Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance by Lori Perkins
Authors: Lori Perkins
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we could double date, I bet I could dig up someone…and make sure to ask Mandy when you see her!”
Her cackling followed us down the hallway, but it was Danielle’s speculations about Mandy’s life that kept banging through my brain as Shana and I walked to the car.
“Ryan,
you
okay?”
“Nope. Definitely not okay.”
“You want to talk about it?”
92
“Nope,” I said. “I want to do something about it.”
“You gonna go get her?”
“Yep, but I’m going to drop you off back at the station first. No sense you getting mucked up in all of this.”
I expected an argument from her, but all she did was give me a crooked smile and show me two small glass medicine bottles she had hidden in her pocket.
“Well, considering I’m the one who remembered to grab the evidence against Danielle,” she said, “I’d say I’m already up to my mucking eyeballs in this, so we might as well head over to Lassiter’s house and put an end to all this shit.”
“Okay.
Thanks,
partner.”
“ De nada . How about backup?”
“Given that we don’t know who Lassiter’s friends are, it wouldn’t be smart to trust anybody at the department,” I said.
“How about stopping at my place and picking up Alice on our way…and some extra weaponry?”
“You must really want to do this, letting me borrow your beast and raid your private armory.”
“What can I say, Mandy’s story struck several nerves,” she said. “Daddy dearest needs to go bye-bye, hopefully in the most painful, time-consuming, and humiliating way possible.”
I glanced over and noticed her granite-hard expression. “Shit, you too?”
93
“No, not me,” she said. “A girl I knew in school. She tried to tell and no one believed her. Her Dad was a doctor. He started drugging her to keep her compliant. She hung herself from the ceiling fan in his waiting room one day when she was fourteen.”
She paused, then went on. “I was the last one to talk to her. We were working on a social studies project together. She wanted to pass the notebook back to me so I could add her research to the paper. After she left my house, I found she had written me a fourteen-page letter telling me everything her father had done to her all these years. She never mentioned she was going to kill herself. I thought I’d see her the next day at school and we’d talk about it.”
“Jesus. That’s a lot for a fourteen-year-old to handle. Did you turn the letter over to the police after you…found out?”
“Yeah. I figured they’d put the guy in jail, there’d be a trial, something…”
“But it all just went away, right?” I asked.
“Yep. He never even saw the inside of the police station. The letter disappeared. I was only fourteen and she was gone.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, lost in our own individual regrets and what-ifs.
Alice, a large brown and black German shepherd, met us at the door. She was trained as a zombie detection dog, an indispensable specialty that evolved from her original cadaver dog training. Dogs like her could smell decomposing flesh a minute after death a mile away and Alice was the best of the best. She’d already saved our asses a number of times over the past twelve months.
94
After giving Alice her required quota of love and adoration, I followed Shana into her gun room. Once it had been a normal, ordinary bedroom, but she had lovingly refurbished in early John Rambo meets any Robert Rodriguez movie. Handguns from tiny, pearl-handled .22’s all the way up through her array of 9mms and .45s adorned one wall, while two other walls featured her collection of long weapons, rifles, shotguns, automatics—culminating in her pride and joy, a hand-held rocket launcher, just like the one Michael Douglas used in the movie Falling Down . The other wall held drawers filled with ammunition, loaders, kits and other accoutrements.
“What are we taking?” I asked.
“It’s your party. Take
Her cackling followed us down the hallway, but it was Danielle’s speculations about Mandy’s life that kept banging through my brain as Shana and I walked to the car.
“Ryan,
you
okay?”
“Nope. Definitely not okay.”
“You want to talk about it?”
92
“Nope,” I said. “I want to do something about it.”
“You gonna go get her?”
“Yep, but I’m going to drop you off back at the station first. No sense you getting mucked up in all of this.”
I expected an argument from her, but all she did was give me a crooked smile and show me two small glass medicine bottles she had hidden in her pocket.
“Well, considering I’m the one who remembered to grab the evidence against Danielle,” she said, “I’d say I’m already up to my mucking eyeballs in this, so we might as well head over to Lassiter’s house and put an end to all this shit.”
“Okay.
Thanks,
partner.”
“ De nada . How about backup?”
“Given that we don’t know who Lassiter’s friends are, it wouldn’t be smart to trust anybody at the department,” I said.
“How about stopping at my place and picking up Alice on our way…and some extra weaponry?”
“You must really want to do this, letting me borrow your beast and raid your private armory.”
“What can I say, Mandy’s story struck several nerves,” she said. “Daddy dearest needs to go bye-bye, hopefully in the most painful, time-consuming, and humiliating way possible.”
I glanced over and noticed her granite-hard expression. “Shit, you too?”
93
“No, not me,” she said. “A girl I knew in school. She tried to tell and no one believed her. Her Dad was a doctor. He started drugging her to keep her compliant. She hung herself from the ceiling fan in his waiting room one day when she was fourteen.”
She paused, then went on. “I was the last one to talk to her. We were working on a social studies project together. She wanted to pass the notebook back to me so I could add her research to the paper. After she left my house, I found she had written me a fourteen-page letter telling me everything her father had done to her all these years. She never mentioned she was going to kill herself. I thought I’d see her the next day at school and we’d talk about it.”
“Jesus. That’s a lot for a fourteen-year-old to handle. Did you turn the letter over to the police after you…found out?”
“Yeah. I figured they’d put the guy in jail, there’d be a trial, something…”
“But it all just went away, right?” I asked.
“Yep. He never even saw the inside of the police station. The letter disappeared. I was only fourteen and she was gone.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, lost in our own individual regrets and what-ifs.
Alice, a large brown and black German shepherd, met us at the door. She was trained as a zombie detection dog, an indispensable specialty that evolved from her original cadaver dog training. Dogs like her could smell decomposing flesh a minute after death a mile away and Alice was the best of the best. She’d already saved our asses a number of times over the past twelve months.
94
After giving Alice her required quota of love and adoration, I followed Shana into her gun room. Once it had been a normal, ordinary bedroom, but she had lovingly refurbished in early John Rambo meets any Robert Rodriguez movie. Handguns from tiny, pearl-handled .22’s all the way up through her array of 9mms and .45s adorned one wall, while two other walls featured her collection of long weapons, rifles, shotguns, automatics—culminating in her pride and joy, a hand-held rocket launcher, just like the one Michael Douglas used in the movie Falling Down . The other wall held drawers filled with ammunition, loaders, kits and other accoutrements.
“What are we taking?” I asked.
“It’s your party. Take
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