Love, Lust, and Zombies Read online

  I laughed. “Aimee, I never knew you were such a big softie.”

  “It’s your faith in me,” she said, sniffling. “It means everything.”

  “I’m still not sleeping with Steven,” I said. I took a step back and looked her in the eye. “I feel like a sheep—but we’ll do artificial insemination.”

  “Whatever you want,” she said.

  “I want you to be there for the insemination. I want to feel like this baby is yours and mine.” As I said it, I thought of Steven. We’d talked about what I wanted, and we’d talked about what Aimee wanted, but Steven never told me what he wanted. He’d said he respected my marriage, but would he be happy as a sperm donor, or would he want to be a co-parent? Of the three of us, he was the only one who’d raised a child before.

  “Of course,” she said, squeezing me and kissing my cheek. Our lips met, and most of my anger and fear melted away. She told me to sit at our table and volunteered to get our evening meal. As I waited, I spotted Steven sitting at a table with some of the other single men. I decided not to interrupt his meal.

  When Aimee returned with two bowls of rice and vegetables, I asked her, “How involved do you imagine Steven being with this baby?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” she said. “I guess we’ll have to talk it out with him.”

  As she finished speaking, she looked up at something behind me. I turned around; Steven stood a few inches from the back of my chair. Aimee beamed at him. “We’re going ahead with the project.”

  “Turkey-baster style,” I added.

  “Looking forward to it,” Steven said. He smiled, but his eyes looked serious.

  “Ava wants to know if you’re planning on being the hands-on type of dad.”

  He stared at Aimee a moment. Then he turned to me. “I would love to be hands-on,” he said. “From the moment you hold them the first time, you can hardly stand to have your babies out of your sight.”

  I looked into Steven’s eyes, and I saw his love for the baby we could have. Desire shot through me. I reached out and took Aimee’s hand, lacing my fingers through hers. I wanted them both, but couldn’t stand the thought of being disloyal to Aimee. A short time later, Steven went back to the men’s table. Later that evening, Aimee and I figured out I would be fertile in about two weeks.

  I saw Steven occasionally during the intervening days. When we passed on the stairs or in the dining room, I felt awkward. It felt even stranger to bring a large syringe home from the med clinic and knock on Steven’s door. I woke him up; his hair was rumpled, and his chest was bare under his leather coat. He laughed softly as I handed him the syringe. “Bring this to us when you’re…done.” He nodded.

  At home, I kissed Aimee, stripped from the waist down and lay across the bed under our familiar brown blanket. When Steven knocked, Aimee answered the door. I closed my eyes and kept them closed even after I felt Aimee’s reassuring presence among the curious ghosts crowded around our bed. A moment later, I was inseminated. Aimee collapsed on top of me, kissing my lips, my neck, my collarbone. “We’re going to be mommies,” I said excitedly, combing my fingers through her auburn hair.

  Our first attempt failed. The next month, and the month after that, we tried the same procedure with the same disappointing results. “Don’t be discouraged,” Aimee told me as I sat on the bathroom floor, holding my knees and sobbing. “We’ll keep trying.” The air stirred, and I heard the ghosts whispering faintly. I couldn’t make out their words, but I believed they were encouraging me.

  On the night before we’d scheduled my next insemination, I woke up alone. Aimee was off dealing with some food storage crisis. I couldn’t fault her for that, but I was angry at being alone. I was angry at the cold, impersonal syringe and at not being pregnant yet.

  I threw on a sweatshirt and walked down the hall to Steven’s. After I knocked for several minutes, he came to the door. Despite the cold, he wore only black pants. I looked at the long vertical scar down his arm and remembered suturing it. “Ava,” he said, sounding surprised. “It’s early.” He let me in.

  I looked into his eyes, noticing for the first time they were no fewer than five different shades of blue. Blue eyes were rare among the survivors, but Steven had them, and so did I. “Make love to me.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Are you sure about this?” I nodded. I leaned in to kiss him, but he held me at arm’s length. “What does Aimee think about you being here with me?” He moved in closer.

