He walked through the door to Joe’s Beverly Bar and Grill just as the delicate morning mist began to dissipate and the waking sun sent curling rays of dust to sift and shift in the gloom of the empty bar. Without breaking his stride Daniel Murphy shrugged off his gray overcoat and hat, set them on the coat rack beside the door, shifted his pistol to his hip, and moved towards the long oak counter.

“Morning, Joe. How’s business?” (more…)

“This is the last one.”

Matt Baker glanced up from taking the safety off his gun to the one-level ranch house his partner was pointing at. A large picture window was shattered in the front–glass jutted up from the sill like broken teeth. Blood stained the driveway in streaks and splatters that trailed onto the immaculate lawn. A single red hand print was smeared across the aluminum mailbox, which now hung at a sad, abused slant. (more…)

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…)

Zombie killers,

A hearty (and overdue) congratulations to site contributor Bret Hammond, whose story RURAL DEAD was recently republished in the anthology The Living Dead 2, alongside such zombie fiction legends as Robert Kirkman, David Wellington, and Max Brooks. See the book site for more details.

More good news: in the spirit of repentance your humble editors will be posting a minimum of one new story per day for the next 7 days. So be sure to check back often – each day by noon (CST) a new tale will appear for your instruction and enjoyment.

Yours in victory,

-ed.

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…)