Fat Girl Finds Love At The End Of The World

By Nancy M. Griffis

As a makeup artist in Hollywood, Beth had seen a lot of weird things over the years, but actual zombies took the cake. With no help from the government, the fully-armed neighborhood steps up to keep the streets safe. On a supply run, Beth ends up face-to-face with a shotgun held by the most gorgeous woman she’d ever seen and has to wonder... Why did it take a zombie apocalypse for her to find love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy M. Griffis
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463702673

Nancy M. Griffis

A novelist and screenwriter living in Los Angeles, enjoying the sun, and writing whenever possible.

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Fat Girl Finds Love At The End Of The World

By

Nancy M. Griffis

Copyright © 2018 Nancy M. Griffis

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to others. If you want to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy each time. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard in creating this new universe.

This book is available in e-book and print formats at most online retailers

Thanks to Elizabeth M. Thurmond for her editing skills and support.

Thanks to Cynthia McCoggle for the endless spit-balling.

The End

When people used to talk about the zombie apocalypse, I always said that I’d be one of the first to die. Whoever I was talking to at the time would laugh, but I wasn’t joking. My pessimism wasn’t because I’m fat, although I am, but because I have a ton of breathing problems. Even with inhalers and allergy meds, I can hardly walk up a hill without panting like I’d just run a marathon.

It never occurred to me that being smart and a big old nerd would be more helpful than my physically fitness. Honestly, why would it? Zombies, right? Grrr! Argh! Chomp! You’re dead – or infected and then dead – and being able to run away would likely be the difference between mostly-dead, all dead, or sprinting towards safety. Then again, life hardly ever turns out the way I expect, so why would the zombie apocalypse be any different?

No part of Hollywood – or anywhere in LA, really – was a bastion of good mental health. Beth saw it every day in the homeless who ranted at strangers on the street and the actors ranting on sets where she sometimes did hair and makeup. They were all buckets of crazy, just some didn’t have much choice in the matter while others got paid to be that way. For the most part, she avoided contact by wearing headphones and pretending not to notice. City blinders, she’d termed it a few years after living in LA; unpleasant, but vital. Now, over ten years later, she was pretty well used to it.

Those city blinders didn't slip so much as get ripped off her face when a vicious fistfight broke out at the Hollywood/Vine Metro stop. She jumped away in fright when one guy shouted and randomly pounded in the face of another. Her heart thudded hard against her chest with the sudden adrenaline surge and she ran behind one of the gauche planter/barriers at the station and pulled out her cell. Unlike the morons filming the fight with their phones, Beth dialed 9-1-1.

We’re sorry. All operators are currently busy. Please wait for the first available operator.

Beth gaped at her phone, but had never called the emergency line before, so she didn’t know if it was a normal thing. She heard all the time in the local news how strapped for people and money the LAPD was, but this seemed excessive even for them.

A police car screeched to a halt, rolling onto the sidewalk a short distance away. The noise made her jump in fright again, spinning towards it with her hands up instinctively. Two uniformed cops ran from the car, but they bolted right past the fight and down into the bowels of the station.

That, she thought, is not good.

The fight ended, but only because the guy doing the pounding stopped abruptly and sat on the pavement next to his moaning victim.

Beth brought the phone back to her ear.

We’re sorry. All operators are currently busy. Please wait for the first available operator.

So not good.

Since the crowd didn’t seem to be going anywhere – cell phones now recording the non-action – Beth walked quickly to the street corner, waiting impatiently for the light to change, body shaking with reaction to the violence. Her car was parked on the street, down a couple blocks from the W Hotel and Metro stop, so it was a short walk back. It was a rare day off from the salon with no side work on a set somewhere, but the hot sun and clear skies she’d been enjoying had taken on a surreal tint and all she wanted was to go home.

Beth got into her trusty, dusty red 1998 Toyota Celica and pulled onto Hollywood Blvd. It was a short ten-minute drive back to her apartment building in East LA and she let out a sigh of relief inside its safe, if dented, doors. The change in neighborhoods was palpable once out of Hollywood, shifting from retail and tourist-driven to somewhat faded, residential apartments and homes.

Parked in her apartment garage, she sat for a few