Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [2]
Phoenix hadn’t escaped this “final solution” mentality any more than Seattle or L.A. or San Diego had. While some parts in the south end of the city were still partially intact, the downtown area itself was a mass of twisted burned metal and half walls.
Despite that, downtown was where Jimmy No-Toes lived. Why No-Toes? Other than that he had no toes on his left foot, I have no fucking idea.
“Watch yourself,” David muttered as he cut the van’s engine and looked at the burned-out building our “employer” for the day called home.
It had once been a barber shop, I guess, and Jimmy had found it hilarious to paint the old-fashioned barber’s pole with black blood and sludge from dead zombies. Most of whom we had killed, by the way.
I pulled my pistol from the back of my waistband as I opened up the passenger door and both of us checked around us. Guns were a great way to dispose of zombies, but the sound brought others running to check it out, so whenever possible we used other tools.
David pulled open the back of the van and I looked inside at our arsenal, collected over the past few months and tested tried and true (seriously, we should have made a stamp for these things that said SARAH AND DAVID APPROVED! Maybe next apocalypse, huh?).
“What does my lady prefer for today?” Dave asked as he flipped his hand palm side up and gestured to the weaponry before me like he was Vanna Fucking White.
I stared at the cornucopia of choices stacked and hung in the back of the van.
“Well, the scythe is always fun,” I mused. “But unwieldy in tight places like Jimmy always calls us to. Same thing with the chainsaw, and it stalled the last time I used it in Mesa Verde, which was almost very bad.”
David flinched at the memory. “True. How about an axe?”
I tilted my head as I examined the gleaming blade of my favorite axe. “No, not today. Just not in the mood for that, or the sword.”
Dave’s eyes lit up. “Wait. I know what you want.”
I gave him a look as he took off around to the driver’s side back door of the van. In a second, he was back and he was brandishing the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“I call it the home-run-you-through,” he said as he held out a heavy wooden baseball bat that had a long, wicked sharp spearhead firmly attached to the end by some kind of metal twine. “And I’m copyrighting that as soon as we find a patent office, so no trying to rip me off.”
I grinned as I reached out to take the bat. It was balanced perfectly and would do the job of both smashing and stabbing zombie heads nicely.
“You do know what to get a girl for Christmas,” I murmured as I put my handgun back in my waistband and stepped back to perform a few practice swings and stabs in the air.
“Oh no, baby,” Dave said as he grabbed a machete and shoved his shotgun into the sling around his back. “This isn’t half as cool as what I have planned for our first zombie Christmas.”
I laughed, but the sound faded as he shut the double back doors of the van and we faced Jimmy’s barber shop. “Want to do this?”
Dave nodded and we inched forward, ever at the ready. The door to the shop was locked, but the glass around it had been broken, rendering the lock useless anyway, even to a really stupid zombie. Dave rolled his eyes and reached through to throw the latch and let us in.
Jimmy had no toes, but I should also mention he wasn’t exactly brainy, either. Probably why he was constantly asking for our help. He could find a pod of zombies better than anyone I’ve ever met, but he was too lazy or dim-witted or both to do anything about it.
“Jimmy?” David called out into the dusty dark of the front room of the barbershop. “Hey, it’s ZBE, Inc!”
I rolled my eyes. “God damn it,” I whispered. “That isn’t what we call ourselves.”
He never looked at me, just kept moving forward. “It’s a perfectly legitimate shortening of our name and I think it’s catchy.”
“We have a fucking brand to maintain here, David,” I insisted. “All the