Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (16 page)

She reached up and slowly daubed at his weeping eyes. “I’m glad we could say goodbye this time.”

Joshua nodded but said nothing else.

Emily drew a rattling breath and in a single burst of excitement said, “I have something for you too. A box for you. Under the bed. That man sent it to me a few weeks after the wedding. My mother told me to throw it away, but I kept it all these years because I knew. Somehow…I knew…you’d come back…to me.” After she spoke the last words, she closed her eyes and fell still.

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Joshua sat in silence for a minute, just looking down at his lost love as his tears dried. He leaned low and kissed her on the forehead, the eyes, and the lips one last time.

“I love you, Emily,” he whispered. “Godspeed you to your eternal rest.”

Joshua got to his feet and retrieved the wooden box from under the bed. Clutching it to his breast, he silently passed Dee and exited the room. Dee pointed the fingers of her right hand to the corpse and laid out one quick motion, a sigil of her own design, ensuring that Joshua would never see his lady love up and about now that she was gone.

Dee caught up with Joshua halfway down the hall. As they passed the nurse’s desk, each woman in white nodded their sympathies without even asking what happened.

They knew when the reaper had done his deed, just as Dee could smell death in the air.

She and Joshua were well in the car and halfway back before he spoke again.

“Thank you, Deetra,” was all he said.

They rode for a little longer in silence, until Dee couldn’t stand it any more.

As if sensing her frustration Joshua said, “Go on. Ask your questions. You deserve much more than anything I can offer you.”

“How long have you been dead?” she asked.

“Seventy-three years,” he answered.

“I see. Do I want to know what happened?”

“Let’s just say I dug my own grave. One should never embezzle when one is the accountant for a necromancer.”

“That was a punishment for stealing from him?”

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Joshua nodded. “He killed me on my wedding day. He knew for weeks, but let me ride it thinking I had beaten him. I was surprised when he asked me over for drinks. Said he wanted to celebrate my nuptials. He isn’t a celebrating kind of man.”

“Few necromancers are.” Dee thought of Maggot, and how lucky her friendship with him really was. She would have to be nicer to him in the future.

“A few arsenic brews later and I’m a walking corpse. Then he fixed me up so I would never go sour, as he put it. Not living, never dying, and all this knowing my Emily was growing older and older and would eventually die without me. His last punishment was to take the one thing that led me to steal from him.”

“Your heart.”

Joshua nodded. “We didn’t have the money to start a life together, so over a few months I cooked his books, hoping he wouldn’t notice.”

“You stole for her.”

“And died for her.”

“All because of that black-hearted monster.”

Joshua narrowed his eyes at Dee.

“Silas Croomer was the same man who raised my grandpa.”

“I’m so sorry,” Joshua said.

“No,” Dee said. “Don’t be sorry. Be angry. Be furious. Be pig-biting mad as hell and not want to take it any more. But don’t be sorry. Don’t you ever be sorry again.”

This finally got a smile from the dead man. “Yes, ma’am.”

“How did you get out from under Silas? Did he die? Please say he’s finally dead!”

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“No, unfortunately not. He bound me to his second cousin who lived up in Vermont. Roger was a good man, surprisingly enough, but all the while my absent heart ached for Emily. He wanted to set me free so I could go to her, but we both knew Silas would just kill all three of us. So Roger fixed the spell to slip at his death. I am no longer bound to him, or Silas, or anyone. Except you.”

“Me?”

“I owe you everything. If you hadn’t stepped in I would have missed my chance to say goodbye to Emily again. I can never repay you for what you’ve done. Please accept my servitude instead.”

“I can’t.”

“Please, Deetra. Don’t make me beg again.”

Dee nodded to the locked box. “But you have your heart now. You can rest.”

“Is that what you truly want?”

She sighed. What she wanted was to have a chance at him, now that he was on the market again, so to speak. She also wanted him to be happy, and she knew that the one thing the dead wanted more than anything else was to find eternal peace. “Yes. Put your heart back and when we get home I’ll work on lifting your curse and the zombie spell.

You can finally join her, where you belong.”

“You are unlike anyone I have ever met, Deetra Jones. There is not enough karma in this universe to pay you back for this deed.” And with that, he snapped the rusted lock and opened the box. He looked inside for a moment, then started to laugh.

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“What’s so funny?” she asked. He held the box to her and she glanced inside. It was empty, save for a few words scribbled at the bottom. “Come and get it,” she read aloud. She supposed Joshua was laughing because there was nothing else he could do.

“Silas was always the sly one,” he said.

“You mean he was always the asshole.” She blew an exasperated breath and strummed the wheel with her fingertips.

“What do we do now?”

“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.

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“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.

149

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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

* * * *

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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 better 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?