Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (7 page)

He waited until she lifted her head to place the fingers that were deep inside her body into his mouth to lick them clean, and the heat in her eyes told him the embarrassment she experienced was long gone. She rotated on the towel and flipped over, crawling to him on her knees. Her hands went to his trunks and she tugged on the elastic waist.

“My

turn.”

His mouth went dry and his cock pulsated miserably.

“Whatever you say.”

He flopped into the sand when his body was as bare as hers, landing on his back, and hollered when her hot mouth closed over his aching flesh. She used her hand to work the root she couldn’t swallow, sucking greedily while working the base of his cock with her tongue. Never had a blow job been this good or this satisfying.

How did I ever live without this woman?

He held off for as long as he could, which was only minutes.

“Stop,” he groaned. “I want to be inside you when I come.”

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She allowed him to slide free from her shining lips but mumbled, “You were inside me.”

“I want to be inside you here.” He reached for the slick folds of flesh between her legs and pressed a finger inside. “I want that tight sex of yours squeezing me, to feel you clamping down around me.”

Snagging his shorts, he quickly retrieved the condom stowed inside.

“Have you had sex with someone else?” There was no condemnation in her voice, but there was a pain he hadn’t anticipated radiating in her eyes.

“Hell, no.” He palmed the line of her jaw with his free hand. “Don’t you know how I feel about you, Livvie? Haven’t you figured it out by now?”

“I thought I did,” she whispered. “But you didn’t say anything…”

He dropped the condom and captured her face in both hands. “I love you.”

Shyly, she murmured, “You do?”

“So fucking much it hurts.”

She smiled and produced an unexpected burst of laughter. “I love you, too.”

He reached for the condom again and she stopped him, pulling him over her body as she rested in the sand. “You’re not the only one that’s been waiting for this. I’ve been on the pill for months now.”

“Well damn, woman. Why didn’t you say so?”

He moved between her outspread thighs and thrust into her, going balls deep. She cried out, arching her back and grasping at his shoulders. He pumped his hips, taking her hard and fast. The moment she climaxed, he allowed himself to follow, spending his seed deep inside her body.

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“You’re incredible,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“You’re not too shabby yourself.”

“Are you hungry?” He smoothed stray stands of hair from her face. “I brought fresh crab and shrimp from the mainland.”

She sighed. “That sounds wonderful.”

He pulled away from the temptation of her body and rose, sliding on his trunks and offering his shirt when she blushed at her lack of clothing.

“No one’s out here,” she explained. “And I don’t like tan lines.”

“I’m

not

complaining.”

She rotated the large garment around and froze when she saw the words written on the front. There was no zombie standing with a plate of brains. Instead he went for simple and understated.

“’I heart brains’?”

“Your idea, remember?”

Her beautiful lips curved. “You remembered that?”

Stepping in front of her, he eased the material around her head, waiting as she pushed her arms through the sleeves. Then he whispered, “I remember everything when it comes to you.”

Bending at the waist and taking her hips in hand, he claimed her lips, tasting the sweetness within. She went soft against him, raking her fingers across his skin and welcoming his tongue as it delved inside.

Becoming a zombie was a bitch, but salesman Tub-o pudge was right, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

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So what if he had a different body?

He had the brains.

And he got the girl.

63

Everyone I Love is Dead

by Elizabeth Coldwell

I always vowed I would never date a zombie, until Mark turned up dead. Or should that be undead? I’m still not sure of the distinction. And if you’re confused by this, think how I felt. But I suppose I should start at the beginning.

It must have been about eighteen months ago when the first of the zombies started turning up. No one was really sure where they came from: some people said it was due to genetically modified food, others that it was caused by the radiation from cell phones or from living too close to power lines. Still others claimed it was all part of a big conspiracy engineered by the lizard people secretly in charge of the planet. You can still see them even now, arguing themselves into knots about the subject on late-night cable TV shows.

