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

the air in the building. Nothing could fit behind it.
    I wiped my hands off on my jeans. “It probably climbed in here after it was bitten, while it was still human and just never had a reason to come out until it smelled you. Aw, you denied it its first meal as a zombie.”
    “You denied it that,” Lisa said as she shoved to her feet. She collected her gun from across the room and glanced over at me. “Um, we’re even.”
    I blinked. “Huh?”
    “I saved your life the day we met,” she explained. “So we’re even now.”
    “Do you take back all your implications that I’m an idiot who could barely tie her shoes, let alone get through the apocalypse?” I asked.
    She considered that for a minute. “Maybe. Your shoe is untied, by the way.”
    I glanced down and she laughed. “Made ya look. Come on, we still have the next two floors to do.”
    I shook my head as I followed her out of the room and toward the staircase that would take us to the main floor of the HUB. The one where all the zombies had been waiting for us earlier. Now we would see how great that grenade and its cocktail of zombie killing chemicals was.

Chapter Ten
    The most important thing when dealing with kids is consistency. Same is true with zombies.
     
    When we got to the bottom of the stairs back on the first floor, I have to admit, I was ready to fire off a million shots to kill a bunch of zombies. And yet, as we peeked out into the main floor, mostly silence greeted us. Silence and a shit ton of bodies.
    “Are they dead?” I asked, looking at the piles of zombie corpses draped all over, including ones that were reaching toward the stairs as if they’d died trying to chase us up the first time.
    “Should be,” Lisa said. “But we’ll check anyway. Stay sharp. Sometimes there are some stragglers.”
    I watched as she started nudging corpses with her rifle, finger on the trigger and ready to blow a head off if anyone dared to move.
    Obviously this was a girl who didn’t get caught unaware twice. I shrugged and started doing the same, poking at the zombies with the greatest of care.
    Lisa waved to catch my attention and motioned toward a zombie over on the other side of the room. It was half on the ground, but kept trying to get up only to fall on its face again and again. It muttered to itself constantly, making those gurgling sounds they sometimes did. Only these were a little more… coherent.
    “What is it doing?” I muttered.
    “The closer they are to being a fresh zombie, the more human they get when exposed to the chemical,” she explained as she motioned me closer.
    “It’s human?” I repeated in shock as I stared at the struggling creature in horror.
    She shook her head. “No. Once you’re fully turned into a zombie, we don’t have a way to come back. The serum can only prevent turning from a bite, whether administered at the point of a bite or as an inoculation. The brain damage done after a turn is instant and permanent. It’s still more than half a zombie and it’s dangerous.”
    I flinched as she raised her gun and fired, dropping the poor thing in a pool of blood. Not goo. Blood.
    “Good thing is, that sound will bring any other stragglers.” She reloaded and smiled at me. I couldn’t return the expression and her brow wrinkled. “You okay?”
    I shrugged. “It’s just different if there’s even a tiny bit of something human left in them, isn’t there?”
    Lisa pursed her lips. “That thing I just shot? He was one of our guys, taken because he wasn’t paying close enough attention about three weeks ago. I didn’t like killing him, but you have to set your mind, Sarah. They’re already dead. Just like when you got over killing the zombies the first time. This is no different.”
    I glanced at the man-zombie laying there a few feet away. His face was bloated, but the grey tones weren’t as dark as a zombie corpse, his eyes were glassy, but clear, not red.
    It sure felt different.
    But there was no time