Sunrise.

Lou Raines, Gunnery Sergeant, USMC (retired),  scanned the crimson landscape below him through his binoculars from his vantage point on a high peak overlooking the eastern Ohio countryside.

Thick, white mist still clung in the gentle valleys. It enshrouded the small towns in a thick blanket, with only the tops of similar peaks to the one he was currently standing on visible through the otherwise clear morning air. (more…)

Miriam’s Journal

They flock- no, they don’t flock, that would signify some sort of protective group instinct – they gather, they congregate, they brood. They stand crushed by their rearmost fellows against the reinforced ornamental gates and stare silently into the grounds of the Light Station. Whether their eyesight allows them to see as far as the Lighthouse or not, I just don’t know, but their very existence gives me the heebie jeebies. Their distant faces are absorbed in contemplating me. It’s like I’m their magnetic north. I’m a nervous wreck. They never leave. They never wander off. They just stand there quietly, almost politely; patiently. (more…)

Growing up, I remember thinking the worst thing in the world would be to be alone.  To have no human contact.  Now it seems that the only way I can survive is by cutting out all the human weaknesses I once feared; pain, sadness, fear, and love.

Apocalypse Z is what they called it, before they got the plugs pulled.  They: the government, the media, the people deemed “intelligent” enough to inform the rest of the population about what the hell was actually going on. But once the panic really hit, the first thing to go was the media. So the media died, and people freaked out.  The fact that I’m still alive today has less to do with my hunting skills than it does with my location.  Normally a downtown urban area would be a feeding ground for the Zs, but the only access to the apartment is through a gated elevator with a heavy locking fence.  I keep it shut and locked at all times. When we bought this place we were gonna live like real artists.  A loft, no walls, no blinds, no rules.  Let the world around us be our muse.  Us: Max and me. (more…)

“Over sixty years after the Romero Revolution, and some of you still want to split hairs about the definition of life?  We’re way past that, ladies and gentlemen.”  Roscoe was thankful for the microphone on the podium in front of him.  He was plenty pissed off, full of that righteous anger that had gotten him elected in the first place, but he knew that, at his age, if he started yelling, his vocal cords would just shred, tear loose, and slide down his throat.

He paused before speaking again, his eyes sweeping the room.  Unbidden, an image of the shop down in his basement came to mind.  He quickly cast it away, steeling himself against the loss of focus.  The speech was going very well.  He could tell; he could feel it.  He had them.  “I think some of you might even want to go outside and wave those signs and shamble back and forth like idiots.  I’ll tell you what: you’ll never see the great senator James P. Roscoe holding one of those ‘Humans Are People Too’ signs.  That’s just ridiculous.  Humans are food.  And except for that rare, viable two percent that have the potential to become people, that’s all they’ll ever be.” (more…)

Odan stood motionless in the heat as a gentle dust cloud whisked around him. The sun glared from a sky that was, as always, cloudless, but never empty. He studied the large black ships hovering in the air, sanctuaries for the privileged. Everyone else remained down on Earth, trapped in a nightmare as unrelenting as the sun.

His wife, Jesmin, crouched on the concrete yard, gnawing a synthetic chew bone. Saliva glistened off the toy which squeaked each time she bit into the plastic. Her fingers tore at the plaything, and when that didn’t work she clutched it between her teeth and swiped her head from side to side. (more…)

For me, the world ended in the men’s toilet at the Hamburger Palace. But right before that, I met a beautiful girl named Keisha.

Keisha looked like ValkYra of the Damned, the main character of my graphic novel. It’s like this: a guy gets abducted by aliens in 1947. He finally escapes and in the process of coming through a black hole into our dimension, he accidentally transports the prion element that has kept him young for all these years. But in this dimension, the prion causes everyone he touches to become a zombie. Only one person is immune, ValkYra. She used to be a Sunday school teacher but now she’s a zombie killer. (more…)

Ray Wilkins finally became a human wreck within weeks of the world ending.

“My Raymond is going to end up in the gutter if he doesn’t pull his socks up.” His mother once prophetically stated, never dreaming of the circumstances in which her words would come true. At the time of her pronouncement the rest of Ray’s large family sat round the dinner table and nodded their heads respectfully in agreement. (more…)

The chords struck went out in a sonorous wave. Matt Stokes’ fingers bled, making the coarse strings slick like entrails. With so many of his audience fondling their exposed intestines, he could easily make the connection between the ribbed Markley’s and the twenty-eight feet of digestive tubing. (more…)

Gunner and I ran like hell through the dark streets. We could still hear the screams. Air tore in and out of my stubborn lungs, but not fast enough to keep my sides from throbbing. That didn’t stop me. We ran until the road forked, then slowed to a walk. Gunner—at least that’s how he introduced himself, after I bought him a beer—thumbed toward a branch of the fork. I assumed his house was that way. He didn’t speak—too busy sucking down air, chest heaving. When he leaned back, I saw that blood had speckled one half of his body, from his face down to his waist. Screams came sporadically, now. One final one, cut off abruptly. Then silence. “Holy shit,” Gunner said, the blood on his face looking like chicken pox. “Holy fucking shit.” (more…)

The flowers looked hungry.  The blossoms turned their stem-necks towards the family as they walked by.  Filaments rippled and gnashed together like teeth as ovules vibrated with pangs of starvation.

A red grevillea reached toward Brie.  Straining at its roots, tiny red petals, barbed at the end, reached out for flesh.  Grandma brought down her machete chopping the head off the flower.  It fell to the ground with a tiny squeal and rolled down an embankment into a swarming mass of tangled weeds. (more…)

The four figures sat in their large plush leather chairs watching the old, bulky television on the far side of the large room. A fire burned in the fireplace off to one side, the flames casting the only other illumination in the room. The walls were lined with pictures of famous people, all now long dead. Einstein, Mozart and Hitler to name a few. Trophies covered the entire mantle piece and filled glass cabinets, ranging from sword fighting to horse riding to `slimmer of the year`. All of them were for first place. Cigar smoke drifted slowly around the ceiling.

Each of the seated figures was as different to the others as they could be. The first figure was huge, and not due to fat but pure muscle. Every inch of him was a bulging mass of rippling muscle with think veins like worms crawling across his exposed skin. His neck was easily the size of a normal man’s waist. He wore tight red vest top and denim shorts, with a red baseball cap sat backwards on his head. A large cigar, twice the size of a mans finger, was gripped between his teeth. (more…)