Free The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) by Jesse Petersen

considering the question.
    “Robbie and Josh and the lab rats, I don’t think they’d make anyone stay, though they would hate to lose the research opportunity that your being here offers them. They really do want to create a cure and they
really
think you’re the key.”
    “Which may be true,” Dave said. “But what about the others?”
    “The military guys, it’s harder to say. I think most of them have good intentions.” She shrugged. “But can I promise you no one will go rogue on you? No, I can’t.”
    “Who would go, if you had to hazard a guess?” I asked. I hopped down from the table.
    “The guy who you met with earlier this afternoon, Colonel Fenton? He’s hard to read. And he and your friend Lisa… well, they are more than friends if you know what I mean.”
    I nodded. “Okay.”
    “I’m not telling you that either of them is dangerous,” Nicole insisted.
    I nodded. “You’re just letting us know that we want to make sure we stay safe. I get it. And I appreciate it.”
    And I did. Even though, as we followed her out into the main lab room, with all the lab rats now staring at me the same way they had been staring at Dave, I wasn’t sure if I felt better knowing the real score or worse.
    All I knew for sure was that I was going to find a way to keep an eye on Lisa and the Colonel. For the sake of my husband, myself and even for LZ. Because until I knew otherwise, I was about to become a mother and nobody was going to fuck (sorry, LZ) with this mother.

Chapter Eight
    Ready, Set, Eat Brains
     
    The next three days passed like molasses. Even though everyone liked to stare at me, whisper about me when I came down from the bedrooms into the lab, as far as I knew, none of my results were in yet. Apparently medical bureaucracy, like cockroaches, Cher and us, had survived the apocalypse just fine.
    Actually, I think the wait was based more on the fact that everyone in the lab was so focused on Dave. Having a real, live semi-zombiefied person around… well, it was like Christmas for the nerds. They had him run on treadmills, then ran tests. They drew blood. They tested how long he could hold his breath, how much weight he could bear, how hard he could punch.
    And Dave ate it up, becoming the center of the universe, just like he’d been born to take on the role.
    Now I love the guy, don’t get me wrong. But sitting in a lab on day three since our arrival, watching him go over numbers and tests with Robbie and Josh was mind-numbingly boring, even if he did look pretty hot with his shirt off and sensors stuck all over his chest.
    I got up from my chair across the room from them and said, “So I’m going to get a drink, anybody want anything while I’m out?”
    My question was hardly registered as they all huddled around their computer monitors, looking at data together.
    “Guys?” I repeated.
    Dave glanced up finally and spared me a rather dismissive look. “No, thanks babe.”
    I sighed as I pulled the door open and stepped out in to the main lab. I weaved my way through the computers and tables with beakers filled with mysterious chemicals and pushed through a pair of swinging doors in the back of the room. Down a short hall was what had obviously been a break room when this was still an active facility.
    The military guys hadn’t included this room, or our bedrooms above, in the areas hooked up to the generators, so there was a little battery operated lantern hanging by a hook next to the door that I grabbed as I stepped inside.
    I clicked the switch and set it on the counter next to the fridge. When I opened it, I was greeted by a stale, ozone scent from the warm fridge. They had removed all the real food, transferring what meager portions of it that was left to a fridge in the lab that was kept running at all times. The shelves were still full of bottled waters, sealed flavored beverages and soda. Lines and lines of soda.
    I grabbed a Diet Coke and cracked it open as the break room door