More Killing of Dead Things

Okay, so you know how last week I brought you a fabulous excerpt from Sommer's zombie book? Well guess what, beetches. She's written a sequel, and it's as amazeballs as the first one. And just for you, I've got a fabulous excerpt from that book, too.

Because nothing makes me happier than spreading the Sommer love. Especially after she went and wrote the most amazing review of Control:

http://sommermarsden.blogspot.com/2011/07/control-by-charlotte-stein-book-review.html

I swear to God, I didn't pay her. I didn't even ask her. She just did it, because she is made of all that is orsum and amazeballs in the world. Seriously, one of my writing heroines saying that. I can't even.

Instead, I will just leave you with living proof of how talented she is:



Excerpt from NO GUILT (Zombie Exterminators book #2)

Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/323-201-107-489-2--no-guilt-zombie-exterminators-series-book-two-by-sommer-marsden.html

Also on Kindle, at ARe, Bookstrand etc.

Chapter One

“Don’t spook her,” Garrity said.

Noah was turning his big white van onto Topaz Lane, and I was trying really, really hard not to stare at Cahill. This was our first big job since moving from Maryland to Connecticut. Our first mission handed down and paid for by the county we lived in. Once we left our hometown after taking care of the Evoluminaries and their rabid leader William Tell (who had wanted to use me as a zombie baby mamma, thank you very much) we’d treated ourselves to a few weeks off.

Now the cupboard was bare, and we were itching to do something that did not involve loud music, alcohol and trading creeper war stories like old men at a veterans’ lunch.

“I won’t spook her. Why the hell would I spook her?” I snapped. Being fixated on Cahill’s offer wasn’t helping my mood. An offer of a threesome with him and Garrity—something that, yes, boys and girls, I have fantasized about more than once. It had come out of the blue after a drunken bucket-list conversation the four of us had had. Bam! In a moment of privacy, the offered was slammed down on the figurative table, and I couldn’t seem to stop poking at it. It was something I wanted, but it scared me.

I caught Cahill looking at me from the front seat where he rode shotgun to his lover Noah. I felt my face flush when I saw his cocky grin. Jeesh.

“Because you seem a bit on edge, Poppy,” Garrity said and leaned in. “Why are you so on edge, babe?”

It had taken forever and ever for me and Garrity to get together despite attraction and all that jazz. But my mother’s death and our last mission had sealed a bond that was a long time coming. So how would he feel about bringing handsome, tall Cahill in on the sex part of stuff? My brain wouldn’t let it go, but I swallowed hard and said “Don’t know. Maybe I’m rusty.”

“Nah. You’re good, girly. There’s nothing rusty about you,” he said and kissed me.
I turned my face fast—before I could analyze it—and kissed him on the lips. Part of me wanted to say those dreaded three words. I love you…part of me wanted to scream at even allowing myself to think it.

The van jumped and jittered on non-existent shocks and ripped me out of my reverie. “We’re here,” Noah said.

“Ready?” Cahill asked.

“No,” I said.

“Good.” Garrity patted my legs. “So let’s do this thing.”

We got out of the van and went to knock on Marylou Peterson’s front door.

I watched that instant—the instant that all couples seem to have—unfold. As Garrity was touching the small of my back, Cahill was touching Noah’s arm. That we-have-a-connection touch. Would Noah hate me forever if I took Cahill up on his offer? Would it ruin our friendship? Would it ruin the four of us and how we worked together? It was something I had to push out of my head as the front door swung inward. I had to focus on the complaints by the neighborhood and the county about a creeper that was loose that no one could seem to pinpoint. The last place it had been seen was Marylou’s house. I needed to focus on her.

“Hi, Marylou Peterson?” I spoke. The boys felt it better that I introduce us since I was relatively calm and a girl and there was a zombie apocalypse under way—or so the general population thought. “My name is Poppy Cooper, and we need to talk to you about a recent cree—” Garrity nudged me. Creeper was our own personal nickname for the undead. “Um…undead sighting on your property.”

“Who are you?”

“We’re county licensed freelance exterminators,” I said. Which was a fancy way of saying we kill dead things. We’re killers for hire.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“May we come inside and speak with you?” Garrity asked, flipping a piece of nearly black hair out of his blue-blue eyes. He smiled. His boy next door shtick. Niiiiice.

“Sure. Come on,” she said and took a step back.

Funny. She seemed more scared of us than the idea of rogue zombies in her neck of the woods.

People were strange.

“It was on my property?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and frightened but off. Something wasn’t right, and I couldn’t figure out what. Maybe we’d interrupted her and her boyfriend or something.

I looked at the county’s paperwork. Connecticut was way more of a stickler for paperwork than Maryland had ever been. Go figure. “Two complaints of a lone male undead subject on your property,” I said. “But when someone is sent out to take care of the call, he’s gone. There is a note that the second complaint called was only partially sure it was a male subject. Have you seen anything?”

She shook her head. Her big brown eyes wide, her fingers twirling a piece of dyed-red hair so tight I feared the whole lock would pop right out of her scalp. “No. It’s just me and my brother here. I haven’t seen anything. My dad’s long gone—has been for years, my mom…” She shook her head and looked away.

