My Zombie Honeymoon: Love in the Age of Zombies Book One (35 page)

I also realized it would be as easy for someone to follow me as it had been for me to follow him. So I took a circuitous route, at first deliberately heading the wrong direction, took a bunch of side streets, dodging zombies in the street, and when I felt safe, I rode as fast as I could without upsetting the wagon, hoping to shake anyone who might still be trailing me.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

April 7
th

Today started out a fairly typical day. We tended the plants and harvested some spinach and some herbs and tomatoes. The tomato plants are starting to play out. We added fertilizer, adjusted the pH, etc.

We’ve had a cold snap (lows in the thirties, highs in the forties) and another few inches of snow fell, so we took advantage of our current relative safety to get rid of the trash we’d accumulated during the warm spell. There was a time when I would have complained about the smell, but compared to rotting zombies, stinky trash is almost pleasant.

We also emptied out the water we couldn’t recycle—the water from boiling noodles and vegetables, the water I drained from the hydroponic reservoirs when the TDS meter showed a significant salt buildup, urine, etc.

I started a lot of tomato and pepper plants. A month from now I’ll be putting my garden in. And this time, it won’t be just for the delight of fresh vegetables; now I need the food to survive. I usually buy my garden plants at the nursery, but those days are long gone, like most of the things I took for granted.

After I hauled the trash outside, I loaded it onto a large piece of cardboard we use for hauling over the snow, and headed for our current trash dump. I also wanted to check for more zombies in the neighborhood and to check the zombie bodies in the burned-out house. It doesn’t look like the zombies’ bodies have been disturbed. Apparently, even coyotes don’t like dead zombies.

I dumped the trash, then began scouting the maze of streets, sort of on patrol. My own neighborhood watch. I was looking for any sign of survivors, and also trying to figure out which houses I hadn’t explored yet.

I had crossed back over into Dicken, the neighborhood close by. As soon as I got beyond the area we’d cleared, I found a lot more zombies. They were slow with the cold. I had my axe with me, so I chopped the heads off a dozen. A dozen is about all I can handle when they’re frozen, then my shoulder starts aching again.

I finally decided to head home. When I crossed the side street where I’d seen the man and his dog, I saw footprints in the snow. The trail led from north to south. I looked around, puzzled. I was sure I hadn’t gone down that street, but the trail seemed to be leading in the direction of the house. That’s when it hit me: I hadn’t made those prints. Which meant only one thing!

I started running back to the house. Running through snow while carrying an axe isn’t easy. I let go of the cardboard and kept running. I tripped over hidden stuff under the snow a couple of times and bloodied up my left hand. I was mentally castigating myself, cursing my stupidity with every step. What an idiot I had been! Every time I went outside in the snow, I’d left a trail leading right to our house! Any bad guy, any thief, any rapist or murderer could easily find us.

When I finally opened the door to our house, I could hear a man’s voice. My worst fear realized! Maybe it was the guy I saw with the dog. Maybe he’d followed me. I took the steps three at a time. I could smell freshly brewed coffee. I heard Johnny Cash singing
I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen
. Time slowed down. I felt a burst of adrenalin energy. I rushed into the living room, my axe at the ready, anxious to dispatch whoever was threatening Michelle. Then I stopped cold in my tracks.

Michelle was there. So was a man I’d never seen. He had a revolver strapped to his chest. It wasn’t the man with the dog.

The crazy, paranoid part of me briefly reared his ugly head, and I thought
Is that Wayne?
Michelle’s eyes grew wide as I burst into the room. I must have looked like a complete lunatic.

“
Leave us the hell alone!”
I shouted, raising the axe up to my shoulders. “I’ve gotten pretty good at cutting off heads!”

The man approached me, smiling, empty hands out to his side. “Easy there, Kevin. You don’t want to put an axe through the head of a friend.”

“
Kevin! No!!”
Michelle cried out.

The man continued approaching me, and at the last minute stuck out his hand. “I’m Steve. Doctor Steve. Doc.”

Epilogue

It was a simple ceremony.

We asked Doc if he would officiate even though he’s not an ordained minister. You can imagine our surprise when he told us we were wrong.

“I became a legally ordained minister about fifteen years ago,” he explained, “mainly to piss off my ex. I was an early user of MySpace, and I posted a scan of my ordination certificate because I knew she secretly visited my page.”

I asked him if he went to seminary, and he laughed. “No, not me. I used one of those internet sites that ordains you for free with no requirements. It is a legally binding ordination, there just isn’t any religious affiliation, education, or training involved.”

So we had a bride, a groom, and a minister.

