My Zombie Honeymoon: Love in the Age of Zombies Book One (31 page)

I stood there, naked, my willy shrinking up, caught up in my emotions and the mystery of the moment. My left hand held the glass of bourbon; my right hand migrated to my willy and covered it for warmth.

The trees in the neighbor’s back yard had a layer of snow on the branches. The roof of Michelle's house across from me practically glowed. The fence between our houses also had several inches of snow on top, and the fence cast a blue-black shadow on the ground.

Because of my dream, my thoughts at first were still about Tammy, but soon I began thinking about the snow, and how in a few months it will all be gone. I thought about the transient nature of things, and I began to think how things would never be like this again.

At some point in the future, I will die, or Michelle will die, and the other one will be left to carry on. I can't imagine how I would live without Michelle. She's my lifeline, my sanity, my only friend (except for Doc). I can't imagine leaving her alone to fend for herself.

I thought, too, about life after we're gone. Once I'm gone, there will be no one left to remember Jason. It will be as if he never existed. And once Michelle's gone, there will be no one to remember me. The story of my life will be unwritten.

I thought about my grandparents, and their grandparents before them. I don't even know what my great grandparents’ names were. They are gone forever, even their names forgotten. In this world we live in, I suppose nearly every former living person is now forgotten forever. Whatever dastardly deeds they did in their lifetime, no matter what heroic feats were accomplished during the Collapse—all of it is forgotten.

I took another sip of bourbon, and then watched, fascinated, as a great horned owl flew over my head and landed in the neighbor's tree. It didn't make a sound, the flight completely silent. I saw a small cascade of snow silently fall from the branch on which it landed. With the moonlight shining on it, it sparkled like star dust as it floated down.

After a few minutes it took flight. Without even a breath of sound it lifted off and flew over to the fence between our houses. I stood still, admiring its shape in the moonlight. It was perhaps twenty feet from me. The moon in the west highlighted its wings. It perched there, head swiveling around, as it surveyed the yard and probably looked for a meal. At one point it looked right at me, watching.

After a few minutes, it moved on, north and out of sight. I stood there, shivering, again thinking about the temporal nature of things. When I die, there will be no one to remember the owl. And one day Michelle will be without me, or I will be without her. My eyes began to tear up, and I chided myself for it.

I've never experienced a love like this. It's vital to me now. My love with Tammy was just as intense, but it was completely different; they’re different people and these are different times. How could I manage to go on if Michelle died? Even the thought make me sad. I don’t know if I could survive such a loss again.

From somewhere to the east, I heard the owl hoo-h’
hoo
-hoo-hoo, then heard the mate answer from farther away, her pitch a bit higher.

We may very well look back on this time as the best years of our lives post-Collapse. I resolve to live more in the moment, to notice more about Michelle, to express my love to her more, to do what I can to make her life better. When I make her my focal point, all is right with the world. When I start to think about me, and whether she's making the same amount of effort to love me—in other words, when I become self-concerned—that's when things deteriorate. Suddenly it's not unconditional love.

I want to die knowing I loved her with all my heart, strength, and mind, whether she goes first or I do.

I thought,
This time will soon pass away, and I'll wish with all my might for just one more day with her, like I do with Tammy. But my wish will not be granted.
The very thought filled me with melancholy.

But as I lifted the glass to my lips and sipped the last of the bourbon, I heard the owls call again. And I thought,
Yeah, it will happen. But right now, your lover sleeps peacefully no more than thirty or forty feet from where you stand.
I turned to my right and took a quick piss, watching the steam rise from the darkening snow.

With a sense of urgent joy overflowing my heart, I crunched my way back to the side door, went back downstairs and opened the laptop to write down these thoughts. Soon I will slip into bed beside her. And though I’d like to press my body against hers, to feel her skin, to nuzzle her neck, after having been outside my cold hands and feet will probably awaken her. So I imagine I will lie there, listening to her breathe slowly in and out, and just like the calls of the owls outside, my breath will soon began to answer hers as I drift to sleep.

February 1
st

Not much to report over the past few weeks. We’ve gotten into a groove and a pretty good routine. We actually have a schedule.

Monday: Spend time on the plants (check the pH, replenish the water, add fertilizer, harvest, replant, check for pests, clean up). Germinate seeds. Check in with Doc.

Tuesday: Seek and destroy (eliminate any new zombies who have wandered into the neighborhood). Haul off a couple of bodies.

Wednesday: Check neighborhood houses for zombies/survivors. Destroy zombies. Haul a few more bodies. Rescue survivors (if we ever find any). Check in with Doc.

Thursday: Return to cleared houses, gather any needed supplies (food, alcohol, weapons, booze, prescription drugs).

Friday: Laundry, cleaning, plant seeds, move sprouts to hydroponic raft, harvest anything ready, check pH and water levels. Haul bodies (if any left). Check in with Doc.

Saturday: Breakfast in bed (pancakes, coffee, and each other). Scout out neighborhood for any signs of zombies or intruders.

Sunday: Lounge around naked. Enjoy each other. Watch DVD or listen to music. Read. Dance in bed.

One thing I always look for when we’re scavenging through houses are spices. I don’t want to run out. Once the spices are gone, I may never (for example) taste cinnamon or cumin again.

Michelle’s the one who checks for drugs, since she’s most likely to know what they’re good for. I wouldn’t know them by their generic names.

We’re always looking for antibiotics, pain meds, and ADD meds for those days when we’ll need an extra boost. We haven’t found a whole lot of useable meds yet (most are long expired), but at one point Michelle jauntily entered the kitchen (where I was packing up some canned goods) holding up a medicine bottle and shaking it so I could hear pills rattling.