Whatever the cause, the first time one of these shambling, rotting husks pushed its way out of the cemetery dirt and started making its way in search of civilization, people were naturally terrified. They’d all seen the films where zombies gradually take over the world, killing and eating the brains of their victims until only a few hardy souls are left to make a last futile stand for mankind.

Only it turned out that while zombies were eager to feed, they didn’t necessarily need prime human rib. They were just as happy with the brains, offal, and other parts of domestic animals which would otherwise have found their way into low-grade burgers and sausages. Once that had been discovered, it was easier for them to establish their place in society. Naturally, the reaction to the appearance of the zombies varied from 64

country to country. In Haiti, those who had originally wished them dead locked their doors, buried their heads under the bed sheets, and prayed they would live to see the morning. In parts of Africa and Aboriginal Australia, the zombies were worshipped as venerated ancestors. In Britain, they were ruthlessly hunted down and decapitated, that being the only reliable way to kill a zombie.

Here, the government decided that the sensible thing to do was to allow them to find jobs and pay their taxes, just like everyone else. Otherwise they would all have been sitting around on welfare, and given the state the economy was in that just wasn’t a viable option. There were certain restrictions—no zombie could work anywhere which dealt with the processing and handling of food, or be around animals or children—but after a while you no longer really noticed that the guy repairing your shoes or the woman behind the counter at the dry cleaner had a certain graveyard pallor and a blank-eyed, uncommunicative demeanour. Indeed, sometimes it was hard to tell them from the person who’d been working there before.

And, of course, it wasn’t long before you saw mixed-mortality couples openly kissing and holding hands on the streets. For some girls, dating a zombie was the perfect way to upset Daddy, far more shocking than running around with the big, black quarterback on the college football team could ever be. I didn’t see the attraction myself, although a couple of my friends enthused about the unique delights of lying in the arms of the undead. They claimed that once you’d tried it, you would never go back, but I wasn’t even a little bit zombie-curious.

Then one cold February evening, I was serving the last couple of customers before the coffee shop shut for the night when a familiar figure shuffled slowly through 65

the door. My heart fluttered up into my throat for a moment as I realized I was looking at Mark—or, rather, what had once been Mark. His formerly glossy brown hair was dull and lifeless and his skin had a distinct greenish tinge, but despite the fact that he was clearly dead, he was still undeniably handsome.

When the zombies first started returning, I must admit I had wondered what would happen if someone I had known was among them, but I had been thinking more of a dead relative than the man whom I would always consider the one who got away. Mark and I had been one of those couples everyone had said was destined to be together, but it had just never happened. When I had been single, he had been in a relationship, or the other way around. He had gone to college on the West Coast, while I had stayed on the East. And then, just when we were both single, available and living in the same city once more, with seemingly nothing to stop us having a long and happy life together, Mark literally dropped down dead in the street one evening, killed by a heart condition no one had known he had. I was devastated, sobbing all the way through the funeral and grieving for months afterwards, but in time I had recovered and accepted I was simply never going to see Mark again.

Until now, as he was standing at the counter asking for a large sour-milk cappuccino.

“Mark!” I exclaimed stupidly, aware that my voice was too loud, too forced in the quiet surroundings of the shop. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, you know,” he said, his voice slower and more guttural than when he had been alive, “not too bad, considering I’ve been dead for—what, four years?”

“Yeah, time really flies. So, are you working?”

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“Yup, I got my old job back at the bookstore over on Twenty-third. I think they were kind of glad to see me back—once they’d got over the shock.”

“Well, it is good to see you,” I said, surprising myself by how sincerely I meant this. Looking at Mark was stirring up feelings I thought had been buried along with him.

“Maybe we should go out sometime, catch up on everything that we’ve...oh, you know what I mean.”

“Sure, that’d be nice.” He picked up his coffee, started sloping over to a vacant table, then turned—a process that took him a little while, as though he still wasn’t totally in control of his limbs. “Tell me, Millie, are you seeing someone at the moment?”

