Zombie Wonderland

By Piper Vaughn

Nothing says Christmas like droves of the undead….

All Emery wants for Christmas is someone to share it with. It looks like he might finally be getting his wish in Ross, the sexy customer he's been crushing on for months. But neither of them counted on the zombies or on being caught in the worst blizzard in half a century. Even with a plan for contending with the zombie hordes, surviving will take a miracle.

It's not exactly how Emery dreamed of spending Christmas with Ross, but he can't think of a better way to spend a zombie apocalypse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piping Hot Books
• Release date: Sep 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393658498

Piper Vaughn

Piper Vaughn wrote her first love story at eleven and never looked back. Since then, she’s known that writing in some form was exactly what she wanted to do. A reader at the core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great book—fantasy, young adult, romance, she loves them all (and has a two-thousand-book library to prove it!). She grew up in Chicago, in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, and loves to put faces and characters of every ethnicity in her stories, so her fictional worlds are as colorful as the real one. Above all, she believes that everyone needs a little true love in their life… even if it’s only in a book.

Book preview

"O come, all ye zombies

Undead and voracious

O come ye, O come ye to the humans

Come and consume them,

Reborn the King of Dinner;

O come, let us devour him,

O come, let us devour him,

O come, let us devour him,

Emery O’Reilly."

––––––––

Xara X. Xanakas 

There should be some kind of law against being alone on Christmas. But there I was again, manning the diner on Christmas Eve for the third year in a row. Alone.

Antonio had begged off an hour before, spouting an excuse about how he’d promised his girlfriend he’d be home before midnight this year. I hadn’t seen any point in forcing him to stay. I knew how to make everything on the menu, and it wasn’t as if I expected a sudden rush of customers. Not on Christmas Eve, and definitely not in the storm that raged beyond the windows.

It was a veritable blizzard. Not the lazy sort of snowfall with big, fluffy flakes that fluttered prettily to the ground. These snowflakes weren’t flakes at all, but tiny chips of ice that stung the skin and made people huddle in their jackets against the needlelike barrage. They pelted noisily against the windows and door, obscuring my view of the street, loud enough to be annoying—and a bit terrifying, really, when I considered how bad the storm might be when I finally closed up and walked home.

I’d always hated the fact that our manager, Irwin, wouldn’t let us close early on holidays. I guess I understood his reasoning—we were the only eating establishment within a solid mile, and the train station directly across the street normally provided a steady influx of customers—but on nights like these, I doubted whatever meager profits we might bring in were even enough to cover the overhead cost of staying open. But according to Irwin’s rules, as long as the trains ran, we were open. And since the train schedule almost never wavered, and probably never would outside of some sort of apocalypse, the diner was staffed from six in the morning to midnight every day of the year.

For the fourth time in fifteen minutes, I looked up at the clock. Still another hour before I could close and I’d already scrubbed every surface in the diner three times over. A Christmas movie played on the small television in the corner, but I’d turned the volume down to a murmur. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to other people’s festivity, fake or otherwise. There wouldn’t be any kind of celebration waiting for me back in my dingy studio apartment. No warm smiles of welcome or presents under the tree. I’d be as alone there as I was at the diner, but the thing was, I’d spent all day hoping for something different. Just my luck that for the first time in three months, he hadn’t shown up. To say his absence disappointed me was like calling the storm outside a light flurry.

It made sense, though. Probably he had a family or even a girlfriend. Maybe he’d gone out of town. It’d been stupid of me, I guess, to hope the holiday wouldn’t change anything. But he’d come in on Thanksgiving, business as usual, and I thought it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him coming in on Christmas Eve too.

From the first time he’d walked in all those weeks ago, it was always the same. It’d become a routine of sorts, and I knew he stuck to it even on my days off. He came in with a messenger bag, settled down in the farthest booth from the door, placed his order (coffee, black, and sometimes a slice of whatever pie was on special), withdrew a notebook and a mechanical pencil, and wrote until five minutes before closing, only pausing occasionally to stare off into some middle distance before he started up again. Then he packed his belongings, dropped a wad of cash on the table—enough for his bill and an extravagant tip—and left.

There were times when I felt him watching me, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing in his direction. He never looked guilty or pretended he hadn’t been staring. His gaze would meet mine for a long moment, and then his lids would come down, heavy lashes shading those dark, dark eyes, and a mysterious smile would curl his lips at the corners.

It had taken me three weeks to build up the nerve to ask his name.

Ross, he’d said.

I’d smiled, feeling nervous and shy, despite the fact that I’d been serving him for nearly a month already. I’m Emery.

His eyes had flicked to the name tag on my shirt, and that small enigmatic smile made a brief appearance. I know.

We