Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance

by Lori Perkins

  “We don’t do anything. You just sit there and be quiet while I try to work this out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And cut that out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Joshua smiled.

  Dee eyed the dead man and his dashing smile. She supposed, maybe, she had been on her own for too long. It had been years since she had a familiar, or help of any kind. And he did offer. “Would you like to work for me?”

  “I have to. I owe you my fealty.”

  “I didn’t ask for your servitude. I asked if you wanted a job. As in a paying job.”

  Joshua was silent.

  “Would you like to work for me?” she asked again.

  “I’m dying to,” he answered.

  Dee smirked, laid her foot down heavy on the gas and flipped a bitch in the middle of the quiet road.

  “Where are we going?” Joshua asked.

  “To see a man about a spell,” she said.

  “You can’t be serious. Silas will kill you where you stand.”

  “I’m not talking about Silas. I’m talking about Maggot. He’s the man to see about locating dead things like, oh, the heart of a seventy-year-old corpse.”

  Joshua closed the box with a chuckle. “You are single-minded, aren’t you?”

  “No honey, I have an eight-track mind. They just don’t make the tapes any more.”

  The pair of them laughed for a bit.

  “I really appreciate all you have done for me,” Joshua said.

  “You’ll get a chance to make up for it,” Dee said. “It might take a while to find your missing ticker, and until then I have loads of things that need doing.” Including me, her mind finished for her.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Stop that! I’m your friend, not your master.”

  He nodded his assent, but Dee had a feeling he wasn’t going to stop.

  And, truth be told, she kind of liked it.

  Captive Hearts

  by Brian Keene

  “Maybe I should cut off your penis next.”

  Richard moaned at the prospect, thrashing on the bed. The handcuffs rattled and the headboard thumped against the wall, but Gina noticed his efforts were growing weaker. That was good. Weak was better. She wanted him weak—enjoyed the prospect of such a once-powerful man now reduced to nothing more than a mewling kitten. Even so, she’d have to keep an eye on his condition. She didn’t want Richard too weak. He’d be useless to her dead.

  “Please, Gina. You can still stop this. No more.”

  “Shut up.”

  The room was dark, save for flickering candlelight. The windows had been boarded over with heavy plywood. Gina had done the work herself, and had felt a sense of satisfaction when she’d finished.

  Richard raised his head and stared at her, standing in the doorway. He licked his cracked, peeling lips. His tongue reminded her of a slug. Gina shuddered, remembering how it had felt on her skin—the nape of her neck, her breasts, her belly, inside her thighs.

  Her stomach churned. Sour and acidic bile surged up her throat. Gina swallowed, and that brought another shameful memory.

  “Just let me go,” Richard pleaded. “I won’t tell anybody. There’s nobody left to tell.”

  She studied him, trying to conceal her trembling. He had bedsores and bruises, and desperately needed a bath. Richard’s skin had an unhealthy sheen that seemed almost yellow in the dim candlelight. His hair, usually so expertly styled, lay limp and greasy.

  One week into his captivity, she’d held up a mirror and shown Richard his hair, and asked him if it was worth the ten thousand dollars he’d spent on hair replacement surgery.

  He’d cursed her so loud she had to stuff a pair of her soiled panties in his mouth just to stifle him.

  Gina winced. She could smell him from the doorway. He stank of shit and piss and blood, and with good reason. She’d stripped the sheets from the bed, yanking them right out from beneath him when they became too nauseating to go near, but now the mattress itself was crusted with filth. The bandages on his feet covering the nine stumps where his toes had been were leaking again.

  “Where would you go?” she asked.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “They said things were better in the country. The news said the government was quarantining Baltimore.”

  “Not anymore. It’s everywhere, Richard.”

  “Turn on the news. They—”

  “There is no news. The power’s been out for the last five days.”

  Richard’s eyes grew wide. “F-five days? How long have I been here, Gina?”

  “That’s easy. Just count your piggies. How many are missing?”

