Joseph Duncan's Blog

Retiring The Redux

Hey, gang! I hope you enjoyed the serial novel I presented here on my blog. I know I had a lot of fun writing it. I am currently editing Cattle for publication for those of you who'd rather just read it on your kindle or iPad or whatever device you use. (I might even do a paperback version!) I also wanted to take a moment and let you all know what I am planning on doing-- what I have, in fact, already begun to do.

Basically, I have decided to retire the Redux.

I have decided, after much internal debate, and after consulting my Facebook friends, to retire my pseudonym Rod Redux and rerelease my books under my real name JOSEPH DUNCAN.

I adopted Rod Redux as a pen name for a couple of different reasons. One, I was insecure about my writing skills and wanted to insulate myself from the negative reviews I was certain I was going to receive. And two, I have a demented sense of humor (as you probably know) and thought Rod Redux was a hilarious, porny-sounding name. I figured people would remember an author name as far out as Rod Redux.

It made me laugh, anyway.

Well, I'm not so insecure anymore, and a small percentage of people seem to have a real problem with my pen name. I've even gotten a few bad reviews based almost solely on their dislike of my pen name, which I find really strange, but whatever.

Anyway, for the next few weeks I am going to be updating my book files on amazon's servers so that they display my real name, and I guess I'll be designing all new paperback versions of them, too. I'm sure this is going to confuse some people, but I am hoping it will help me to reach more readers and get a little more respect in the industry. Who knows? Maybe no one will even notice. I'm just tired of this Rod guy getting all the credit for my hard work!

Is that crazy?

Probably.

Thanks, everyone. See ya around!

Joseph Duncan

(aka Rod Redux)

Cattle: Chapters 31-35 (THE END)

31. Herd

There were dozens of them, just in the one narrow alley, and what looked like thousands at the head and foot of it. The lightning revealed the ragged revenants in strobe light flashes. Men, women, children, their clothes hanging in frayed tatters, or naked, their bodies shriveled and skeletal. Ian had dashed right into the midst of the creatures, and was pivoting around to retreat, eyes wide, dreadlocks swinging, even as the lightning passed and darkness came sliding back down like a shutter.“Get back!” he yelled. In a final blip of lightning, Brent saw the heads of several of the chompers twist in the young man’s direction. Milky white eyes locked onto the source of the cry. Wrinkled lips split back from sharp broken teeth. Roo screamed, and Brent clamped his hand over her mouth too late. He backpedalled, pulling her with him as she screamed against his palm.“Back inside!” Muriel yelled.Lightning flashed again and Brent saw Ian struggling in the hands of several zombies. They had grabbed ahold of him, were inclining their heads to bite, jaws gaping.“Get off me!” he snarled, twisting in their grips, and then he was free, and he went stumbling into the kid and his girl, who stood frozen in shock at the foot of the ramp. Ian and the girl went down in a tangle of limbs.Zombies howl when they’ve spotted prey, and that’s what they did now. The ones nearest to their group began to howl first, but the cry spread quickly through the herd. Within moments, their combined yowls had become a choral hum. It was deafening. The very air seemed to shiver with it.Lightning flashed again and again. Rain slashed the air like silver razors. Brent passed backwards through the warehouse door, Roo in tow, as Ian clambered to his feet and leapt clear of Amy. The kid was bending to his girlfriend, reaching out for her flailing hand.Before he could grab her hand and pull her up, zombies seized her ankles and jerked her away from him.“Amy!” he yelled. “No!”Amy screamed as she was bore into their arms. She reached out to him, her hand a pale starfish, as the zombies encircled her, and then she was enveloped in their dark, writhing mass. With a wet tearing sound, her cries fell silent.A zombie went tottering toward the kid, mouth agape, arms out straight like Frankenstein’s monster. With a furious “Hiyah!” the kid jumped into the air and kicked the creature in the head. Amazingly, the zombie’s head snapped off its neck and went flying into the crowd.Ian stumbled through the door past Brent and Roo, arms and legs pinwheeling. He crashed into a pallet of boxes and crumpled to the floor, panting.“Max!” Brent yelled.The kid kicked another zombie down, then turned and pelted up the ramp, head down, arms and legs pumping. As Brent shoved the door shut, he could see the zombie horde converging on the supermarket.“This door isn’t going to hold,” he said, throwing the deadlock.“We’re dead!” Ian sobbed in the dark. “Oh, daddy, we’re going to die!”“No, we’re not!” Muriel said scoldingly. “We can climb the shelves and hide in the rafters.”Brent looked up, but it was too dark to see.The door shuddered as the first of the zombies crashed into it. The first blow nearly took it off its hinges. Roo screamed again. “Max, have you still got those matches?” Brent called.“Yeah,” Max said. Light flared, revealing his teary face. He held the match up, wiping his cheeks with his free hand.“See!” Muriel said, pointing toward the ceiling. “There’s a partial floor up there. We can climb up there and hide. The zombies won’t climb up after us. I’ve never seen one of them climb, anyway.”The door shuddered again and again as more zombies battered against it.Brent nodded. “Here! Everyone start climbing!” He pushed Roo toward one of the storage units. Hands trembling, Roo seized ahold of one of the steel shelves and pulled herself up. She wasn’t far enough along in her pregnancy for it to interfere with her movements, and she was halfway to the rafters in just a few moments. Brent pushed Muriel ahead of him. She kissed him on the cheek before she started up. An older woman, she progressed a little slower than Roo. Brent put his hands on her plump behind and pushed. Ian was climbing one of the other shelves. The kid stood behind Brent, holding up his match.The match burned down to his finger, and he dropped it with a hiss.“I can’t see!” Roo shrilled.“Hang on!”Another match flared.“Hurry!” Brent called.Roo climbed onto the very top shelf, then hopped to the raised deck. She peered over the side at them as Brent started up, her eyes wide and glistening. Muriel got to the top, and Roo reached out and helped her hop the divide between the shelf and the partial floor.The kid started up behind Brent, trying to hold the match as he climbed. The match went out and he cursed. Brent froze, waiting for him to light another. He heard the kid curse again, and the soft sound of the matchbox falling to the ground.“I dropped it!” the kid cried.In the darkness, the door of the storeroom exploded open. It crashed to the ground, admitting the zombie horde.“Just climb!” Brent yelled, feeling his way up in the dark.He got to the top shelf and crouched there for a moment, heart racing in his chest. In the dark below, the room began to fill up with zombies. He could hear them crashing through the stockroom in the dark, falling over boxes, smashing into the walls. The shelf he was on shuddered as they stumbled into the base of it.Panting, the kid pulled himself up and kneeled beside him. “We can’t jump across in the dark,” he gasped into Brent’s ear. “We can’t see!”Then, dimly from the supermarket, a chorus of screams. Some of the deadheads had stumbled upon the occupied section of the building. The zombie howls increased in volume. The dark below seemed to ripple and heave as the zombie horde stampeded through the storeroom.Lightning flickered in the windows. For a second he could see them below: wall-to-wall zombies, racing now through the plastic partition and into the supermarket beyond.We’ve killed them all, Brent thought, but the horror of it was too great. He instantly blocked it from his mind.They heard gunfire, both inside the building and outside of it.A floodlight went on in the yard, and faint, indirect light spilled into the loading bay. Before he lost that wan illumination, Brent leapt across the gap to the raised storage platform. The kid followed a moment later. Muriel and Roo huddled over them, stroking and kissing them as they crouched there and trembled.“It’s too far!” Ian called from the top of his shelf. He was standing upright, but the gap between his shelf and the platform was a good eight feet.Brent studied the rafters, trying to figure out a safe passage for his friend to cross. Ian could join them if he was brave enough to shuffle across the beams.Before he could find a path, however, several zombies spotted the lanky young man standing atop the shelf. They seized the steel shelving unit and began to yank on it. With a sharp report, its bolts broke free of the cinderblock wall. The shelf toppled forward into the crowd. Ian wailed as he fell backward into the zombie horde. They converged on him, fingers curled into claws, teeth gnashing. Brent closed his eyes a moment before they tore him limb from limb.

