Free Zombies in Love by Nora Fleischer Page A

year. 
                  Sam rubbed his thumb over Jack's wristwatch, safe in his pocket for the duration of the trip.  When he'd unrolled the tarp in his trunk and revealed his cousin's limp body, there'd been so much blood under him.  And when the body went down, he'd seen no air bubbles, not a single one.
                  Had Jack somehow survived?  It was impossible.  But maybe it was true.
                  Goddamn it, now he was going to have to kill his asshole cousin all over again.
                 

ch. 12
     
    The zombie rocked back and forth in a corner of its cage.  Sarah could barely remember the way it looked when they had captured it-- now it smelled unbelievably foul, and she could see parts of its skull where it had pulled the skin away and eaten it. 
    Here was the problem-- once you’d put the monster in the cage, there was no way to get it out.  It had seen their faces, it probably knew where it was, and if they’d let it go when it was still coherent, someone would have found out what she and Ian had done.  Goodbye Stanford, goodbye new start. So they had to let the game run to its necessary end. 
    But now she felt sorry for the poor creature, and even sorrier that she’d even started this thing.  It had all been a joke.  They didn't actually think it would work.  “It’s gotten worse,” she said to Ian.
    “He’s already dead,” Ian replied.  “How can he get worse?"
    She sighed and loaded the syringe.  “This is going to make all the pain go away,” she murmured.
    Uncle Fester tried to say something, but it hissed out through a hole in his throat.
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.  “Just tranq him, Ian.”
    Ian shot the creature.  It sagged to the bottom of the cage.  While Ian reloaded his gun, Sarah opened the door to the cage and went inside.
    The monster sprang to its feet, lifted Sarah by her armpits, and crushed her to the side of the cage.  Her feet dangled off the floor.  Before she could react, before she could even speak, the creature bit her flailing arm.  So much pain, so much blood that she could not even think, but now she had fallen to the floor and the zombie was running out of the cage running past Ian running out the door.
    “He bit me, Ian,” she said.
    Ian shot her.
     
    #
     
    All the peace that had come over Jack in the morgue was gone.  Even though he was jogging back to Lisa’s apartment-- and getting some strange looks because he was wearing a set of scrubs and a pair of flip-flops he’d liberated from the hospital-- he felt a terrible restlessness.  Like he couldn’t be still, ever again.
    No, that wasn’t it-- he felt the sort of prickly awareness of a mouse being watched by a owl.  It felt as though something was after him, something with a stride matching his own, something that reached out with a pale cold hand...
    He reached the door of Lisa’s apartment, thudded up the stairs, and pounded at the closed door.  She opened it like she’d been waiting next to it for hours.  Out the door came the rosy scent of her body, the heat of her, and in the center of the candle flame, Lisa’s beautiful daredevil smile.
    “You're back!  How'd it go?  I dropped off the satchel, just like we planned, and the guy seemed to know exactly what it was for,” she said.  He followed her in.  “I’ve never done anything like that in my life.  Wasn’t that crazy, wasn’t that wild?”
    “Stick with me, honey,” he said.  “We’ll have fun.”
    She smiled and squeezed his bare upper arm roughly enough for him to feel it.  Heat seared his cold skin.  “And tomorrow, we go back to work, and I know I’m going to be standing there, giving people their pizza and thinking, ‘All you people, you don’t know a damn thing about me, you don’t know what I’ve been up to.’  Me and my secret life.” 
    And then it all made sense.  He knew what he wanted.  He reached up and kissed her.