Christ, I hated this part. I always felt like a heel. Like I was pouring salt in a wound, because I was. I had lost my mother to a creeper, I knew the pain of it. I also knew I’d been slightly luckier than most simply because my mother had been immune to the virus that was infecting all these undead. She didn’t rise. Most people had to deal with the loss and unwanted resurrection.

“I’m sorry,” I said. A few stupid words that could not possibly stem the flow of pain.

She nodded, cleared her throat. “My mother succumbed to the virus.”

“And your brother? Has he seen anything?”

“I’d have to ask him. Chuck’s not here right now, though,” she said, waving her hand around the kitchen. “But I’ll ask when I see him.”

“Can we look around your property? Maybe there’s something attracting this subject,” I said. When did I start talking like a zombie cop? I didn’t know.

“Sure,” she said and gave me another shrug. “You’re not going to find much. An overgrown yard, a shed, honeysuckle bushes and an old dog house. But go for it.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to her back kitchen door. “May we?”

Marylou stood and unlocked a series of locks on the door. Finally, she was able to pull it open. “I’ll be here when you’re done,” she said.

I eyed Garrity and his gaze flicked to the locks. Five of them by count and an old fashioned cheap battery operated alarm. It simply hung on the door knob, and if jostled it would sound an ear piercing alarm to let the occupants know someone had opened the door.

When we hit the wide planted, screened-in back porch, I whispered to him “Safety first.”

“Jesus, I’ll say.”

Cahill and Noah had already hit the property, walking the perimeter like two jungle hunters. I turned to face the house once I hit mid-yard. I stared up at the farmhouse windows that reminded me creepily of the eyes of the undead. They were there, they were open, but no one was home. The windows were uncovered, the sun bouncing off the upper panes of glass. I thought I saw something in the upper right, but then a crow flew overhead and it was gone. Probably a reflection.

The house to the right was for sale. The house to the left was buttoned up like a storm was coming. “We need to check next door,” I said to Garrity.

He grunted and checked out the shed. “Nothing but lawn stuff. Mower, hoes,” he laughed.

“Are you five?”

“Hoes,” he laughed again.

“Dipshit.”

“Snippy.”

“Childish.”

“Bitchy.”

“Hey, flirt later!” Cahill called, and when I looked up, surprised, he winked at me.
It went right to my pussy, that wink. I shook my head, ashamed of myself. We were on a job. I could worry about my sex life later.

“Anyway, just some gas and lawn care stuff. Normal shed crap,” Garrity said and put an arm around me as he passed to show we’d just been teasing.

I kissed him on the cheek, and he looked surprised. It was my penance for dirty thoughts about Cahill. Now how did I make amends with Noah? I had no idea.

Not that Noah was even paying attention. Or seemed to care. Maybe he didn’t know about…

“Hello?” Garrity rapped softly on my forehead with his knuckles.

“Sorry. Spacey. What did you say?”

“I said we need to talk to that brother. But first we’ll go next door.” He cocked his thumb at the battened-down house. “My guess is at least one of the complaint calls came from there.”

“I agree.”

“Well, someone call fucking Guinness. Or the church. Because that’s a miracle.” Noah brushed his surfer boy hair out of the way and holstered his gun. We were all armed to the teeth but trying to appear like we were just checking to see what was what.

It was nice to keep everything tucked away and hidden until we had an actual creeper spotting. On the other hand, we had to have it all so we weren’t caught off guard and didn’t become lunch for some dead things.

“Seriously,” Cahill said and put a possessive hand on Noah.

It made me hot all over to see those two touch, and it instantly brought to mind the times I’d accidentally seen them together. It was easy to imagine Noah sucking off Cahill. And it was never hard for me to call up the image of Cahill plunging into pretty Noah. Holding his slim hips and pushing his cock deep inside. But it had totally been accidental, me seeing them. Okay, the first time had been an accident.

The other times had been luck.

“We’ll cut through the bushes to speak to the neighbor. When we come back here we can use the back door and talk to Marylou.”

“She’s edgy with a capital fidgety,” Noah said.

“I know. But imagine that you’re a young woman living with just your brother, and he’s not here. Maybe she’s alone a lot. Her mom died.” I felt a twinge in my gut when they all looked sad for me, and I shook my head. “Don’t do that. Don’t pity me,” I snapped, and they all fixed their faces into masks of indifference.

I cleared my throat, coughing away the ball of emotion that had lodged there.

“And she doesn’t have dad to speak of. That’s gotta be hard. And then we show up—our ragtag team of killers…I gotta say, boys, I’d be a little edgy too, I think.”

Garrity sighed. “You have a point. Lucky you, you have us.” He smacked my ass hard, and I gaped at him.

“Come on,” Noah said to Cahill, and led the way. “Let’s go talk to the neighbor before they do something like fuck in the bushes.”

It was Cahill who turned and waggled his eyebrows at me. Jesus. This was getting sticky fast.