Lipstick & Zombies (Deadly Divas Book 1)

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Free Download

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Thank You

  Blood & Glitter

  Bonus Scene

  www.McKayManor.com

  Copyright © 2015 Faith McKay

  Book cover designed by Deranged Doctor Design

  All rights reserved.

  LIPSTICK & ZOMBIES

  (Deadly Divas, #1)

  Faith McKay

  Acknowledgments

  This is such a weird book. I've said that hundreds of times since coming up with the idea. I love my weird little book, and I am grateful to everyone who helped me complete it.

  Robert McKay—because you are always there in the thick of it with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Tori Centanni! Thank you for beta reading Lipstick & Zombies and helping make it better. Thank you for your enthusiasm, your emails, and for always bringing this book up with me. You regularly reminded me how much I believed in this book by believing in it yourself.

  Amy Giuffrida, thank you for swooping in to beta read at the last minute like a knight in red ink.

  Heather Barnes. Thank you for all the pep talks and the reminders not to give up. You are amazingly supportive, and your emails often save my day. You are my superhero.

  To all of you: Thank you for believing in my weird book.

  Sign up for the McKay Manor New Releases mailing list and get a free copy of Faith McKay's latest novella, Death & Fashion, a Deadly Divas story following Jo's adventures after Lipstick & Zombies.

  Click here to get started: www.McKayManor.com

  For Robert.

  I wrote a book about five girls who believed in themselves.

  For believing in me when I didn't, this book is for you.

  Prologue

  Aim for the head.

  The only good zombie, is a headless zombie.

  Kill all corpses.

  Save Fort Atlas!

  Only you can stop the second life!

  Do your part to keep our wall safe.

  None of them ever believed those posters, but they clung to their words as the elevator lowered them to the ground outside the wall. It was the only advice they had left before facing the hordes themselves.

  It won't be so bad. That's what Georgia had told her mother. It won't be so bad. It was just something she said at the time, something to make her parents stop crying. They'd always been a little annoying, but the crying? Come on. She was the one being sent over the wall, just after getting her acceptance letter for Fort Atlas University's biology program. Not that the government cared. She actually did care about the zombie problem, and wanted to do her part to take them out for good, or at least greatly diminish their numbers. Biology was going to be the way she figured out how to do that. It turned out the government had a better use for her: zombie kibble.

  Her parents had covered her mouth when she told them how she really felt. Actually put their hands, physically, over her mouth. So, yeah. Lies like, "It won't be so bad," were the best response she had for their hypocritical blubbering. It wasn't enough for this moment, though. Having only her own lies to cling to when she was about to face zombies was just too unfair. Almost worse than the posters. Almost.

  The dude to her right was doing some blubbering of his own, reading those posters like they were going to save him. She rolled her eyes and turned away, unable to even begin to believe this shit. The guy on her left smiled down at her.

  "You don't look excited to do your part. Where's your smile?"

  "Are you for real?"

  "Girl, what is?"

  "Fair enough," she said.

  "I'm Ben."

  "Georgia."

  "Drafted?"

  "Who isn't?"

  "I met one," he said. "Survivalist."

  She rolled her eyes. "Seems like there should be enough of those nuts to cover those of us with brains."

  "Truth. So, what do you say?" He shook the rifle in his hands like it was a plastic toy he'd only just discovered, not like a man who'd spent the past three weeks in basic training. Georgia had actually paid attention in those classes, and she wasn't sure she was holding it much better.

  "What do I say about what?"

  "Want to have each other's backs?"

  Three weeks, and this was the nicest conversation she'd had. "Definitely," she said.

  "This is Katy," he said, pointing to the girl on his other side, and then rambled off a series of names to the people down the line. This friendly thing must have been normal for him.

  "You have some kind of plan?" Georgia asked.

  "Not dying," he said.

  She was about to say that was her plan, too, but the truth was she hadn't had one at all. And the dying felt pretty certain. Damn. Well, a few seconds before the door opened was better than never. Stay alive. That's all the plan anyone needed. She shook her weapon in front of her as he had. "Sounds good."

  He leaned down to her ear and said, "We're thinking we charge out the elevator in the beginning, start taking them out before they can build up into a bigger group around us."

  Group offensive effort. "I can get behind that."

  He nodded while the doors squeaked open.

  She jumped back in surprise, not at the crowd of zombies already gurgling outside the open doors, but at the war cry let off by the guy who'd been blubbering at her right just a second before. He charged through the doors. It seemed he'd been in on the offensive plan as well. There was no way she could imagine the crier being the first to charge the door otherwise. She bumped into the person behind her, and before regaining her balance, was shoved out the door.