  “Oh God, stop…”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She went down the hall. When she returned, she was dressed in rubber gloves, a smock, and surgical mask. The bolt cutters were in her hand. She held them up so that Richard could see. That broke him. Richard sobbed, his chest heaving.

  “Don’t worry,” she soothed. “I cleaned them with alcohol, just like always. We can’t have you getting an infection.”

  Gina retrieved her wicker sewing basket—the last gift her mother had given her before succumbing to breast cancer three years ago—from atop the dresser, then stood over the bed. Richard tried to shrink away from her, but the handcuffs around his wrists and ankles prevented him from moving more than a few inches.

  “Listen, listen, listen…” He tried to say more, but all that came out was a deep, mournful sigh.

  “We’ve been over this before,” she said. “You won’t die. I know what I’m doing.”

  And she did. While most of her fellow suburbanites had fled Hamelin’s Revenge—the name the media gave the disease, referencing the rats that had first spawned it—Gina had remained behind. She’d had little choice. There was no way she’d have abandoned Paul. Richard was already imprisoned by then, so she didn’t need to worry about him escaping. She’d ventured out after the last of the looters moved on, armed with the small .22 pistol she and Paul had kept in the nightstand. Gina had never fired the handgun before that day, but by the end of that first outing, she’d become a capable shot. Her first stop had been the library, which was, thankfully, zombie free.

  Alive or dead, nobody read anymore.

  Her search of the abandoned library had turned up a number of books—everything from battlefield triage to medical textbooks. She’d taken them all. Her next stop had been the grocery store. She’d scavenged what little bottled water and canned goods were left, then moved on to the household aisle, where she’d picked up rubber gloves, disinfectant, and as many cigarette lighters as she could carry. Finally she’d hit the pharmacy, only to find it empty. She’d had to rely on giving Richard over-the-counter painkillers and booze instead. She hadn’t thought he’d mind, especially given the alternative.

  “I just want to wake up,” Richard cried.

  Gina positioned the bolt cutters over his one remaining toe. “And I just wanted to provide for Paul.”

  “But I di—”

  “And this little piggy cried wee wee wee—”

  CRUNCH.

  Richard screamed.

  “—all the way home.”

  He shrieked something unintelligible, and his eyes rolled up into his head. He writhed on the mattress, the veins in his neck standing out.

  “You brought this on yourself,” Gina reminded him as she reached for a lighter to cauterize the wound.

  Richard had been her boss before Hamelin’s Revenge—before the dead started coming back to life.

  Gina and Paul had met in college, and got married after graduating. They’d been together three years and were just beginning to explore the idea of starting a family when Paul had his accident. It left him quadriplegic. He had limited use of his right arm and couldn’t feel anything below his chest. Overnight, both of their lives were irrevocably changed. Gone were Gina’s dreams of being a stay-at-home mom. She’d had to support them both, which meant a bet
ter job with more pay and excellent health insurance. She’d found all three as Richard’s assistant.

  Gina had spent her days working for Richard and her nights caring for Paul.

  Richard had been a wonderful employer at first—gregarious, funny, kind, and sympathetic. He’d seemed genuinely interested in her situation, and had offered gentle consolation. But his comfort and caring had come with a price. One day, his breath reeking of lunchtime bourbon, Richard asked about Paul’s needs. When Gina finished explaining, he asked about her own needs. He then suggested he was the man to satisfy those needs. She’d thought he was joking at first and, blushing, had stammered that Paul could still get reflexive erections and they had no trouble in the bedroom.

  Then Richard touched her. When Gina resisted, he reminded her of her situation.

  She needed this job. The visiting nurse who cared for Paul during the day didn’t come cheap, nor did any of his medicines or other needs. Sure, Gina could sue him for sexual harassment, but could she really afford to? Worse, what would such a public display do to her husband? Surely he was already feeling inadequate. Did she really want to put this on his conscience as well?

