Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (23 page)

“Don’t touch it!” she warned.

“I wasn’t going to fall into that trap,” he promised, but did take another step closer. It was his medical training.

Enthralled, he crouched beside it, careful to keep half an arm’s length out. “If we can get 212

it back to the States, I can publish this.”

“We have to keep on.”

“We did our duty,” he pointed out, but stood.

“Come on Doctor Moreau, we’re heading for the house.”

“And to think, yesterday morning going to Martinique was such a good idea.”

“If we get out of this alive,” she agreed, “I’m going to find that lawyer. He’ll be sorry.”

* * * *

“I never thought I’d have to crawl through the mud on a vacation,” Rebecca mumbled.

Griffin slithered next to her, shovel gripped in one hand, flashlight in the other. He’d turned it off, he noticed, the closer they got to the brightly lit house. For a doctor, he was more practical than she’d have given him credit for.

“Now what?” he asked once they were lying next to long floor-to-ceiling window. There was no curtain on it, but then who besides them was out here at two in the morning to see the lights?

“Find the source of the screams,” she whispered back.

“I got that,” he snapped.

Rebecca looked sideways at Griffin. For a man who had just crawled on his belly through the mud, he looked pretty damned sexy. She wanted to lean over and kiss him, but practicalities and all. Instead, she nodded upwards. “I’ll go first.”

“Good,” he grunted, shifting to crouch against the wall, shovel at the ready. “You have the gun.”

Snorting an aborted laugh, Rebecca peeked around the stonewall, scanning the interior as quickly as she could. Not seeing anyone—or anything—she eased forward. As far as she could 213

see, there was no latch on the window, and she didn’t want to risk drawing attention to them by breaking the glass.

Silently motioning for Griffin to follow, she sprinted to the next window, but encountered the same thing. On the third try, she stopped before French doors, and eased one open. It wasn’t locked, but again, she chalked it up to the complete isolation of the house.

Really, she just refused to consider any other option. If she was back in D.C., that’d be different. Here…with zombies….

“Ready?” she asked.

“As I’ll ever be.” Griffin nodded.

They slipped inside. Rebecca could feel Griffin behind her, a solid, reassuring,
alive
presence that did much to steady her against such an unknown. Gangs, gangsters, thugs, she could deal with. Zombies?

“Maybe the letter from the lawyer really was a scam,” she muttered.

“I was just thinking that same thing.” Griffin’s voice was light, given the situation.

Her hand gripped the doorknob to the door separating the empty room from whatever else lay in the house. “Ready?”

Griffin nodded, and she swung the door open as fast as she could. It made a horrible screeching noise, but just then the screaming began again.

“What is he doing to her?” Griffin demanded.

Rebecca shook her head. She had no answers, and was afraid what they’d discover when they did find the source of the scream.

Down the hall, to the left, and that’s when they found them. Dozens of the creatures.

They stood in a haphazard array, not walking, not talking, not even moaning in an undead kind 214

of way. They just stood there.

Rebecca raised the gun.

“Wait. They’re not reacting.” Griffin pointed the shovel to the group who hadn’t even noticed their presence. “Damn, they’re the Borg.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go, then.”

Utterly disgusted, she held the gun ready as they slipped by the zombies. It was true; they didn’t react. One or two looked right at them, but Rebecca didn’t want to take the chance they’d charge if she maintained eye contact, and moved past them as quickly as she could.

Griffin followed her as they walked down another hall and to a set of steps. The door was wide open, lights blazing from the basement as well. Both sides of the stairs were walled, so Rebecca took the chance and descended them.

“This is a bad idea,” she said halfway down.

“Can’t turn back now,” Griffin pointed out.

“Wasn’t going to,” she shot back, “but it’s still a bad idea.”

The last step and she peeked around the corner. Blinking, she tried to process what she saw.

“He looks like a mad scientist!” Griffin whispered from above her.

It was exactly what he looked like. Wild Gene Wilder hair, a white lab coat, computers, machines she couldn’t begin to name, and a woman on the table. One look told Rebecca it was too late for the woman. She was already a zombie.