  “Her idea.” I put my hands on his shoulders, closed the space between us and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around me, and even through my sweatshirt, I could feel his skin was cold. His lips were warm, and his mouth felt wonderful. He kissed me back, admitting my tongue as it gently touched his lower lip.

  I couldn’t deny my desire any longer. Reluctantly pulling away from his kiss, I whispered, “I want you.”

  Steven didn’t hesitate. He lifted me off my feet, carried me to his bed and sat me on the edge. He undressed quickly and slipped under the brown blanket, identical to the one I shared with Aimee. After I’d joined him under the blanket, he helped me peel off my warm clothes. I unhooked my gray bra and took off my unmatched green panties. We lay face-to-face, studying each other’s eyes for a moment, his fingers lightly grazing my belly, before he held me to him. I ran my hands over his arms, trying to take the chill from his skin.

  I closed my eyes as our lips met. I surrendered easily, rolling onto my back. He covered my body with his. I parted my thighs, wrapping one leg around him, inviting in the hardness I could feel against my inner thigh—another part of him that felt warm and alive.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  “More than anything.” He groaned and kissed my lips. I only had to angle my hips toward him, and he shoved his cock inside me. I gasped at how deeply I could feel him, then ground my hips against him. We moved in imperfect unison. The thrill of this stranger’s thighs slapping against mine while he touched long-untouched places inside me overwhelmed me. The desire I’d been trying to suppress for months came back with a vengeance. Pushing down hard with both hands on the muscle of his lower back, I made my muffled howl into his smooth chest while I came.

  I felt the excited pounding of his heart, and I could tell Steven was close, too. In a few quick, hard strokes, he made a loud sound of bliss. With my head still pressed against his chest, I opened my lips and bit him underneath his collarbone. His moan became a shout and we clung to each other, desperately trying to catch our breath. This felt right.

  He withdrew suddenly and rolled over to his side of the bed. “Ava, I’m sorry. You feel too good.” He sounded exhausted.

  I opened my eyes. “Don’t be sorry. That was perfect. Next time we’ll go slow.” I caught a glimpse of his beautiful smile. It was even prettier now that he was, in some way we hadn’t quite figured out yet, mine. “Are you one of those guys who doesn’t like to be touched while he sleeps?”

  He shook his head; his dark hair looked gloriously messy. “I want to hold you all night.” I rested my head on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me.

  I slept deeply, but not for long. Before the sun came up, he nudged me gently awake and said into my ear, “Is it next time yet?” Laughing, I rolled over on top of him. I kissed my way down his chest in slow motion. I wanted to taste him, to taste me on him, but I would take my time. Our first time was short, but sweet—the product of months of self-denial—but our second time would be an experience to savor.

  The next day as I walked through the hotel’s halls, I heard bits of songs hummed softly. I didn’t know what it was until the woman from the new band, the one who’d lost an eye, told me. She’d lost the sight in her remaining eye after a series of infections, and in her blindness the ghosts spoke to her.

  “Lullabies,” she said. “They want to sing to your baby.”

  “My baby?” It would be weeks before I knew beyond a doubt I was pregnant, but she knew.

  “The ghosts l
ove babies. New skin, bones and blood remind them of life. They miss it. That’s why they keep us.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder, leaned in and kissed the top of her head in the center of her smooth, black hair. In the old world, we’d been more independent, but the Wild Ones had eaten away at some of our boundaries. I would learn to play by the new rules.

  SO YOU WANT TO DATE A ZOMBIE?

  Shane Vaughan

  The zombie apocalypse lasted a week, before everything reverted back to normal. Well, as normal as things can be with half a billion undead looking for all their old stuff back.

  We’re still not sure exactly why it happened. Some say it was God, some say aliens and some that it’s all those preservatives we keep eating. Who knows?

  All I know is one day I’m walking down the street and there’s my dead aunt walking up. “Jeffrey! Jeffrey!” she called out, waving her one remaining arm in the air while hobbling up on blunt ankles. “Oh Jeffrey! Isn’t it lovely? I’m alive!”

