Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [49]
I turned to Dave, but he too was finished. His machete dripped as he sliced it through the air around the headless, naked body of the male zombie. Apparently I had been the only one to have a bit of trouble with my zombie. Maybe it was all the distraction of late, but I didn’t like that I’d been a bit weaker than the rest, including a fucking child.
“Well, now that that little chore is done,” I said in a falsely bright tone, “how about we hit the Lowe’s up the street?”
Dave was watching me. Maybe he’d noticed my uncharacteristic struggle with my zombie, but he didn’t say anything. He just unlocked the van and got into the driver’s seat to drive us to our net-gun-making future.
Think win-win. You probably won’t get it, but think it.
Although we had directions and all the PVC piping and netting materials we could ever want, need, or hate at the Lowe’s down the street from the library, creating the gun wasn’t as easy as the directions implied. In fact, it took us all the way until dark to get the damn thing even half made. There were at least three tantrums during the exercise (and only one of them was The Kid having a meltdown) and one half-assed threat of divorce (from David to me when I got tired and cried… just a little).
But by the time the morning light started peeking back through the broken glass doors of the home improvement store, we were looking at a net gun.
It was jacked up. It was ugly as hell. I think some parts of it were held together with only duct tape and a prayer, but it was a net gun. And as our five test runs with it had proven, it would work. In fact, we had caught a barbeque, several lawn chairs and even a pallet full of useless grass seed with it.
Surely those were viable replacements for writhing, biting, highly infected zombies who were just itching to devour our brains, right?
I guess we were tired, because at that point, we thought so. I smiled at Dave as he carefully reset the netting into the contraption. It had to be done perfectly or the gun wouldn’t fire.
“Think it will work?” I asked.
He shrugged even as he stifled a yawn. “I like it better than the stupid pulley system. At least we don’t have to be right on top of a zombie to get him netted.”
I nodded with enthusiasm. “So let’s get out there!”
He stared at me in blank disbelief. “We’ve been up all night fucking around with this, Sarah.”
“I know,” I said with a laugh. “But I have a new toy now and I want to play with it.”
He didn’t laugh with me. In fact, his dour mood was starting to bum me out. “Do you really want to go out and get into a fight with zombies while we’re exhausted? Especially after what happened yesterday?”
I flinched and turned my full focus on him. He was frowning at me, his face lined with worry and upset.
“And just what do you mean by that?” I asked though it was completely obvious to what he was referring.
“Yesterday you could hardly put down one zombie,” Dave said softly. “And we both know full well that catching is way harder and far more dangerous than killing.”
I stared at him. Not since the beginning of the outbreak had he actually questioned my abilities. He had been protective over the last few months, but never judgmental. So this was a new thing and I didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.
“You know, everyone has an off day,” I ground out past clenched teeth. “And you were just barely flicking the blood off your blade when I was done. So that means it took me what, one minute longer to take care of Nurse Betty than it did for you to take care of Ugly Naked Zombie?”
He held my gaze evenly. There was no hint of apology in his stare as he said, “A minute is an eternity, Sarah. A minute can mean the difference between safety and me having to put you down before you turn into a monster.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he plowed on without letting me. “You know that as well as I do. We’ve both seen the same fucked-up crap over the past few months.”
“That’s bullshit,” I snapped, even though I knew it wasn’t. “You are just so against anything to do with