Zombies! A Love Story Read Free Page A

huge box of bullets, then took her purse from the hook on the inside of the closet door and shoved the ammunition inside.
    She yanked my denim jacket from the closet and threw it to me, then pulled on her own leather one and gave me a nod.
    I put my jacket on, checking for my cell phone in its pocket, clutched the baseball bat tight, and took Mom’s hand. We crept through the house toward the back door, and I took the car keys, both hers and mine, just in case, from the key rack in the kitchen, then peered out the back windows.
    “More of them,” I whispered. “They’re all over the back yard. Weird, Mom, they look blue, don’t they?”
    She was digging her glasses out of her purse. “Sad blue or Smurf blue?”
    “Death blue.”
    She put her glasses on and looked up at me slowly. I’d never seen her as afraid as I did just then. But even with that, she wasn’t falling apart. The Mom I’d left behind two years ago would’ve been sobbing in the corner by now. After Dad had walked out on us when I was fifteen, she’d been kind of...broken. She’d never really put herself back together again. At least, she hadn’t, last I knew.
    We both looked at the door that led from our kitchen to the attached garage where Mom’s behemoth was parked. I preferred my own car, but my tiny hybrid was outside, parked at the curb. Her 1985 Ford station wagon with wood grain panels and all of 23,000 miles on it, was in the garage. It was a relic and a gas hog.
    “What if they got into the garage?” I whispered.
    And then my bedroom door crashed open, and we were out of time. “Then I start shooting,” she said. She opened the garage door, and we ducked through and pulled it closed quickly behind us.
    Then we stood there in the dark, with the shape of the car in front of us, shivering and listening, not moving, not making a sound.
    “Should I turn on the light?” Mom whispered.
    “I don’t think so.” I thought I heard something moving near the front of the little garage. Just outside the door? Or just inside? “Is the car unlocked, Mom?”
    “Yes.”
    There were five feet of empty space between us and the car. Its driver’s side faced us, its nose pointed toward the overhead door. Mom always backed in. There were two car doors on our side, front and back. “You take the back seat, I’ll take the front,” I said, soft as I could.
    “I’m driving. You take the back. Ready?”
    I nodded, wondering what this confident, gun-toting fifty-five year old had done with my real mother.
    “I love you and I’m proud of you, Suz.”
    “Love you back, Mom. On three, okay?”
    “Three,” she said. We lunged, took two leaping strides in perfect synch, yanked our respective doors open simultaneously, dove into the car and slammed the doors closed. The things, whatever they were, plastered themselves against the car almost instantly. God, they must’ve been closer than I’d known. I heard the locks snap closed as Mom hit the button. Then she started the engine and flipped on the headlights. And we saw them. The garage was teeming with them. Groaning, they clawed at the car, the whites of their eyes hiding behind bloody spiderwebs. They reacted not at all to the headlights blazing into their faces. Didn’t squint or shield their eyes like you’d expect.
    Mom screamed, and pointed her gun at the thing that was pawing at her window.
    “Don’t shoot don’t shoot!” I cried. “Just drive.” I reached over her shoulder, and slammed the column shift into gear.
    Mom dropped the gun onto the seat beside her, gripped the wheel and hit the gas. Her trusty old woody smashed straight through the bodies of the things, and then through the garage door behind them. She floored it and cranked the wheel to the right, and we fishtailed, then rocketed down our quiet, country road.
    In a few hundred yards, they were behind us, the road was clear. I climbed up into the front seat and picked up my mother’s gun, studying it. I’d never held a