Flip This Zombie by Jesse Petersen

but quickly checked myself. Now wasn’t the time for idle fantasies.
    I grinned. “You
know
the fastest way to bring zombies so we can settle down for the night.”
    Dave shot me a glare and sighed. But he wasn’t kidding anybody. He
liked
my games. “C’mon then and do it.”
    I pointed my shotgun at an angle toward the ceiling and pulled off a shot. A few feet away from us, plaster cracked and fell to the marble floor and the echoing sound of the shot made my ears ring. Acrid smoke filled my nose and the foyer.
    “And
now
you smell like cordite,” Dave pointed out as he swiped at the smoky air around us.
    I frowned. Damn, he was right.
    “I’ll air out,” I said as I stepped further into the foyer. “Hey, zombie assholes! Come and get it!”
    Silence was the only response. I turned back around with a shake of my head. “I guess nobody’s home.”
    “Shit!” he said. “Duck!”
    After so many years together, and after so much time slaying zombies side by side, Dave and I sort of have a rapport. You know how it is… after enough time you start to “get” what a person is saying without having to clarify. So instead of asking for more info or turning to see what he was freaking out about, I dropped flat to my stomach on the marble floor.
    The instant I was down, he pulled off a shot with his shotgun and then a second. My heart throbbed and my ears rang, but I couldn’t get into shocked mode, I had to act. Keeping low, I flipped onto my back and lifted my shotgun. But there was nothing there.
    “Clear?” I asked, my voice weak and soft from the ground.
    “Clear,” he panted.
    I pushed up on my elbows and looked down the length of my body to see what he’d been shooting at. There, collapsed across the broken plaster I’d caused, were two zombies, a man and a woman. I got up, rubbing my elbow (I don’t recommend dropping down on marble if you can avoid it, just an FYI) and looked at them.
    The woman was wearing a fur coat. Not kidding. A fucking fur coat. Who even owned one of those in Arizona? Apparently this woman, though it was ill-fitting on her all-but-skeletal frame.
    She also had on bunches of jewels. A ruby and diamond pendant, a big honking ring on each finger (all of which looked real, not costume) and the crowning glory were her earrings. Huge droplets of diamonds.
    Unfortunately, their weight had tugged at her rotting ear lobes and now they were dragged almost to her shoulders like some native woman on a
National Geographic
special.
    “I guess she must have put them all on to escape,” Dave said with a shake of his head. “God, she’s skinny.”
    I nodded. Here’s a tidbit—most zombies are not thin. In fact, quite a few of them are fat fucks. I guess it comes from the never-ending food supply right outside their door. Also, I’m not sure how digestion of their prey works for them. If you know, don’t tell me, I don’t
want
to know.
    But this lady, well, if she’d been anorexic in life, apparently she’d continued that trend in the unlife, too.
    “What about the guy?” I said, turning my attention to the person half-hidden under fur-coat zombie.
    “His clothes aren’t so expensive,” Dave said. “Maybe he was her butler.”
    I laughed at the mere idea of someone having a butler. Then again, it was a gloriously overpriced house before the zombies had significantly affected home values in the area. It’s a bubble you just don’t want to see burst, I promise you. It’s waaaaay worse than subprime mortgages.
    “Why the hell are they still in the house?” I asked as Dave kicked the front door open. We lifted the woman with effort and heaved her onto the drive. Tomorrow we’d kick her out of the way of the car, at least. Maybe.
    He shrugged as we returned for the servant. “I have no idea. Most of them got a clue when they got turned and started out in the world looking for food. But this lady sure looks like she belongs here. Do you think she might have come home at