Chapter 27
Nick
‘Ugh, sorry,’ she said, ruefully. ‘I know that sucking in isn’t going to buy us any extra room. But I am happy that Larissa likes me. I read up on her most recent cases, you know.’
Nick chuckled. Of course she had. He’d never known an autodidact quite like Zoey.
‘That sandwich-throwing one was quite something,’ she went on, extremely animatedly, as she often was when she was discussing her latest research rabbit hole.
‘The whole discussion about whether a sub could properly be defined as a sandwich – brilliant. It reminded me of the Jaffa Cakes case in England, where they were deliberating over whether Jaffa Cakes were biscuits or cakes for VAT purposes. But with an assault-and-battery element for some extra oomph.’
‘Glad to see you’re feeling better. You are, right?’ He reached over to give Zoey’s hand a squeeze. She squeezed right back, and suddenly all felt right with the world again – remaining zombie population aside.
‘I’m doing pretty well, considering the whole zombification thing and the ensuing stabbing-a-hundred-zombies-with-syringes thing and the subsequent meeting-your-sisters-properly thing. The grilled cheese helped.’
‘Grilled cheeses help everything, to quote an old hippie friend of ours.’ Nick slowed to let in a Mini with a missing side mirror and a bumper sticker that said Please let me merge – my dad is dead. ‘I’m willing to accept that Reba is a genius.’
‘I’ve known that since the moment I met her,’ said Zoey. ‘And talk about an address book. The woman knows everyone. If I ever need to solve a mystery in a small British hamlet, I know exactly who I’m calling. And it’s not Father Brown.’
‘But he’d be second, surely.’
‘A close third, after Perry the Platypus.’
‘So,’ said Nick, as they cruised past downtown Vancouver and the massive house with the castle-like crenellations that they were both equally fascinated by and had Zillowed at length, ‘Sorry about the whole zombie-mushrooms thing.’
‘Yeah, I really wish you’d led with that when you were plying me with your beautiful-but-evil specimens at the farmers’ market.’ Zoey stroked Alice’s soft ears. ‘Although honestly, I’ve had way worse while dating. Zombies barely even register.’
Nick was struggling not to burst into song. Had the constant thumps from the road not reminded him that he was on a particularly bumpy bit of the I-5, he might have been forgiven for thinking that he was in paradise.
‘We’ll have to monitor for zombies, of course,’ said Zoey. She pulled up her phone. ‘I used one of Terriffany’s startup growth charts to plot the rate of expansion as well as the likely travel routes for our zombies. It’s the influencers I’m most worried about.’
‘I worry about them, too,’ said Nick, as he pulled off at the exit and turned down the potholed road that led to his farm.
‘They can’t really be happy, can they? Dancing in their all-white houses and taking car selfies?
The endless pursuit of content is Sisyphean.
No one’s designed to shoulder that existential weight. ’
‘I was talking more about the biting, but we’re definitely on the same page about the influencers.’ Zoey was texting rapidly. ‘However. We do have a secret weapon.’
‘Tattoos are very popular right now?’
‘That’s a solid start,’ said Zoey. ‘But I’m thinking of Gracie. She knows everyone, and anyone she doesn’t know, her sister Honour absolutely does. So we can just load her up with tattoo ink and send her after every influencer who’s posted about the shop.’
‘Sounds ominous.’
Zoey squeezed his arm in pretend frustration. And then again, presumably because she liked his arms. ‘Not like an assassin. Like someone who’s invited to every VIP party and has an eye for what looks good on camera.’
‘I’m seeing the vision.’ Nick pulled the truck up the last winding stretch before his driveway.
The broken glass from Darina’s fateful visit still glimmered in the ditch by the driveway.
Poor Darina, locked in a shed for the sad crime of being under the zombie influence.
He’d have to send her an apology card. Maybe he could use that stationer in SoCal everyone seemed to love: Tink or something.
He parked the truck and squared his shoulders.
‘All right, babe, it’s mushie smushing time.’
‘We’ll workshop that,’ said Zoey, who was already out the passenger door, Alice following at her heels.
Nick smiled as she hurried over to the storage shed, pulling it open and pulling out her favourite shovel, the sharp-edged one that some worker had left by the side of the road and never come back for.
