My Zombie Honeymoon: Love in the Age of Zombies Book One (22 page)

I heard Michelle shout something behind me, and I remember seeing the gun shift slightly in his hand as he looked up. I remember seeing a flash from his gun as it went off.

The last few days are pretty hazy. Michelle insists I helped her move the body upstairs, but all I remember is looking at the trap door and thinking what a pain in the ass it was going to be to fix.

I’m much better now. On my feet again. My first priority was the trap door. I realized it would be impossible to repair it convincingly, since I don’t have any wood or the same stain, so I did the next best thing: I messed with it (mainly one-handed) until it worked, though not as good as it had. I glued a throw rug on top so the edges of the rug were just beyond the end of the boards. It disguises the damage, and I used a rug that used to lie in the same spot when Tammy was still here. It felt right to use that rug. Michelle was a little nervous about me working on it upstairs, but she didn’t try to stop me. She did hover around me quite a bit.

I started listening to the shortwave radio when I couldn’t do much but lie around. I’ve learned a lot, and most of it isn’t good. Many of the broadcasts are the same looped recording from the Emergency Broadcast System, so I ignore them. I’ve heard a few survivors talking to each other but they don’t answer me when I transmit. I guess the signal can’t get out of the basement.

The only exception is an older doctor not too far from us, all things considered. He can pick up my signal most of the time. He’s near Atlanta, Michigan, west of Alpena. He hasn’t seen any zombies—his cabin is deep in the woods. I’m going to try and enhance the antennae so my transmissions go farther and I can talk to him more.

I was surprised at how excited I was to talk to another person. Other than Michelle and those assholes, I haven’t seen or spoken to another living person. Now I know there are other survivors, perhaps a lot of survivors. But where are they and how can I trust them? It used to be a dog-eat-dog world out there; now it’s a human-eat-human world; and watch out for bad guys.

When I think of how things might have turned out—the bullet might have killed me if he hadn’t flinched when Michelle yelled out. Or he might have shot her. Or done worse—lord knows, from what we saw them do earlier, they would have had quite a good time torturing us and raping Michelle—or raping both of us, more likely.

Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying making love with Michelle. She’s very imaginative.

There’s something different in her eyes, something that wasn’t there before I got shot. There’s still just as much lust, but it seems there’s something deeper and warmer as well. Or, hell, maybe I’m seeing her differently, maybe my eyes are more wide-open.

When I bit down on that guy’s pecker, I knew I was going to die. But when I looked down the barrel of his gun, I was not afraid. So when I woke up and realized I wasn’t dead, I felt a change come over me. I was glad I wasn’t dead. I wanted to live, and I wanted to be with Michelle.

Tammy told me to give Michelle the stars. Maybe she didn’t mean for me to paint the ceiling. Maybe she meant for me to put little pinpricks of light in the darkness of these times. I’m no star in the heavens, but I believe I can help make her life easier. I can die knowing I made a difference in someone’s life.

But I don’t know with certainty if she feels the same about me. I’d hate to hear her say
, Gee, Kevin, I like you too, but we’re just friends with benefits, okay?
That would . . . ugh. It would be devastating.

I wasn’t sure of these feelings when I first woke up after I was shot. I knew I felt different, but it took a while for me to figure out how. Over the past few days, she’s fussed over me and taken care of me. The more she does for me, the more she touches me and talks to me, the more affection I feel for her. And yet my fear remains. I’m afraid to fall in love. But is it too late?

The Wind in the Birch Trees

you save my life
one day at a time

when I find myself

swimming past the drop-off

I hear you mumble in your sleep and I am serene

when I find myself launching

into dark spaces of my psyche

you tether me with your bright laugh,

a carefree echo of song, a quick toss

of your auburn hair

you are the wind

in the mottled white bark of the birch trees,

the breeze sighing over the sun-dappled grass

your voice beckons and disrobes me

until I lie naked and aroused

upon the sandy ground

amazed at the sensation

of shadow and light upon my skin

December 15
th

It’s amazing the difference a couple of days make. There’s no doubt anymore. I really do love her. It’s not just lust and not friendship or gratitude. When I’m with her (which is almost all the time), I feel whole. I feel healed. She’s wonderful, and although it’s probably some kind of blasphemy to say, I’m glad the Collapse happened because it brought us together. I don’t just want to be with her, don’t just want to have sex with her, I love her. I love her and want to be with her. I want her to be my wife.