32. Aftermath

The morning of their third day in the rafters, Brent woke and discovered that the stockroom below was clear of zombies. He sat up and tried to summon some spit in his dry and sandpapery mouth. In the silent supermarket, the breathing of his companions seemed overly loud—to Brent, they sounded like The Three Stooges from the old black-and-white comedy shorts-- but it was a good sound, a reassuring sound. Muriel had slept on his left, Roo on his right between Brent and the kid. Muriel was snoring softly. The kid was on his side, one arm draped across Roo’s waist.Three days… It had taken the zombie herd three days to pass through the town of Manfried. For three days, the quartet of survivors had huddled in the rafters of the building, with no food and no water to drink and nothing to keep them warm but their own body heat. It was the longest three days of his life, the miserable tedium relieved only once, when the kid attempted to amuse them by hanging his rear end over the side of the platform and crapping on the heads of the zombies below.The screams of the dying had faded shortly after the zombie horde invaded the building that first night, but the sounds of destruction had continued on until dawn. By the end of the second day, the stream of zombies passing through the building had thinned, but there were still too many for them to chance climbing down and making a run for the truck.Brent sat and watched the doors for over an hour, but saw no zombie stragglers. Not a single one. Perhaps they could climb down today. They had to come down today. They were dying of dehydration.Sadly, Brent thought his need for a cigarette was almost as maddening as his thirst for water. He had gotten terribly addicted during his captivity. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d die for a cigarette right then, but it was a close call.Muriel woke next, and sat watching the doors with him for a while. She sat close to him for warmth, and he put his arm around her shoulder, thinking vaguely that he liked the way she smelled. Even unwashed, she had an appealing odor.“I think we should climb down,” Muriel said finally.“I agree,” Brent replied.“Let’s do it before the young ones wake up,” she suggested. “We’ll scout the area. Bring them back something to drink.”“Okay,” Brent said.He stood, and for a second he had to hold onto a beam as his head swam dizzily, the world around him fading in and out.“You okay?” Muriel asked.“Yeah. Just give me a second.” Brent weathered the dizzy spell, blinked his eyes rapidly. When it had passed, he held his hand out to Muriel. “Careful standing up,” he said.“Whoo,” Muriel breathed when she stood. She smiled at him, eyebrows arched. “I used to have to smoke some weed to get a feeling like that.”Brent chuckled.They stepped carefully over Roo and the kid, made their way to the edge of the platform. Now that it was light out, the gap between the shelf and the partial floor looked trifling. Funny how wide it had seemed the night they’d tried to escape! In the dark, with zombies rampaging beneath them, that little gap had looked like a bottomless chasm. Brent stepped across, waited for Muriel, and then they climbed to the floor below.The back door of the loading bay lay flat on the concrete floor. Brilliant sunshine angled through the open doorway. It was warmer out today than it had been previously. The storm had passed, and the sky was blue and clear. Easter lilies had bloomed at the edge of the lawn directly across the alley from the supermarket. In the sunshine, each of the bright little yellow blooms was surrounded by a bright little yellow nimbus of light.Muriel a step behind him, Brent crept to the open doorway and stuck his head outside. He looked up and down the alley.“No zombies,” he said.“Is the truck still there?” Muriel asked.Brent looked back to the east. There on the corner at the end of the alley was a large blue Ford.“Yep,” Brent said. He withdrew his head.Muriel looked at him anxiously. “Do… do you want to go up front?”Brent considered.“There might be survivors,” Muriel said.“Might be zombies, too,” Brent replied.She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with her eyebrows raised.“All right,” he relented.They crossed the loading bay. The plastic strips that separated the loading bay from the interior corridor had been torn down. The plastic blinds lay sprawled throughout the hallway, covered in muddy footprints. Brent led the way, Muriel close behind him. The swinging doors were still intact.“Be careful,” she said.Brent leant his ear to the doors. Pushed through.“Good Lord!” Brent whispered.The interior of the supermarket had been destroyed, looked like the wreckage left over from a tornado or some other natural disaster. The main doors were torn off their hinges. The big display windows were smashed out. (The slivers of glass jutting from the frames made them look like gaping mouths with sharp teeth.) All the barricades the zombie crews had erected the morning the herd arrived had been torn asunder. The partitions were knocked over and lay in untidy piles of lumber and paneling. Tattered pieces of clothes and bedding drifted in the breeze. Brent expected to see bodies, lots of mangled bodies, but there were no bodies. There was dried blood everywhere-- on the walls, on the floor-- but not a single corpse. Not even a gnawed on bone.Muriel followed him onto the sales floor, staring around in amazement.“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s all gone!”“Oh… my… God!” a croaking voice exclaimed.Brent and Muriel started as a deadhead stepped from the manager’s office. It was the heavyset female zombie with the flat, jowly face. She aimed a pistol at them, squinting one eye. “How did you survive?” she demanded.Brent put his hands up. A moment later, Muriel overcame her surprise enough to do the same.“Look what I found,” the female zombie said, grinning toward someone in the office behind her. “Breakfast!”Brent opened his mouth to speak, and the woman’s head exploded. Blood, brains and bone fragments erupted from the left side of her temple. She dropped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.Harold stepped out of the office, brandishing his own pistol. He grinned at Brent as he holstered the weapon. “What a cunt, right?” he said.“Harold!” Brent exclaimed. He started to embrace his friend, but Harold flashed his palms, warning him off. “Not too close!” he said. “I’m having trouble controlling myself… lot of blood in here… the smell, you know...”Brent stopped. “I’m glad you made it,” he said.“You, too, kiddo,” Harold responded. “I saw the truck was still in the alley. I figured you and your friends got ate.”“We climbed into the rafters,” Brent explained.“I hid in your old bunkroom. Pulled some mattresses over me. Me and ugly over here. We just crawled out this morning.”“Did anyone else survive?” Brent asked.“Several,” Harold said. “You gotta get out of here now, kiddo. They’re roaming around town, rounding up anyone who got loose during the attack. They could be back any minute.”“Well, come on then,” Brent said with a wave, turning toward the storeroom. “Let’s shit and git!”“No,” Harold said.“What? What do you mean? Come on, man! Let’s go!”“I can’t go with you,” Harold said, and he gave Brent a funny smile. It was one of those smiles that were joyful and sad at the same time. The kind of smile you gave someone when they were going away for good, but you knew they were going to be happy.“What are you talking about? Why can’t you go with us?” Brent asked.“They’re not going to let me into the Free Zone. I’m not one of you anymore,” Harold said. “I don’t think I really thought about it until this morning. Until I came out here and… you know… all the blood… I was just trying to get us out of here. I never stopped to think…” “Harold!”“I can’t even trust myself to be around you,” Harold said. “It’s taking all I got not to run at you right now.”“Harold…”“You know what you smell like to me right now, kiddo? A big porterhouse steak with all the trimmings. Ain’t that a bitch? All I want to do right now is tear you open and eat your guts!”Brent’s shoulders fell. “So this is goodbye? You want me to leave you behind?”“No,” Harold said. He pulled out his pistol and held it toward Brent, grip first. “I want you to put me out of my misery.”Muriel gasped, and Brent’s entire body rocked back, as if Harold had taken a swipe at him. “Harold, I can’t do that!” he gasped.“You have to,” Harold said. “I can’t do it myself, kiddo. You know that. I’m Catholic. I’ll go to hell.”“Harold--!”“I don’t want to be this way!” Harold said urgently. “It hurts, Brent! It hurts all the time! They give us drugs, but the drugs only dim the pain. They don’t make it go away. It hurts so bad I can’t think straight, and all I want to do is hurt someone. Hurt them and kill them and eat them. It’s worse than being dead. It’s a living hell.”“Harold…”“Please!” Harold begged. “I’m already dead anyway. My heart don’t beat. My dick don’t work. What good is a life like this? I’m already dead, kiddo. I died that day in the woods.”Brent felt tears running down his cheeks, but he didn’t move to wipe them away. He let his friend see them. He wanted Harold to have them.“Please?” Harold said, one last time. “I’d do the same for you…?”“Okay,” Brent said. He stepped forward, hand out.Harold placed the gun in Brent’s palm. He got down on his knees and clasped his hands, said a quick prayer. “See you when you get here,” he said.“You, too,” Brent said, pressing the barrel to his friend’s forehead.

33. Ford

The report of the pistol echoed and died away. Harold, blood dribbling from the hole in his forehead, toppled onto his side. Brent looked at the gun in his hand. He wanted to throw it down, never wanted to touch a gun again, but they might need it later. Better hang onto it.“Brent?” Muriel said behind him.“He was my best friend,” Brent said, his voice toneless.“I know, honey, but we need to go.”Muriel had turned her head away when Brent put the barrel of the pistol to Harold’s forehead, but now she looked. She was pale, her lips a thin, downwardly bowed line. She tugged on Brent’s arm.“Brent?”As if to underscore her statement, the distant hum of a car engine drifted through the gaping display windows. It seemed to be coming from the west. Whoever the driver was, he was putting the pedal to the metal.“Brent!” Muriel said again, speaking, and tugging on his arm, much more emphatically.Brent nodded. “Okay,” he said. He turned and followed her.The gunfire had awakened Roo and Max. They peeked down from the elevated platform like a couple of lion cubs.“Is it safe?” Roo said.“Who’s doing all the shootin’?” the kid asked. He saw the pistol in Brent’s hand then and said, “Hey! Where’d ya get that gun?”“The herd has passed,” Muriel called up to them. “It’s safe to come down now.”“And hurry!” Brent added. “We’ve got to get out of here!”“Hurry? Why?” Roo asked, hopping across the gap to the top of the shelves.“Some of the deadheads survived, too,” Brent said as she climbed down. “They’re out looking for escapees right now. If they come back and find us here…”Roo climbed down a lot faster. Max slid over the side of the platform, hanging by his fingers for a moment, then dropped. Everyone cried out, thinking his ankles were going to shatter when he hit the concrete, but he landed in a crouch and rose up with a proud grin. “What?” he said, scowling at their fear-struck expressions.No time to scold him. Probably wouldn’t do any good anyway, Brent thought. “Come on,” he said, and he jogged to the door. He stopped to peek out as everyone filed up behind him, then ran down the ramp and made his way to the blue Ford at the end of the alley.There were only four of them now. They piled into the cab of the truck, Brent behind the wheel, Muriel next to him, the kid beside the passenger window, and Roo plopped down on his lap“Oh, no!” Muriel gasped, staring down at the gearshift lever. She looked at Brent anxiously. “Can you drive a manual?”“Of course, I can,” Brent assured her. “I’m from Tennessee.” He handed Muriel the pistol to hold. She put the safety on carefully, like it might explode at any moment, then held it in her lap.Brent examined the controls of the vehicle, trying to familiarize himself with its workings as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, he was a little disconcerted. It had been years since he’d driven an automobile. It had been so long that sitting behind the wheel of the Ford was like sitting behind the controls of some exotic spacecraft. He felt like he didn’t belong there.Just do it, he encouraged himself. Like riding a bike.He flipped down the visor and caught the key as it fell. Thrust it into the ignition slot. Gave it a twist. The engine caught on the first try, thank God. He had expected the old truck to give him fits, maybe refuse to start at all, send them packing on foot. He depressed the brake and clutch, shifted into first.“Rotter,” Max said, and they twisted around in the seat to look. At the head of the alley, a thoroughly decayed deadhead was shuffling slowly but determinedly in their direction, dragging one leg behind it. It was hardly recognizable as human, its flesh hard and glossy, like the mummified remains of some Egyptian prince. It was sexless, missing an arm, a sad specimen of its kind. “Must be a straggler,” Brent said, dismissing the harmless creature. “It can’t hurt us. It’s going to take half an hour for it to get over here.”“Yes, but if there’s one, there may be more,” Muriel said. “Maybe a lot more.”“We’re going,” Brent said, and he promptly popped the clutch.The Ford died. Muriel looked panicked. Brent turned the key in the ignition—pleaseohpleaseohpleasestartagain!—and started the truck a second time. This time he released the clutch a little gentler.With a lurch, they started forward.Max and Roo cried, “Yaayyy!”“See,” Brent said, as he guided them onto the street. “I got this!”“Why are you stopping at the stop sign?” Muriel asked.“Oh, yeah!” Brent said, blushing, and pulled out onto the main road. “Sorry about that!"
34. America