(Even though Nick had tried very hard to reunite it with its owner.
Truly. All right, so not that hard – it was a good shovel.)
He loved that Zoey was comfortable enough on the property that she could raid the shed without any further questions. Not to mention that she had a favourite shovel. A girl with a favourite shovel was a keeper.
Ah, she’d tucked a trowel into her waistband for backup. Damn, he loved her more every second.
Nick grabbed a shovel for himself, and together they strode off towards the lightning-scorched bit at the back of the property where the orange toadstools grew with such vim.
‘Ready?’ said Zoey.
‘Let’s clear these motherfuckers out.’ Nick stomped on the blade of his shovel to gain purchase into the damp ground.
The toadstools parted beneath the blade’s slice, coming away with ease.
But they’d multiplied dramatically over the past months, spreading across huge swathes of the property in a giant tangerine fractal.
Nick and Zoey had their work cut out for them, but the two of them were up for the job.
All right, Nick perhaps a bit more than Zoey, but her enthusiasm was almost as valuable as sheer physical strength.
The two of them stomped, sliced, and hurled toadstools like they were participating in a mycological massacre.
(Nick supposed that they were.) Alice joined in, tail wagging as she dug.
She bit at the dirt, jawing away clumps of spores and merrily spitting them aside.
Her snout was black with earth – adorably so – and she grinned with doggy glee.
‘We’re going to have to do something with them,’ said Zoey.
‘We’ll burn them,’ promised Nick.
‘Will that be enough? What if there are like … zombie spores?’
She wiped her forehead as she said it, somehow making the phrase zombie spores oddly alluring.
‘Or we can explode them. I know a guy,’ said Nick, nodding towards Bozo’s property.
‘Good ol’ Bozo.’ Zoey raised her shovel in salute, then resumed digging.
She glimmered with sweat, and every time she swiped at her hair she made a damp, sexy mess of herself. Nick was enthralled. Zombie situation aside.
‘Here.’ Stepping forward, he took the shovel from her hand and set it aside.
Then he dipped his head to press his lips to hers. Damn, she was gorgeous. Smart. Funny. Perfect.
He could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he kissed her: Bozo couldn’t compete with these fireworks.
Zoey was the one who finally broke their kiss. ‘Are you sure? I was a zombie just a few hours back. What if there are … consequences?’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ said Nick. Laying out his flannel shirt on the ground, he gently pushed her down, cradling her in his arms so that she wouldn’t fall.
‘I was so scared I’d lost you,’ he said breathlessly, as he grazed kisses down her neck, the curve of her shoulder. ‘I would’ve walked every street in Portland trying to get you back.’
Zoey gasped as his lips found her throat. Mindful of the ground beneath them, he tugged aside her shirt just enough to glimpse the perfection of her skin.
‘I was scared I’d hurt you. I was trying to keep you safe.’
‘Well, we found each other in the end,’ he murmured. He left her bra intact, but ran his fingers over the smooth fabric, cupping his hands around the softness of her shape.
She squirmed as his hand traced the curve of her waist, then reached down to unbutton her jeans.
‘Like that,’ she whispered, her breath hot against his neck as he slid his fingers beneath the band of her underwear, then deeper still, finding the wetness he craved. Her breathing grew shallow as he opened her, dipping into her warmth.
‘Here,’ she said, her voice tinged with frustration. ‘The tarp. Before I hit you with the shovel for tormenting me like this.’
‘Wow, kinky,’ said Nick, with a grin. ‘C’mon. Let’s hear it for our good friend the tarp.’
Laughing, they rolled over to the blue tarp, the one Zoey called the deconstructed IKEA bag, and which had served them well during the fence-mending party.
Zoey dragged her jeans off in an awkward movement he found somehow both endearing and alluring. There was a vulnerability to her fight with the denim that he loved: it took a certain amount of trust to slough off a stubborn item of clothing in front of someone, and it set him alight.
As hard as it was to hold back, he pulled away to regard her for a moment.
She was so flawless: lithe and vibrant, sweaty and lightly dusted from their toadstool-digging efforts.
He was growing to know every part of her body, including the new dot of brown from where he’d jabbed her with the syringe earlier that day.
And of course, the new Frog tattoo on her wrist, the one that so perfectly matched his own Toad piece.
