Sven the Zombie Slayer Read Free Page A

to drink the water I bring out to you.”
    She went back into the kitchen, smiling to herself and thinking how clever she had just been. But the smile faded quickly as her thoughts turned to her sick roommate. Vicky looked like she was getting worse, and Jane was beginning to think she should consider staying home to look after her.
    Jane set the glass down on the kitchen counter and opened the cupboard. She took a raspberry vitamin C packet out of a box in the cupboard, then closed the cupboard.
    She was about to rip the packet open when a noise from outside made her jump. It was a simple scraping sound, probably nothing more than a squirrel scratching at a screen door, but the way it broke through the quiet startled Jane. Then the scraping stopped. Jane went to the window over the sink and looked outside. The street looked serene, empty. Must have been a squirrel.
    Jane went back to the counter, ripped the vitamin C packet open, and tipped it into the glass.
     
     

4

     
    Sven could feel the droplets of sweat running off his forehead and down the sides of his angular face. It was an odd thing to notice, considering the circumstances. He couldn’t take a full breath, and the bar was squeezing the remaining air out of his already-burning lungs. He was pushing as hard as he could, but the bar wasn’t going back up, and he knew it wouldn’t. Sven was only keeping it from crushing the life out of him, and he only had a minute or two at the most until his muscles failed and the bar made him very, very dead.
    I need Lars, Sven thought in desperation. Where the hell is he?
    With the bar’s weight on him, Sven could only turn his head an inch or two in any direction, and there was a sharp, stabbing pain in the left side of his neck when he tried. Where was Lars? Why would he have walked away in the middle of the set?
    Lars had been acting a little strange that day, sure, but he had just lost out to his arch-nemesis in the Virginia Beach Bodybuilding Pose-Off, so Sven hadn’t thought much of it. But leaving Sven in the bench like that? That was more than strange.
    Trying to avoid the stabbing pain in his neck, Sven took in his surroundings by moving only his eyes. He turned his eyes up, to the left, and to the right.
    Lars was supposed to be there, spotting! That was his function when Sven was benching, and one of the reasons the duo worked out together, for exactly this situation.
    Spinning his eyeballs around had gained Sven nothing. Lars was nowhere in sight. Sven turned his eyes up again, looking behind the bench now. That was where Lars was supposed to be, doing his spotting duty.
    A bead of sweat rolled off Sven’s forehead and into his right eye. He flinched at the sting, involuntarily relaxing his grip on the bar. The bar took the opportunity to sag further into his body, evoking a ragged, spluttering cough from the compressed strongman.
    He managed a low rasp. “Lars…”
    There was no answer.
    “Lars…” He rasped again, a little louder this time.
    Still no answer.
    Each time Sven had called for Lars some air was let loose from Sven’s lungs, and the bar had sunk lower, deeper into Sven’s chest. His strength was failing, and his ragged gulps of air weren’t finding their way home. He was suffocating.
    Dead bench-pressers flashed in Sven’s mind—the ones who died benching alone in their basements without spotters.
    But that’s not me, Sven told himself. I have a spotter! That’s not my story. Where is Lars? Sven didn’t want to be remembered that way, as an idiot bodybuilder that crushed himself in his basement, all the people judging and offering their opinions on his stupidity. It was better not to be remembered at all.
    Sven’s burning face pulsed, like his heart was beating out of his face, instead of out of his chest, as the expression properly went. Sven pleaded with the bar, pushing against it with all of his strength, but it went nowhere.
    Then, as Sven continued to push, the bar began to move