Their journey to the Free Zone passed mostly without incident.Brent wasn’t familiar with the town of Manfried, but he and Harold had possessed an old road map, an atlas they had pored over countless times as they ran for the Free Zone, and he remembered enough to get them from Manfried to the nearest interstate highway.It was a short jaunt, just a few miles. Nevertheless, it took them nearly fifteen minutes to get there, as the road was buckled and there were clumps of weeds bursting through the pavement like tall green feather dusters. The first mile of road leading from the grocery story was also littered with broken glass and boards and clumps of mattress stuffing from the breeding facility. He had to steer back and forth to avoid the worst of it. “They must have pushed it along ahead of them after moving on from the place,” Brent said, steering carefully around the wreckage.There were bodies, too.Well, pieces of bodies. The pieces were barely recognizable as human, or even as originating from a living creature of any kind. But Brent considered that a blessing, as he did not know how he would react if they should come across an identifiable chunk of Maudelle, or Traci Hewlett, or Bernice Mitchell, or God forbid, one of the little ones, one of the babies the women had been allowed to keep. Brent did not believe he would be able to bear it if he saw one of the little ones… or maybe he would. When life gives you lemons, you don’t always make lemonade, you just get used to the smell of lemons.It’s our fault, Brent thought as he steered around a clump of grass. A ragged sheet had gotten caught up in the weeds and was flapping in the wind. We let them in when we made for the Ford. We let them in the back door, and they tore the place apart.He knew it would do no good to let that guilt tumble over and over again in his head, like rocks in a rock polisher. Nothing shiny was ever going to come of it. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He had always been very good at feeling guilty.At least now it was justified.About a mile from the facility they began to pass a few more zombie stragglers, creatures like the one in the alley who were too worn out or injured to keep up with the herd anymore. The kid wanted Brent to run them over. “Are you crazy?” Brent cried. “That would be like hitting a deer!” Brent steered around the creatures instead, and the kid had to content himself with yelling disparaging comments from the passenger window. The withered deadheads groaned and swiped at the passing vehicle but could do little to impede them.The onramp of the I-25 was on a hill. As Brent prepared to turn onto the ramp and get on the interstate, Roo spotted a great concentration of zombies on the plains to the east. “Look!” she cried, pointing in that direction. Brent hit the breaks and they just stared, amazed by the sheer number of zombies in the valley below. There were thousands. Tens of thousands. They covered the entire area, which must have been at least four or five square miles, before vanishing into a large wooded ridge.“It’s like a murmuration of starlings,” Muriel said quietly.“A what?” the kid asked.“A large flock of birds,” Muriel supplied.“Ah.”“They’re going east, too,” Brent said. “The Free Zone is north of here. I don’t see any tanks herding them along, either. Guess your friend Luke was full of shit.”“Maybe not,” Muriel said. “That could have been resurrects preying on the herd.”“What do you mean?” Brent asked.“Like Indians hunting buffaloes,” Muriel explained. “They ride out to the herd in their cars, stay at the fringe of the mass, shoot from their windows. Later, after the herd has moved on, they would just have to collect the bodies. Be a good way to get some food. Efficient. Relatively safe for the hunters, too. To an outside observer, though, it might look like they were herding them along.”Brent nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds logical. That’s probably what he saw.”They watched the herd for a minute or so, then continued on their way.They did not see any other survivors.By nightfall they were halfway to the Free Zone. In the Before Times, the drive from Manfried to Peoria would have taken four, five hours, tops, but Brent was only able to drive at any respectable speed in fits and starts. Here and there, the roads were in good repair and he could put the hammer down for a bit, but most of the time they had to creep along about thirty miles per hour, threading in and out of abandoned vehicles and gaping potholes, clumps of weeds and fallen limbs. They passed a good number of wandering chompers, but no great herds and no meat patrols. Nearly a decade had passed since the Phage swept across the globe, and since deadheads could not reproduce like living men and women could, the world was becoming bigger and emptier every day.“Someday there’s going to be more people than zombies,” Brent said. “And then the world will be like to used to be.”“I hope not,” Muriel said. “I can do without politics and war.”“And taxes,” Brent added.Muriel laughed. “You know what they say about death and taxes. But hopefully we’ll do better next time.”They stopped at a small roadside motel just before sundown, parking in the back so the Ford wasn’t visible to any passing vehicles. None of them wanted to stop, but Brent didn’t want to drive with the headlights on. “If there are any smart ones nearby,” he explained, “they’ll be able to see our headlights from miles away.”Armed with the pistol he had killed his best friend with, Brent and the kid checked the premises for chompers. Finding nothing but a sun-bleached skeleton lying in the parking lot, they broke into one of the rooms on the second floor. While the women barricaded the window, Brent and Max ranged through the building for supplies. They broke open a soda machine and stocked up on bottled water, got towels and blankets and robes from the linen room, even managed to scrounge up a couple cans of food. Everyone put on robes when they returned to the room with their bounty, laughing at the strangeness of it, all of them wearing the same style white terrycloth robe. They feasted on canned vegetables and bottled water as the light drained from the world, and then they bedded down for the night. The room had two full size beds. Brent and Muriel slept in one bed. Roo and the kid slept in the other. Roo wanted to sleep with Brent and Muriel, but they both said no at the same time-- and hopefully, Brent thought, for the same reason.That night, after the kids had fallen asleep, Muriel rolled over to face Brent and whispered, “I know I’m several years older than you, but I’d like to be your woman, if you’ll have me.”“I’ll have you if you’ll have me,” Brent whispered back.She stroked his beard very lightly with her fingertips and he bent his lips to hers, sliding his hand beneath her top.They continued on the next morning.They came across a wrecked RV a few miles from the motel they had stayed the night in. It was a white and tan Winnebego Vista, lying on its side on the shoulder of the road like a dead horse. It looked like a prop from a fantasy film, saplings growing up through its shattered windows, a toupee of grass speckled with tiny white flowers perched atop it. Brent thought it looked like a Hobbit house. Muriel was the only one who knew what a Hobbit was. The only reason he pulled over was because several large suitcases were scattered across the road beside it.“Be careful,” Muriel called as he and Max slid out of the cab of the truck. As the girls watched the area for danger, Brent and the kid hefted the suitcases onto the tailgate and popped them open.A couple of the suitcases were buggy and useless, but the others were fine, and there were quite a few clothes inside of them, men’s and women’s.Muriel jumped out of the truck when Brent held up two pair of high-heeled shoes, grinning like a triumphant fisherman.“Heels!” she breathed, her eyes alight. She grinned naughtily at him. “Oh, you are going to get it so good tonight!”They all managed to find a few outfits that fit, even the kid, who was kind of short. He just rolled up the legs and sleeves of his outfit and he was good to go. Roo put on a scoop neck white lace top and a very pretty pair of blue silk capri pants.Dressed in black dress pants and a white shirt and tie, Brent turned around in the middle of the road, arms out to his sides. “How do I look?” he asked.Walking a pretend catwalk in a shin-length red dress and high heels, Muriel pushed her hair up and said, “Almost as fine as me, sugar daddy!”They had to flee then as a chomper came running out of the woods at them. It was a big Bubba chomper in bib overalls with a stocky gray body covered in sores, but they got away without injury, and they all agreed that stopping for the RV had been a good idea, even though the zombie had scared them half to death. They say clothes make the man, but the truth is clothes make the human being, and they felt like human beings again with their slightly musty smelling newfound clothes.Shortly before noon, Roo suggested they try the radio. Brent and Muriel looked at one another with a flabbergasted “why didn’t we think of that?” expression. The thought hadn’t occurred to either of them, they had gone so long without the luxury. Muriel immediately turned the radio on, and gaped at Brent when it actually worked. She dialed through the stations until it picked up, faint and crackly with distance, the Free Zone radio station.It was just music for a while, what they used to call easy listening. Roo and the kid watched in dumbfounded amazement as Brent and Muriel sang along to “Right Here Waiting For You” and “Islands in the Stream” and Neil Diamond’s “America”.That last brought tears to Brent’s eyes as he sang, but they were happy tears. “Home! Don't it seem so far away?” he sang, grinning at Muriel as he steered. “Oh, we're traveling light today! In the eye of the storm…!” By the time the song was over, both of them were weeping, and Roo and Max, who had very little memory of a time and place called America, were looking a little misty eyed themselves.The song ended. The dulcet tones of one half of the duo known as the Last Living Deejays purred through the old Ford’s crackling speakers. (“Ronni!” Brent cried at the sound of her voice, remembering all the times he and Harold had squatted in the cold and dark and listened to her on the radio.) “Home,” she said. “Isn’t that a beautiful word? Sometimes I think it’s the most beautiful word in the English language. That song was “America” by legendary performer Neil Diamond. We dedicate it to all you people trying to make it Home right now. Wherever you are, however hopeless your situation may seem, just know that we are still here, and we are waiting for you to come join us. However near, however far, however young, however old, sick, healthy, happy or in despair, it’s time to put on those walking shoes and come Home. Come Home, you brave souls. Come Home.”And they did.
35. Home

Muriel mopped the sweat from Roo’s forehead and replaced it with a kiss. “Come on, honey,” she said, stroking the girl’s cheek with the other hand, “you heard the doctor. Give us one more big push!”Roo’s entire body went rigid, teeth clenched, the muscles in her neck standing out. “I caaaaan’t!” she cried.Despite her denial, she could and she did. She held her breath and balled her hands into fists and pushed.Standing beside the doctor at the foot of the bed, Brent watched as his child spilled moistly from the teenager’s body. It came all at once, after what seemed like years of intense labor. The baby slithered out into the doctor’s waiting hands, all purple and wrinkly and covered in viscous goo, and Brent thought for a moment that he was going to faint. As the doctor wrapped his child in soft white swaddling, and a nurse stepped in to suction the baby’s nostrils and mouth, Brent stepped away and leaned against the counter.“Are you all right, Brent?” Muriel asked, as the world faded in and out on him for a moment.“I… Yeah, I’m fine,” Brent said. His legs felt like they had magically transformed into rubber. Or spaghetti noodles. Whichever was wobblier.“Is it over? Is it out?” Roo panted, and when the doctor said it was, she began to sob exhaustedly. Young as she was, and being her first child, her labor had been long and difficult. She was worn out. They all were. Brent and Muriel had stayed with her the whole time, from the moment her water broke at their apartment, nearly two days ago. They had all piled into the big blue Ford, just as they had when they escaped the town of Manfried, and drove her to the hospital: Brent, Muriel, Roo and Max.Max was here, too, waiting in the hallway. He wasn’t able to stay in the delivery room, not after the blood and shit started flying. He had bowed out with a distinctly queasy expression on his face, apologizing to Roo, who was his girlfriend now, but that was okay, because Roo had Muriel and Brent, and that was more than enough.“Would you like to hold your baby, Roo?” the doctor asked, rising from his stool with the baby in his arms.“Oh, yes! Yes, sir!” Roo exclaimed, smiling radiantly and holding her arms out. “Is it a boy or a girl?”“It’s a boy,” the doctor said, and he laid the newborn on his mother’s chest, the umbilical cord trailing across her belly for the moment. Brent had followed the doctor around the bed, and he leaned over Roo after the doctor stepped aside.The baby boy was pudgy and purple, looked like an beat up old baseball, but Brent thought he was just about the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Waving his fat little arms in front of his face, the little boy opened his mouth and began to squall.Muriel laughed and kissed Roo on the forehead again. “Oh, he’s just beautiful!” she said. “What are you going to name him?”Cradling the baby in her arms, Roo said, “I’m going to name him after my father. My father, and the man who helped us escape from that awful place. His name is Charles Harold Wilson.”“That’s a wonderful name,” Muriel said, and she smiled up at Brent. “Don’t you think so, hon?”“It sure is,” Brent said, shaking his newborn son’s tiny hand. “Welcome to the world, Charles Harold Wilson. It’s not as nice as it used to be, but we’re working real hard to fix it up for you!”

