10 Things I Hate About Zombies

Chapter 1

Zoey

There were many things that Zoey Kaban hated.

Leaf blowers. Doors that expanded in cool weather and wouldn’t shut properly.

Self-checkout stations where you had to press for assistance after every item.

The mystery person who left bagged-up dog poo on the sidewalk outside the house Zoey shared with four roommates.

Ex-boyfriends who’d cheated on her for the better part of a two-year relationship, and who just might be said mystery dog-poo bagger.

But at the very top of The List of Things That Zoey Hated were the people who stood in front of the vegetable displays at the Portland Farmers’ Market, lifting each individual piece of produce up to the light like it was their first day on earth and they were seeking guidance from the universe.

This was going on right now, and Zoey was doing everything in her power not to give the woman in front of her a good shin kicking.

Was the woman even alive? She’d been holding up the same tomato for a solid three minutes, like she was being painted by an unseen artist with a particular affinity for an heirloom Brandywine. Maybe her muscles had atrophied and she was stuck like that.

It wasn’t even that Zoey was in any particular hurry.

Portland’s waterfront market didn’t really lend itself to speed shopping.

There were too many unicyclists and costumed dogs to avoid.

Not to mention all the abstract art and strange musical instruments that practically demanded you stop for a moment as you tried to figure out what on earth was going on.

(Flower? Penis? Stringed instrument? Some combination of all three?)

It was more that … produce was Zoey’s thing.

You see, Zoey, following the loss of her dearly beloved boss Maeve a year ago, had purchased Maeve’s business, The Smoothie Maven.

Since then, Zoey had become intimately acquainted with the weird and wonderful world of fruit and veggies.

And not just all the ways she could blend them into a delicious pulp that she could dub with a whimsical name and then sell for twenty bucks to people who maintained a running list of dietary restrictions.

She’d actually become quite the appreciator of the whole aesthetic of veggies.

So much so that these days she had a frequently updated display of the most ungainly produce she could find, which had become quite the draw at the shop, along with the selfie wall that her teenaged assistant Terriffany (yes, her real name) had insisted that Zoey install.

Terriffany, who at seventeen was an expert in all things branding and business-related, had been right.

The vendors, looking for any bit of cross-promotion they could find, now clamoured to hand Zoey double-legged carrots dressed in paper outfits, mouthy bell peppers with googly eyes stuck on, or twisted ginger labelled with yoga poses.

‘Zo-zo!’ came the gruff voice of Kenard, a heavily tattooed veg vendor leaning against the tray of a truck that had seen its share of the Portland rain.

Kenard ran Punk Broc, a non-profit farming collective that helped punks get back on their feet after life had given them a kick in the butt of their acid-washed jeans.

An ageing rocker who still played the odd gig when McMenamins asked politely, Kenard had more metal in his face than your average cutlery drawer, but the only time he was a problem was going through the metal detectors at PDX.

Well, and if he saw some injustice going down.

Zoey gave up on the tomatoes – let’s face it, the woman was practically rooted to the ground by now – and headed over to the Punk Broc booth.

Mindful of avoiding the jacket spikes that were at her eye level, Zoey leaned in to give Kenard a hug.

Zoey wasn’t ordinarily much of a hugger, but it was hard to say no to Kenard.

Due to all of the spikes. And the felonies.

‘I see the spuds are in high demand.’ She nodded at the dwindling wall of veg. Kenard’s crew grew some mean potatoes. (Or ‘grouch potatoes’, as they were officially dubbed.)

‘Not so great in smoothies, though.’ Kenard’s chuckle revealed a row of gilded back teeth.

‘But I do have some Phat Beets. I have them in red and in gold as well, in case your customers aren’t into the whole “thinking they’re dying of bladder cancer” thing.

Unless they are, in which case … this is a judgement-free zone. ’

Zoey checked over the beet that Kenard had handed her.

She’d heard worse while working the counter, and definitely while studying at Reed.

Did she need two master’s degrees from a private college to run a smoothie shop?

Probably not. But the job market was brutal, and you know what couldn’t be replaced by AI?

Smoothies. Besides, she owed it to Maeve to keep her legacy going.

Other than Gran, who’d done her best, Maeve had been the only one who had ever really been there for Zoey.

‘Load me up.’ Zoey tapped her order into Kenard’s iPad, which was housed in an anarchy-symbol case. Even anarchists had to do proper accounting if they wanted to keep their non-profit status. ‘I’ll be in at five a.m. tomorrow if you want to drop them behind the shop.’

