Battle of the Network Zombies Read Online Free PDF

thing was subdued and totally imprisoned. The singer turned and winked. “Catch you bad-asses later.”
    “Oh no, you don’t.” I stepped into his path.
    “Ah.” He sighed and nodded his head. “You want to come home with me. It’s all right. It happens to all the women I touch with my song.”
    He reached out and slipped his hand across my face, smooshing my lips with a rude ploying thumb. I jerked away.
    “You must be joking.”
    He shook his head. “No. And you needn’t be embarrassed. I can almost smell your wetness.”
    “That’s not arousal, you idiot. That’s rot.” I looked around and saw my mother scowl at the comment and purse her lips in heavy judgment. 11 My head swiveled to alert Gil that Ethel was at it again. To prove it. But as is so often the case, the vampire was busy looking at something else entirely. My stomach turned. Gil was assessing the nymph’s ass.
    Birch chuckled at my comment and returned to the destruction of our banquette to collect his bag and the disheveled carcass of the creature that lay nearby.
    “Seriously. If you could do all that, why didn’t you pull out your magic song when the yeti first attacked.” I glanced over at the creature. Its claws clung to the branches, eyes seeking out Birch and following his movement across the room.
    “I thought there were more of them—they usually travel in herds, like women at shoe sales. I can handle one yeti.” He paused, lost in a memory. “But two and I’d have been so much mulch.” He pointed at the pile of torn bodies strewn around the strip club floor.
    “I totally get self-preservation, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
    “Thank you, madame.”
    “ ‘Moiselle!’ Mademoiselle!” Of course, Birch was no longer paying attention. He simply pivoted in his Italian loafers and slunk from the room.
    “See you soon,” he called behind him.
    Gil followed his motion with actual interest.
    “What are you lookin’ at?” I asked.
    “I’m lookin’! He’s got a nice can. For fuck sake.”
    “A can? What is this, the 70s?” I asked, momentarily forgetting that Gil was technically the same age he was in those sexy years of polyester, pet rocks and coke-fueled orgies in artist’s lofts. 12
    “Yep.” He brushed himself off and we walked over to Ethel, still dazed and spread-eagled on the floor. Gil held out his hand and Mother took it. “Let’s get you into something more comfortable.”
    “Seriously?” I looked back at the cage, half-expecting the yeti to come charging from between broken branches, but it was still inside, hunched down like a big dollop of vanilla pudding.
    The prone woman at first waved off Gil’s offer with an uncharacteristically pained expression and then yielded to his support with such a sigh I expected the stigmata to appear and squirt blood from her hands like a hose. Gag. Gil hoisted her slim frame into the protection of his underarm and led her around the truck bed and toward a door behind the hostess kiosk.
    “Are you going out with Wendy and me?” I called after him.
    He spun, jerking Mother around with him, a scowl of judgment plastered on his normally handsome face. “How could you even ask that, with all that your mother’s been through?”
    I don’t know why it surprised me. Really. I should have expected it, but when I turned my eyes in Ethel’s direction, she wore a smirk the size of a cantaloupe slice, gushing with her usual hateful gaminess. My fists balled instinctively and I took a step toward her, more as a threat than any real prelude to the beating she deserved.
    Gil gasped and looked at Ethel, who instantly put on a pathetic pout for his benefit then curled her lips into a perfect mimicry of a cat’s anus when he turned his gaze back to me.
    “Really, Amanda, you could work on your empathy a bit,” he said.
    I’m pretty sure my mouth sagged open like a blowup sex doll, stuck on there like it was permanent. Gil could have probably tossed his entire