  It's okay. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. She wished she'd thought to bring earplugs. Hearing as a survival tool was bullcrap; the groaning zombies and shouting soldiers were freezing her brain up worse than anything. Deep breath. Gun. Target. Don't kill your friends. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Pull the trigger.

  She couldn't pick out the dead in the sea of bodies engulfing her. If she could turn off the sounds, she could almost convince herself she was at a mall, or a concert, or some other big crowd event. Ben was nowhere to be seen, and a scan of faces didn't pull any that she registered as his friends. If these people weren't part of it, though, why had they all charged out there so early?

  Blubbering guy let off a scream more shocking than his first. It was rough and strangled, full of struggle, like the choking gurgle from the zombie who'd just taken too big a bite from his neck.

  The blood was much more vibrant than she'd thought it would be. And voluminous. Like a fountain.

  When people asked her why she'd want to study biology, when it was so gross, she'd told them that was a matter of perspective. Anything could be beautiful if
you looked at it in the right light.

  The zombie, still choking on what he'd torn from that guy's neck, fixed its gaze on her.

  She was wrong. Some things could never be beautiful.

  Staggering back toward the elevator, she gripped her gun and thought, hey, I remembered not to drop it, and bumped into a wall of cloth blocking her way. In the background she saw guns going off, zombies gnawing at people in uniforms, but her attention was on the zombie ambling her way.

  Her shots were going so wide it was a joke.

  I shouldn't be here.

  She broke her focus on the zombie to look into what was blocking her way to the elevator, and spotted Ben's face at an opening in the cloth. They'd built a barricade with knotted strips of fabric. Some of his friends were still emptying their pockets and tying more up.

  "Sorry," Ben said, with a smirk.

  "What?" she asked. "Let me in!" She leaned against the cloth, bowing it, and they shouted at her. One of the girls from their group was playing with wires in the elevator wall. She shouted something about almost having it.

  The zombie that had been coming for Georgia had fallen onto someone else, giving her time, but not much. She reloaded her gun while continuing to shout that they needed to let her in—she didn't even know what she was saying to convince them anymore. It didn't matter; no one was listening. She pointed her gun at the opening in the fabric, at Ben. He shook his head, still smirking. She pulled the trigger. She'd been aiming for his arm, not his chest, but oh well. He collapsed to the floor.

  "I got it!" someone shouted.

  The elevator doors closed, like the force of her arms was nothing at all. She pulled her fingers back at the last second.

  The large body of the blubbering guy made a good shield. She killed two zombies before he jerked forward and bit her. She thought she might have shot one more before her thoughts slipped out of her grasp.

  A table of bored executives looked away from the frozen image of Georgia's last moments.

  "Again, huh?"

  "I really thought that elevator was fool proof.”

  "One of those kids is always going to be smarter than you, Anna."

  "Thanks, asshole."

  Damien shrugged, like he was proud of the title.

  "It doesn't matter," the guy in the corner said. "If it wasn't the elevator, they'd find another way out. The idea of coming back here and going to the brig is always going to be more appealing than being eaten alive."

  "Well, what do you suggest we do, then?" Anna was tired of watching these tapes of people half her age outsmarting everything she rigged up. It was infuriating.

  "We could kill anyone who comes back up," someone suggested.

  "Then what motivation do they have for shooting the zombies at all? Die down there, or die up here? Idiot."

  "I don't hear you suggesting anything."

  A chorus of sighs and groans filled the board room. They were all tired of these meetings, these tapes, this job. Being an executive was a great title, with a slew of boring tasks, none of them as monotonous as this. No one wanted to join the military, drafting wasn't going over well, and the corpses—animated and not—were piling up at the wall and causing a smell that nothing could keep out. If there were anything more boring than the tapes of the newly drafted shoving their comrades forward to die, it was listening to lazy people complain about the smell of the dead. Luckily, that was mostly a job for politicians, but they'd demand to be heard every few weeks at these meetings, like the executives didn't have enough to deal with. Zombies weren't the true plague of the world, laziness was.

  "We could give them their own shields, so they stop using people," someone said.

  "We did that, remember?"

  "Oh, right. That was..."

  The groans and sighs were replaced with snickers. Kids did the darndest things.

  "Okay," Willa said, standing up. Heads popped up around the room, silent. Willa never made a sound. She was too busy flicking through her phone, talking to kids about buying drinks, or handbags, or whatever she was plundering the pockets of parents for that week. "I have a plan."

  ARE YOU READY FOR FAME, FORTUNE, AND FIGHTING?

  ARE YOU READY TO CHANGE THE WORLD THROUGH MUSIC?

  WANTED.

  Five girls. Must be able to sing, dance, and kill zombies.

  We're looking for you, Deadly Divas!

