Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (34 page)

"Do you have a better explanation?" I stared at him, incredulous. "That woman just got smushed by an Escalade. You don't get up and walk after that!"

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"It's a terrorist attack." Barry nodded emphatically, validating his own words.

"Nerve gas. Or ...or ...PCP."

"PCP, my ass." Someone screamed near the front door. "Shit." I grabbed my purse and scrambled to my feet. "We have to get out of here. This is a death trap."

Barry shook his head back and forth, back and forth, as if each shake would convince him he was right. "We can't go out there."

"We can't stay here." I scrambled to my feet in time to see several mangled yuppies stagger into the Bank and attack the people nearest the door. "Get your ass up, Barry, or you're going to die here!" I grabbed our waiter's arm. "Is there a back door out of here?"

"Yeah. Downstairs. There's a door into the alley."

"Let's go."

Cutie-boy nodded. "I'll show you the way."

"Barry?"

My date looked up at me, disbelief and outrage in his expression. "This can't be happening."

We

so
did not have time for a generic default proclamation of disbelief. "It's happening, Barry, and you can either deal with it and move your ass now or die here."

Frozen in his seat, Barry watched some real-life balls-to-the-wall horror as two men in Armani rip apart a group of Irish tourists seated at the bar. Agonized cries of

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" gave away their nationality.

I grabbed Barry's arm and turned to the waiter. "Show us the exit."

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He took my hand and together we managed to yank Barry to his feet. I didn't like the guy, but I'd be damned if I left him to die on our first date.

We ran towards a stairwell at the back of the restaurant. A tipsy woman was ascending the stairs when we hit the top, her high heels making the trip up an adventure.

"Turn around and go back down," I said.

"Huh?" She looked at me, her blue eyes glazed with too much alcohol. "My date's waiting for me."

"So are a lot of things you don't want to meet," I snapped.

She shook her head and shoved past us, oblivious to the screams of terror and pain emanating from the restaurant.

I would have reached for her, but our waiter slung an arm around me and hustled me down the stairs. I liked the way his strong arm felt encircling my waist. Barry clutched my other arm in a death grip and dogged our steps to the basement. Points for survival instinct.

We hit the bottom of the steps and Cutie-boy pointed to the left. "The door out to the alley is back there."

The basement consisted of the bathrooms off to the right, some extra furniture, and some boxes stalked in a corner. Not a hell of a lot .

"Can't we just stay down here?" Barry's grip on my arm was cutting off circulation.

I pointed to the stairs. "No door. We need to get some place we can barricade the entrances."

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"And no food down here." Cutie-boy grabbed one of the boxes, ripped it open, and extracted a butcher knife worthy of an '80s slasher film.

"Nice. Got any more of those?"

He grinned and pulled out two more, handing them to me and Barry. Barry took his as gingerly as an arachnophobic handed a tarantula. I seized mine and hefted it, liking the way it felt in my hand. Then I spotted a crowbar lying in a corner. Shoving the knife in my purse, I grabbed the crowbar and gave it an experimental swing. I grinned at Cutie-boy and said, "Even nicer."

"Any ideas where to go?"

I nodded and unzipped a little side compartment of my purse. I pulled out a cork keychain with three keys and a gray fob dangling from the ring. "My office. It's in the Charles Schwab building around the corner on California Street. If we can get there...I think we'll be safe. At least for a while."

"If?

If
we can get there?" Barry's gaze jerked around the room, taking everything in little segments. He reminded me of a somewhat spastic bird.

"At this point," said the waiter, "everything is a risk."

I nodded. "Here's the plan. We go out the back door and haul ass to my building.

If someone...something tries to attack us..." I held up the crowbar. "Once we're in the lobby, I'll open the stairwell and we can get to my office. There's food and water there.

We should be okay for a while."

"That's it? That's your plan?" The veins on Barry's neck throbbed. I bet he had high blood pressure problems.

"You got a better one, mate?"

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I smiled gratefully at Cutie-boy, vowing to find out his name as soon as we had a second to breathe.

We didn't wait for Barry's answer; the screams from upstairs were building in intensity and growing closer, which meant the mayhem would soon make its way downstairs.

