Zombie Ever After by Carl S. Plumer Page B

to the end of the hall and out the nearest window. This strategy was half-baked, but he wanted to give Cathren a chance to get out of there alive, rather than both of them being gunned-down in the guest room.
    He reached the top of the stairs and started yelling, “Cathren, we’re going. Now!” He ran into the bedroom, shut the door, and wedged the chair under the knob.  
    A loud crack and a lot of shouting came from downstairs. Before he could put two and two together, the shooting stopped. There was another crack. More yelling. Donovan realized, at last, that the sound he was hearing was of bones being broken. He turned around to address Cathren.
    But she wasn’t in the room.
    Donovan jerked the chair aside and opened the door again. Against his better judgment, he made his way back downstairs and around the corner. There she was. Not in danger, but in control.  
    The two men lay on the ground. Surprisingly, they were not ripped to pieces, but rather completely intact. Albeit with most of their extremities at sixes and sevens. Even more surprising, Cathren was not in her half-zombie state. She stood there in her underwear, perfectly normal so to speak.
    “What’s going on here? Where’s Alena?” she said, breathing heavy.  
    “I don’t know. She was downstairs last I saw, in the basement.”  
    “Okay. Show me.”  
    “We need to be careful. She’s conceivably in cahoots with the enemy— ”
    “I strongly doubt that.”  
    “—or being tortured by them.”  
    “Why, what did you see?”  
    “I’m not sure, but—”  
    Cathren started down the steps at a fast clip. Donovan headed off after her. She might be strong, she might even practice martial arts or whatever the hell she did, but she wasn’t ready to face Egesa again.  
    Ahead of him, Cathren turned the corner in the dark as Donovan reached the bottom of the stairs.  
    Then he heard her scream.  

Chapter 36

    He ran to her as fast as he could, knowing all too well she was now face-to-face with Alena’s dead body. He called out, “Yes, Cathren, I know, it’s not pretty. But be careful, Egesa is down here somewhere.”  
    Donovan rounded the bend and skidded to a stop on the dirty cement floor, cutting the bottom of his feet.
    “Oh, fuck,” he said. Not because of his burning feet, but because the chair was toppled, and the basement door to the outside was wide open.
    Egesa and Alena had vanished into the night.
    Cathren was out the basement door before Donovan could say, “You haven’t got any clothes on, you know!” Which he did say, actually. Immediately after she’d disappeared into the night. He was not fast enough to convince her to put on something more appropriate for battling evildoers. She was scarcely wearing a tank top and thong panties, and Donovan had on only his boxers.  
    The couple ran through the gloomy, pre-dawn morning on a rescue mission only Cathren truly understood. They jogged along the sidewalk of the gray San Mateo street, looking for something—anything—that would indicate where Alena had gone. Or, more accurately, been taken.  
    Outside, at night, in his skivvies, in a world newly-populated by the undead, was not Donovan’s idea of a good time. For some reason he felt vulnerable. This happened every time he was outdoors in only his underwear. Which he’d done a total of, until now, never. But now he knew how it felt. It felt just as bad as he thought it would.
    “There!” Cathren pointed to a car roaring around the corner. It was just a couple of blocks up ahead. “I’m sure that’s them in that Mercedes.” She picked up the pace. But Donovan knew even a girl with superhuman strength (and maybe speed) was no match for a car.
    “Cathren,” he wheezed, catching up. “We need to stop. I don’t mean stop going after them. But stop for a minute. We need to find a car or a motorcycle or something. We’ll never be able to follow them on foot, let alone catch up with them.”  
    She