Free Zombies in Love by Nora Fleischer

had any meat without formaldehyde before, and it was like the difference between canned green beans and the real thing, fresh from the garden, uncooked, warm with the heat of the sun, covered with fine clear stiff hair.  Crunching softly in his mouth, giving up its sweetness.  His hand twitched to take more, but he restrained himself.
    He could handle this.  He'd had this problem before.  Back when he'd been alive, he'd had a weakness for potato chips.  He'd buy a family-sized bag, and it would be gone the next day, and since he lived alone, it must have been him who ate them, right?  Solution: don't buy potato chips.
    Or to put it another way, Let go of the corpse, Jack! 
    He snatched his hand away and gripped the sheet tightly.  “I’ve met at least forty more just like me in Boston,” he added.
    “Why?” she asked.  “What happened?”
    Hell if I know , he thought.  And I've spent a lot of time thinking about it.  But you go on and chase that wild goose, lady.  It'll distract you from me.  “You’re the real reporter.  I’m just the lazy hack.  You figure it out.”
    “What do I get?” she asked.
    “All the help I can give you,” he said, “if you keep my name out of it, and make us look good.”  He grinned.  “Come on, Donna.  This is the big one.”
    “Zombies are real,” she said, distantly.
    “Pulitzer Prize, here you come.”
     
    #
     
    As soon as the doorbell rang, Lisa bolted down the stairs to let Jack in.  It was only when she was halfway down that she remembered, he has a key, idiot, and saw that there was a woman standing there instead, someone she didn't recognize.  She was slim, dark-haired, about Lisa's age, but expensively groomed, her eyebrows plucked to perfect arches, a neat cap of hair, a thick gold chain around her neck.  It was only when Lisa actually had her hand on the doorknob that she realized who she was looking at: Tina Gallagher.  The old friend she'd been dodging for weeks.
    She opened the door.  "Hi, Tina," she said.
    "Look at you!" said Tina.  "You haven't changed a bit!"
    She couldn't say the same.  Last time she'd seen Tina, she'd been wearing a white T-shirt, an oversized vest, jean shorts, and Dwayne Wayne glasses.  Some kind of high school graduation party about twenty years earlier.  "You look great," said Lisa. 
    "I never seem to catch you on the phone, so I thought I'd stop by," Tina said.  "May I come in?"
    "I know what this is about," said Lisa.  "This building isn't for sale."
    Tina rested her hand on the doorframe.  "You don't have to give up the business.  Everyone loves your pizza.  You can buy elsewhere.  Start fresh."
    "I like it here."
    "You know and I know this isn't the neighborhood it used to be..."
    Lisa cut her off and took the door in a firm grip.  "Good night, Tina."  Tina snatched her hand away as Lisa slammed the door shut.
    As Lisa walked upstairs, she could still hear Tina yelling something at the shut door.  It sounded like, "Nancy thinks it's a good idea."
     
    #
     
                  Kelly, the man who'd picked up Jack's car for the dealer, had obviously talked to one too many representatives of the Kershaw and Lazarus families.  "Like I told the other ten guys who asked," he told Sam, "it was a guy who looked just like you.  I only remember him because he sold us a Beemer, and we don't see too many of them.  And he was staying in a crappy hotel, which was weird for a guy with a car like that."
                  "But you bought it?" asked Sam.
                  "Of course we did.  He had title and ID.  Anything else?"
                  Sam didn't have anything else, and he suspected that this was where every other investigator had stalled out, too, though they might drag out their time on the family payroll.  This was what they all said: Jack was alive, he didn't want to be found, and he'd managed to successfully hide for over half a