  Gina succumbed. They did it right there in the office. She’d cried the first time as Richard grunted and huffed above her. She’d cried the second time, too. And the third.

  And each time, Gina died a little bit more inside.

  Until the dead came back to life, giving her a chance to live again.

  She’d called Richard before the phones had gone out, telling him to come over, pleading with him to escape with her. They’d be safe together. They could make it to one of the military encampments. Could he please hurry?

  He’d shown up an hour later, his BMW packed full of supplies. He smiled when she opened the door, touched her cheek, caressed her hair, and told her he was glad she’d called.

  “What about your husband?”

  “He’s already dead,” Gina replied. “He’s one of them now.”

  Then she’d hit Richard in the head with a flashlight. The first blow didn’t knock him out. It took five tries. Each one was more satisfying than the previous.

  The thing Gina had always loved most about Paul was his heart. Her mother, who’d adored Paul, had often said the same thing.

  “You married a good one, Gina. He’s got a big heart.”

  Her mother had been right. Paul’s heart was big. She stood staring at it through the hole in his chest. Paul moaned, slumping forward in his wheelchair. She’d strapped him into it with bungee cords and duct tape so he couldn’t get out. He was no longer dead from the chest down. Death had cured him of that. He could move again.

  She moved closer and he moaned again, snapping at the air with his teeth. Gina thought of all the other times she’d stood over him like this. She remembered the times they’d made love in the wheelchair—straddling him with her legs wrapped around the chair’s back, Paul nuzzling her breasts, Gina kissing the top of his head as she thrust up and down on him. Afterward, they’d stay like that, skin on skin, sweat drying to a sheen.

  Paul moaned a third time, breaking her reverie. She glanced down and noticed that another one of his fingernails had fallen off. She couldn’t stop him from decaying, but when he ate, it seemed to slow the process down.

  She reached into her pocket, pulled out the plastic baggie, and unzipped it.

  Richard’s piggy toe lay inside. It was still slightly warm to the touch. She fed Paul the toe, ignoring the smacking sounds his lips made as he chewed greedily.

  “We’ll have something different tomorrow.” Her voice cracked. “A nice finger.

  Would you like that?”

  Paul didn’t respond. She hadn’t expected him to. Gina liked to think he still understood her, that he still remembered their love for each other, but deep down inside, she knew better.

  Eventually, Gina grew tired. Yawning, she went around the house and snuffed out the candles. Richard was still passed out when she examined his newest bandage. She double-checked the barricades on the doors and windows. Finally she said goodnight to what was left of the man who had captured her heart, while in the other room, her captive awoke and cried softly in the dark.

  Apocalypse as Foreplay

  by Gina McQueen

  There are fifteen of them left outside my bedroom window, and I am running out of bullets fast.

  God

  damn, why did I have to be born so popular?

  And where in the hell is my man?

  This whole zombie plague/collapse-of-civilization thing is going down stupid fast, pretty much the way the movies always told us it would. Guy gets up. Bites another person. They get up. Bite somebody else.

  Thank God I was raised around guns, with both Mom and Dad backwoods hardcore survivalists. I grew up on a firing range, never taught that it wasn’t a young woman’s place to squeeze the trigger and aim like you mean it.

  As such, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t blow somebody’s brains out if push came to shove. Be they male or female. Republican or Democrat.

  Alive or the next thing to it.

  Thanks to my Mom, I never knew limitations. Thanks to my Dad, I never thought of men as the bad guys. (Except maybe government men. And Ray helped me get over that.)

  Thanks to these guns, I never had to split the difference. Right up until now.

  That said:

  BLAM! Jerry Whicker’s forehead implodes, firehosing what little brains he had out the back of his skull in freshets of wet papier-mache confetti. He collapses like the wannabe prom date he was.

  Never liked that Jerry. Had fended him off since high school. Another jerk who never got the word no. Eternally nursing the hope I’d one day be just self-loathing or drunk enough, if only he hit on me every chance he got.