“Yes, I am,” I admitted. And as I watched him shuffle off to drink his coffee in a secluded corner, I wondered whether I should tell that someone about my unexpected encounter with Mark, and about the feelings I now realized I still so clearly had for him.

So later that night, as I lay in bed with Brody, I came clean. Brody was the best thing that had happened in my life since Mark had gone. I’d met him at the point when I’d finally decided I had to spend time around people who hadn’t known Mark, who hadn’t hung out in the same places he had and who could help me to move on. Someone had invited me to a gallery opening in the East Village, and that’s where I had got talking to Brody. Lanky and blond, with eyes the cool blue of a mountain lake, he couldn’t have looked more different than Mark, but that was part of the initial attraction—it meant I couldn’t easily make comparisons. Not only was Brody cute, he was intelligent and well read, qualities I’ve always admired in a man. He worked for a small publishing house who specialized mostly in academic publications, but had ambitions to one day write a novel. By the end of the week we were an item, and a couple of months after that we 67

moved in together. Of course, I never forgot about Mark entirely, but being with someone as clearly besotted with me as Brody was helped to ease the pain.

I dropped a gentle kiss on his forehead. “The strangest thing happened today,” I said. “Mark came in for a coffee.”

Brody looked at me, startled. “Mark? You mean he’s..?”

“Back, yes. I know, I can hardly get my head around it. And because I promised I’d never keep any secrets from you, I have to tell you the weirdest part.” I took a deep breath. “As soon as I saw him, I knew I was still attracted to him.”

“Seriously? You’ve always said you’d never be one of those girls who went chasing after a dead guy.”

But Mark’s not
a
dead guy, I wanted to tell him, he’s
the
dead guy. Brody, however, didn’t give me the chance to say anything. He pressed his lips to mine, kissing me passionately.

“What would you rather feel?” he asked. “Warm lips like mine”—he kissed me again, to emphasise the point—“or Mark’s cold ones?” His hand moved down between my legs, parting the lips of my pussy so he could tease my clit. “Fingers that know how to take you to the edge of ecstasy, or ones that aren’t properly under control?”

He straddled my body, and I spread my thighs eagerly as his cock head nudged at the opening of my sex. “And, most importantly, do you want this cock inside you?”

“Yes, Brody, yes!” I almost screamed, as he plunged up into me with his hot, virile length. Mark would never be capable of fucking me as hard as Brody could, of filling me with his fertile seed, but as the first fierce sparks of orgasm shot through me, I knew I still really wanted to find out what sex with Mark would be like.

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A publishing convention was taking Brody to Chicago for a couple of days, so in his absence I arranged to have dinner with Mark. He’d chosen a zombie-friendly trattoria close to his apartment, and when I arrived he was already seated at a discreet corner booth, well away from the undead couple having a blazing row at a table near the door. It was a little hard to make out what was being said, given that the pair of them were rather more decomposed than most and her jawbone didn’t seem to be properly connected, but the gist was obvious: he was dumping her. Seemed like relationships didn’t get any easier even after you were dead.

I ordered a bowl of linguini, and Mark went for what was described as the charnelhouse special: a plate of sloppy meat with what looked uncomfortably like a piece of windpipe sticking out of it. Vaguely repelled by the whole scene, I asked myself what on Earth I thought I was doing here, and then Mark looked at me with his dark, rheumy eyes and my reservations melted away. So many times I had dreamed of sharing a romantic candlelit dinner with him, and now here we were, clinking wineglasses in a toast to each other and chatting together companionably.

As we ate, I filled Mark in on everything that had happened while he had been out of my life, telling him about friends we had known who’d got married, or had started raising a family. He told me he was aiming to raise money so he could go traveling, though he aimed to stay well away from Britain, given the country’s less-than-welcoming attitude to the undead.

Soon, it felt as though no time at all had passed since the afternoon I had made plans to go for a dinner like this with Mark, only to receive a phone call a couple of hours later to let me know he was dead. It didn’t matter that one of us was alive and the other 69