Free Love in the Time of Zombies by Jill James

it was unplugged.”
    “Dr. Drake. I’m sorry.”
    “Todd, I’m sure you are. But that doesn’t bring Mr. Jamison back, does it?”
    Todd smirked.
    Shannon smiled unwillingly. “Okay, you know what I mean.” She pulled her gun out of the holster and handed it grip first to the young man. “Mr. Jamison’s non return is now your responsibility.”
    She left the room and stood by the closed door. She waited for the slight sound of the silenced weapon and the young man’s sobs before she headed upstairs to visit the rest of her patients. That he had cried meant there was hope for him yet.
♦♦♦
    “Work, dammit,” Jed Long yelled at the radio as he pounded on the side of the casing, and then stopped to rub it like he’d hurt the inanimate object. He’d started as a janitor at Concord Hospital until the Z virus turned everything upside down, and Dr. Drake had discovered his hobby was ham radios. After that, he was the communications hub for the Far East Bay Area.
    Thanks to Seth Ripley, he’d been able to make a run to his apartment downtown, and return with all his radios and equipment. He swiped long hair back behind his ears. Now, he was connected to the area and the world. Not that there was a lot of world left out there. Spain and Portugal had gone dark early on. Cornwall seemed like the only place left in Great Britain, must be the rough terrain he’d seen pictures of in school. Paris fell in the first few days. The flu vaccine may have been meant for the United States, but once it mutated into a lethal virus, worldwide travel took care of the rest of the planet.
    Asia held on the longest; with so many people vaccinated for the bird flu, it took another mutation to do them in. Before they went dark, China was reporting deaths and risings in the hundreds of millions. He shuddered. Thankful the country was on the other side of the world. The thought of hundreds of millions of undead was enough to make him never sleep again.
    He pushed his glasses back up his nose and turned the dial on the radio calibrated for the local camps and compounds. A shrill hum vibrated into his headset. He twitched and yanked them off, slamming them to the desktop. The hum had been infiltrating the radio for days.
    He rubbed his jaw. The hum set his fillings to vibrating, threatening to fall out, and unless a dentist miraculously appeared, he wasn’t getting new ones anytime soon. The door behind him opened, and Jed spun around in his chair. That young nurse, Amy peeked around the door.
    “Hi, Jed. Talking to anyone interesting?” She talked while chewing and popping her bubble gum. He wondered where she kept getting some. And how she managed to walk and chew at the same time, when it seemed like her brainpower would only be capable of one or the other.
    “Now I am,” he said with a smile.
    She smiled back, swallowed her gum, got down on her knees, and swallowed him.
    A while later, she sat up on the mattress they’d fallen on to and handed him his glasses. She looked around as a hum filled the space like feedback from a microphone.
    She covered her ears, while Jed jumped up and turned down the sound on his radio. The hum grew dimmer, but remained. He pulled on the headset. He switched frequencies and it died. His fingers played with the dial, bringing the sound back. Glancing at the chart thumb-tacked to the wall, he saw it was the location for the small enclave across town. A few stubborn holdouts were trying to survive atop a small strip mall just off the freeway. A couple of old men and their cult-like followers who chose to live by the mantra of at least two women for every man and no woman alone. The only reason they still existed was drivers like Ripley who’d take supplies to them from time to time.
    He pressed the mic. “Rob’s group. Do you read me? I’m getting feedback. Anyone there?”
    “They—everywhere. Can’t—them off. God—us.”
    “Rob’s group. This is Jed at Concord hospital. Can you read