Free Flip This Zombie by Jesse Petersen Page B

Still, you can’t just put us on the hook for something without talking it over with me first. We’re supposed to be a team.”
    I gave him a little look. He didn’t look mad, butdefinitely a bit put out. Slowly, I edged a little closer to him and leaned over the gear shift between us.
    “C’mon babe, admit that you like being all clean again.”
    “Hmph,” was the response.
    I moved closer and nuzzled his smooth neck. “
And
shaved.”
    “Hmmm,” he said this time, though he sounded far less irritated than a moment before.
    “And you
like
that I smell good.”
    Dave shrugged before he leaned down and pressed his freshly clean mouth to my sparkling mint one briefly.
    “Fine,” he said as he put his attention back on the road. “I admit it’s a good trade. That
and
the weapons.”
    I glanced back. Yeah, we’d come out pretty well in our agreement with Barnes…
Kevin
. He’d handed over a stash of weaponry worthy of the most bad-ass zombie movie. We’d even gotten one of those handheld multi-shot cannons I’d coveted. I have to admit, I creamed my shorts a little every time I looked at it all awesome and deadly and stuff in the back of the van.
    “We better find a place to hole up,” Dave said, veering off the highway at an exit that said Moon Valley Country Club.
    “True. We couldn’t exactly go to the camps so clean and fresh, it would raise eyebrows,” I said with a broad grin as he started scanning up and down the street for the perfect mansion for us to take over.
    Like the whole car thing, the housing situation was another of the few fun elements to the apocalypse. Before the outbreak we lived in a shithole of a one-bedroom apartment.
    Since then? Well, we’d lived it up in the ritziest resorts, fanciest suites, and the mansions of the ultra-rich and famous. I don’t like to drop names but Paul McCartney has a ranch two and a half hours south of Phoenix. Just saying.
    “You’re right about not being able to go to camp like this,” Dave said. “And I want to be able to talk freely about our plans anyway. If we’re going to catch zombies, that’s a whole other thing from blasting their brains out. I don’t even have the first clue how to do it without getting killed….”
    His voice trailed off as he pulled into a long, circular driveway that led up to a gorgeous mansion.
    Tudor-style turrets lifted skyward and although the desert winds and heat had fried the grass and landscaping, there was nothing about the place that didn’t scream “class.”
    Well, except for the ridiculous knight that was “standing guard” at the front door, rusting away from exposure to the elements.
    Really, rich people? Really?
    We got out, loading up on weapons before we made our way to the front door. Dave tested it and we both tensed when he found it was unlocked. Most of the time, houses like this got locked down tight the moment there was danger. The ritzy owners and spoiled dogs that lived there holed up to wait for help that never came. Or if they ran, they barred the doors behind them so that their precious stuff would be waiting for them when this mess was all over. They were oddly more afraid of looters than the living dead. Go figure.
    So an open door at a house like this either meant thatthe person within hadn’t been
able
to lock the door… or someone else had gotten here first. Either way, it was a danger zone until we got it cleared.
    We pushed our way into the house carefully. Outside the sun was setting and inside the rooms were dim and dusty. There was a faint smell of rotting food just in the foyer. The fridge had obviously been stocked when the shit went down. Hopefully so had the dry pantry so we could restock our tack box and even get some extra supplies for trade.
    Dave’s nose wrinkled at the gross smell as he gently shut the door behind us. “I forgot how much I missed electricity until that son of a bitch reminded me.”
    I smiled at the memory of real lights and hot, clean water,