  Then I passed out.

  It all started on a Wednesday. A Wednesday! Nothing ever happens on a Wednesday. It’s been universally panned as the most boring day of the week. But not this Wednesday; this Wednesday felt it had a point to prove, a need to be different, a desire to fulfill some sort of ritualistic destiny.

  Like on any other midweek day, the sun shone dimly through autumn clouds, the breeze keeping us all cool. People shopped and worked, and worked to shop. Children played in the mud, catching disease and friendship.

  A family processed from a funeral home to a small idyllic church on the outskirts of the large, nondescript metropolis.

  The grieving wife mourned the passing of her dearly departed; her children bowed their heads, thinking of home; the family dog panted in the warm air, wondering where “master” was.

  As the dearly beloved gathered, the priest said a few kind words and they each siphoned off a handful of dust. Ceremoniously, they sprinkled earth onto the mass-produced coffin and shed a few tears.

  Then screamed as the hand of their departed broke through the plywood and, quivering, kicked off the apocalypse.

  The poor wife fainted and fell. The priest tried to run, but tripped on a loose headstone and didn’t last much longer. The children screeched and made it almost all the way to the gate. The woman, now in the grave, had cracked her head open on account of the fall and her husband, now free, slobbered over his wife of twenty years. The priest moaned as he crawled his way into the path of an oncoming horde, and the children’s voice boxes gave way as teeth gnashed and ground on their throats.

  The zombies treated their heads much the same way we treat Halloween monkey nuts, splitting them open and greedily scooping out brain matter.

  Of course, brains don’t actually taste all that good. After a few quick, barely digestible morsels the zombies, like sharks, spat out the tasteless human flesh and awkwardly apologized to the dearly departing.

  “Needs. More. Salt!” they stammered before their memories of speech came back and they remembered how to talk without sounding like a B-movie.

  Wiping their mouths with the backs of no-longer-decomposing hands, they turned their eyes to the next edible thing: the family dog. He barked and he growled, but, like candy at Halloween, he was unwrapped and devoured quicker than you can say, “Oh my god, are those zombies?”

  It was a symbiotic solution in the end: the zombies promised not to eat our brains if we mushed up our pets. The apocalypse lasted a week, but the pets only held out for three days. And so the great dog-food company of the world was created, animal rights groups abolished and the dawning of a new era of human-zombie relations began.

  The lawyers were the first to accept the zombies, doing so with open arms. They rubbed their hands at all the lack of legal clarity as a host of undead sought to fit back into the society they had left. The prostitutes were next to accept, as humanity’s never-ceasing curiosity caught up with itself.

  Though there were a few zombiephobes kicking around who liked to kick around zombies, most people found that, after a while, there wasn’t all that much difference between humans and their resurrected subspecies. Except of course for the undead part.

  So You Want to Date a Zombie?

  “Jeff!” Brian said, poking me in the arm as we lay slouched on the couch. “Have you seen this?” He pointed to an advert on the telly with the other hand.

  “What is it?” I asked, squinting from the copious amounts of smoke we released from a homemade bong, resisting the urge to rub my eyes raw.

  “It’s called ‘So You Want to Date a Zombie?’”

  “Is it like the ‘Z-Factor’? That was rubbish; the one without the vocal chords was the best.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that, you twat. It’s like, I dunno, ‘Blind Date’ or something,” he said, waving around the remote to illustrate his point.

  “So, what, the zombies go on a date blind? Sounds shit. What’s the betting they get an actual blind one to do it? Reality TV…there’s nothing real about it.” I took another hit from the bong to emphasize my apathy.

  “Actually, it sounds pretty good,” he said, scanning his laptop for details. “They put a human male, or female, on a stool and they describe three players who sit behind a curtain. The contestant doesn’t know anything except what the host tells them.”

  “I thought you said it was reality TV?”

  “I never said that, spanner; I said it’s like ‘Blind Date.’” He paused to watch me as I exhaled white smoke. “I think you should do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go on the show.”