Cutie-boy led the way to the door, slid the deadbolt open, and cautiously cracked the door. I pushed past him and poked my head out, glancing in either direction.

So far, so good. I could hear screams in the vicinity, but the alley was clear of both people and zombies.

"Come on." I stepped outside, crowbar at the ready in one hand, keys in the other, and thanked the fashion gods that I'd worn low-heeled boots today instead of fuck-me-but-don't-ask-me-to-outrun-zombies pumps.

The men followed me out the door.

"Stick close to me," I said quietly. "I'll get the door open as fast as I can."

I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it; the alley reeked of Dumpster innards and stale urine. "Now!"

I took off at a run towards Front Street, hoping against the odds the street would be clear when we reached the mouth of the alley. It wasn't.

The minute I rounded the corner, I collided with a beefy man who smelled worse than the alleyway. His face—what was left of it—had a grayish pallor . His—no,
its
breath wafted out in a charnel house reek as it reached for me, gore-rimmed mouth gaping to show a full set of hungry, bloodied teeth.

315

"Oh,

gross!
" I brought up the crowbar and swung it down in an arc, burying the two-pronged hook in its head. The zombie swayed for a second, then collapsed onto its knees, then facedown on the asphalt. I kept my grip on the crowbar and yanked it out as the zombie hit the ground.

"Let's go!" I ran down Front Street towards California, trusting the men to follow me. The door to my office was only a half block and a door away, but given the chaos around us, it felt like miles. I could see other mangled yet still ambulatory people shambling towards us from several directions. Slaughter raged all around us, a mini-apocalypse. I saw the local homeless guy who always perches in front of Lee's Deli get swarmed by several well-dressed Financial District types, blood and guts splashed on their business suits, skirts, and designer shoes. He'd never shake his paper cup filled with spare change again.

I dashed around the corner of California and Front, past the main doors to the Charles Schwab offices to the door leading to the other floors at 200 Cal. Screams, calls to various deities, and the sounds of rending flesh filled the air. Like hell had come to Earth within the space of fifteen minutes. Maybe it had.

Our daily FedEx delivery man staggered down California Street, blood pouring out of wounds on his neck and arms. I locked eyes with him as he suddenly convulsed, like someone with an epileptic fit. I fumbled the keys in my left hand, dropped them as I reached the door with its electronic eye. By the time I retrieved them, Mr. FedEx had changed. His eyes had gone the same dead milky white as the rest of the zombies—and they were still fixed on me.

Shit.

316

I swiped the little door fob over the sensor. It stayed red. "Shit!"

"What?" Barry stared at me, eyes wide with panic. "It isn't working? You made us follow you out of the restaurant and your fucking keys aren't working?!" His voice rose to a scream, attracting the attention of all the wrong dead people. FedEx dude's gaze shifted from me to Barry. His mouth widened in a ravenous gape and he staggered straight for us.

I looked at the fob; it was backwards. Flipping it over, I swiped it again. The light turned green and I shoved the door open, dashing inside the lobby. "Hurry!"

Barry and Cutie-boy were through the doors right after me. Unfortunately, FedEx zombie (I'll just call him Zed Ex) was hot on their heels. Cutie-boy had the foresight to pull the door shut as he ran in, but ZedEx was already partly in and the lobby's glass doors had some sort of air compression system that prevented the doors from being slammed and shattered.

"
Shut the door
!"

"I'm trying!" This was Cutie-boy.

"Try harder!" I ran for the stairs on the far side off the building's notoriously slow elevator. Decorative, to be sure. But cranky and temperamental, like an aging diva.

"Where are you going?" Barry slammed his hand against the elevator's 'up' button even as I shoved a key into the stairwell door lock.

"Stairs!" I opened the door as ZedEx pushed his way into the building despite Cutie-boy's best efforts to keep him out. Guess lugging all those packages built some muscle.

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Cutie-boy staggered back under ZedEx's onslaught, barely keeping his feet. He managed to get one hand under the drooling deliveryman's chin, shoving hard. ZedEx slammed backwards into the glass door, giving Cutie-boy the chance to get away and join me at the stairwell door. I held the door open for Barry, who was still hitting the elevator button with the flat of his hand.

