The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (21 page)

“If you die after a zombie bite, you’re supposed to be brain damaged beyond repair,” Lisa said, still shaking her head.

“The Kid said the baby might protect you,” Dave muttered. “That he had antigens thanks to my exposure to the cure and those could be shared in your blood. He must have… he must have saved you once you started to turn.”

Sarah looked down at the stomach hidden under layers of rope. “Wow. I guess he’s going to hold that over me when I threaten to ground him, isn’t he? Can you guys untie me now?”

Lisa hesitated. “Um, are you going to eat us?”

“Do you know any zombies who can hold a rational conversation?” Sarah asked, eyebrow arching.

Lisa shook her head. “No. Well, except for Dave.”

“Of course, except for Dave,” Sarah laughed.

“I’m not a zombie,” he said, his tone flat as he set her down and untied her.

She wrapped her arms around him, tugging herself so close to him that they were practically one body (except for that pesky baby bump).

“Turns out,” she whispered. “Neither am I.”

#

Zombie benefits or not, having a baby really hurts. I found that out about three weeks after I was turned into a zombie by my husband and saved by the same baby that was now determined to rip me in half as he made his grand entrance into the world.

“Push,” Dave encouraged, clinging to my hand.

He’d actually been holding my hand pretty much nonstop since that afternoon when I’d come back to life, new and improved. Not that I blamed him. I knew what he’d gone through, having watched him start to change myself. I could forgive him the constant bodyguard routine.

For now.

“I’m pushing as hard as I can,” I panted. “Isn’t he out yet?”

“I see his head,” Nicole told me, looking up from between my legs. Drea stood beside her, assisting.

Thank God it wasn’t Robbie. There were some things no one should have to endure.

“How does he look?” Dave asked.

“A little gray,” Drea admitted. “But considering that he saved his mama from zombieism, let’s reserve judgment.”

Her tone was very perky, but my heart rate increased a little anyway. After everything we’d gone through to get here, there was no way we weren’t coming out with a healthy half-zombie baby. No. F’ing. Way.

What? I had to start working on my language sometime.

“Come on Sarah, give it another push,” Nicole said.

I bore down and pushed with all my might. The pressure I felt gave way and then there was silence in the room. The baby was out.

“Why isn’t he crying?” I asked, sitting up straighter.

Drea and Nicole were fussing over him, wrapping him in a towel so I couldn’t see him. I didn’t even know if he was alive.

And then he let out the cutest, most normal baby squeal ever.

“Is he okay?” I asked. “Please!”

Nicole turned and held out my son, placing him on my sweaty chest. We looked down at him and saw that he was perfectly pink, with ten fingers and toes. He opened his eyes and they were brown. Brown with just the slightest, faintest tinge of red.

I looked up at Dave. “Um, he gets that from you.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I’m okay with it.”

“Me too,” I laughed and nearly passed out from joy and relief. He was here. He was okay. He was ours.

There was a sound outside the window and I lifted my head. “Is that them taking off?” I asked.

Nicole moved to the window and lifted the shade in time for us to see several helicopters and planes buzz the lab. In the weeks since our return, the inoculation had been finished. The first phase of our plan was to crop dust everyplace we could, wiping out zombies and dropping leaflets so that people could come to our stations and get inoculated.

“That’s them,” Nicole said with a nervous smile. “They’re off.”

“Holy shit, I think we just saved the world,” I said, watching as the last plane faded into the distance.

Dave slipped an arm around me. “If it works.”

I stared at the empty sky and then down into the eyes of my son. “It will work. I just… know it. And as you know, I’m never wrong.”

He might have laughed, but I hardly heard him. All I could see was the future in my arms, the future out the window and both were brighter than they had been in months.

Epilogue

Six months later

I still wasn’t entirely used to the fact that I could turn on a light whenever I wanted, so as I stepped into my son’s nursery, I fumbled in the dark before I turned back to the switch.

“Fudge,” I muttered.

Yeah, fudge. I really was trying with the swears. Not succeeding most of the time, but trying.

“You ready to wake up?” I asked the baby in the crib.

He sat up and pulled himself to his feet, smiling at me with two teeth already. That zombie aging thing was really still working. Though Robbie’s tests showed it was slowing and he would likely return to a regular growth curve within another six months.

I picked him up and carried him to the changing table next to the window. I pulled the shade and light poured in, showing us both the rapidly rebuilding skyline of Seattle in the distance across the Lake.

As I changed him, I heard Dave behind me.

“How’s Little Man?” he asked.

The boy grinned at him in response. Daddy’s Boy.

“Is the news still talking about the Wall coming down?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, big story. They’re also talking about the arrests over on the other side, the cover up. The story is really spiraling now. Nicole looks great.”

Nicole and McCray had headed back to the Midwest as soon as the drops had been made, with tons of research and proof of what was happening on the Westside. She was going to get that Pulitzer after all. The Nobel Prize was more likely to go to Robbie, Josh and my David.

“Your Mom and Dad texted,” he said as he held up the phone. It had spotty connections a lot of the time, but honestly, it wasn’t much worse than Before Zombie. “They’re getting clearance to travel next week. They say to expect them by Friday.”

I smiled. We’d been talking since the first connections had been re-established to this side of the country. Now they were going to meet their grandson for the first time.

“Well, I guess we better get the guest room ready, then,” I laughed as I handed the baby over to him.

“Guest room?” David said as he followed me down the hall. “What about the guest house? We didn’t take over Bill Gates’s house for nothing, you know?”

“I guess not,” I agreed with a laugh.

Yeah, everything was going to be okay. I knew that now. And one day I also knew we would be asked to tell the tale of how we’d saved the world. Maybe for a class project by the little boy in David’s arms. The boy we had named Future. Yeah, one of those dumb celebrity names, I know. But who the fuck would mess with my kid with all this powers?

