Zombies! Episode 3 - Love Bites Read Online Free

He took her to all
sorts of places and when she went to his place for dinner, the food
was good, the movie was her choice, and the rest of the night was,
well, satisfying at least. But not exciting. That was where Larry
had come in.
     
    At first, they'd just been workout partners.
But there's something about a workout that gets the juices flowing
and the pheromones flying. Larry was bored. There's nothing like a
man who's spent ten years in a mundane marriage. He's got all this
pent up sexual energy and all of these crazy ideas that he wants to
try out. Suzanna could smell Larry a mile away. He worked out to
alleviate stress and expend some energy. His wife was a corporate
liaison, whatever that meant. She flew from country to country.
She'd barely had enough time for their daughter let alone for him.
So Larry went to the gym and hooked up with Suzanna. Just for
workouts. But as they became more comfortable and familiar, they
stopped being shy about putting their hands on each other. During
the workout. Then one day, when his wife was overseas and his
daughter was in preschool or daycare or college or whatever, he'd
invited himself back to her apartment and she couldn't say no.
     
    Being with Larry was very different from
being with John. John was comfortable and, again, satisfying. Like
a good meal. Larry was that triple chocolate molten lava eruption
you had for dessert. They didn't do it all the time. Not after
every workout. But enough so that it had become regular. And as it
had gone on, Suzanna had become both more addicted to him and more
guilt ridden over her infidelity to John. Not that she and John
were married or even exclusive. But she knew that she was lying by
omission. She wondered how Larry had felt.
     
    Poor dead Larry.
     
    When Abby had told her about Larry, Suzanna
had all but revealed their affair. To her surprise, she'd found
that she was ashamed. Suzanna DeForest ashamed of something. Well,
many things. She was ashamed of carrying on an affair with a
married man. She was ashamed of doing so while involved herself.
She was ashamed because her first thought had been that his death
had solved both of her problems. There was no more Larry to feed
her addiction and no more addiction to cause her guilt.
Unfortunately, his death had also come with an emotional crisis.
What Suzanna had learned from the experience was that she didn't
really like herself. The woman that had grown out of that
downtrodden girl had focused so much on becoming not just strong
but stronger than everyone else that she had forgotten all about
cultivating her heart. And it was that misguided, overblown
strength that forced her to walk on even when she wanted to go
back. It was that strength that whispered in her ear, telling her
that John didn’t even really want her there. But as she descended
into the subway stairwell, feeling cold and miserable surrounded by
the fall night and John's clothing, her strength abandoned her and
she began to cry.
     
    ***
     
    CULPH went in first. Culph was always
elected to go in first. It was the way he wanted it and, frankly,
the way everyone else wanted it also. The call had come in about
eight minutes before. Some time during the night there had been a
struggle. A super had gone missing. Now there were strange noises
from the basement storage rooms. Despite the media slowdown
concerning zombies, the police were still getting a flood of calls.
The calls were so numerous that they could hardly keep up. There
weren't that many men on the team, although Heron was scouting for
new people every day. Fortunately, most every call that came in was
a false alarm. That's not to say that there wasn't real police work
to be done, just not zombie police work. Culph was beginning to
resent it.
     
    Dressed to the nines, Culph felt invincible.
Overheated but invincible. He was covered from head to toe in
kevlar navy blues. There was a mask and goggles over his face and a
hat with ear flaps under a helmet. His belt