"Barry, come on!"

I don't know if it's because he was inherently lazy or just programmed by years of taking elevators, but Barry ignored me as the elevator doors finally slid open, painfully slow as usual. ZedEx, in the meantime, staggered towards him. I screamed Barry's name as the zombie grabbed his arm and took a hefty bite out of Barry's bicep, tearing through fabric and flesh as easily as though they were soft butter. Barry hollered in pain and outrage, and ripped his arm out of the zombie's teeth.

"You

son
-of-a-bitch!" Barry hauled off and punched ZedEx square in his rotting face. ZedEx stumbled back against the wall and Barry vanished into the elevator. I heard him cursing as the doors slid shut.

ZedEx looked at me as though I was a jelly doughnut and he was a zombiefied Homer Simpson. I pulled the stairwell door shut just as he lurched forward. The door shook as he hit it from the other side, a metallic boom echoing in the stairwell.

Cutie-boy looked at me. "Can that thing get in?"

I shook my head. "Not unless he has a key."

"What about your boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend," I said. "First date."

"Pretty lousy one, by the looks of things."

318

I nodded. "No joke."

"So...is he coming up?"

"He can't get onto our floor without an elevator key."

Cutie-boy nodded slowly. "Do we let him in?"

I hesitated, then shook my head. "He's been bit. If there's any truth to any of the movies, he's going to turn into one of them."

"So what now?"

"Fourth

floor."

We pounded up the stairs, the sound of our footsteps on the metal stairs eliciting a renewed assault on the lobby stairwell door. We reached the fourth floor. I started to unlock the door. Cutie-boy put a hand on my arm. "Are you sure it's safe?"

"Yeah. I was the last one out the door and I locked the elevator, so no one can get off on our floor."

Nevertheless, when I pulled the door open and stepped inside, I proceeded with caution.

The lobby was empty, lights off.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

I turned to Cutie-Boy. "I think we're safe."

He looked down at me and I noticed how green his eyes were, fringed with thick dark lashes. Sea-green. "You're something, you know that?"

"Really?" I felt suddenly shy, pretty ridiculous under the circumstances.

319

"Yeah." He ran a finger down one side of my face. "You were dead sexy with that crowbar."

His finger traced the outline of my lips and I caught the tip in my mouth, suctioning it in gently, but suggestively. I dropped my keys, purse and crowbar on the floor.

We didn't make it past the lobby couch. Clothes went flying: his green Royal Bank T-shirt and black trousers, my boots, black silk skirt, and red v-neck sweater. I briefly thanked the clothing gods that I'd worn a nice matching set of Victoria's Secret black silk bra and v-string, even though I don't think he noticed them before yanking them off me and tossing them aside. I did the same to his hunter-green briefs, marveling briefly at the size and hardness of his erection, especially under the circumstances. But then, I was so wet and goddamned horny, maybe there was something to the whole sex-and-death thing. You know, the closer you come to death, the more you want to fuck.

Whatever—when he slid into me, filling me with the long, hard length of his cock, there was no hesitation, no brief readjustment to make sure Item A would fit into Slot B. Everything fit just fine; a tight fit creating a delicious friction that had me digging my nails into his back with each stroke. He put his teeth against my neck, and for a brief second I wondered if he'd turned zombie. Then he proceeded to nibble and lick his way down the length of my neck to my collarbone with just enough pressure to send little frissons of heat to my nipples and groin. I returned the favor by reaching behind him and running my nails down his spine. He shivered with pleasure, creating a corresponding pulse of heat in my clit. I felt my orgasm spark and build, every thrust of his cock turning up the fire a little more until I thrashed beneath him in an orgasm so strong I thought it 320

would shake my body apart. I felt him come as well, a shuddering release accompanied by a low primal growl that made me come all over again.

The best fuck of my life was over in less than five minutes.

We lay on the leather couch, limbs entwined, bodies slick with sweat, our breathing slowly returning to normal. Supporting himself on one elbow, Cutie-boy brushed my hair back from my forehead and grinned down at me. "What's your name, then?"