  Those days are gone forever. Aim for the brain is the new game in town. Blowing holes in their guts is a waste of time and ammo, the practical equivalent of polite conversation.

  As of right now, no means no.

  Not no, thank you.

  No with a capital BLAM!

  Jerry hits the lawn and stays there, directly in front of the Rev. Stanley Simmons: to my mind, the least sexy man in town, an inveterate starer at my God-given breasts who seemed to think he’d gotten the Pentacostal version of papal dispensation for that act.

  Good to know he hadn’t been plowing evangelical boys with the Lord’s tallywacker, I must admit, but if I had a daughter, he wouldn’t have been giving her Bible lessons.

  BLAM!

  Rev. Stan is already tripping over Jerry when his red third eye opens, more expressive than the others. It makes him arc majestically as he falls—pelvis out, head back, arms flailing up as if groping for Heaven.

  “Good luck with that,” I say, reloading.

  Thirty-seven down, thirteen to go.

  I wonder if my man is ever going to show.

  In George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead—Mom and Dad’s favorite movie, circa 1979—the zombies descended on a shopping mall. Why? Not because they wanted to shop in the conventional sense, but because it was a place that was important to them.

  Somewhere they wanted to be.

  I guess I should be flattered.

  I know I’m not the only desirable young woman on Donnybrook Terrace, and thank God for that, though I’m terrified for Susu and Jackie and Dot, who couldn’t defend themselves if the zombies were made of Xanax and low-fat yogurt.

  Just as I’m sure that many of the most desirable men are, even now, being surrounded by the feminine dead.

  Hubba is hubba.

  And hunger is hunger.

  BLAM! There goes that dipstick from Lance Automotive. I always knew he had a thing for me. Scraggly beard and scrawny body, always leaving his monkey suit unzipped, like I was somehow barely repressing the desire to lick the grease off his sweaty pot belly. Guess again.

  Then BLAM! Sweet old Mister Finster from next door, and a pang of inescapable heartbreak. I want to believe that h
e’s here just out of convenience—even in life, he didn’t get around so hot—but I can’t help reading his wide-open robe as a repeat of last December’s wardrobe malfunction, when he asked me to change the light bulb in his bedroom because he was too weak to unscrew it himself.

  One more limp dipsy-doodle down.

  And, from somewhere up the street, the distant sound of gunfire.

  “Oh!” I gasp, shocked and embarrassed by my girliness. Take a look at myself in the bedroom window glass. My makeup is smeary with tears and sweat, and my hair is a riot, but I tell myself that I still got it goin’ on.

  That he is gonna love me, when he fights his way through.

  That those are his gunshots, blowing their way back home to me.

  BLAM! Another single shot from my 98 Bravo, having dialed back from semi-automatic hours ago. Precision is the key. But precision eludes me this time.

  I take the left eye out of little Pat Diggins.

  Poor kid. Horrible family. Always wanting a hug. At ten, it was cute. By seventeen? Waaaaaay past creepy.

  The shot spins him around, but doesn’t take him down.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, though the sad little boy I knew is as gone as the parents he is better off without.

  The next shot works better.

  A dozen to go.

  And from the street comes blam blam blam, three in rapid succession. Whoever it is is on a roll. Sounds like a .357 Magnum.

  Please let it be him.

  I take aim at the remainders, closing in on the window now. Some are woefully close to home, in far more ways than one.

  For example, I always liked Willie. Super nice. From the health food store.

  Always had great advice on fresh produce. A warm and lovely smile.

  Right now, he’s probably got more red meat packed between his teeth than he’d eaten in the past thirty years.

  BLAM!

  Doug, my boyfriend from seventh grade. First guy I ever kissed. Turned out remarkably dull, but never less than sweet to me…until now, drooling black blood down his drab bank teller’s suit.

  BLAM!

  Oh, Danny. Lived together three years, him cheating on me all the while. So handsome, so charming, so much fun to be with that it was almost worth the drama.