I want to ask Michelle to marry me but don’t want to just blurt it out.
Honey, can you hand me the pruning shears? Oh, and will you marry me?!
I want it to be romantic, something she’ll always remember.

Okay, this is just an aside, but my rational side is demanding he be voiced. Here I am gushing on about my love for this woman I’ve only known a few months. Wanting to be together forever without even a clue as to what tomorrow holds. Things aren’t looking up. I think most of humanity became infected. Survivors are few and survival is difficult. Some men have become evil. The long-term outlook is grim. And here I am excitedly pondering when best to propose to her. As if there’s marriage anymore. As if there’s anyone to marry us. As if it’s a given she’ll say yes.

December 21
st
is the solstice. That would be a cool day. We could look at the stars. Christmas Eve is romantic, and so is Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.

I’m still afraid she doesn’t feel the same about me. But my fear is allayed by what I see in her eyes. And in her touch. When we’re in bed, it’s incredible. If I was having this kind of sex with Tammy, I don’t remember it. Sometimes I almost hallucinate. It feels like our souls are merging. I feel something in me enlarge and expand beyond the room, beyond everything physical. I don’t know how else to describe it. Sometimes, like I said, the experience is so intense it’s hallucinogenic. Other times it’s more subtle, like an interesting note in a beautifully complicated chord.

But there’s almost always a spiritual element to it I’ve never felt before—or felt but forgot. This is not just a biological function. This is not just an activity plugging into my pleasure receptors. This is something different. This can’t just be an emotional/physical response to the release of our natural feel-good chemicals like oxytocin and phenylethylamine.

Re-reading what I just wrote, I sound like a spaced-out granola wuss. I feel like I’ve gone off my nut. Maybe I have.

If I felt like this about someone before the collapse, I would have handled it differently. I might have backed off or kept her at arms length, afraid of being hurt. I might have decided I didn’t want to be in a relationship. It’s so less complicated to be alone.

Michelle in almost all certainty is my one and only friend in the world. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last man on earth!” suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

December 17
th

We went upstairs yesterday, something we haven’t done in a while, but we had another small bag of trash. We exited the trap door around 3 p.m. and were surprised by how bright it was. It wasn’t nearly as dim as I expected. Approaching the windows we saw it was a brilliant December day with freshly fallen snow on the ground, an emerald blue sky, and a dazzling yellow-white sun illuminating everything.

Looking outside we both started laughing. Five inches or so of snow covered everything.
Everything!
Including the zombies. It was like a sculpture park after a snow. Five inches of snow on their heads. Five inches of snow on their rotting shoulders. Their feet buried in snow. Big humps of snow were probably snow-covered bodies of zombies who had fallen in the snow and couldn’t get up. It was eerie; even with the snow on them, they looked like people, not statues. But if these had been human beings, we would have seen the fog of their breath. There was no fog. There was no breath.

As soon as we started laughing, we stifled ourselves. We didn’t want to be heard. Seeing how slowly they moved gave me an idea. I quickly went downstairs and got the gun off the nightstand. When I went back upstairs, Michelle asked what I was up to. I replied, “Some yard work.”

I unbolted the side door and stepped outside. It was pretty cold. The thermometer on the outside wall near the door read fifteen degrees. The body of the big guy was still there, thankfully covered in snow. It reduced the stink. Thank God there are no maggots this time of year.

I quickly walked over to the nearest zombie and shot him in the head. His head exploded and he fell over. Bits of brain made a dry rattling sound as they hit the snow covered ground, as if the brain was completely frozen. And yet they move. How is that possible?

The closest zombie was slowly turning toward me when I got to him. I shot him in the head too. He fell over. One by one I walked around the yard, shooting zombies, reloading when I ran out of bullets, then shooting some more. I went through a whole box of ammunition.

I had one unpleasant surprise. As I approached a zombie, it looked somehow familiar. It was completely naked and used to be a woman. The neck had been eaten on both sides, both breasts were ragged and torn, and it had been nearly eviscerated. Shreds of its internal organs hung out grotesquely. Most of one arm was missing. One foot was also gone. Then I noticed lateral marks across the back of its legs and butt. Marks that looked like someone had beaten her while she was still alive.

It was the woman. The young blonde woman the men had thrown to the zombies. She had been mostly eaten, and had turned. I quickly walked up, placed the gun against its head and shot it. I turned away, a mixture of revulsion and pity seeping into my stomach. I decided not to say anything to Michelle.

