The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) by Jesse Petersen Page A

in there. Not that I was going to say that with Dave ranting.
    “Or will it burst from your stomach like in
Alien
?” he continued. “Maybe play a little song and dance routine while you bleed out in front of me?”
    “Stop, enough with the imagery, Dave!” I insisted, feeling so sick that I wished I’d eaten just to have something to puke up now.
    “How can I stop with the imagery? Didn’t you think about all this while you were keeping your little secrets?” he asked.
    I nodded. “I did. I
do
. But I try to block it out because I’m not sure about the alternative.”
    He frowned and for a long moment he seemed to ponder that. “Maybe in Montana, in that house when we were alone, there wasn’t an alternative. But now we’re here, with a bunch of doctors and nurses and chemists and whoever. There are options now, Sarah, and you know it.”
    “So what do you suggest?” I asked, my tone so flat that it hardly squeaked past my pursed lips.
    “I want you to get tested. I want them to test you, to test the baby, to test whatever they can test,” he said.
    I sucked in a breath. I thought he was going to say he wanted this baby yanked out of me, but the alternative wasn’t much better.
    “David,” I began.
    He shrugged. “I doubt you’re going to have much choice in the matter anyway, Sarah. They know you’re pregnant and now you’re like me. You have something they want.”
    I shivered. “That’s true,” I whispered.
    I guess we were both in the zombie club now. At least until they figured out what the deal was with my kid.
    “I want to know you’re safe,” he said.
    “What about…” I hesitated and then pointed toward my abdomen, pantomiming a pregnant belly for him.
    He winced. “He/she/
it
is not really my concern right now.”
    We locked eyes and the coldness in his made my heart hurt. Not coldness toward me, though. To my surprise, all his concern was toward me, even though I’d kind of screwed the pooch here. No, he just felt nothing for the life inside of me. The one he’d helped create.
    The door opened and Nicole stepped inside. She was pale, so I knew she had already been told about my… situation. Which meant that Robbie and Nadia had probably already screamed it from various rooftops. I could just picture it:
    “Not only do we have a zombie-Dave, but we have a zombie-baby, too! Everybody come look at the Freak Family!!”
    Okay, maybe not.
    “Hey,” Nicole said, her voice strained. “Um, I’m sure you two have a lot to discuss, but you need to come with me. We’re going to need to have a long talk about this.”
    Dave nodded and took my hand. She left the room first and he leaned down close to my ear.
    “Let me do the talking,” he hissed.
    I glanced at him. “Why?”
    “I’ve been a half-zombie longer.”
    #
    The room we were taken to was outside of the bustling lab, away from the prying eyes of the techs. It was on the top floor of the building in an old room that looked like it had been a faculty office at some point, but it felt like the principal’s office and we were the naughty kids caught smoking behind the school.
    Dave and I sat at a table, facing off with a panel of four. Nicole, The Kid, Lisa and some guy we hadn’t met yet in an old army shirt and ragged jeans were our interrogators.
    “So you’re pregnant,” army guy said, his voice cool and unemotional.
    I opened my mouth to respond, but Dave lifted a hand to stop me. He shook his head.
    “Who the hell are you?” he asked, protective caveman Dave to the hilt.
    “I’m Colonel Grant Fenton,” he said. “Or I was.”
    “Before the government abandoned you here to die, you mean,
Grant
?” Dave asked.
    I reached out to grip his hand. Fenton’s lip twitched and I wasn’t sure he was the guy you wanted to ultra piss off. Especially since we’d dealt with military asshole types before.
    “Something like that,” he said softly. “But whatever happened before, what was left of my platoon came here,