  Girls must be 16-17 years old. Chosen individuals will be exempt from military draft lotteries. Only one girl will be chosen per school. The chosen Divas will no longer need to attend school.

  Are you ready to be more than you dreamed?

  Chapter One

  SADIE

  Sadie didn't need to be able to hear to know what people were saying. They were talking about her. They always were. Something about her clothes making her a skank, or how she dressed like she thought she was better than everyone else—she was—or her leg. Always about the leg, either in whispers, or loud and bitter. “She thinks she's better than everyone else, but she's handicapped.”

  They should really be on the other side of the wall with the other zombies, where they'd fit in with their mindless groaning and need to turn everyone else into a dark little flesh eater like themselves.

  The teacher pointed at his own ears when he walked past her desk, his daily reminder to pull out her earbuds. It was cute how he kept trying. She kept her music on all day, everyday. She only pulled her earbuds out when it was time to shower, and then it was only to switch to her bathroom speakers. If she was going to be the best musician, she had to know more than everyone else, not just the cannibals currently surrounding her.

  Someone threw a wad of paper at the back of her head. Her arm ached with the urge to throw something sharp their way, but she didn't even have a knife on her today. It was probably for the best. The last time she'd thrown a knife at school they'd told her she wouldn't just be expelled, they'd get special permission to have her "special skillset" drafted early. With a threat like that, you'd think she'd actually hit the bastard. She'd left a good quarter of an inch by the side of his head. Dramatic bureaucrats.

  The teacher started the morning announcements like every other, with the deaths of the drafted. She'd written several songs about this glorious beginning to the day. This teacher slipped right through the names; there was a rhythm to it she admired. She wondered how many of the names he knew. He must know a lot of them. The teachers always did.

  He rolled his eyes when he held up the flier. She wasn't going to read it—why would she?—but the music note caught her attention. She raised an eyebrow and pulled out her earbuds.

  DEE

  "Did you see the news?" Dee's dad asked.

  "Of course," her mom said.

  "You know who'd be great at that," he said.

  "Hmm?"

  "That girl next door, the silly one," he said.

  Dee slapped her dad's arm. "Oh come on," she said.

  He laughed. "You know I meant you."

  "I could do it!" she exclaimed, like there'd been doubt in his voice.

  "I know you could."

  "I'd be great at it," she insisted.

  "We know, baby," her mom said. "You could do anything. More eggs?"

  CARRIE

  She was scribbling in her notebook, listening to the morning announcements, sort of, when she first heard a whisper of her name. Hairy, Carrie, thinks she's so scary. Pete again. It had been a while. She pulled out a new page, scribbled quickly, and left it on her desk. She leaned back and stretched her arms. A dainty smile pulled up her cheeks before she turned around.

  Pete winked at her. "Hey, Carrie."

  "Hiya Pete."

  "Whatcha writin'?"

  "Oh, it's for you." She pulled a curl away from her face and twirled it around her finger.

  "Love note? You don't have to go through all that trouble for me, babe." He elbowed his friend, whose name she couldn't remember. Everyone called him Sport.

  "It's no trouble at all."
She giggled. "I've been looking forward to it."

  "Don't be so shy, let me see it."

  "Oh, I don't know," she said.

  Sport pulled it off her desk. "Whoa."

  "What?" Pete yanked it out of his hands. "What is this?"

  "Your suicide note," she said, with a giggle. "It'll be useful the next time you sing that song." She squeaked when she shrugged and turned back around in her chair.

  The announcement on the screen at the front of the room stole her attention before she got back to her notebook.

  JO

  "Who do you think signs up for these things?" her brother asked.

  "The same girls who are willing to sleep with you," her sister answered.

  "Jerk."

  "Moron."

  "Jo likes to sing. Maybe she'll do it."

  "Oh right, can you imagine? Flipping her hair and tripping over her high heels?"

  Jo's jaw jutted forward. She was careful not to let her hair do anything too flamboyant when she shook it off her face.

  GERRI

  Some guy had his hands in Gerri's hair. She couldn't remember his name, but with the way he used his tongue, he didn't need one. He'd be remembered.

  "Gerri, holy monkey zombies, have you seen the ad?"

  She pulled her face free, and the guy moved his mouth to her neck. He definitely got bonus points for handling interruptions well. Still, he really needed a wardrobe change. She wasn't sure how she felt about a fixer upper. Nelly shook the screen. Gerri focused on Nelly's face. "What are you talking about?"

  "The ad! Have you seen it?"

  Gerri took hold of the screen and read the heading. "Wait. What?" She pulled it free of Nelly's hand and patted the guy on the head before pushing him away. She read the whole thing. Her jaw dropped.