As I rounded the corner of the house to go inside, I looked back. The beautiful, formerly virgin snow was now a scene I’d have never imagined. Scattered all over the snowfield were the remains of zombies. Bodies were everywhere. Frequently there were bits and pieces of zombie skulls and frozen zombie brains. It was all gray-ish black and puss yellow against brilliant virgin white.

If this was a horror movie, the scene would show crimson red against the white. But in reality, their blood had long since congealed and blackened. There were a hell of a lot of dead and decomposed bodies and body bits scattered across my lawn, Michelle’s lawn, our driveways, and into the street. But no blood.

When I ran out of ammunition, I went back inside and was tempted to get another box, but my left shoulder was aching and Michelle could tell. I should have put a coat on when I went outside. She gave me a stern look and a lecture about not overdoing it. Then she gave me a pain pill. To my dismay and amusement, as I swallowed the pill she put on her coat, grabbed a box of ammunition, and climbed the stairs. Shortly after, I faintly heard a series of gunshots from the .22. They sounded kind of pleasant.

When I woke up, it was morning. I could detect the scent of a recent shower. And she had changed clothes. “Wake up, lazy bones, time to get to work.”

“Get to work? Doing what?”

“We have a ton of cherry tomatoes we need to pick, probably enough for fresh pasta sauce. And with the herbs we have growing, it’ll be great. Plus I have a surprise.” That got my attention, but then again, I have a dirty mind and a wicked imagination. We picked a very large bowl of cherry tomatoes and some herbs, plus a few hot peppers had finally ripened. They sure take their time.

We pruned the lettuce and checked everything over for pests. I gave the few houseplants, like the spider plant, a fresh drink of water. Then we went into the kitchen. I mashed the tomatoes and put them in a pot on top of the natural gas stove we try not to use too much. I made sauce from the tomatoes and while it was cooking down I added some sausage flavored beef jerky. I chopped it into small pieces and added it to the sauce. As the sauce reduced, the jerky rehydrated. By the time it was done, the sauce tasted smoky and the sausage had the texture of real meat, not jerky. We boiled the noodles and I stirred the basil into the sauce just before serving it.

The whole time we were making dinner, I was half-erect wondering about her surprise. You wouldn’t believe the scenarios running through my mind. When dinner was finally ready, she showed me the surprise. While I was asleep, she snuck over to her house to get a few things, including her case of wine and a bunch of CDs. I admit, it was a bit of a letdown after the possibilities I had imagined. I was glad she had her wine and music, but the surprise I had hoped for was something a bit more . . . tactile. Plus I didn’t like her leaving the house without telling me. If something had happened to her, how would I have known? I swallowed my objections, however, and agreed to have a glass of wine. I’ve never been much on wine, but I must admit, the stuff she has is very nice. It made our Italian meal feel even more Italian. I can’t recall the last time I had wine.

We had a huge salad, ate more spaghetti than I thought we could, then sat back and relaxed. She played some of her music—I’m glad her tastes run parallel to mine. One song was called
Shagging the Night Away
. She was amused when I said the music was fun and playful even though they were singing about shagging. She laughed and told me it was beach music, and shagging is a kind of dance you do in the sand. I felt my face redden. I thought shagging was slang for having sex, as in
The Spy Who Shagged Me.

It reminded me of Fudgies asking what a pasty is—and pronouncing it ‘pay-stee’ instead of ‘paah-stee’. Here in Michigan, you don’t
wear
pasties, you eat them. I used to buy them from the Saline Downtown Diner, and I’ve been known to drive as far as Clarkston to drop in on Uncle Peter’s Pasties.

I laughed along with her, feeling silly but happy. Maybe the wine is making me feel this way. After we’d finished the bottle of wine, we brought out the small mattress and reclined on it as we played another game of backgammon. Each time it was my turn, she unbuttoned another button on her blouse. Within five minutes, her blouse was completely undone, and so was I.

I hate playing with a cheater. Then again, I love admiring her breasts. Losing a game of backgammon is quite worthwhile under those conditions. And indeed I did lose, but by then I was ready to devour her nipples. Which I did, among other things.

We fell asleep in each other’s arms—again—under the stars. Not five feet from where just a few days ago, a dead man with a bullet in his brain had fallen to the floor. Right after he’d shoved his cock in my mouth. Bizarre.