“Lookie what I found!” she chimed, “a bottle of tadalafil!!” She had a gleam in her eye I found curious.

“What’s tadalafil?” I asked.

“Generic Cialis!” she replied rather gleefully. I’ve never used it, but even so, it sounds like fun. Not that I
need
it. But hey.

We also retrieve any liquor and beer we find. We stockpile alcohol in the crawlspace under Michelle’s house. No point in leaving anything out in the open.

We come across dead bodies in some of the houses. When possible, we haul them away with the zombies. Sometimes it’s not possible (if they’re too large to haul up flights of stairs, for example), so we close the door to those rooms and leave them.

Yesterday we came upon several disturbing scenes while scavenging houses in the neighborhood. One house was pretty trashed inside, with empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and liquor bottles scattered everywhere. We heard rustling upstairs—it sounded like small animals—and went to check it out. We’ve seen plenty of rats in these houses, along with a few raccoons, opossums, some feral cats and even a wild dog. They all run when they become aware of us.

So we weren’t surprised when we went upstairs and saw a half-dozen or so rats scurry into holes they’d chewed through the walls. We could smell something decomposing, and in the master bedroom we found the remains of a dead man lying in bed. His hands and feet were duct taped to the bed frame and his head showed signs of trauma. The mattress had a lot of blood stains.

It was hard to tell what happened to him. The rats had been feeding off the remains.

Michelle is the one who pointed out the blood on the mattress. Bodies don’t bleed after they’re dead, so the rats couldn’t have caused the blood we saw. His head trauma could not have come from himself or the rats—they must have come after the fact. He couldn’t have taped himself to the frame. It appears someone did this to him.

Michelle went into the master bathroom to look for pharmaceuticals. I headed downstairs where I found more bloodstains on and around a coffee table. Looking closer, I saw duct tape stuck to the legs. While I was puzzling over this, I realized this was the house where the bad guys pulled their truck into the garage. She must have lived here and been captured by them. The body on the bed must have been her husband or boyfriend.

The blood was on the coffee table and carpet must have been hers. They must have taped her down so they could have their fun. There was a broken broom handle, which they probably used on her too. I can still picture the nasty lateral bruises on her legs and back as they heaved her into the horde. I’d hate to think what else they might have used the broom handle for. Sick bastards. May they rot in hell. I can just see the fat man grinning and having a drink as they tortured her.

I decided to see if the truck was still in the garage.

I opened the door into the garage and flinched when I saw another bunch of rats—maybe a dozen—swarm away from me and disappear. The stink of dead flesh was pretty strong there, too.

Sure enough, the truck was there. The day they broke into our house they must have left it here so we wouldn’t hear them approach our house. I heard a slight scrabbling sound coming from behind the truck.

Instantly I recalled that Michelle killed the guy whose pecker I bit, saw the other guy get eaten by zombies, but didn’t know what happened to the third guy. Was he still here, alive after all this time? If so, what would I do?

I raised my gun (I no longer carry it like I’m a TV actor) and quietly followed the trail of blood to where the sound was coming from. It led behind the truck. Dim light filtered in through the narrow windows at the top of the garage door.

Peering around the corner of the truck, I found a strange sight.

Three rats were gnawing at two decomposing bodies lying in a pool of blood and tissue. One was a few feet from the other, the back of its head blown off, presumably by the gun still grasped in other body’s right hand. Bits of dried bone and flesh were splattered onto the tailgate.

The body holding the gun was collapsed against the garage door, its neck and shoulder ripped out. The back of its head was blown off, a gory spray pattern of brains coating the garage door. Ample amounts of blood stained his filthy shirt. A pool of dried blood spread around the body and underneath the truck. There was no blood around the other body.

“
Scat!”
I shouted at the rats. They quickly ran under the truck and disappeared, I assume into another hole in the wall. I suppose the house is completely infested.

Michelle must have heard me, because shortly afterward I heard her call my name. “Kevin? Are you okay? Where are you?”

“In the garage,” I called. She found me staring behind the truck. She couldn’t see the body from her doorway vantage point.

That was the moment I noticed something that gave me a great deal of perverse satisfaction.

“Michelle, come look!” She warily came over, holding a cloth to her nose. When she came to stand by my side, she flinched and jumped back.

“Ugh, two more. We should open the door and haul them away.”

“No, wait, look closely. See how the one leaning against the garage door had his neck and shoulder torn out? See all the blood on his shirt and the floor? He was attacked. The other body must be the zombie who attacked him. He must have been bitten and then killed the zombie before killing himself.”

“So? We’ve seen worse. It’s disgusting. Why do you want me to look?”

“Do you see anything familiar about the body?” I asked her, pointing to the one in the pool of blood. She glanced at me with a look of impatience before looking back at the body, the cloth still held to her nose.

“I don’t—“ she started, then stopped. The hand holding the cloth slowly dropped to her side. I knew she was a very observant girl.

“His arm. That tattoo. It’s him.”

His right arm, the one holding the gun, had a garish tattoo—the tattoo we’d seen on one of the guys. Now that we were closer, I could see that it was a Dixie flag. The skin was shrunken and shriveled, but it was clear. This was the third guy, the one who’d gotten away.

“When he ran off he must have made his way back to get the truck and was attacked and bitten by the zombie. During the scuffle he must have shot it in the head, and then as he bled out he must have killed himself so he wouldn’t turn.”

Michelle and I looked at each other for a long minute. Searching her eyes, I could see a lot of what she saw in mine as well. A sense of satisfaction and relief mixed with disgust.

Michelle turned away.

“I didn’t find anything,” she said, “those guys must have taken everything worthwhile. Let’s get out of here. I want to go home.”