Read Online Zombies in Love by Nora Fleischer - Free Book Online Page A

nerves were on edge.
    “Dr. Thal,” said Mr. Dudley.  “You’ve been of some embarrassment to our university.”
    Dr., not Professor.  “ I don’t expect to continue my employment--” she said.
    “I assume you read your entire contract before you signed it?” he interrupted.
    She shook her head.  “Why would I?”
    He smiled at her.  “No one ever does.  Except for the Law School.  They’re something of a problem for us, as you might imagine.  Oh, well.  No need to disturb you further, Dr. Thal.”
    She felt something hard and heavy at the small of her back.  “Just walk this way, doctor,” said a man behind her. 
    No, this wasn't right.  This was Winthrop, and there weren't guns here.  Didn't they even have signs in the Square that read, "Violence-Free Zone?" "That can't be a gun," she said, and started to turn around to look.
    She heard the safety click off, a sound even she could recognize.
    She shouldn’t have gotten into the elevator.  She should have run, like the guy from Brown said.  She should have--
    The man shoved her into a room that suddenly zoomed up to twenty feet high, but still had the same ancient slate and dirt smell.  Torches in each corner, burning something she couldn’t see.  A large piece of slate, roughly hewn into something like a bed.  She heard a metal door clang shut behind her.  But she could not turn her head. 
    Before her stood an enormous figure of a man.  It looked like the statue of John Winthrop, if he had been ten feet high, with giant horns, and legs like a goat’s.  And if he’d been dead so long that his face had desiccated into paper, like some terrible saint in a religion Sonia didn’t care to understand.
    She stood there, gaping at this gigantic creature.
    “Dr. Thal,” it said.  “Love your work.”  And it reached out a grey-clawed hand...
    Two days later, her cat, Hutchinson, having realized that food was not forthcoming, escaped through a cellar window, and made his way to the house of a neighbor who was moving west.  Renamed Beatnik, he had a very happy life in San Francisco, even though he never succeeded in catching a single seagull.
     
    #
     
    Jack lay comfortably on the metal table, a sheet over his face, a tag on his toe, reflecting that he hadn’t done badly at all at the press conference.  Not badly at all.  If the doctor hadn’t noticed that he looked like a walking corpse-- oh, if he hadn’t been a doctor, Jack would have shucked him like an oyster.
    Maybe there was a way back.  Not to all of his old life, of course, but maybe he could find some scrubby little newspaper in Boston that might hire him, or at least let him freelance now and then... Why not?  Why couldn’t he?  Surely he had enough talent to get a little work.
    Because there was a reason he was working under the table, and not at a newspaper.  Because using his own name in his own chosen profession was the quickest way for him to be found. 
    He wasn't ready for them to find him yet.  He knew that much, even if he didn't really know what ready would look like.  How was he going to say, Sam killed me, but I deserved to die?  And he had no idea, absolutely none, what should happen to both of them, or to the Palmetto , whenever he did go home.  So it was better to wait until he did know, until it all came clear. 
    Besides, his family deserved a break from him and all his craziness.  He knew that much for certain.
    It was very peaceful here in the morgue.  Lying flat out on the table with a sheet over his body reminded him of getting a massage.  Still, he supposed that he should get back to Lisa before someone decided it was time to autopsy him.  Or before someone figured out that there was no Jack Kershaw working for any Memphis paper, but there was a man of that name-- Yes, it was definitely time to go.
    Except now someone was coming.  He could smell a young woman walking slowly between the bodies, checking out the toe tags.  Lie still.  Look