WIP Wednesday ~ Zombie Survivor Tale

Authors needed - all genres! Are you an author who'd like to share a 100- to 200-word blurb about a current work in progress on a future WIP Wednesday? If so, please send an e-mail to Erin O'Riordan (erinoriordan AT sbcglobal DOT net). 

I've been unbelievably busy doing not-writing stuff for the past week. I have, however, set aside an hour a day starting yesterday to edit St. James' Day, the third novel in the Pagan Spirits series, with Tit Elingtin. I finished writing the first draft all the way back in 2010, but we set it aside to work on Eminent Domain.

I've also got several pieces of short fiction as ongoing writing projects. This is a short excerpt from the zombie short story. It doesn't have a title yet:

“Know what I miss most? Coffee.”  The male voice was surprising close to me, causing me to jerk around to face him. The tall, dark-haired man who lived down the hall from Aimee and me pulled out a chair at my table.

“Excuse me?” I said, more offended that he’d invited himself to sit with me than anything. 

“They say it’ll be years before any mature coffee trees grow within city limits – and even then, I bet it won’t taste the same as I remember.” He sat beside me, ignoring the tone in my voice. “Ava, right?”

I nodded. “…and you’re Steven.”

I’d learned his name the day Aimee and her scouting party came back with his band of survivors. We’d considered them an especially lucky find – an entire town relatively untouched by the Wild Ones, including strong adults with survival skills. I still don’t know how they held out so long without the help of the ghosts. They’d been running low on food, and with my nursing skills, I’d taken care of Steven and some of the other men who’d let themselves get badly undernourished to give the women a better chance. Steven was a little worse off than the others; he’d injured an arm in a building collapse, and the wound was badly infected.

“You remember,” Steven said, smiling. He had a nice smile; I’d always noticed that about him. When we met in the halls, we were cordial to one another, but we’d never been friendly. I thought Aimee had assigned him to the security detail, but I wasn’t sure. “Of course you remember. You saved me.”

He’d probably felt close to death, but except for a high fever and a manageable electrolyte imbalance, his case was far from the worst I’d ever treated. Two members of his band had succeeded in starving themselves to death.

Given how he remembered me, it seemed rude of me to ask him what he was doing at the table I customarily shared with Aimee. Most of the survivors were so grateful for Aimee’s leadership, they treated everything she touched with a certain respect.

Its intended destination, after several more rounds of edits, is this anthology:

You can read the call for submissions at http://www.eroticanthology.com/zombies.htm