  “Why in the name of sweet Jesus would I do that?”

  “’Cos when’s the last time you fucked anyone, Jeff? That’s why.”

  I held my tongue, counting back the days, weeks, months. Nearly a year. A whopping three hundred and fourteen days since I’d last had sex. Three hundred and fourteen miserable wanks with me and my laptop. A year of disappointing Saturday nights and revenge chips.

  “A while,” I said, shrugging.

  “Come on, what if you got a zombie?”

  “That’s gross,” I said, passing him the bong.

  “I dunno, I’m half tempted.”

  “But isn’t that necrophilia?”

  “Not really,” he said, pausing to take in a breath. “’Cos they’re not dead really, are they?”

  “Yeah, but they’re the undead.”

  “That’s the same as the living.”

  “Hardly!” I said, motioning for the bong back. “What’s the opposite of necrophilia anyway?”

  “Sex?”

  I woke the next day with a bad case of fear, one shoe missing and an email clarifying my entry to “So You Want to Date a Zombie?”

  “What have you done this time?” I yelled, but Brian had already left.

  The studio was jam-packed with crew, cast and “support” for the poor victims who would sit in the chair and play dice with their sexuality. Brian had gone and invited himself along for “shits and giggles,” bringing his trusty hand-cam for “funzies,” as he put it.

  “Why am I here?” I said, pacing up and down the small strip of floor they’d designated for [Participant 011-67]. “Seriously. Why am I here? I could leave, right? I could just walk away right now and never have to come back here. Why don’t I do that?”

  “Think of the pussy.”

  “What if I get a guy? What if I get a zombie-guy? What if I get a zombie-guy who died four years ago and hasn’t worked up the cash to get both his legs sewn back?”

  “What if you get some pussss-ay!” Brian squealed unhelpfully as he pointed the camera into his own face, sticking out his tongue and making the “Rock-On” symbol with his free hand.

  “This isn’t like college, man. I could fuck anything then without even giving it a second thought because I was young and high and stupid!”

  “Yeah…” said Brian, lowering the camera for a second. “Now you’re just old, high and stupid
! Woo!” He screamed like a pent-up jock at a Hooters and tongue-wagged at his camera some more.

  “Careful, boy, they’ll think you’re food,” said a darkly clad techie as he passed. “You’re on in five,” he whispered before darting off to the crevice of studio-hell whence he came.

  I felt my face drain of blood and my hands began to jerk. Sweat dripped and slipped into my eyes. I tried to rub it out but the sweat on the back of my hand only made things worse.

  “Oh shit,” I whimpered. “Oh shit, I don’t wanna do it, Brian.”

  “Shh, buddy. Worst case scenario you get a bad date, best case you get a good seeing to.”

  “Best case is I die of embarrassment, worst case is I fuck a dead chick, and then I die of shame!”

  “It’ll be fun. Go get ’em, tiger!”

  Brian slapped me on the butt and I felt myself lunge toward the stage as an ethereal voice overhead pronounced: “Participant Eleven Sixty-Seven to the floor, participant Eleven Sixty-Seven to the floor, please. This is your one-minute call.”

  I had the weirdest moment where all I could think about was where participant Eleven Sixty-Six was. Why couldn’t I see him? What had happened to him? A host of images flashed before me involving spare body parts, green flesh and a deep, unsettling fear of the little blue stool edging gradually closer.

  “Sit down, shut up and follow my lead,” the host said through a gritted smile as I plonked my butt down.

  I barely had time to nod before a flood of lights washed over me and a million eyes, some even belonging to humans, began to watch.

  “Ladies, gentlemen and those who haven’t quite figured it out yet, welcome to ‘So You Want to Date a Zombie?’ I’m your host Chuck Lanigan. Our guest tonight is Jeffrey…” He paused to read my surname: Feuk. Clearly no one had told him it was pronounced “Fwek.” Childhood memories of torment and anguish slithered back into my head. I was about to mouth Fwek! but he didn’t give me a chance.