END

Cattle: Chapters 11-15

11. Muriel

He was surprised when he woke up-- mostly because he had awakened. He had believed, as his consciousness swirled away like water down a drain, that he would never wake up again, but he did.He opened his eyes, or tried to—one would only come open to a slit—and realized that his head was resting on a woman’s lap. She was a pretty woman, middle aged, a bit too thin, with long brown hair salted with gray, and very compassionate features. Her hair was tied back behind her head in either a ponytail or a bun, he couldn’t tell for sure, and she was stroking his bangs back from his brow, which felt wonderful. Above and behind her were metal panels strung with barbed wire upon which a light blue plastic tarp fluttered rapidly. It was cold, and there was a sense of swift forward motion, the rocking movement of travelling by automobile. It had been years since he rode in a car.“Easy,” the woman said, and she smiled soothingly. “They beat you pretty badly.”The woman’s body swayed to the right as the truck they were riding in went around a curve in the road.“What’s your name?” the woman asked, after she had righted herself.“Brent,” he said. “Brent what?”“Scarborough. I’m Brent Scarborough.”He started to sit up, and she put her hands on his shoulders to hold him down. “You shouldn’t try to move around too much,” she said. “Not yet. Just rest a few more minutes. Get your bearings.”“I’m okay,” he said, pushing her hands away. He sat up and immediately regretted it. His head pulsed like an infected cyst. He clutched his temples and groaned. The world faded out on him, then swam slowly back, bright scintillating spots dancing in his vision. He concentrated on his breathing, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, and the dizziness withdrew.“Where are we going?” he asked.The middle-aged woman arranged the edges of the blanket that was draped across her shoulders, pulling it closed in front, but not before he saw that she was pregnant. Her breasts were full, her belly round and firm. She was dressed in filthy blue jeans and a slightly tattered denim shirt.“You know where we’re going,” she said, fussing with the blanket, not looking at him.There was a deer carcass in the cage with them, lying in the bed of the truck just a foot or so away. Its fur was matted with congealed blood, its eyes blank, tongue protruding. It had been partially eaten. Its thick neck and muscular chest had been thoroughly chewed. Piled beside the deer were several smaller animals, all dead: cats, rabbits, a collie, a raccoon. The big deadhead he’d killed yesterday was lying among them, body naked and pale, face tucked into the corner of the truck bed like a resolute napper. Its head gaped, a hollow gourd. Someone had had a snack.Brent examined his arms and hands, looking for bite marks.“They didn’t bite me,” he said, not quite able to believe it. “Not even a finger!”“They argued about it,” the woman said, smiling morbidly. “Several of them wanted to, but their boss said no, said they were taking you back alive. The tall redheaded one defended you, too.”“The tall redheaded one?” he repeated, head jerking up.The woman nodded. “I think he knew you.”Harold! But it couldn’t possibly be his friend, could it? Harold was immune to the Phage, like him, like all of the people who had managed to survive so far. Anyone who could catch the Phage had already caught it. That’s what Brent and Harold had believed, but maybe they were wrong. They’d never been bitten, and didn’t care to be bitten to test their theory. He shook his head. It didn’t make sense.“You were very lucky,” the woman continued. “They ate that one’s brains, and some of the deer this morning. I think they were full. Otherwise, they probably would have munched on you a little.”“What’s your name?” he asked the woman. The truck they were riding in jounced over a large pothole, and they both cried out—the woman startled, Brent from the pain in his head. He touched his face carefully. His right eye was hot and puffy. Swollen. That’s why he couldn’t open it. And there was a pop knot on his forehead, near his left temple.“Muriel,” the woman said. “My name is Muriel Jones. I’m the reason you got caught. Sorry about that.”Brent stared at her blankly for a moment, trying to process that statement. “What do you mean you’re the reason I got caught?” he asked.“They were running me down,” she said. “I escaped from the pens a week ago. Headed for the Free Zone. They caught me early this morning. They were taking me back to Manfriend when they saw blood splattered in the front yard of that farmhouse. They pulled over to investigate. About twenty minutes after pulling over, they opened the cage and tossed you in. You and Mr. No Brains over there. A zombie, I take it?”Brent nodded. “Yeah. I killed it yesterday. It tried to get into my hideout.”“Bad luck,” Muriel said.“Yeah,” he nodded. “Bad luck.”Muriel’s hands moved beneath her blanket. She put a cigarette between her lips, ducked her head down and lit it with a plastic lighter. The smoke vanished almost instantly through the gaps in the rattling blue tarp. She smiled at him, the cigarette jittering between her taut lips. “Want one?” she asked. “I found them in the house I was hiding in. They’re kind of stale but…”He was a little outraged she was smoking. Old conditioning from the days before the zombie apocalypse, when smoking was a Bad Thing, especially for pregnant women. Brent wondered if all those health nuts regretted their ascetism at the end. Life sucks and all the rest, only now you sometimes came back. If Brent had known what was going to happen back then, he might have indulged a little more often himself. He used to drink a little, but had never smoked.“Yeah, give me one,” he said.Muriel lit a cigarette and passed it to him. “I saw that look in your eyes,” she said, amused. “I wouldn’t smoke if there was any chance…”“Sorry,” he said. He took a drag of the cigarette and coughed.“I’ve been a breeder for them for five years,” Muriel said. She pushed an errant strand of hair from her face. “In those five years, I’ve had six children. They took them all.”“I’m sorry,” he apologized again.“I don’t know why you’re sorry,” she said. “It’s not your fault. It’s not really their fault, either. They can’t help what the Phage has turned them into. They’re as much a victim of all this as we are.” She cocked her head, looking at him thoughtfully. The corner of her lips quivered, not quite a smile. “If anyone is to blame, it’s God, but I don’t think He really exists. How could He? And if He does… well, all I can say is: what an asshole!”Brent laughed, and then immediately felt ashamed of himself. He had been raised a Southern Baptist. The evangelical denomination was almost as good at instilling guilt in its adherents as Catholicism. Guilt, and a heaping helping of fear. Hell was very real for Baptists, and God a short-tempered curmudgeon. Brent wasn’t too sure God existed either, not anymore, but it was best not to take any chances.“You seem like a nice kid,” Muriel said, smiling at him sadly. “We’ll arrive at Manfried soon, and then they’ll probably kill you. You want to come over here and sit with me before we get there?”He thought about it a moment and then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that would be nice.”Muriel opened her blanket, inviting him in. “I had two boys before the zombie apocalypse,” she said as he shifted over beside her. “One of them would have been about your age if he’d survived.” She lowered the blanket over the two of them and leaned her head against his shoulder, still puffing on her stale cancer stick. “His name was Billy.”Brent moved his hand beneath the blanket, grasped her free hand, held it. Her hand was cold and bony, but it felt good to hold her hand. It was comforting. He hadn’t held someone’s hand since… well, it had been so long he couldn’t remember the last time he’d held someone’s hand. He used to spoon up with Harold on really cold nights, but that wasn’t the same.“I almost made it,” he said.“Where did you start your run?” Muriel asked.“Tennessee.”“That’s a long way,” she said. “You did good.”They were silent for a moment, their bodies swaying together as the truck flew down the crumbling highway.“I don’t want to die,” he said finally, his voice low. He felt ashamed of his weakness.Muriel turned her head on his shoulder a little, exhaling smoke. “I know, baby,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. She put a cold hand on his cheek. “Just try not to think about it.”

12. Manfried

They arrived in Manfried shortly after. Houses and retail buildings flit past the gaps in the tarp, too fast to make out any details, only that they were deserted and dilapidated, walls falling in, roofs collapsing. Every now and then, a zombie would flit past, too, walking down the sidewalk, dressed in winter garb. A few of them raised a hand to wave to the drivers of the truck. Some looked like normal human beings. Others looked like ambulatory skeletons. The only thing the victims of the Phage had in common was that they were dead, and they had an uncontrollable hunger for human flesh.“Where do they live?” Brent asked. “Do they stay in houses like regular people?”“Most of them do,” Muriel said, lighting another smoke. “But just in the homes surrounding the supermarket. There’s not a lot of them. Maybe two, three hundred. They keep us all together in a big grocery store in the center of town. There are stalls inside, and a big fence surrounding it. It’s a tall chain link fence with barbed wire along the top, like you’d see at a prison.”“To keep you in?”“Yes, but also to protect us.”“From what?”“From them.” Stroking his arm, Muriel said, “They breed us like animals. Take the babies and eat them. They kill and eat all the males, too. Anyone too old to breed. Infertile females. They keep a few men to… you know, impregnate the women. Oh, they keep a few children. Just enough, I suppose, to replace the breeders when we get too old to bear young. None of my babies, though. Not that I would want such a thing. It’s better they die before they know what kind of world they’ve been born into. That’s horrible, I know.”“My god,” Brent murmured.“They all do it,” Muriel said. “The Zombie Nations, I mean. Breed us like cattle. We’re not their primary food source, though. There are too many of them and not enough of us. Mostly they eat venison, anything else they can catch, but they can’t, or won’t, subsist on animal flesh alone. They need to feed on us to keep up their strength, to stave off decomposition. Perhaps it’s nutritional. I can’t say for sure. But them seem to relish human flesh more than any other food. Their demeanor is almost… orgasmic when they engage in cannibalism. They barely seem able to restrain themselves from attacking us, even when they’ve fed.”“How smart are they?” Brent asked. “I’ve only seen them from a distance,” he explained when Muriel glanced up at him.“They’re no different from the living,” she said, settling her head back on his shoulder. “Some are smarter than others. It’s really their… emotional capacity that seems to remain impaired. They don’t feel like we feel. They’re smart, but their emotions, their morals, are just as dead as their bodies. Most are like that. There are a few that seem to feel love. Most just seem to feel anger. Malice. Greed. They enjoy being cruel. Our suffering amuses them.”“How did you escape?”“One of them helped me escape. One of our guards. He was one of those deadheads I just mentioned to you. A zombie that could still feel love. He fell in love with me, I guess. He said I reminded him of his wife. His name was Chuck. He smuggled me out of the compound one night.”“What happened to him?”“They killed him,” Muriel said. “They caught up with us once. This was a couple days after he smuggled me out. Chuck held them off while I ran away. They killed him and ate him. I didn’t see it. I only know because they boasted about it.”“I’m sorry.”“You say you’re sorry a lot.”“Sorry,” Brent laughed. Muriel cocked her head to one side, breathing smoke. “The Zombie Nations are organized like the North American Indian tribes. A sort of loose confederation. They keep to themselves mostly, but sometime they trade. They raid one another for food, too. Our tribe got raided last summer, but the Manfried zombies repelled the attack. It’s all very interesting, in an abstract sort of way. I used to be a history teacher, you know. What were you?”“I was a student in college when the Phage struck,” Brent said.“What were you studying?”“Business... Football.”“Girls?”He laughed. “Just one.”“What kind of grades were you getting with her?”“I’d like to say A’s, but probably C’s,” he said, and she snorted.“You were probably getting A’s,” Muriel said. “We don’t like to tell a man how well he’s doing. It gives him a big head.”“That’s funny.” Muriel shrugged. “Girls are funny. We don’t even know what we want until we’re forty. I like you, Brent. If we had more time, I’d send you off with a bang. A literal bang, if you know what I mean.”“You’re spoiling that maternal vibe you’ve got going,” Brent teased her.“Life’s too short to play games. Especially now.” She turned and looked somberly at him, her lips clamped to her cigarette. The truck was slowing, the breaks squeaking. “We’re here, sweetheart. Be brave. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”Brent nodded.

