1.

Higgins hears the deer approaching. A buck – five-pointer at least. He spent enough time canvassing the Allegheny’s to know the difference between the dainty sound of a doe and the lumbering sound a buck. But he can’t do anything about it, except hope the deer continues on into the shallow woods.

Higgins clears his throat to whisper into the headset, but Whitney’s voice crackles through his ear-piece before he has the chance.

We see him, Whitney says. (more…)

Josiah smelled the stinker as he was building a house of cards to stave off boredom.  He froze, considering his options. Papaw always told him, ‘Measure twice, cut once. You can’t put four more inches back on the board if it’s too short.’  The black-out curtains on the windows of their hidey-hole were down (he had checked them earlier, something he did obsessively). With the curtains down at this time of night, the second floor section of the old factory they called home would be literally pitch black. He didn’t know how much stinkers depended on sight, but he’d take any scrap of an advantage he could get. (more…)

“Alright,” you think. “That should be enough.”

You have been banging on the air conditioning unit on top of the rooftop of the store for some twenty minutes now. Although you look at your now-dented aluminum bat with some regret, you remind yourself that if this works it will be well worth it. (more…)

A town at last! thought Cory as he looked down the hill at the buildings. The last few days wandering around the countryside had been peaceful but unproductive. Amongst the trees and fields there were no supermarkets or shops to loot, and he was down to his last tin of food. He got it out of his rucksack; there was no label on its silvery surface, it could be anything. Vegetables, fruit, dog meat; he’d eaten them all in the past. He was tempted to open it but decided not to; for all he knew the town might have been stripped of everything long ago. He noticed a few thin trails of smoke coming from the town, drifting into the sunlit sky. Cory lifted his binoculars; perhaps the town wasn’t dead? He’d come across a few settlements in the years following the day of rising; none had lasted long. The zombies overwhelmed some and everyone fled in a panic, but equally as often human folly was responsible for the downfall. Petty jealousies, greed, stupidity; all had caused organised groups of survivors to collapse into anarchy. Sadly for Cory, the few settlements that had persevered didn’t welcome outsiders. That’s probably the secret of their success. (more…)

“Hello, my name is Billy, and I am alive,” I say, as I do every week at these stupid-ass meetings.

“Hi, Billy,” the soft, sad voices of the eight other victims on stage with me echo through the mostly empty auditorium.  When the defeated speak in unison, the sound has no power to uplift.  In fact, it’s almost like a moan from my past.  I shiver as the soft breeze of a lost memory drifts just out of reach. (more…)

Thursday
April 20, 2003
5:23 PM

Two hours ago I killed my husband. Tom Everett Manning. He was 36 years old, a teacher at Mission High School. He had a masters in US history, and was under contract by a publisher to write a Civil War novel. Historical fiction was what it was. He was writing a romanticized account of the life of General Chamberlain. (more…)

“Why is it that the women who are so fuckable are always so fuckin’ insane?

“This last one was a real nutter.  I met her at a bar at the hotel where I was workin’ on assignment.  The place was full ‘cause of  the convention, and she walked in with the tightest little…well, I know I sure as hell wasn’t the only one lookin’.  (more…)

Exposure. That was what they called it in Mother Constance’s Kingdom of God. God ruled and Mother Constance was his Primate, Holy Reverend Mother to her people and a shepherdess to her flock. Wolves in sheep’s clothing were to be exposed and put out of the fold. Exile by any other name in the Zombie-Apocalypse was just as cold.

It was murder. (more…)

In September Baelynn was still with us…although that always seemed to be a relative term given the circumstances of the situation. When I would make my visits to her in the hospital she wouldn’t know who I was. There were several times where she just didn’t respond to my visits at all. It’s a double edged sword in that when I would visit her I would feel depressed and when I wasn’t visiting all I could feel was a great wave of melancholy and overwhelming guilt come over me. High fevers, rapid aging of the skin and tooth decay and a plethora of other symptoms didn’t keep the doctors at ease, but it didn’t stop them from collecting their money and going on with their day-to-day activities either. They still gave their fake smiles and counted down until they could get their next fix on some cigarettes and coffee. I hated the doctors, but at this stage in the game they were my greatest allies. I wasn’t the only one facing these problems. Several other people that I worked with at the warehouse had family members dealing with the same illness. No one could really make any sense of it. My boss, Mustafa Alford, and I shared the same plight, though both his mother and son had fallen ill, so I’d say that his situation was slightly worse. (more…)

Sequel to EVERYBODY BUT LAZARUS – LIVING DEAD GIRL

Dr. Rob Klein looked through the glass at the girl in the hospital bed on the other side. A patch of gauze the size of his palm was taped across her right eye and her limbs were strapped to the bedframe. An oxygen mask across her face obscured her expression, but her one heavy-lidded eye stared straight back at him.

“How is she?” (more…)

The old man was dead.

The dog lay beside the old man on the truck’s threadbare bench seat. The shiny thing lay in the man’s lap, still clutched in his hand. The dog had seen the shiny thing only once before. He knew it made a loud noise and scared away strange people, but he didn’t know it would hurt people. He didn’t know it could make them dead. (more…)