That morning, Michelle made me go upstairs while she got dressed. I thought she was being silly, but I’m no fool—on a woman’s wedding day, you don’t argue with her. Besides, I had to go upstairs to get my dust-covered tuxedo from the closet.

Doc went back and forth between us, playing gopher, and generally amusing himself with our nervousness. When Michelle was finally ready (a full forty-five minutes after our agreed upon ceremony time), Doc had me come downstairs and go into the bathroom with the door closed, while Michelle went up the stairs. Our stairwell is the closest thing we have to an aisle, and Doc insisted on a grand entrance for the beautiful bride.

We didn’t have a copy of Chopin’s
Wedding March
, so instead we played
Spring
from Vivaldi’s
Four
Seasons
. I was standing in the living room with Doc standing next to me.

When Michelle descended the staircase, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was wearing a beautiful dark blue dress she’d retrieved from her house, and had even made some kind of veil. Her baby bump was adorable. In her arms she held a bouquet of flowers. Her face was radiant as she came forward to join me—the smile on her face practically lit up the room. I must have been standing there with my jaw agape, because she giggled and put her hand under my chin to lift it, forcing my mouth closed. That made me blush a little, and Doc laughed.

Doc’s ceremony was short and sweet. He told us we were gathered here before God and each other to join our lives together, then turned to me and said, “Kevin, do you take Michelle to be your wife, to love, protect and nurture, til death do you part?”

“I do.”

He turned to Michelle. “Michelle, do you take Kevin to be your husband, to love, protect and nurture til death do you part?”

“I do.”

He turned back to me. “Kevin, do you have a ring signifying your love for Michelle? If so, please place it on her finger.”

I dug the ring out of my pocket and laughed nervously when I saw my hands shaking while putting the ring on her finger.

He turned to Michelle. “Michelle, do you have a ring signifying your love for Kevin? If so, please place it on his finger.” Michelle cradled the bouquet in the crook of her arm while she reached over and pulled the ring off her right hand where she’d kept it, then placed it on my finger. Our eyes met, and we were both smiling—and yet we were tearing up at the same time.

“I do charge you by oath to faithfully terminate the life of your beloved should he or she become infected by a zombie, as a sure sign of your love and loyalty to each other, and ask you to signify your fealty to this oath by saying ‘I do’.”

“I do,” we replied in unison.

“By the power vested in me by the Universal Life Church and the state of Michigan, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Kevin, you may kiss your bride.”

I pulled her to me and gave her what started out to be a tender kiss, but soon blossomed into a longer, passionate kiss.

“Easy now, kids, save it for later when I’m not around,” Doc said with a grin.

For dinner we splurged on canned ham, fresh salad (which isn’t very special for Michelle and me anymore), some very nice Old Mission Peninsula wine, and Michelle had baked a cake mix she scavenged. It wasn’t a white cake, just a yellow one, but the chocolate icing made it pretty tasty. Doc had his fair share of bourbon.

I asked about the flowers—that was Doc’s doing. He’d scoured the neighborhood, looking for early daffodills and vernal witch hazel. God bless him!

After dinner we sat around, drinking more wine (except Doc—he stuck with bourbon), laughing and talking and listening to some of Doc’s tall tales of life as a doctor. But about 10:30, Doc announced he was calling it a night, and gave us a surprise wedding gift: He’d changed the bedding upstairs and was sleeping up there, giving us the basement alone for the night.

“Don’t think I’m doing it for your sake,” he said, “I’d like to get some sleep tonight. This is your honeymoon, after all, and you young lovers have a tendency to get loud.” Michelle and I both blushed, but Doc laughed it off. “Enjoy yourselves. I’m very happy for you and very jealous.” After filling a highball glass with bourbon, he grabbed his sleeping bag, headed up the stairs, and closed the trap door behind him.

“We have the place to ourselves!” I marveled, as I heard the trap door close.

“We don’t have to be quiet . . . !” Michelle sighed.

“We can walk around naked.”

We raced for the bedroom, fingers already unbuttoning our clothes, while visions of sugarplums—or something even better—danced in our heads.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James is a graphic designer by profession who spends much of his time engaged in his favorite hobbies; writing, photography, singing in a variety of choirs and a barbershop quartet, hydroponic gardening, brewing and drinking beer, and perfecting his Zombie Blood hot sauce
(“Reanimate Your Taste Buds”)
. He lives in Athens, Georgia with his wife, Gretchen, while dreaming of northern Michigan. This is his first novel.

Follow the author on
www.myzombiehoneymoon.com
for the continuing saga of Life in the Age of Zombies, including information about the soon to be published sequel,
Zombies In Paradise
.