13. Longworth’s

The truck stopped. Brent heard a brief exchange, the voices rough and quick, more like the barks of angry dogs than the speech of human beings. Muriel listened with him, her cigarette trembling. There was a loud rattling sound, obviously the gate of a chain link fence being drawn back, and then the truck eased forward again.I’m going to die now, Brent thought.Rather than being frightened, he felt a sense of dislocation, the same sense of disconnectedness that came over him when he was fighting the zombie’s at the farmhouse. It was a defense mechanism, he knew, his brain’s way of coping with his terror so he could continue to function. In the face of imminent death, the human mind reacted by pretending nothing was real, that reality was an insubstantial illusion, when it was the reverse that was true. The universe was very real. It was the souls of men that were thin and all too fragile.The truck curved around, stopped once more. The engine died with a sharp backfire. Doors creaked open. Someone complained about his sore ass. Someone else laughed. It was like listening to aliens talking. Their voices made Brent’s hackles rise. They were human… but not.Would they converse so casually, would they joke around and laugh, as they devoured him?The blue tarp shook.“Lift it up, don’t drag it,” someone snapped. “The barbed wire will rip it if you try to drag it off.”“Yeah-yeah.”“Look, just climb up there and fold it back.”Sunlight sliced down like a guillotine blade as the edge of the tarp folded back. Brent and Muriel squinted into the light as a deadhead in a red flannel shirt and jeans folded the tarp again and again, peeling it off in sections. He was standing on the back wheel, gripping one of the bars of the cage’s frame as he stripped back the plastic covering. He grinned down at them, his face gray and crenelated, a cigarette jutting from the corner of his withered lips. “We’re ba-aaack!” he sang in a frog-like croak.Muriel looked away, her face expressionless.The zombie jumped down once the tarp had been removed, chortling to himself. Brent moved away from Muriel, shifting up onto his knees to survey his surroundings. They were in the parking lot of a grocery store. The supermarket was a low profile cinderblock construction, not substantially different from any of the thousands of grocery stores spread across the country. Two sets of automatic doors bracketed several tinted show windows beneath a full-length colonnade. LONGWORTH’S was emblazoned across the front of the supermarket in large red plastic and aluminum letters, the kind of letters that would have lit up at night back in the good old days, summoning the hungry to its halls of junk food and frozen TV dinners. The letters were faded and broken now, with bird nests tucked into the gaps. The building was filthy and swayed from neglect. The doors and windows had been reinforced with wire mesh.The parking lot of the supermarket was surrounded by a fifteen foot tall chain link fence with barbed wire running along the top. In the side parking lot were several piles of building materials, half a dozen industrial vehicles, some wooden sheds and a small silver trailer. There were thirty or so deadheads moving about the parking lot, half of whom were armed. The rest were laboring at one project or another—not very enthusiastically, though. Only of few of them seemed interested in the meat wagon’s arrival.“Here, tut thessse on,” a deadhead growled.Brent turned to the zombie who had spoken. It was the same one who’d taken him captive. The lipless ghoul was holding a pair of handcuffs through the wires of the cage, grinning. Of course, he would always look like he was grinning.Brent just stared at the cuffs. He didn’t move.“Do it, honey,” Muriel whispered.He glanced at her doubtfully.“Don’t fight them. It’ll just make it worse,” she said, and then she put out her cigarette.Brent sighed. He reached out and took the handcuffs from the deadhead. He put the bracelets on his wrists and ratcheted them closed. “Hold out your handsss,” the zombie said.Brent extended his arms through the wires of the cage and the zombie tightened the cuffs, then turned to Muriel. “You, too,” he said, holding out a second pair of cuffs.As Muriel fumbled her handcuffs on, Brent looked around for Harold. Muriel had said there was a redheaded zombie in their party, a deadhead who had argued in his defense while Brent was unconscious, who had acted as if he knew him. He didn’t know how Harold could have come back after he was killed, but Brent supposed it was possible. Maybe the Irishman was a carrier or something. The truck he and Muriel were caged in looked like the same red Ford that had caught them exiting the service station several days ago.If Harold was in the group, however, he had departed before the tarp was removed from the cage. Perhaps he had gone inside the supermarket, or the silver travel trailer on the side. He didn’t see any zombies with red hair in the parking lot.The Ford’s tailgate dropped with a bang. One of the zombies unlocked the cage. It pulled the chain from the frame of the door and yanked it open. “Out,” it snapped. The male ghoul had a bony, withered body, eyes and cheeks sunk in, but a shocking mass of fine blond hair, parted down the middle and feathered. Its clothes were fine, too: clean, well made. Vanity must have accompanied its reason when it returned from the dark place the Phage had temporarily imprisoned it.Muriel moved to obey the creature, shifting around in the bed of the truck and then scooting toward the tailgate.“Now, quick, move!” the zombie said impatiently.“Hold your horses, god damn you,” Muriel said, sounding only slightly annoyed.“Now, quick!” the zombie snarled.The door of the silver travel trailer swung open. An enormously fat man limped out onto the wooden deck. He climbed down the steps and headed toward the meat wagon as Muriel slid her legs over the end of the tailgate and prepared to drop down. The fat zombie was dressed in khaki overalls, a long sleeve blue shirt and a brilliant orange work vest. Two smaller men accompanied him. They trailed after him like lamprey after a shark. The zombies surrounding the truck stood a little straighter as he approached, tightening their grips on their weapons.“Muriel!” the fat zombie called in a jocular voice. He favored his left leg as he walked.Muriel hopped down with a grunt, holding her swollen tummy. “Cooley,” she said.“How far did you get this time, dearest?” the deadhead asked.“Not far enough,” Muriel replied.“Out, now, quick, quick!” the feather-haired zombie snarled at Brent.The fat one had drawn within grabbing distance of Muriel, which is exactly what he did. His arm shot out with shocking speed, and squeezing Muriel’s cheeks between his fingers, he shoved her back against the tailgate. Muriel cried out, clutching at his wrist. Brent lunged forward instinctively, but froze as the deadheads trained their weapons on him.“I warned you about trying to escape again!” the fat zombie snarled at her. “As soon as you squeeze out your squealing little piglet, I’m having you hobbled! We’ll see how good you run with your toes chopped off.”Muriel hawked and spat. The fat creature laughed. It released her cheeks and scooped her spittle from its face, licking its fingers with a savorous expression. “You have a few more years of breeding left in you, I figure,” it said, opening its eyes slowly. “After you’re done, I’ll slit your fucking throat myself.”“What about this one, boss?” the vain zombie asked. He nodded toward Brent. “You want us to butcher him now, or you got something else in mind for him?”The fat zombie eyed Brent appraisingly, rubbing its bulbous chin. “I don’t know… not much meat on his bones.”“He is kind of skinny,” the feather-haired zombie agreed.“Did he put up much of a fight?” Cooley asked.The blond zombie shook his head. “He’s been pretty cooperative. He fought us when we busted in on him, but he hasn’t given us any trouble since.”“Get him down. Let’s have a look at him,” Cooley said. “It’s been a while since you guys brought in a runner.”Brent tried to restrain himself as the zombies rushed forward and snatched at him. His instinct was to pull away, to kick at them, punch, scream, fight, but Muriel had told him not to struggle, that it would be easier for him if he did as he was told, so he did his best to control his terror, to curb his instinct to resist them. They yanked him down from the back of the truck, and at the fat one’s instructions, ripped at his clothes, tearing them away from his body. Brent tried to cover himself as they tugged down his pants, but one of them grabbed his wrists and held his arms aloft.The fat zombie, the one Muriel had called Cooley, curled its lips back from its teeth. “Just skin and bones,” it said, “hardly fit to eat. Just look at those ribs.” Addressing Brent directly, it asked, “You like girls, meat?”Brent said, “Huh?”The fat one leered. “Girls! You like girls or boys?”Brent couldn’t quite process what the thing was asking him. His shirt hung in tatters from his shoulders. They had jerked his pants down to his knees, exposing his genitals. He stood there shivering in the frigid winter wind, wrists cuffed together, and tried very hard to puzzle out the meaning in the monster’s words, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. He thought the thing had asked him if he liked girl meat, but he wasn’t a deadhead; he didn’t eat other people.“He’s a dummy, I think,” the vain one laughed.“No, just in shock,” the fat creature said. “He’s too frightened to think.” The obese zombie took a limping step toward Brent, loomed over him, leered down at him like a window peeper. He spoke loudly, as if volume would impress the meaning of his words on Brent, and it actually did, sort of. “Do you like to fuck girls or boys?” he yelled.“Guh-girls,” Brent said, blinking up at the monster.Cooley snickered and grabbed his balls. Brent whimpered as it squeezed his testicles, rolled them around in its cold, slimy hand.“He’s all there,” the fat creature said. “One dick, two balls. That’s all he needs to get the job done.”A couple of the zombies standing nearby laughed at that. Muriel stared off into the sky, her face unreadable. The gusting wind whipped loose strands of hair around her head. They looked like tentacles snapping at the windblown snow.Cooley released him, started away. “Put him in the coop with the rest of the roosters,” it said with a dismissive wave. “We’ll let him peck at a couple of the hens. If he works out, we’ll butcher Vickers. We’ll get more meat out of him. He’s getting old and lazy.”“Yessir,” the zombie with the feathered hair said, watching the fat one limp back to its trailer. “You’re lucky, meat,” he said, and started tugging Brent’s pants back up. “But if I were you, I’d sleep with one eye open tonight.”

