The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) Read Online Free PDF Page A

anything, it just sucked to have wasted the food.
    “You okay?” Dave asked as our pilot Brian slid the doors open and hopped out ahead of us.
    “I’m fine,” I reassured him as I tossed the bag off toward the bushes next to the airstrip. “It’s just been a while since I was in the air in anything, I guess. And it certainly wasn’t a helicopter.”
    “It’s common,” Brian said as he motioned us toward the small plane parked on the tarmac that would take us the rest of the way to Seattle. “Helicopters fly differently, lots of people puke in them.”
    I smiled at his retreating back, appreciative of his attempt to make me feel better, even if it was delivered in short, gruff tones. He seemed like a nice guy, but something about him made me uneasy. Maybe the fact that he talked and moved like military, even though The Kid and Nicole kept telling me he could be trusted.
    We moved across the field toward the plane and Brian opened up the door with a hook that had been left on the tarmac, probably when they landed.
    “It will take me a few minutes to get the systems up and ready,” he explained. “Meanwhile, cover me.”
    I sighed as I pulled my pistol. Of course there were zombies here. There were freaking zombies everywhere.
    “Toward the terminal,” Nicole said, the picture of calm.
    I turned in the direction of the big terminal building and sure enough, there was a zombie, still dressed in the remnants of his pilot’s uniform, staggering toward us. His moans and groans echoed in the still, cool air.
    Nicole leveled her pistol on him, but Dave placed a hand on the barrel.
    “Wait,” he murmured. “If we shoot, it will only bring more of them. Let me deal with it.”
    She shrugged as he pulled the machete from the sling I’d made for him a month or two back (etsy had nothing on me). He walked toward the thing, no hesitation, no worry. The pilot zombie didn’t care, of course. He didn’t even seem to notice Dave as he sliced with the blade in one, smooth motion.
    The zombie held still for a moment, and then slowly, comically, his head rolled back away from his body and hit the cracking tarmac below him. His body hit the same ground shortly thereafter and he twitched once before he lay still.
    As Dave turned back and started toward us, The Kid took three steps back. Dave looked at him as he reached us.
    “What?”
    “So that’s what it looks like,” Robbie whispered.
    Dave walked toward him. “Hey-”
    But before he could finish, Robbie sidestepped him. “Just… don’t touch.”
    I spun on the boy. “Look, he isn’t going to hurt you, okay? You know that. You also knew what was going on with him before you came here. That’s
why
you came here in the first place, right?”
    “Yeah, I just didn’t know what it would look like. I’m going to check on Brian,” The Kid said with a shiver before he ducked into the plane.
    Nicole and I looked at Dave. He was pale and his frown was deep as he stared up where the kid had gone into the plane.
    “It’s okay,” I tried to comfort him, but he didn’t react.
    “And he
knows
what’s going on,” Dave muttered, almost more to himself than to us. “He knows what I am and why I am this way and he still backs away like I’m a monster. Think about what other people will do, even if we do save the world.”
    Nicole shrugged. “We’ll just start a campaign or something. Zombie-People are People Too. We’ll get awesome videos on YouTube. It will be fine. Now come on, looks like Brian is starting the engines.”
    She climbed up into the plane and Dave and I followed. But as he closed the door and latched it, I could see he didn’t feel any better.
    The trip didn’t help either. On a small plane, we were talking a five hour trip. And me without my Kindle or my Angry Birds. Of course, there were other things to keep us entertained. Like the way The Kid kept watching Dave out of the corner of his eye as if he might zombie out at any moment. Or like the