Zombie and Hitch by Jeanie and Jayha

unedited excerpt:

Five weeks later...

As a connoisseur of reality television, Alden Chrysanthos had seen them all from truckers to housewives to gator hunters…and enjoyed them all.  All of those shows combined, however, didn’t have a damn thing on the town—and he used that word lightly—that he was in, or the people—and he also used that word lightly—who lived in it.  As a spec-ops warrior, he’d seen a lot of sh*t, but he’d never witnessed or experienced the likes of this level of WTF.  He didn’t know where in the f*ck they were, but he knew they’d left “normal” behind about twenty miles and two hours ago.  He missed normal.

As if the town and its residents wasn’t enough for one mortal man to deal with, there was that other thing:  the wedding.  The wedding hadn’t even started good and already he was sure he never wanted to witness anything like it ever again.  This wedding was just wrong on so many levels. 

First, there were the groomsmen…or should he say hostages. It wasn’t the fact that this wedding featured groomsmen; it was the fact that he and his team were the groomsmen, courtesy of some shotgun-wielding nuns.  Having anyone get the drop on them was a bitter pill to swallow, but hey, at least they could still swallow.  No thanks to Ms. Mel, who’d pulled a gun on them and forced them to drink her moonshine. 

Being alive gave him the opportunity to ponder things like the family Thane was marrying into.  He wasn’t a psychiatrist, but he’d bet good money that every single bridesmaid was certifiable. The first bridesmaid stumbled in carrying a hound dog.  He wasn’t sure if she was stumbling due to the weight of the dog or because Ms. Mel had pulled a gun on her and made her taste her moonshine. The second bridesmaid had a falcon with the wingspan of a pterodactyl, perched on her shoulder.  The third bridesmaid didn’t have an animal, probably because she had a tray of cupcakes…and a matching frosting ’stache.  And they were going to be Thane’s sisters-in-law. 

Of course, they were the saner option than the woman who was Thane’s bride.  Zelda Dodge who put the b, the u, the c, the k, the w, the i, the l, and the d in buck wild and the c, the r, the a, the z, and the y in crazy.  Lead zombie hunter for Smashes to Ashes & Bust to Dust, according to her 1099, her primary duties included cutting the heads off of zombies and incinerating their remains. 

But right now she wasn’t knee deep in gore.  Nope, she was rocking an eloquent gown while dragging a butt a*s naked Thane, up the aisle.  The second-to-last thing he wanted to see was the crack of Thane’s a*s, and that was only because the very last thing he wanted to see was the barrel of the highly-illegal gun haphazardly slung over the bride’s shoulder. 

Alden’s thoughts were interrupted by the freakishly large reptile that slithered up to the front and stretched out. 

“Is that an alligator?” Sander asked hopefully.

The man was probably trying to work out how many pairs of cowboy boots that hide would yield.

Braughan corrected Sander before Alden could get the chance.  “Komodo dragon.”

“We are so totally screwed,” Grosvenor said.

“And not in a good way,” Angel added.

They were totally screwed but at least none of them had ‘Grosvenor’ as a Christian name, Alden thought. 

Thane was going to owe them.  If he didn’t pay up, they wouldn’t help him get this farce of a wedding annulled. Of course, the way Thane kept interrupting the ceremony with his vociferous proclamations of love—for the bride, not for them—an annulment may have been the last thing their teammate wanted.  Even though he knew better than to ask, Alden knew he would eventually ask Thane what had happened.  And from the absolute mayhem surrounding him, he would dollars to doughnuts that Thane’s story would begin like all WTF stories did: What had happened was.