14. Roosters

The smell struck him like a slap on the face. As soon as he passed through the door of the supermarket—a door that would have opened automatically back in the good old days of electric lights and high speed internet -- Brent swayed back with a cry of disgust. It was a smell of unwashed human flesh and waste so powerful it seemed it should be visible, a greenish-black cloud of human effluence. The deadhead standing behind him gave him a prod with the barrel of his rifle, and Brent pressed forward, feeling as though he were physically pushing his body into that fog of human suffering. He could feel it settling on his skin, moist and corrupt. He could taste it in his mouth. It almost made him gag.He had entered a sort of vestibule. To his right was a desk, manned by a skeletal creature that looked more dead than alive. Behind the desk was an office with a plate glass window. It had probably been the manager’s office when the building was still an actual supermarket. The walls of this makeshift lobby were shoddily constructed from mismatched building materials: planks and beams and pieces of gypsum and wooden paneling. Through the chinks in the clumsily built walls, Brent could see women moving around in the chamber beyond. They were like ghosts in their thin white garments. Their murmuring voices drifted to him like penitential prayers. From somewhere came the monotonous squall of an unhappy baby. A zombie guard barked at some unseen internee, and a woman responded in an appeasing voice, “I’m trying!”“Ah, home sweet home,” Muriel said. One of her escorts snatched her cigarettes from her breast pocket then, and she yelled, “Hey! Give those back, god damn you!”“Go to your fucking cubicle, meat!” the zombie snarled, raising a fist as if to strike her.“Go ahead, do it,” Muriel said defiantly, raising her face to the blow. “I’ll fall on my stomach. Whatever will you do for Christmas dinner then?”“I said go to your cubicle!” the zombie repeated.She glanced back at Brent. “Don’t tell Vickers you’re going to replace him,” she said. “He’ll kill you if you do.”Brent nodded.She smiled at him sympathetically, and her guards pushed her forward. They passed through a heavy metal door that hung slightly askew. Brent heard a gate rattle open. “They got me!” she announced in a mocking tone. Her escort snarled menacingly at her, but she just laughed. A moment later, he saw her pass by one of the gaps in the wall-- walking to her quarters, he supposed.“And why is this one here?” the zombie at the desk asked Brent’s guards. It had long, stringy hair, like frayed ropes, and liver-colored, crinkled skin. Spectacles perched on its shriveled nose, an incongruent adornment. Its eyes were gray and baleful.“Cooley said to put him in with the roosters,” the ghoul standing directly behind him said. “He’s going to replace Vickers, unless he’s shooting blanks.”“Vickers has been a good breeder,” the desk clerk said, looking at Brent appraisingly. “He is getting a little old, though. What’s your name, meat?”“Brent,” Brent said.“Not anymore,” the desk clerk grinned. “Now you’re number 404.” It passed a fat laundry marker to one of Brent’s guards, then rose and tottered into the manager’s office.“404,” Brent’s escort said, and it scrawled the number on Brent’s chest, just about his left nipple. It had to step close to do it, pushing Brent’s arms up over his head, and the ripe stench of decaying flesh fought the smell of the building’s interior to a stalemate. Brent tried to breathe through his mouth, but that only made it worse. The zombie raised its head and grinned at him, and Brent could see mites swarming in the sockets beneath its bony brow, crawling busily around its filmy eyeballs, trundling over them. He averted his head in disgust.The clerk had returned. It held out a pair of flimsy white boxer shorts. “Put this on, 404,” it said. “Meat don’t wear clothes here.” The boxers looked as if they had been laundered, but there were several brown stains in the material-- at the waistband, down the right leg. Blood stains, most likely.“Hold out your wrists,” the deadhead who had marked him commanded.Brent held out his cuffed wrists.“Just try something stupid,” the zombie said, unlocking the bracelets. “I haven’t had fresh meat in two weeks.”Brent didn’t reply. He didn’t try anything stupid either. He massaged his wrists after the handcuffs had been removed.“Take off your clothes and put the shorts on,” the clerk said, gesturing to him absently. It flipped through some sort of logbook and made an annotation. Its flesh looked like the casing of a Slim Jim.“Age?” it said.“Thirty,” Brent said, shrugging off his tattered shirt. He toed off his boots one at a time, bent and stripped off his socks, then took a deep breath and shoved down his pants and underwear. He stepped out of them, yanked the boxers out of the zombie’s hands and slipped them on.“Have you ever fathered children?” the clerk asked.“No.”It glared at him a moment, then rolled its eyes and wrote in its logbook some more.“Now what?” Brent asked. The clerk seemed to have dismissed him.“Follow me,” his guard answered.Brent followed the zombie through the crooked door. On the other side was a long corridor. It ran nearly the entire length of the supermarket. On one side was the outer wall of the building, bare cinderblock with water stains running down from the ceiling. On the other side was another chain link fence. The panels of the chain link fence were attached to the columns that supported the roof. Armed deadheads were spaced at intervals along the passage. There was one gate just inside the corridor, and two more at the far end. On the other side of the chain link fence was the women’s quarters. Office cubicle panels and pieces of the supermarket’s original shelving units divvied up the space. Women of various ages moved among the maze-like compartments. Most were in their twenties and thirties, though a few were a little older. There were no elderly women, and very few children. They were all dressed in white boxers and flimsy white undershirts. Nearly all of them were in varying states of pregnancy. There were forty, maybe fifty women that he could see. Many of them turned or stood up to look at him, their eyes dulled by captivity and despair. Their living space was only dimly illuminated. What light there was slanted in through a series of skylights in the center of the roof.From somewhere came an electric whirring sound, some kind of industrial space heater maybe. He could hear a rattling engine sound, too, a gas-powered generator perhaps.“Come on,” Brent’s guard growled, and it prodded him forward.Brent walked. Each time he passed one of the guards, the zombie grinned at him and croaked, “Fresh meat!” The women repeated their taunt, a sibilant susurration: “Fresh meat! Fresh meat!” It was an eerie sound, their hopeless whispering; it raised goosebumps on his arms.Halfway down the corridor, he encountered a young black girl with teary eyes. She was standing beside the fence, her skinny fingers curled around several of its diamond-shaped links. “Please, have you seen my dad?” she questioned him rapidly. “They separated us when they brought me here. Have you seen him? He said he’d come back for me!”“Shut up!” Brent’s escort growled. It struck at her fingers with the butt of its rifle.The teenager jerked her hands back with a squeal. A couple of older women scurried forward to embrace the girl. They guided her away as she continued to babble about her father. 398 was written across her forehead in black ink. The hysteria in her voice made Brent’s heart race. He could feel his own terror tugging at its reigns, struggling to break free. It was all he could do to maintain his control, to continue forward without his legs giving out on him, without screaming and trying to escape.What if this is a trick, he thought. What if this is where they take you when they butcher you? The meat department is always at the back of the supermarket, isn’t it? Maybe that’s where they’re taking you, so they can chop you up and run you through the slicer? Where they can process you. Turn you into cutlets and burger. Make sausages out of your guts.Terror came over him so powerfully then he thought that he would piss himself. He felt a hot surge in his groin and had to squeeze down with his PC muscle to hold in his urine.If he was going to die, he didn’t want his last act to be pissing himself like a frightened little puppy. If he was going to die, he wanted to die like a man.I hope I give them diarrhea, he thought.He continued down the passage. The tile floor was chilly under his feet, although the ambient temperature was warm enough. It was certainly warmer inside the supermarket than it was outside.He passed beneath a hanging sign that said PRODUCE. The sign was festooned with cobwebs, like it had been decorated for Halloween. Maybe it had been. If he remembered correctly, the pandemic had begun shortly before Halloween. He was planning on going to a costume party at a friend’s house. He was dressing as Shaggy, Naomi was going as Velma. He had bought a large stuffed Scooby Doo to take to the party with them. Naomi had told him she wanted to do it with their costumes on before they left for the party—a little fantasy roleplaying.“He’s going in with the roosters,” Brent’s escort said to the zombie guarding the two end gates. That zombie nodded and turned to unlock the further of the two gates. He keyed the padlock open, swung the door out.“Inside,” his escort said.Brent passed through the doorway, and they shut and locked the gate behind him. He turned and saw three men sitting around a table playing cards. They all stared back at him like goldfish in an aquarium, eyes wide, mouths hanging open.“Oh, shit,” one of them said.The men occupied what must once have been the deli area of the supermarket. There were stainless steel counters behind them, and an enclosed section with a swinging door and a plate glass window: the meat department, now their dormitory. Brent could see that cubicles had been erected inside the butcher’s station, and there were mattresses on the floor. All three men were dressed just like him, naked but for a pair of plain white boxers. One of the men was tall and heavyset. He wasn’t fat, just big-boned (as a famous cartoon character was inclined to say). He had long brown hair and a beard, both streaked with silver, and one of those hangdog faces that must always look slightly morose, even when he was happy. His entire upper body was embellished with tattoos. Mostly biker-type ink. Naked women. Skulls and snakes. All a little bit fuzzy and saggy. He might once have been an intimidating man, but drooping pecs and a small potbelly had tempered some of that fearsomeness. He was the one who’d said, “Oh, shit.”The second man was handsome and fair. He was about Brent’s age, with shoulder length blond hair and a good physique. His might have been movie star looks back in the old days, once they fixed his teeth. A scar wriggled up from his chin through his left cheek, puckering the flesh along the edges. It lent him a rakish, somewhat piratical air.The third man was a skinny black fellow with a badass set of dreads. He was rail thin and dark as coal, with delicate, almost effeminate features and very long fingers. His eyes and mouth seemed slightly too large for his face. He held his body as if he had a tendency to retreat.For a long moment, neither party spoke.“Don’t let them smell your fear,” Ghost-Harold spoke up unexpectedly in Brent’s mind. The imaginary voice was so real that Brent lurched. He looked instinctively over his right shoulder, where the voice had seemed to issue from. “Men are like dogs. If they smell your fear, you’ll be their bitch from here on out.” That time the voice had sounded as if it had come from his left shoulder.“Got it,” Brent murmured out of the corner of his mouth. He turned to face the trio and saw that they were looking at him in bewilderment.“Who are you talking to, buddy?” the biker asked. The bearded one was numbered 282. The number was on the upper part of his left pec, in an open space between a black widow spider and a pinup model wearing black garters and little else.“No one,” Brent said.“It sure sounded like you were talking to someone.”“Nah,” Brent said. “He’s dead.”The black man looked at the biker, his eyes comically wide. The handsome one leaned forward in his seat, smiling at Brent as if he were waiting for the punch line.“So what’s your name, buddy?” the bearded man asked.“Brent.”“Brent what?”“Scarborough.”“Where you from?”“Tennessee.”“How’d you get here?”“I walked.”“Running for the Free Zone?”Brent nodded.“Me, too. That’s how they caught me. I was trying to gas up my hog at a service station when a meat wagon rolled up on me. I’ve been here five years now.”“What’s your name?” Brent asked.“Vickers,” the biker said. He thumbed the blond. “This is Jamie. And this guy with the cool dreads is Ian.”“I know. Weird name for a brother, right?” Ian said.Brent shrugged. “I had a black friend named Poindexter when I was in college. We called him Dex.”“So why’d they put you back here with us, Brent?” the biker dude asked. He looked at the playing cards in his hand, then laid them on the table face-down.“I don’t know,” Brent said. “Don’t they normally keep all the guys together here?”“No,” Vickers said.“Normally they eat them,” Jamie said with a grin. “We’re the stud service around here. They call us the roosters. We keep the hens laying, if you know what I mean. It’s the sickest fucking thing you could ever imagine, but it keeps the corpse brigade from chewing on us.”Brent feigned confusion. “The fat one just said to take me in the back. I thought they were going to kill me, but they wrote a number on my chest and marched me back here.”“Good, good,” Ghost-Harold said. “Just keep playing dumb.”Jamie stared at him for several seconds, eyes narrowed. “I think he’s lying,” he finally said. “I think they’re planning on retiring one of us. You know how they do things around here, Vick. They always kill the males as soon as they haul them in. They just keep us for breeding.”“Maybe they mean to fatten him up a little,” Vickers said. “Look at the poor bastard. He’s skinny as a rail.”Ian nodded, blinking from Vickers to Brent and back again. “Yeah, that must be it. Look how skinny he is.”“Which one of us is it, guy?” Jamie demanded. “Which one of us is getting the axe?”“I told you I don’t know!” Brent yelled, feigning confusion. “I don’t know anything except… except they killed my best friend!”“Pull your hair out,” Ghost-Harold said.Brent grabbed his hair with both hands and pulled, his face twisted up in anger and frustration. He growled through his clenched teeth. His theatrics was only about five percent acting. His face turned red, and the veins in his temples puffed out. He could hear his heartbeat whooshing in his ears.Ian stepped back, eyeing him nervously. Jamie looked amused. Vickers seemed more concerned than anything. The old biker half-rose from their card table, making a soothing gesture with his hands. “It’s all right, dude. Take it easy. There’s no need to get yourself worked up. We don’t mean to give you the third degree. We’re all buddies here.” He looked at his companions. “Right, guys?”“Sure,” Ian said, nodding his head rapidly. “We’re all bros. You watch my back I’ll watch yours.”“Jamie?” Vickers said.Jamie didn’t respond. He just stared at Brent and grinned.

