Alan was deeply apologetic as he transferred Karen from her wheelchair to her easy chair. They normally went out in the afternoons for a stroll into town. It broke up the day and let her get some fresh air. Unfortunately Alan, for all his vigor at age 60, was feeling fatigued and ill enough that they turned back 2 blocks from the house.

“I’m sorry dear heart,” he said again as he propped her on the pillows, “I’ll call the clinic and see if I can’t go in tomorrow to get checked out. Here, let me put the news on for you while I call, is that alright?” (more…)

Dianne had always maintained that the homers held the key to understanding zombie behaviour. Homers, those most unique of zombies that still seemed to retain some semblance of their past lives. Homers like Sweeny Todd, the zombie that frequented the abandoned barbershop, Little Orphan Annie who latched onto any mother figure and walked with them to the end of the block, or Hendrix, the adolescent male zombie with the torn heavy metal tee shirt who hung around the ruined guitar store. But of all the homers that Dianne had studied over the past few months, Romeo was the most fascinating. (more…)

… and in the end, after Tony suggests that he might like to share Sonja’s daughter with the rest of the men working in the camp, she puts a bullet between his eyes and steals his truck. She hopes to put as many miles between Shelly and that hell hole as she can before the truck runs out of gas.

Sure, they follow her. They follow her as far as Crenshaw. But nobody dares go through the city. They are a pile of cowards just like Tony. She sneers her way through the lonesome town just fine. She doesn’t see one of the restless dead. She doesn’t see anyone, for that matter. (more…)

I never had a stomach for shooting. The only time that I had been invited to one of my Grandfather’s famed huntin’ n’ fishin’ weekends I had earned the scorn of my extended male family by firing early and high at a doe, allowing her to scamper into the forest before the more experienced marksmen could take a bead.

That was a lifetime ago, before the apocalypse. God knows where they all were now; dead probably, or worse. And here I was, rifle once again in my hands, the butt nestled to my shoulder and the muzzle pointed at Jenny’s forehead. (more…)

Cherry blossom sores riddling her body, Mary lifted the arm to her mouth and pressed her teeth down, feeling her mouth flood with salty metal. Sweat and blood mingled on her taste buds.

The pack gorged in the aisles of the grocery store. Her nose filled with the rot of lettuce and the decomposing survivors who ended their lives no better than the horde they fed; herded by their hunger. A family of them. (more…)

Orange County, California, USA

[ I look down on the city of LA, from my perch on a balcony in the hills above the city. The sounds of reconstruction and clean up still echo even 10 years after the war. I’m waiting for the owner of this large, walled in compoud. It is definately a post war consturction. Part House, part shooting range, part bunker and storage facility. It’s owner, a very successful business man, gives lessons in shooting, and most importantly, the art of killing the undead. I’m here to get his story of what had happened when the day came, when the dead walked the Earth. ] (more…)

Ask me how I came to be a corn farmer on one acre of land wedged between a mountain and the white sand beach, and I’ll laugh. How, indeed. I guess there isn’t much of a demand for sociologists on Koh Tao. Never has been, so why should that change after the outbreak? Look at the island. This whole thing used to be forest. It’s basically a tree-covered mountain that sticks out of the water.

The only dangers that this island ever knew were coral scrapes, drunken motorcycle accidents, and falling coconuts. Tourism was all Koh Tao had going for it. This is and will forever be a diver’s paradise. That’s why I came. It was supposed to be a two-month course to get my Dive Master certification. After all, Koh Tao is the cheapest place in the world to train. I didn’t know that I’d be here for this long. None of us did, at least in the beginning. (more…)

Wet floors.

Open doors.

…A priest mounting a thrashing, made-up corpse from behind…her makeup smeared.  Her giant hoop earrings spinning in wild circles from her ear lobes.

…A legless, armless trunk of a woman is chained in midair by an “X” of chains.  She sits pelvis high.  A half-crazed traffic cop leers from the corner, not moving yet.

…short whacks of consciousness capitalized by the taste of bile, punctuated by the slam of gunshots into windowless rooms.

…A decomposed nurse’s outfit…no bottom jaw.  No way to say “no”.

Rooms full of money.  A hand covered in gold.  The stink of chugging generators.

Wet bodies hit the floor. (more…)

We’ve blocked off the reference room in the small community library for these interviews. Otto Miller sits across the table from me, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He is an elder in this small Amish community and looks every bit the part. I ask him to state his name and he simply stares at me and then looks down at the digital recorder I’ve placed on the table. He strokes his beard a couple times and then folds his arms again. I can see we’re going to get nowhere with this. (more…)

The yoke about our necks, this crux of all human bondage, is that we remember the suffering of the past.  This awareness of the illusion of time, this surety of our own presence, of our own history…these are the constituents of our misery.  External misfortunes are but the clarion call at the head of our army of woe.  As we have often seen, we humans are capable of misery even in the absence of tragedy.  Lacking true unrest, we will make ourselves un-restful with petty tricks of the mind, picking endlessly at the single dropped thread in the great carpet of life.  We are destined for this, made for it.  Apocalypse aside, we have always gloried in the gloom of our own bruised dreams.  The only difference now is that there are far fewer of us to do the suffering. (more…)

In the wintertime, when the infected were few and slow, we would walk outside among them, employing clubs and axes at our pleasure. Watching the kids from the safe house joining in, I could imagine this becoming a Christmas tradition in a few years like caroling or standing in line outside the mall at daybreak on December 26th to take advantage of great sales with newly minted gift cards. Crack. Snap. Rip. It was like the sound of church or jingle bells. Our Christmas presents? Laughter. Exercise. Fresh air. (more…)