Curving a hand gently around her wrists – he didn’t want to touch the still-healing skin – he raised her arms above her head, admiring her, and marvelling at the fact that after all that had happened, she was here.
That she’d decided that what they had was worth the absurdity of wrestling with a zombie future.
He kissed the tiny tattoo he’d given her, then traced the line of her body with his mouth, low and lower until she squirmed under the touch of his lips, his tongue.
‘That tickles,’ she whispered, knotting her fingers in his hair and pushing him into the warmth of her. ‘But don’t stop.’
Nick had no intention of it. He had Zoey back, and he wanted to reclaim every part of her. Hands pressed to her thighs, he worshipped her until she shivered and trembled beneath him, gasping for air.
‘Holy shit, I’m seeing stars,’ she whispered, as her convulsions slowed and her grip on his hair loosened.
‘Only stars?’ Nick grinned as he moved his way back up until they were face to sweaty face. ‘Let’s strive for the whole galaxy.’
And they did, losing themselves in each other until their vision sparkled from breathlessness and they collapsed together, trembling in the afterglow of release.
‘Wow, that second one was beyond seeing stars,’ said Zoey, when she’d recovered enough to string together a sentence. ‘It was a comet bringing an extinction-level event with it. Sorry, dinosaurs, but it was utterly worth it.’
Nick nodded, because that was all he could manage at the present moment. His heart was off and running both physically and emotionally, and he was on a high that even in Portland was probably considered illicit.
‘Shall we … ?’ said Zoey at last, gesturing at the half-dug toadstool patch.
Alice’s tail thumped. The poor girl had kept a polite distance at least. Cattle dogs didn’t kiss and tell.
‘Oh, that’s right,’ said Nick. ‘We were meant to be digging up toadstools.’
‘We have time,’ said Zoey. ‘Zombies move slowly. Well, except in 28 Days Later. And …’ She trailed off, her eyes sparkling mischievously as she prepared a teasing comment.
‘Don’t you dare compare me with Cillian Murphy,’ warned Nick.
‘No one compares with Cillian Murphy.’ Zoey leaned back, her hazel eyes practically devouring him. ‘Damn, I love your body.’
Nick tried not to preen. All those days of hauling rocks around and sweating over the Assault Bike had paid off.
‘And here I just thought you wanted me for my brains.’
‘Honestly, even before the whole zombie thing, I was definitely thinking about eating your brains. I bet they’d taste amazing.’
Grinning, Nick rapped his knuckles gently against the top of her head. ‘Right back at you, nerd.’
Zoey’s eyes were bright. ‘I love it when you call me a nerd. Come here, you.’
She pulled him towards her, and Nick happily acquiesced. He’d roll around in the dirt with her any time the urge struck her.
But then.
‘Hang on,’ said Zoey, frowning. Her elbow had made a thudding noise, as though it had hit wood. ‘There’s something solid here. Some old wood or something.’
Rolling over, she grabbed her trowel and started scraping away at the clumps of toadstools and the moss and lichen that clung to the dirt. Slaters and centipedes went trundling off, and a family of tiny snakes beneath a rock slithered away to safety.
At least they’d put down a tarp, he thought grimly.
But as Zoey scraped and hacked, her trowel slowly pushing aside the dirt and debris to reveal what she’d bumped against, Nick realised that they weren’t just dealing with any wood. It was a very specific kind of burnished, polished wood with gold hinges.
‘Oh, fuck,’ he said.
Well, at least he knew what had been getting in through the fence. Or out through it.
Now he understood what Darina had been trying to tell him before her unfortunate zombie turn. And why Alice had shown up with herringbone fabric stuck in her collar that time. There was a graveyard on the property.
And they’d just …
‘Sorry, guys,’ he said, apologetically, to whichever posthumous folks had just witnessed their unabashed lovemaking.
All this acreage and you’d think you’d be safe from watchful eyes.
But no, nowhere was private. Although the corpses were probably feeling rather the same way.
But, who knew, maybe they’d enjoyed the entertainment after however long they’d been down there.
‘We didn’t know,’ added Zoey, who’d clocked what was going on as quickly as he had.
‘But I’d do it again,’ said Nick.
Zoey grinned. ‘Me too.’