15. Dinner

The roosters treated Brent with kid gloves after his mad little outburst. They invited him to sit down at their table, supplying him with a couple of plastic milk crates for a seat. Vickers gave him a smoke, lit it for him with a match. The trio continued to ply him with questions, neglecting their card game for the moment, but they didn’t question his internment with them, merely his history, and how he’d gotten apprehended.Brent was open with them about his past and the circumstances of his capture. He just played dumb when they asked him why his life had been spared. The zombies, the roosters explained, always slaughtered their male captives immediately on their return. They hadn’t kept a male captive since Ian, who had been spared to replace the last rooster, a guy named Jack Beachum, who had keeled over with a heart attack the previous spring. “They only keep three males at once,” Vickers explained. “Jamie here took over for Brooks, who got killed trying to escape. It’s just dumb luck. They don’t care if we’re fit or smart or good-looking, so long as we can fuck. That’s why I don’t understand why they didn’t kill you. Unless they think there’s too many women for us to service now.”“They didn’t tell me anything,” Brent said, drawing on his cigarette.They talked about themselves after they got Brent’s story. Vickers was from Arkansas. He had owned and operated a bike repair shop. He was somewhere around fifty, he said, though he couldn’t remember just exactly how old he was anymore. He was captured with his wife, but they’d killed his woman when she couldn’t get pregnant.“She had a hysterectomy when she was thirty-five,” he explained. “Endometriosis. She kept it a secret from them for a while, but they’ll only keep the women for so long if they don’t get pregnant. It’s like we’re livestock here, and if we’re not productive…” He ran a finger across his throat.“How did you get here?” Brent asked. “Why didn’t you stay in Arkansas? Or go west, out into the desert where there’s not as many zombies?”“We were heading for the east coast. That’s where her family lives. But then we heard those radio broadcasts, and we decided to run for the Free Zone instead.” Vickers lit another smoke and looked thoughtfully at Brent, head cocked. “Sometimes I wonder if there really is a Free Zone. Sometimes I think it’s just… you know, bait. To bring the meat out of hiding.”That thought had occurred to Brent as well.Ian was a native of Western Kentucky, he said. He’d gotten captured running for the Free Zone, too. He was only seven years old when the pandemic broke out. He had stayed in the backwoods of Kentucky, living off the land, until his parents died, first his mother, who had perished during childbirth, then his father, who had contracted the Phage during a bout of pneumonia. He had run for the Free Zone mostly out of loneliness, he admitted. He couldn’t bear living alone.“I know it sounds crazy, but I’m glad I got caught,” he confessed. He laughed guiltily, ducking his head. “I wouldn’t be saying that if they’d decided to eat me, obviously, but this place is better than how I was living before. It’s better being here than being by myself.”Brent, who also hated being alone, could sympathize—though he couldn’t imagine ever becoming accustomed to this place, to this human meat factory.Jamie, a native of New York City, had been on a flight to New Orleans for a business convention when the pandemic struck. His flight got rerouted to Nashville during the chaos of the outbreak, and he found himself stranded in an unfamiliar city, surrounded by several hundred thousand of the hungry infected. He had endured by banding up with several other groups of survivors, abandoning one after another as necessity demanded. He was slowly making his way back home when he was captured. He didn’t know that New York had gotten nuked until Ian joined their group.“My dad had a solar-powered radio,” Ian explained. “That’s how I knew about New York City. Atlanta, Georgia got blasted, too. And some city out west. I can’t remember the name now. Seattle, maybe? My dad used to listen to the news all day. Until the radio stations quit broadcasting, anyway. He had a journal, and he would write down everything he heard in it, all the pertinent information he’d collected. He kept a big map of the United States on the wall of his office, too, and he’d take a red marker and scratch out cities on it if they got blasted. He called them dead zones. Said they were uninhabitable now because of the radiation, like some place called Chernobyl. He was really smart, my dad. Our cabin had a fallout shelter and several years’ worth of supplies. I guess he was one of those doomsday preppers.”The door of their quarters swung open as they chatted. Brent turned in his seat and watched as two women stepped inside. They waited with their heads down until the guards had shut and locked the door, then advanced into the room, a young blond with the number 344 on her forearm, and a brunette with 352 scrawled across her forehead. The blond was carrying a large plastic bowl. The brunette was carrying two metal pails. Judging by the slant of the brunette’s shoulders, one of the metal pails was heavier than the other.“Five minutes,” the guard at the door growled.“Grub,” Vickers announced, standing up to greet the women. “Paula,” he nodded to the blond. He took the plastic bowl from her hands. “You coming back to see me tonight?”The blond blushed. “I wish,” she said. “I think I’m out of rotation for a little while.” She touched her stomach with a meaningful expression, and he looked surprised. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved me again.”Vickers grinned. He set the bowl on their card table and gave her a rough hug and a kiss on the forehead. “You’re welcome, hon,” he said. “I’m glad you’re safe-- for a little while, anyway. I’ll miss our little visits, though.”The blond giggled.Brent watched the exchange with something like horror. He wasn’t horrified by the behavior of the two, only by the grisly fate awaiting their child. The blond was happy to be pregnant because it meant she would live a little longer, even knowing that her captors would probably devour the baby shortly after birth. Vickers was pleased that his “services” had helped the young woman. He was proud of himself. Necessity had forced them to accept their terrible roles, but it did not make the situation any less terrible to Brent.And then he wondered: would he be so casual about it in a few years’ time?Assuming he lived so long...!Ian had taken the metal pails from the brunette’s hands. He set the heavy one on the stainless steel deli counter by the back wall, exchanging it with a lighter one, then carried the second pail to the far end of their living quarters. He ducked behind a section of shelving, then returned, carrying a different bucket.“Here you go,” he said, passing it to the brunette.She wrinkled her nose. “Thanks,” she said sarcastically.“Vickers had diarrhea last night,” Ian apologized.“Time’s up!” the zombie at the doorway barked.Vickers and the blond embraced quickly, reluctant to part. The blond ran to the deli counter and grabbed an empty bowl, then trotted toward the entrance. “Bye, Vick!” she called. “Thanks again!”The brunette shuffled after her with her sloshing bucket of offal, grumbling under her breath.“You going to eat?” Ian asked, before the smell of their waste bucket had even dissipated.Brent looked into the plastic bowl the blond had brought to them. He sat back with an expression of revulsion. The bowl contained food—vegetables, fruit, meat, all of it from cans-- but it had all been chucked in together, looking more like dog slop than dinner.Ian noted the expression on his face and shrugged. “That’s about as good as it gets, mate. Zombies aren’t exactly gourmet chefs.” He chuckled at his own wit, picking bits of vegetable directly from the bowl.“You need to eat,” Vickers said, returning to the table. “You need to keep up your strength.” He used his hands to tear off a chunk of processed meat product and brought it to his mouth.“For what?” Brent asked.Vickers grinned but did not answer.Two zombies entered sometime later, as the daylight—wan as it was already—dimmed even further toward night. They shuffled in carrying a single mattress. They didn’t approach the roosters, but tossed the mattress down just inside the door. Then they withdrew.“There’s your bed, I think,” Vickers said.They tossed a wadded blanket on top of the mattress, then shut and locked the door.“And there’s your blanket,” Vickers chuckled. He smiled at Brent strangely. The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I guess you’re moving in.”

Cattle: Chapters 6 - 10

6. Snow

The snow began to fall shortly after dark. It came in big moist flakes, some almost as big as silver dollars, splatting on the windows with such force that it sounded like moths batting against the glass. The tapping startled Brent, who was trying to cook some ramen noodles over a candle he had found in one of the cabinets. He jerked around, almost knocking over the sauce pan he was cooking the noodles in, which he had perched over the candle on two other, larger pans. He stared at the window a moment, his heart galloping in his chest, before he realized what the drumming on the glass was, and then he smiled, let out his breath with a gust, and even laughed a little.“Little jumpy, aren’t we?” Ghost-Harold asked.“I don’t like burning candles,” Brent said, walking toward the window over the sink. “I don’t like making any light at all after dark. It’s not safe. You can’t see what’s outside, but anything can see in.”“You covered the windows,” Ghost-Harold said.He had. He had emptied the linen closet, hanging the musty bedsheets over every window and door. Both for heat… and to keep anything from looking in at him.“I know,” Brent said. “The light still shows through, though.” He pushed the sheet that he had hung over the kitchen window to one side, just in time to see a big nugget of wet snow clout against the glass and slither down it.“Just a little,” Ghost-Harold said.“That’s all it would take,” Brent replied, and he let the makeshift curtain fall back into place. He tried very hard not to think about the creatures that might be wandering out there in the snow and wind right then, in the fields, on the empty highways. Had any of them seen the faintly glowing window, the wink of light that had escaped when he pushed aside the curtain to peek outside?The thought made his skin prickle with anxiety.Despite the difference in their age, Brent had always been the more cautious one. A person might expect Harold to be the careful one, being the older of the two, but it was not so. Harold had been the reckless one, the devil-may-care wiseguy, and Brent the nattering ninny. If not for Brent, the old Irishman probably would have died a lot sooner. It was a miracle he had survived as long as he had. “Tis the luck o’ the Irish,” he sometimes claimed, but his luck had finally run out, as luck almost always does-- even Irish luck. If it didn’t, there would have been a lot less casinos back in the day, and a lot more wealthy Micks.Brent returned to his pan and stuck a finger inside. The water was not even lukewarm, the brick of fossilized ramen noodles only slightly softer than it had been when he stripped it from its plastic wrapping. The water wouldn’t even be safe to drink if it didn’t boil. He had scooped it from a rain barrel sitting by the back porch. No telling what kind of bugs were swimming around in it.He returned to the cabinets, looking for shorter pans, something that would lower his soup pan closer to the flame. You could boil water over candles, but it usually took at least three of them, and he had only been able to find the one candle. Whoever had taken the guns out of Mr. Johnson’s gun cabinet had taken everything else of use as well: food, candles, batteries, weapons… He had found a few handy items in the farmhouse, but nothing to jump for joy about, nothing he didn’t already possess.“I miss microwave ovens,” Brent said, pushing through the pots and pans beneath the cabinet. He squatted down and reached into the far corner, feeling around with his fingers. He heard a snap and felt a sharp pain in his index and middle fingers. Cursing, he jerked his hand out and pulled the mousetrap off his hand, throwing it angrily across the room. “Stop laughing,” he said, shaking his throbbing fingers. “That could have broken my fingers.”“You ought to know better than sticking your fingers in places you can’t see,” Ghost-Harold said.Brent stood with a grunt and began to rummage through the upper cabinets. He pulled around one of the kitchen chairs and stood on it and examined the top of the cabinets. “Yes!” he hissed.He jumped down with an unopened package of tea candles. They had been hidden behind the trim of the cabinets. He returned to the stove, tearing the package open, and rearranged his cooking setup. He lit four of the tea candles, put the large candle aside, and placed the grill from one of the stove’s burners directly over the shorter tea candles.“Now we’re cooking,” Brent grinned, putting his pan directly overtop the tea candle flames.Within thirty minutes, the water in the pan was steaming. Forty-five minutes later, the soup was bubbling, and the noodles were soft and plump. He opened a can of mixed vegetables, drank the water, then added the veggies to his soup.“Gonna be go-ooood!” he sang excitedly, his belly gurgling.He ate quicker than he intended, then blew out all but one of the candles and crept upstairs, his shadow jumping in its wavering light. He had made a little nest for himself in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs, using the sheets and blankets and pillows he had stripped from the beds downstairs. It would have been nice to sleep in an actual bed for a change, but it was safer to sleep on the second floor. He would have a better view of his surroundings from its window, and he would have more time to escape should anything nasty bust in through one of the windows or doors downstairs.“Always have an escape plan,” he said, and Ghost-Harold made a sound of agreement.He set the candle on a large tower speaker and shut and locked the bedroom door, then piled some boxes and plastic bins against the door. The bins were not very heavy. They looked as if they contained mostly women’s clothing, shoes, seasonal decorations, and family photos, but it made him feel more secure barricading the door.“I’m going to look through all this stuff tomorrow,” he said.“That’s a good idea.”“Maybe I can find some clean new clothes to wear.”“You could use some.”He sat on the bench of Mr. Johnson’s Bowflex machine and took off his boots, then retrieved his candle and walked to his nest of blankets and pillows and settled in. He had made his pallet on the floor beneath the window so he could sit and look outside until he got sleepy. The snow was still splatting against the window. An occasional gust of wind rattled the glass in its frame. He blew out the candle as soon as he was situated and then just sat there and gazed out at the snowy, benighted world, his elbows on the windowsill, his forehead and the tip of his nose lightly touching the cold glass.“This might be a good place to hole up for the winter,” he said softly. “It’s pretty warm for an old farmhouse.”“I don’t know,” Ghost-Harold replied. “It’s awful close to that town. I think you should push on north after the storm passes.”Harold was probably right. The farmhouse Brent was waiting out the storm inside couldn’t be more than ten miles from the nearby town of Manfried. They had come upon the village shortly after scurrying across the Ohio River, picking their way carefully through the wrecked and abandoned vehicles on the disintegrating bridge. It was just a small riverside town; population 5,000, the sign said. They had expected it to be like almost every other Midwest town they had encountered during their journey to the Free Zone: derelict, depopulated by the Phage, a few dumb deadhead shuffling around the streets. But it wasn’t. There had been a thriving community of deadheads occupying the town. Brent and Harold had watched the zombies for a little while, hunkered down in some woods at the edge of town, and then headed east, planning to circle around the zombie tribe. They had only put a few miles between them before running afoul of a meat patrol.It was dangerous and taxing traveling in the winter, but in some ways it was safer. Zombies were not as active in the winter. The smart ones hated the cold, and tended to stay in their homes where it was warm, and the dumb ones froze. Zombies were cold-blooded creatures. They turned into zombiecicles if the temperature dropped below freezing. You could walk right up to them and knock their frozen heads off. Harold used to call it Zombie T-Ball.“You can’t give up now,” Ghost-Harold said. “You’re almost there.”“I know,” Brent sighed, staring out the window. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he could see the snow swirling through the air outside. It looked like the snow on an old TV set when it was tuned to a station with no signal. It was coming down pretty thick. Visibility was only a couple hundred meters. The ground outside was already white, the collapsed barn nearly obscured but for the section of the roof that kept flapping up and down.Out there, past the storm, or maybe staring out their windows at the snow like he was doing, were the people of the Free Zone. The city of living men was only 300 miles away now. Harold had traced out a rough route on an old road map when they decided to make a run for it. That was over a year ago, but they had managed to travel over six hundred miles before his partner died. That was two-thirds of the way there. In the old days, a 300 mile trip would have taken about five hours. Less if you put the pedal to the metal. By foot, it would take at least a month to finish the journey, and that’s if he didn’t run into any trouble, that’s if he could walk ten miles a day, every day, until he got there. More realistically, he was looking at three to six months.And then…But it was too much for him to imagine. Too much, almost, to hope for. He tried to imagine it, being someplace safe, someplace with thousands of other living human beings, with food and electricity and safe drinking water, and it made his soul ache.“You don’t realize how much you need other people until they’re gone,” Brent said. “How much you need… to just be around somebody. To have some company, even if you don’t talk much. To just… feel their presence.”He sniffed and wiped his nose, watching the snow twist and flap at the glass.“You crying?” Ghost Harold asked.Brent nodded. “Yeah… a little.”His imaginary friend was quiet for a moment, then said in a gentle voice, “It’s all right, kiddo. You go ahead and cry. Sometimes you just have to let it out.”Sometime later, Brent slept.