‘Got it, boss. Hey, girls.’ Kenard waved a tattooed hand at a mismatched duo Zoey knew all too well from the smoothie shop.

Darina, the tiny one in head-to-toe glitter, was always posting videos of herself cartwheeling through vegetable gardens while talking about zoning and small-business programs. Meanwhile, June, a blonde with Slender Man proportions and a dramatic moon-phase chest piece, was constantly on about the latest yoga moves she was trialling at her studio.

‘Hey, babe!’ June blew Kenard an air kiss, then began picking through the pile of vegetables, tallying up the starch levels in each variety.

‘Zoey, I’m dying to come in for your Taro Card blend.

If it’s anything like The Perfect Matcha, it’ll see me through an entire workout and my subsequent one-hundred-hour water fast. Sometimes your organs just need a staycation from all these toxins, right? ’

She gestured about at the perfect Portland summer day as Darina, who was mid-handstand, sparkly tutu tickling at her chin, nodded agreeably.

Zoey hadn’t had enough coffee for this. And the G’day Maté smoothie she’d sipped at while workshopping a new wakefulness recipe wasn’t going to cut it.

Rather than make small talk about workaholic livers and crystal healing, she excused herself, squeezing between a few cyclists and a panting wiener dog in a wagon as she put space between herself and the chirpy duo.

Enjoying the warmth of the summer sun on her skin – it seemed impossible that in just a few months the grey skies would return – she browsed from booth to booth, inspecting honeycrisp apples and taste-testing marionberries.

Between the booths, the Willamette River sparkled, divided by the thick spans of the bridges that linked the east and west sides of the city in a snarl of never-ending traffic and novelty bicycles.

Hmm, this was a new one. A simple tent and table set-up covered with dozens of baskets of gourmet mushrooms: shiitake, cinnamon cap, lion’s mane, blue oyster.

Behind them were stacked rows of brown paper bags, stamped with a mushroom logo, folded over to protect their delicate contents.

A simple banner hung from the back of the tent, wafting gently in the afternoon breeze: Down-to-Earth Mushroom Farms.

There was no one manning the booth, unless the blue Aussie cattle dog snoozing in the grass counted. Her legs were tucked under her, and her tail flapped lazily as she glanced up at Zoey, white doggy eyebrows raised in curiosity.

‘Hey, sweetie.’ Zoey offered the back of her hand for a sniff and then leaned in for some between-the-ear scratches.

She had far more patience with animals than she did with people.

Animals never failed you, after all. People did.

And between her less-than-stellar childhood and her string of terrible boyfriends, Zoey had her reasons for being prickly.

Besides, there was nothing wrong with being prickly. Cacti were prickly. Chestnuts were prickly. It was a perfectly fine way to be. Don’t want to get pricked? Don’t get too close.

Zoey’s fingers hit a thick leather collar: its jangling tag read Alice. ‘Did you forage all of these yourself, Alice?’

‘She helps,’ came a low voice.

Zoey glanced up to see a tall figure blotting the sun.

She stood, wondering if the resulting headrush was a blood pressure thing or the fact that the guy epitomised the Pacific Northwest lumberjack stereotype in all the right ways.

Broad shoulders, the flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, a dark beard that traced a firm jaw to meet hair that fell over thick-lashed eyes.

Thick-lashed eyes with crinkles at the corners.

Crinkles that were coming from the fact that she was staring.

Zoey shook herself off, trying to blink the spots from her vision.

‘Sorry, stood up too fast,’ she murmured.

‘Here, I’ve got you.’ The guy passed her a Yeti Thermos.

She sipped, surprised to find it filled with some sort of chilled herbal tea and not the Pabst Blue Ribbon she’d half been expecting.

‘I’m Nick, your local friendly mushroom farmer guy.

And I see you’ve met my assistant. She’s the brains of the operation. And the good looks.’

‘Ah, the boss babe.’ Zoey patted Alice, who hadn’t moved an inch. ‘Does she have legs?’

‘Not when she’s in seal mode. Only when it’s three a.m. and she wakes me up needing to pee.’

‘Well, three a.m.’s the perfect leg-stretching time of day,’ said Zoey.

‘An early bird, huh?’

Always. Mostly because the world was less peopled then. And also because that was when her roommate Winslow was most likely to be shouting at his computer screen. She set down the Thermos. ‘Something like that. So tell me about these mushrooms.’