Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (17 page)

154

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.

* * * *

“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.

155

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.

156

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:

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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.

158

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 he’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.

159

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.

160

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.

He must have died early, because he sure looks ripe. Never thin, but omigod—in death, he has put on some serious water weight.

It splooshes as I pull the trigger.

BLAM!

Then, from around the corner, here comes Ray in a spray of gunfire.

* * * *

The first thing I look at is his beautiful face. There’s no blood on it. That’s a very good sign. His expression is one of intense concentration, no small measure of anxiety notwithstanding.

I love how smart and capable he is.

I knew he knew I’d be waiting for him.

Ray is tall, long, sculpted, and lean. A college basketball star and Gulf War soldier before he became a federal agent, he lives through his body the way most people only live through their dreams.

161

He is an active man. Powerful. Disciplined. Engaged.

And oh, so tender, when the push comes to lovin’…

I never thought I could fall for a government man. They were Fascists and vultures, pure and simple. Didn’t matter which party was minding the store. They just wanted to eat what was ours.

That was how I was raised. That was what I believed.

So when the feds came to my ranch-style suburban home and started asking questions about Mom and Dad, and their alleged signing of some crazy petition that they probably knew was dumb at the time, but they were
just really angry
, way back in ’02, my hackles were raised. I wasn’t rude, but I was firm.

I love my parents, I told them. I don’t live with my parents. They have a life of their own. They’re good Americans. They’re not trying to overthrow anybody. They just want to be left alone. And so do I.

The first guys they sent were officious and stiff, and what they gave was what they got back, in spades.

Then they sent Ray.

God bless America.

It wasn’t just how damn fine-looking he was. From the start, I recognized he wasn’t trying to nail them. He was just burrowing through the bullshit of a paranoid nation to weed the legitimate terrorist threats from all the other little blips on the possible threat index. That was his job.

And I could tell he was clocking me, too.

“We live in a dangerous world,” he said.

162

“I know.”

“It all could all come apart at any second.”

“Exactly.”

“We need to keep track of what matters to us,” he said, blue eyes shining deeply into my own. “Keep each other safe. Take care of each other.”

“Otherwise, we’re all alone,” I said, leaning closer. “And that’s no way to live.”

Ray smiled, his lips amazing. “No, it isn’t.”

“So what, if I may ask, matters most to
you
?”

“Ah…” Ray actually sat back and thought about it, his eyes skimming heavenward before locking back on mine. He sighed once again deeply, unconsciously licked those lips, and said, “Oh, you know. Other people. The people you love.”

“So who do you love?” I wasn’t being a smartass. At least, not entirely. I actually suddenly wanted to know. “Are you talking
everybody
, in a Socialist do-gooder kind of way?”

“Or a Christian way?” He laughed. “Sort of. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s—you’ll pardon the expression—the whole motherfucking point of any attempt to make the world a better place.”

“
Language!
” I cautioned in mock dismay. “Are you allowed to say shit like that, in a federal capacity?”

“Extreme times demand extreme measures,” he said, winking. “So yeah, but…

No. I mean, of
course
it’s not all just some vague dumbass hippy-dippy love of the idealized commonweal. But that’s definitely part of it.”

163

“Do tell.” I was enjoying his chatter. But mostly, I was enjoying his company. His proximity.

The way he was looking at me.

“You’re a human being, right? You love people.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“But you love some people more than others.”

“Yes, I do.”

“So let me ask you this,” he said, leaning into me, as I leaned into him. “Does
loving certain people more than life itself
make you a) love the whole of the human race?

Or does it b) only make you love those certain people?”

Now it was my turn to think about that. And it only took a second.

“Both,” I said. “Just more the one than the other. And thank you for asking.”

“Why?” He grinned, searching. Just confirming the evidence trail, like a good investigator should.

“Because it made me really like you.”

“I like you, too,” he said, as our noses touched. “Sunshine.”

And the second he said my name out loud, in just that way…well, baby, it was on.

The courtship that followed went quickly from formal to truly love-tastic. The second he declared my Mom and Daddy off the list, we fell into each other heart and soul, body to body, mind to mind. All subsequent interpersonal investigation was off the record, and off the hook.

I gotta be honest: for a couple of days there, I honestly thought about following him back to D.C.