Jesse Petersen - Married with Zombies (Living with the Dead)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Jesse Petersen

Excerpt from Flip this Zombie copyright 2010 by Jesse Petersen

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: September 2010

ISBN: 978-0-316-17857-0

I stared at the dead body on top of my car.
I stared at the other two on the garage floor.

Then I stared at my husband. He was smiling at me. Smiling even though we had just bumped our formerly human, currently zombie killing spree total up to a nice round six (not counting Mack, since we didnt actually know if wed killed him when he flew off my car in the parking complex).

What? I asked, because Daves smile had gotten wider. Why are you looking at me that way?

He shrugged as he moved around toward the drivers seat. Before he got in, he grabbed the car zombies ankle and yanked him off the roof with a violent tug. I heard him hit the ground below with a wet and somehow also crunchy smack.

Nothing, Dave said with a shrug as he stood at the drivers side door. I was just thinking how much cooler you are than any other girl I ever knew.

L IVING WITH THE D EAD

Married with Zombies

Flip this Zombie

For Miriam and Michael,
without whom I might have just given up entirely.

D avid and I became warriors in the zombie plague on the first day, but dont think that means we were front line soldiers or something. In truth we stumbled into the zombie battle because it was a means for pure, physical survival.

But I never would have guessed that unlike therapy, unlike the self-help books that littered our apartment at the time, killing zombies would save my relationship.

But let me back up. It all started on August 10, 2010. Wednesday was couples therapy day. It had been for six months, although I was beginning to think that all this talking and sharing and role-playing that our therapist Dr. Kelly preached was nothing but a bunch of bullshit.

Despite her advice, despite all our visits to her office, David and I were on the brink. I had even researched divorce lawyers in our area on the Internet. The thing was, when I put divorce lawyer into the search engine on our shared computer well, lets just say that I didnt have to type the whole phrase before it popped up in the system memory as something that had been searched for before.

So by the time we were driving down I-5 South into the heart of downtown Seattle toward Dr. Erica Kellys tidy, sterile little office, I was just going through the motions of therapy and making a mental list of all the things I didnt like anymore about my husband.

The item I added to my list on August 10th was the CDs. You see, we share the car and the deal wed struck was that since six CDs can fit into the changer, I could pick three and he could pick three. But as I cycled through the changer, keeping one eye on the road ahead of me, I realized that every CD was his.

Every. Fucking. CD.

That probably seems like a little thing, and in retrospect it was. But I guess that just goes to show you how far off the track wed gotten.

I switched the stereo off with a flick of my wrist and glared at David from the corner of my eye. As usual, he was so wrapped up in one of those handheld games he loved that he didnt even notice my annoyance. Or maybe he was so used to it, he didnt care anymore. Either way, it sucked.

Traffic seems pretty light, he said without looking up.

I glided onto the off-ramp and looked around. As much as I hated to admit it at that point, he was right. Wed lived in Seattle since our marriage five years ago and traffic was one of the main things that drove me nuts about the city. At any time of day or night there seemed to be thousands of cars crowding the highways. Sometimes I wondered where the hell they all came from.

But today, at four-thirty in the afternoon, when there should have been bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks honking their horns and blocking the street, instead there were no more than a handful of vehicles around.

I shrugged as I stopped at the red at the bottom of the ramp and checked to my left before I started to roll out into the intersection to make a right. Just as I touched the gas, an ambulance screamed by. I slammed on the brake with a gasp and barely avoided getting t-boned, first by the veering ambulance and then by the five police cars that raced behind it.

Shit, Sarah, David barked, bracing himself on the dash of the car as he glared at me. His seatbelt strained against his shoulder. Watch yourself.

You know, if youre going to drive, maybe you should sit in my seat, I snapped, though I couldnt really blame him for being freaked out. I dont think Id ever come so close to having a major accident and my heart was pounding. Without saying another word, I waited for the green before I double-checked for cars and made my turn.

Within a few blocks we pulled into the parking garage at the downtown office building we had been going to once a week since February. I sighed as I slid up to the guard box to check in and get our parking pass. But as I came to a stop, I realized that Mack, the usual security guy who greeted us every week, wasnt at his station.

You may think its weird that I remembered his name, but I have a reason. You see, every time he checked us in, he asked who we were seeing, and when we said Dr. Kelly he gave us the look. The pity look. It stands out in your mind when a perfect stranger is giving you a your relationship is doomed, how sad face once a week.

When there wasnt the usual banter with the security guard, David looked up. Not there, huh? Weird.

I glanced at him quickly then back to the empty box. He must be around here somewhere. His TV is on, I can see the light of it flickering below the window line.

Maybe he just went to take a leak or something, David said with a shrug. Look, lets just park. Well only be here a bit over an hour. If we have a ticket on the car when we come out, well go talk to him about it. Hell remember us. Im sure we can work it out.

I stared again at the empty booth and gave a shiver. It just seemed so weird that after twenty-four visits with the same routine, today was suddenly different.

Youre right, I said as I put the car in gear and inched into the garage.

David let out a snort as he pocketed his game system in his hoodie and unbuckled his seatbelt. Wow, I hardly ever hear that.

I swung the car into a space close to the elevator bank and slammed on the brake, purposefully making David catch himself on the dash a second time.

Nice, he muttered with a glare in my direction as he got out.

So what I did wasnt subtle, but I couldnt help but smile as I followed him across the quiet parking complex to the elevator. It took a minute for the elevator to come and since we apparently had nothing to say to each other, we just stood there with the sounds of the streets outside the garage echoing around us as the only accompaniment to our dysfunction.