Free When Winter Bared Our Bones by Emily Asimov

 
     
     
     
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    “Well,” said the zombie finally as he sat across from the girl and leaned back into the luxurious leather of the French provincial arm chair. “I not only stayed with the wolves, but I became their leader. Or at least, they looked to me to lead them and I did.
      “Life with the pack was simple. We hunted. We defended our territory. We sheltered. The pack was everything to me and I was everything to them, for I was Alpha.”
      “Alpha?” the girl asked.
      The zombie gazed at the girl. As much as he wanted to tell his story fully to someone, it was the interruptions, always the interruptions that brought out his nature and ultimately led to failure.
      The girl smiled under the weight of his stare. He smiled back even as he imagined tying the girl to the chair, using a surgical saw to cut a circle around her cranium so he could remove the cap of her skull and get at the tissues of her living brain. Even as he imagined scooping up those tissues a bite at a time with a citrus spoon while the girl writhed and screamed.
      There was no substitute for such delicacy. None. Point of fact, he’d eaten little else since he’d perfected the technique centuries ago and it was really modern medicine that was to thank for his marvelous find.
      In the early centuries of his life there simply hadn’t been such fine instruments as those used in modern medicine. Except modern wasn’t really the right word, was it?
      Nothing from the 15 th century could be considered modern anymore, even so he grinned sheepishly at memories of his days stalking cobbled streets with his novel tools, at the way the horses always seemed to know who and what he was while his quarry would never admit to themselves that he was what he was even as he ate their live flesh while they flailed, screamed and squealed.
      Of all his tools, it was a simple citrus spoon from a Civil War silver service that he most cherished. He’d tried other types of spoons. Place spoons. Cream soup spoons. Demitasse spoons. But it was the citrus spoon with its serrated edge that made dining a pure joy. Nothing else could scoop up brain still attached to its host as easily.
      The zombie reached out to the girl, his hand moving hesitantly across the cinnamon-finished coffee table. He wanted to feel her warm flesh beneath his fingers once again. He knew he shouldn’t have touched her before, but the temptation was there. It was overwhelming. Overriding. The reason for every thought he promised himself he wouldn’t have.
      He relived the moments of their touch. How he’d grabbed her wrists to dissuade her leaving. How he’d reached out over the length of the table and steadied her. How she’d shuddered at his touch.
      The fear scent she’d released then was manna from heaven. Except heaven had nothing to with what might be ahead. Not even hell had anything to do with what was ahead. Hell was a child’s playground by comparison.
      The zombie wet his lips, managing to pull back his hand even as the temptation to let his fingers spider across the table set his senses ablaze. As he lifted the wine glass to his lips, he breathed in her scent on his fingers as easily as the bountiful bouquet of the deep red liquid.
      Beneath the Trésor perfume she’d dabbed on her wrists earlier that evening was her true scent. A scent that was surprisingly earthy for one of her occupation. He smelled the herbal teas she preferred to coffee. The garlic, ginger and ginseng of her ethnic foods. The faint odor of cigarettes from smokers who had been standing outside the all night diner where he’d met her earlier.
      The zombie realized his stomach was fluttering and his breathing was more rapid than it should have been. The sigh that escaped his lips then was almost a moan of pleasure, a tip of the hat to the fact it’d been so long since he’d eaten Asian.
      “Alpha?” the girl repeated.
      The girl’s voice brought the