This is such a weird book
. I've said that hundreds of times since coming up with the idea. I love my weird little book, and I am grateful to everyone who helped me complete it.

Robert McKay—because you are always there in the thick of it with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Tori Centanni! Thank you for beta reading
Lipstick & Zombies
and helping make it better. Thank you for your enthusiasm, your emails, and for always bringing this book up with me. You regularly reminded me how much I believed in this book by believing in it yourself.

Amy Giuffrida, thank you for swooping in to beta read at the last minute like a knight in red ink.

Heather Barnes. Thank you for all the pep talks and the reminders not to give up. You are amazingly supportive, and your emails often save my day. You are my superhero.

To all of you: Thank you for believing in my weird book.

Sign up for the McKay Manor New Releases mailing list and get a free copy of Faith McKay's latest novella,
Death & Fashion
, a Deadly Divas story following Jo's adventures after
Lipstick & Zombies
.

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www.McKayManor.com

For Robert.

I wrote a book about five girls who believed in themselves.

For believing in me when I didn't, this book is for you.

Prologue

Aim for the head.

The only good zombie, is a headless zombie.

Kill all corpses.

Save Fort Atlas!

Only you can stop the second life!

Do your part to keep our wall safe
.

None of them ever believed those posters, but they clung to their words as the elevator lowered them to the ground outside the wall. It was the only advice they had left before facing the hordes themselves.

It won't be so bad.
That's what Georgia had told her mother.
It won't be so bad
. It was just something she said at the time, something to make her parents stop crying. They'd always been a little annoying, but the crying? Come on.
She
was the one being sent over the wall, just after getting her acceptance letter for Fort Atlas University's biology program. Not that the government cared. She actually
did
care about the zombie problem, and wanted to do her part to take them out for good, or at least greatly diminish their numbers. Biology was going to be the way she figured out how to do that. It turned out the government had a better use for her: zombie kibble.

Her parents had covered her mouth when she told them how she really felt. Actually put their hands, physically, over her mouth. So, yeah. Lies like, "It won't be so bad," were the best response she had for their hypocritical blubbering. It wasn't enough for this moment, though. Having only her own lies to cling to when she was about to face zombies was just too unfair. Almost worse than the posters. Almost.

The dude to her right was doing some blubbering of his own, reading those posters like they were going to save him. She rolled her eyes and turned away, unable to even begin to believe this shit. The guy on her left smiled down at her.

"You don't look excited to do your part. Where's your smile?"

"Are you for real?"

"Girl, what is?"

"Fair enough," she said.

"I'm Ben."

"Georgia."
"Drafted?"

"Who isn't?"

"I met one," he said. "Survivalist."

She rolled her eyes. "Seems like there should be enough of those nuts to cover those of us with brains."

"Truth. So, what do you say?" He shook the rifle in his hands like it was a plastic toy he'd only just discovered, not like a man who'd spent the past three weeks in basic training. Georgia had actually paid attention in those classes, and she wasn't sure she was holding it much better.

"What do I say about what?"

"Want to have each other's backs?"

Three weeks, and this was the nicest conversation she'd had. "Definitely," she said.

"This is Katy," he said, pointing to the girl on his other side, and then rambled off a series of names to the people down the line. This friendly thing must have been normal for him.

"You have some kind of plan?" Georgia asked.

"Not dying," he said.

She was about to say that was her plan, too, but the truth was she hadn't had one at all. And the dying felt pretty certain. Damn. Well, a few seconds before the door opened was better than never. Stay alive. That's all the plan anyone needed. She shook her weapon in front of her as he had. "Sounds good."

He leaned down to her ear and said, "We're thinking we charge out the elevator in the beginning, start taking them out before they can build up into a bigger group around us."

Group offensive effort. "I can get behind that."

He nodded while the doors squeaked open.

She jumped back in surprise, not at the crowd of zombies already gurgling outside the open doors, but at the war cry let off by the guy who'd been blubbering at her right just a second before. He charged through the doors. It seemed he'd been in on the offensive plan as well. There was no way she could imagine the crier being the first to charge the door otherwise. She bumped into the person behind her, and before regaining her balance, was shoved out the door.

It's okay. This is what I'm supposed to be doing.
She wished she'd thought to bring earplugs. Hearing as a survival tool was bullcrap; the groaning zombies and shouting soldiers were freezing her brain up worse than anything. Deep breath. Gun. Target. Don't kill your friends. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Pull the trigger.

She couldn't pick out the dead in the sea of bodies engulfing her. If she could turn off the sounds, she could almost convince herself she was at a mall, or a concert, or some other big crowd event. Ben was nowhere to be seen, and a scan of faces didn't pull any that she registered as his friends. If these people weren't part of it, though, why had they all charged out there so early?

Blubbering guy let off a scream more shocking than his first. It was rough and strangled, full of struggle, like the choking gurgle from the zombie who'd just taken too big a bite from his neck.

The blood was much more vibrant than she'd thought it would be. And voluminous. Like a fountain.

When people asked her why she'd want to study
biology
, when it was so
gross
, she'd told them that was a matter of perspective. Anything could be beautiful if you looked at it in the right light.

The zombie, still choking on what he'd torn from that guy's neck, fixed its gaze on her.

She was wrong. Some things could never be beautiful.

Staggering back toward the elevator, she gripped her gun and thought,
hey, I remembered not to drop it
, and bumped into a wall of cloth blocking her way. In the background she saw guns going off, zombies gnawing at people in uniforms, but her attention was on the zombie ambling her way.

Her shots were going so wide it was a joke.

I shouldn't be here
.

She broke her focus on the zombie to look into what was blocking her way to the elevator, and spotted Ben's face at an opening in the cloth. They'd built a barricade with knotted strips of fabric. Some of his friends were still emptying their pockets and tying more up.

"Sorry," Ben said, with a smirk.

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