Nobody. Because if they did, they’d have to mess with his half-zombie parents. And that was not a good idea.

A Note to My Readers

Once upon a time, though not so long ago, I wrote a snarky zombie tale mostly to entertain myself. Whoever could have thought that so many of you would love it so much? My deepest thanks to you for sticking through Dave and Sarah’s story and letting me tell it.

A few notes. Yes, I realize there isn’t a warehouse compound in Ballard, WA. The real estate there is just way too nice. I took artistic license, sorry if I made your mansion into a train depot. Oops.

Second, my love to my husband who supported this entire journey. You are the Dave to my Sarah, except far more awesome. And hopefully my Sarah is a little less bitchy.

I hope you’ll enjoy a sneak peek at the first chapter of my upcoming book, Club Monstrosity, which will be released from Pocket Star on April 29, 2013:

Chapter One

The basement of the Holy Heart Church on East 125th Street in New York City smelled like a strange combination of dust, hundreds of years of age, and the leftovers of charity dinners cooked in the kitchen hovering just above it. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent, but spoke of the age of the building and the fact that thousands of people had passed through there, many with their eyes down and faces averted.

And that made it the perfect place for the meetings now hosted there. AA and Narcotics Anonymous and Compulsive Gamblers Group and Trumping Testicular Cancer—and a host of other vice and disease meetings that required support or a kick in the ass on a day-to-day basis.

All of them met in the little room in the basement. It was tiny, cold in the winter, broiling in the summer, and with an odor like a concentrated version of old pot roast and lasagna mixed with the sweet scent of stale holy water.

Natalie Gray was late to her meeting in said locale. That was typical, actually. Even she would admit it, though she had an excuse. Working nights at the morgue made her world all . . . discombobulated, and sometimes it was hard to remember what time it was. She couldn’t quit, though. She had rent to pay and food to buy, just like everyone else. Not to mention the job helped her cover up . . . other things. Things she had to deal with at the meeting, actually.

And so as she hustled her way down the back stairs toward the tiny, smelly room, she cursed in her head (not out loud, it was a church after all and she had standards, low as they might be). She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes late. There was going to be hell to pay.

The door to the meeting room was closed, but a little window near the top allowed her to see inside.

It was weird; the church allowed the various “anonymous” groups to meet in their basement, but then they forced them into a room with a window on the door. Sometimes Natalie felt like they wanted you to deal with your shame, but never forget it was shame and that everyone, including God, knew it. If there was a group for obsessive voyeurs, Natalie guessed they’d love it all the more.

The worn-out sign hung on a plastic holder outside the door said MONSTOFELLDOSIS (MFD) ANONYMOUS. Someone had stuck a creepy butterfly sticker on it that was beginning to fray around the edges.

“Stupid name for a stupid made-up ‘disease,’” she muttered as she looked through the glass.

Yup, everyone was there in their little sharing circle . . . well, almost everyone. Bob didn’t seem to be present. Odd, since, as the group's facilitator, he was almost always first to welcome them and get them all seated, hopefully not near someone they hated. That in itself was no easy task. Over the years, most everyone in the group had developed some kind of aversion to everyone else, either through hurt feelings or worse. Natalie certainly didn’t envy Bob his role.

She opened the door and stepped inside. The room fell silent and everyone’s head pivoted to look at her. What they spoke of in this room was definitely not for outsiders to hear, so the group was always careful about the door opening. Once they saw it was Natalie, the faces were relieved, and then annoyed.

“The meeting for the chronically late is down the hall,” Kai, one of the other women in the group, said as she dug for a cigarette from the purse beneath her chair. The purse’s logo said Michael Kors and Natalie couldn’t believe Kai had set it on the dirty floor. But then again, money never seemed to be an issue for her.

Kai was tall and slender, with an exotic olive complexion that made it hard to place her ethnicity, as did her long blond hair with dark streaks dyed through it. She had an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude and Natalie had learned over the years that it wasn’t a put-on.

“Ha, ha, ha,” Natalie said as she took one of the few empty places in the circle. “I’m not the only one who’s late. Where’s Blob?”

Next to her, the older man dressed in a bizarre cape over wrinkled jeans and a black shirt glared in her direction with surprisingly intense eyes. Natalie felt a weird pull and broke the eye contact. It was so annoying when he did that.

“Careful, little one,” he hissed.

She glared. Just because he looked so much older than them, he always thought it was okay to be condescending.

“What? It’s just us,” she snapped.

“Bob,” said another of the group members, this one named Alec, a good-looking man with long shaggy dark hair, bright amber eyes, and a scraggly beard that was borderline homeless chic, “didn’t show.”

“That’s weird,” Natalie muttered. “He’s never late.”

“Yeah, we went over this while you were staggering off the subway fifteen minutes ago,” Kai said with another perfectly arched eyebrow. She was a gorgeous woman, no one could deny that, but she always looked on the verge of smacking someone.

Currently that someone was Natalie. Scary.

“So what are we going to do?” Linda, the only other woman in the circle, whined as she scratched at her hands absently. She was plain except for her stunning green eyes. Or at least they would have been stunning if they weren’t always puffy from crying. “We’ve never done group without Bob.”

“It’s not like we can’t. We’re all grown-ups . . . mostly.” Kai shrugged. “Let’s start with the usual. Everyone introduce yourself and give us the ‘therapeutic’ spiel about your . . . um . . .”—she looked back over her shoulder, double-checking that the door was shut—“issue. Natalie starts.”

Natalie shut her eyes. Everyone knew she hated this part of the group meetings. It was so awkward and clichéd. Even after all these years she wasn’t sure exactly what to say. Obviously having to kick things off was her punishment for being late.