“Seriously?” Rebecca ducked back behind the wall. “He’s really wearing a lab coat?”

He opened his mouth to comment, closed it, tried again, then shrugged. “I have nothing to say to that.”

215

Incredulous, she hoisted the gun higher and said, “Just to recap before we charge in and attack the mad scientist and his zombie hoard: we came down to the Caribbean, to this gorgeous island. Inherited a spooky mansion in the middle of nowhere that just so happens to be next to another spooky mansion that houses zombies and apparently a mad scientist.”

Griffin smiled, and she could see he tried hard not to laugh and draw attention to them.

“Trust me, this isn’t an ordinary case.”

“No.” He shook his head. With the shovel at the ready, he nodded to where the aforementioned lab coat-wearing mad scientist stood over his latest victim. “Ready?”

Rebecca nodded and rounded the corner, gun aimed at the only other living being there.

“You’re the living, breathing cliché of a mad scientist.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Perfect,” Griffin muttered.

“You must be the Americans from Fleur.” His accent was heavy French, not from the island Rebecca suspected.

“Good guess,” she said.

“What kind of experiments are you doing here?” Griffin demanded. “What have you done to these people?”

“If you took my buyout offer,” the mad scientist said, “you wouldn’t have been my next experiment.”

“I’ve seen this movie!” Rebecca said. She held the gun steady on the man, eyes never leaving his or the zombie on the table. She was fairly certain the creature was strapped down, but one never knew with zombies, did one. “I could try to arrest you now, but I’m a U.S. special agent and have no powers under the French government.”

216

The scientist smirked. It looked mildly disturbing.

“Plus,” she continued, “I have a feeling all this is going to be really hard to explain.”

“Pierre! René! Inès! Kill the intruders!”

Frowning, she glanced at Griffin. He’d edged along the wall to the computers, alternating looking at the mad scientist and the beckoning monitors.

Three zombies ambled from nowhere. They came straight for them in a slow, steady pace. Rebecca had known this was a bad idea. She moved to Griffin’s side, keeping her back to the wall as the three headed for them.

“I have about four bullets,” she said to him, “assuming one doesn’t jam the gun. I don’t want to end up like those girls in horror movies.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. Then, catching her gaze, he said very seriously. “I
really
don’t.”

She nodded and fired at the scientist. One shot clean between the eyes, and he fell backwards. The screams of the female zombie on the table had not abated and Rebecca wondered if the creature knew what was happening. Frantic, now down to three bullets, she aimed at the advancing zombies.

They’d stopped.

“What did you find?” she demanded.

“He’s
Highlander
,” Griffin said, clicking through file after file. “Trying to live forever.”

“Ah, but who wants to live forever?” she quipped, not taking her eyes off the still and suddenly confused zombies. She refused to rethink that thought about confusion and zombies, and kept her gun on the closest one.

“I’ve seen enough.”

217

Taking her eyes off the undead long enough to look at Griffin, she simply moved back the way they’d come. His expression was disgusted, sickened. Whatever she thought the mad scientist was doing, it was worse. Griffin understood his notes, knew what the man was after.

Immortality?

He’d experimented on these people. Later, she’d ask what Griffin found, but for now, she just wanted to get out of this house of horrors alive.

“We can’t leave them here to run amok,” Griffin said.

Rebecca looked over her shoulder as they ascended the steps. She didn’t think there was anyone else in the house—anyone else
alive
in the house—but didn’t want to be caught off guard. Plus, three shots left.

“They’re already dead,” she pointed out.

“Indeed.”

“Ashes to ashes,” she said, peering around the corner. Empty. “We’ll torch the place.”

“For the best. I don’t know if they’re contagious or not, or if that’s a Hollywood thing.”

He didn’t sound as if he fully agreed, but what else was there? No one would believe them and she had no idea how to get a group of dead beings out of the house.

