Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse by William Young

wouldn’t involve telling Charles about her date. She just hadn’t had any time to think about it.
    “Are you crying?” Charles asked a moment later.
    Brooke nodded and rubbed her hand beneath her nose, “Yes.”
    “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
    “I don’t know, everything just went wrong,” she said after a pause, subconsciously editing Josh out of her story and inserting her girlfriends on the fly. “We just left the bar and were walking to the car when we were attacked by … oh god, it’s going to sound stupid … but we were attacked by a group of people dressed up like zombies.”
    There was an awkward pause on the other end of the line. Then, softly, any incredulity hidden, “Zombies?”
    “I know, I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but I think they killed several people on the street right in front of me,” Brooke said, the words coming out of her mouth in small bursts. “It doesn’t make any sense. I saw them breaking people’s arms and biting them on the neck.”
    She broke down into spasms of tears as she thought about the carnage, the blood, the sudden onset of mayhem. It had been such a beautiful night, and then horror. A police cruiser with its lights twirling turned the corner in front of her and sped up the road toward where she had been.
    “Biting them on the neck? That’s vampires, babe,” Charles said on the other end, his voice light, trying to find a way to disarm the situation, to calm her down.
    “Oh, god, not vampires, Charles, zombies,” Brooke said.
    “Did you call the police?”
    “No, but they’re already on the way,” Brooke said. “Can you come get me and take me home?”
    There was a pause on Charles' end. He was at work and his shift wouldn't end until midnight.
    “What about your car?”
    “I don’t want to go back that way,” Brooke said, turning her head to look up the street at where she had just been. “I’ll get it tomorrow. Besides, I peed my pants getting away from them, so I don't really want to walk around in public.”
    She was sure she could hear the sigh on the other end of the phone, although she knew from fourteen years of marriage that Charles was good at masking his emotions and playing the person you needed him to be. He had come to LA years ago to be a screen writer, but she always thought he should’ve been an actor. Either way, he’d still be working retail, trying to break in. But that was all she had, now, and she felt an intense sadness knowing that it would be all she would ever get: just a normal life with a 9-5 job, an ordinary nobody for a husband, three demanding kids, and a DIY fixer-upper house in the suburbs. Dinner, laundry, daycare drop-offs and pick-ups, housework, and grocery shopping all suddenly re-materialized as weekly negotiations to be continued with her husband. Life had just been about to get exciting.
    She hung her head in her lap. “Please, just hurry.”
     
     
     
     
    The Lazarus Question

     
     
     
    Atlanta, Georgia – Day 11
     
    Geoffrey Haversill stared at the monitors showing Hristo Gruev and wondered what the hell was keeping the man alive. He had had nothing to eat or drink since being brought to the Centers for Disease Control’s headquarters a week ago, and the man had not died. Hristo Gruev wasn’t alive, either, not in any sense of the word that Haversill was familiar. But there Gruev was, on camera, swaying from side to side as if he were a blind man passing time listening to the rhythm of the world. Haversill paused as he thought that line, wondering what the musician’s name was … Steve? Stephen? Stevie? Not Stevie Ray Vaughan, though, that was the dude from Springsteen’s band.
    Or was that Van Zandt?
    Haversill drummed his fingers and stared at the man on the monitor, the dead man walking. There was no way for him to be alive. But, still, there he was, alive and kicking.
    Haversill riffled through the paperwork on the desk, hoping something unusual or obvious would suddenly jump