His hand on her arm stopped her. “We need to use the equipment downstairs. I didn’t see anything else on the way in there, and at least I know it’s flammable.”

With a sigh, she agreed and they headed into the basement. It didn’t take them long to start a fire. Griffin was right; besides the computers and such there were jars of liquid, which proved to be very flammable. The fire spread quickly and burned very hot.

Racing out of the house, she saw a zombie on fire. He stood where he caught fire, and let himself burn.

218

Back on the veranda of their own house, Rebecca sat next to him on the steps and watched it. They’d called the fire department and could even now hear sirens speeding towards them.

“It’s safer in D.C.”

Griffin laughed and slung his arm around her shoulders. “Yeah. I’m in for selling this place.”

“I can’t sign the papers fast enough.” She settled her head against his chest and closed her eyes. She could still see the zombies and imagined she heard their death screams despite the distance.

“Ha!” Griffin laughed. “I figured it out. He reminds me of a
Scooby-Doo
cartoon.”

“Hell,” Rebecca said and laughed, “this night was too weird.”

“Hmm, yes. But not all of it.”

“No,” she whispered, “not all of it.” Then, in a firmer voice, “I need a drink.”

“Buy you one at the Hays-Adams,” he offered.

“I’d like that.”

“And dinner,” he added.

Rebecca stiffened, then slowly looked up at him. She hadn’t really thought about anything between them past this tropical sojourn. Looking up at his intense blue eyes, she found herself nodding.

“I’d like that,” she said, resting her head back on his chest. “I’d like that very much.”

219

White Night, Black Horse

by Mercy Loomis

I don't know if I can rightly describe it to you, what it's like. When you are seized by the
loa
there is no memory, no knowledge of what passes. The
loa
, the voodoo spirits that act as intermediaries between God and men, are fond of using humans as their horses when they wish to pass on a message or join in a celebration. It's said that the
loa
displace their horse's
ti bon ange
, the little good angel, the spark of their host's personality. Either they hold it safe in their keeping, or no one has been stupid enough to try to steal the soul of a
loa's
horse.

I would imagine the
loa
would take a dim view of such a thing.

But God knows, I had been ridden before, and coming out of the ground was nothing like it.

The

bokor
, the sorcerer, called me from the earth, and I came.

I was bound. I was beaten.

And

the

bokor
stole my
ti bon ange.

I can tell you all this, for I remember it. It is not the same as being ridden, not at all.

A zombie's baptism is a harsh affair, foul paste for the Host, your own blood dripping down your face. They named me Joseph, and led me away.

Without

your

ti bon ange
, you are nothing. No will. No thoughts. Just a mindless, obedient slave. So it's hard for me to tell you what I experienced, because I had no ability to think, and no sense of time.

220

I don't know how long I'd been working on the plantation when they brought Marie-Celeste to join us. The
bokor
who held my soul now was not the one who had raised me from the earth. That man had been too poor to own the immense fields I and my fellow zombies tended. We worked straight through from sunrise to sunset, because the overseers were afraid to be out after dark.

We were told to work. We worked. We were told to go into the shed. We went.

We were told to eat the meager food that would keep our bodies running. We ate. We were told to lie down. None of us slept.

New zombies came. Others left. We didn't notice.

But when Marie-Celeste came…

I grope for words. I didn't
notice
her, but I was aware of her presence. While I recognized all my fellows, and the overseers too, for that matter, there was a deeper sense of recognition with her. It wasn't that I had known her before, for I had no way to access memory. Her face was not familiar, nor would I have found it lovely even if I had been able to make value judgments. No zombie is beautiful. The sense of wrongness about us is simply too great for beauty.

The overseers gave us simple instructions. No one paid attention to who went where, as long as the work was done.

When we went out to the fields, Marie-Celeste and I walked together.

When we worked, we worked next to each other.

When we lay down, it was always side by side.

221

There was no thought to this. Zombies cannot think. But just as I was aware of rain running into my eyes, though I had no opinion about it, I was drawn to her, pulled as if by gravity.