7. Day

As often happened now that the world was dead, Brent woke disoriented. Without the distractions of modern technology, Brent’s interior life had become much more vivid. It was a thing he had noticed shortly after the world ended, when the initial chaos and violence had passed and the world became very empty and still. It was like his brain was a muscle that the technological world had caused to atrophy, and now, in the new silence of the post-modern world, that muscle had begun to develop, to grow stronger, to bulk up. In the absence of constant electronic diversions, that dormant, almost vestigialized part of his mind had reawakened, had blossomed, and he reverted, it seemed to him, to a nearly childlike state of awareness. His imagination was suddenly so overpowering that he constantly slipped into an almost dream-like state during his waking hours, talking to people who weren’t there, weaving fantasies in his mind, making up songs in his head, or poetry, or jokes. His dreams had become so intense, so potent, that they seemed real to him, even after he awoke, as real at least as the waking world. Sometimes, when he awoke, he was not sure which world was the real one, the world he had just departed, or the one he had just opened his eyes to, or even if such a distinction was important anymore.It was like that when he woke the next morning.He had dreamed that he was a child again, and that it had snowed the night before and school had been cancelled. In his dream, his mother had made hot chocolate for him, and then she had helped him into his winter clothes so he could go outside and play with his friends. He had played all day with his chums—Evan and Bobby Toothaker, twins who lived down the street from him—bobsledding down the big hill behind the old elementary school, building a snowman, making snow angels and having snowball fights. He played until his nose was red and running, until the sun had rolled all the way across the sky to the western horizon, and twilight had dyed the white hillsides the pastel blue of Easter eggs.“Bre-eeent!” his mother called, and he turned in the direction of her voice, a snowball in each hand. “Uh oh! That’s my mom, guys! I gotta go!” he said, and then he had awakened, and he looked up at the brightly glowing window, laced with the snow that had fallen overnight, and for a moment he thought he was a child again, and he hoped that school had been cancelled so he could go outside and play with his chums like he had in his dream.The truth came quickly back to him, but it did not hurt. He had long since finished mourning for the world that used to be. There were times now that he no longer even missed it. Sometimes he didn’t even remember it.“Rise and shine, kiddo!” Ghost-Harold cried.“I’m up,” Brent responded, shielding his eyes from the glaring light that was slanting through the window. The storm had passed. The sun was bright and warm and cheery, the sky clear and deep and cloudless.“I would have made you some coffee, but I don’t have any hands,” Harold said. “Or coffee, for that matter.”“Thanks anyway,” Brent said with a chuckle. He sat up and surveyed the room, letting his memories, like the pieces of a puzzle, slot back into place. He leaned up to the window and peered outside, making sure there were no tracks in the snow. The snow in the backyard was pristine but for a solitary trail of rabbit tracks. That was good. Maybe he would rig up a trap for that rabbit, too. It had been a while since he’d eaten fresh meat. The thought of rabbit stew made his mouth gush with saliva.Brent threw aside his covers, wrinkling his nose at the smell of himself. Maybe he would take a bath today, too. Look for some new clothes in all these boxes and bins. Mr. Johnson was a big guy, but the Johnsons might have had kids who were Brent’s size, clothes that Mrs. Johnson had boxed up and stored after her kids outgrew them.It couldn’t hurt to look.He got up, put his boots back on, and pushed aside the boxes he’d barricaded the door with. He listened at the door a moment, then unlocked it and peeked out into the hallway.“It’s clear,” he said.He crept down the stairs just as carefully, then surveyed the house and its surroundings. There were no signs of intrusion, and no tracks in the snow outside, in either the side lawns or the front. He allowed himself to relax a little.Brent grabbed a large pan from the kitchen cabinet and used it to transfer some water from the water barrel outside to the tank of the Johnson’s commode. It was cold outside, but not painfully so. Once he had filled the commode, he dropped his pants and took a leisurely crap, availing himself of the magazines Mr. Johnson had kept under the bathroom sink: Cheri, Playboy, Penthouse.“Why, Mr. Johnson, you old dog you,” he said when he found the magazines.The glossy pages of the magazines were brittle and faded, but the images and text were perfectly legible. It seemed to him a great luxury to crap in an actual crapper while flipping through the pages of a girlie magazine. Smoking a cigarette while he did it was the only thing that could have made it any more luxurious, he thought, and then he wondered at how spoiled he had been in his old life, how petty his problems had been back then.“You had it good, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold said. “You lived like a king and didn’t even know it.”“Do you mind?” Brent said. “I’m trying to take a crap.”“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”Brent sighed, shaking his head, and returned his attention to his magazine. He rotated the magazine sideways to view the centerfold, ignoring the moist trumpet sounds reverberating in the toilet boil.“Hello, Miss August,” he sighed.Miss August, AKA Katrina Twain, stood with her back turned two-thirds of the way to the camera, dressed in just a pair of bright red stiletto heels and a few bits of glittering jewelry. Her hair was a honey-gold swirl around her face, her eyes like sapphires rimmed in charcoal. Her candy red lips were pouty and partially parted, as if she were about to whisper something breathy and vulgar to the cameraman. The puffy mounds of her pudenda were just visible between the smooth globes of her flawless derriere. In the bottom right corner of the pinup was written, Come on baby light my fire, XOXO Katrina, in a swirly cursive script.He wondered if she was still alive somewhere, or if she had died during the pandemic. Odds were, she was dead. Almost everyone had died during the outbreak. If the Phage didn’t get you, the zombies did, and if the zombies didn’t get you, your fellows survivors did, and if you somehow managed to survive all that, the radiation from the nukes got you, or you caught some other illness and died from lack of medical care, or had an accident, or got depressed and killed yourself. Humanity had gone up in a blaze of glory. People like Brent and Harold, the survivors in the Free Zone, were just the last warm cinders cooling on a mountain of ash.“So you gonna beat off or what?” Ghost-Harold asked.Brent laughed, a long, low exhalation. Whatever passions Miss August had begun to stir in him had been doused by his morbid ruminations. He looked around for something to wipe on.“No toilet paper, kiddo,” Harold said apologetically.Brent sighed. Sorry, Miss August…He flushed and watched the water swirl down the pipe with the same fascination a Neanderthal might have watched a DC-10 take to the air. It had taken humanity 200 million years to go from flinging their feces at each other in the trees to indoor plumbing, and like a careless gambler, they’d lost it right back to the house, and in spectacular fashion.Brent returned to the kitchen. He grabbed a pan and stepped out onto the back porch. The sky was clear now, the sun flashing brilliantly off the snow, though it was still cold and windy. It reminded him of the dream he had had during the night. Playing in the snow with his buddies, school cancelled, and nothing to worry about but the quality of the fun they might have until sundown.He stepped down off the porch and sank to mid-shin. Last night’s snow storm had dumped at least a foot of snow on the region, maybe more. He filled the pan up with snow, returned inside, and set it on the counter to melt. He would have fresh drinking water when it melted, no need to boil, though it might be a little radioactive. Several major cities had been nuked during the worst of the pandemic. A lot of people had died from radiation sickness in the years that followed the outbreak. But not Brent. Nothing ever seemed to make him sick. Even when he was a boy he had been unusually healthy. He could remember his mother remarking on it once or twice when he was a kid.He pushed the table against the back door again and went upstairs. For the next hour or so, he went through the Johnsons’ storage boxes. Most of the clothes in the bins were women’s clothes, but he did find a couple outfits that looked like they might fit him. The Johnsons must have had a son, or sons, and while most of the boy’s clothes were too small, there were a few that were just his size.Happy, he carried the clothes downstairs and laid them on the table. He raided the linen closet for towels and washrags, and then walked into the bathroom to look for soap and shampoo. There was a single bar of dried up soap in the medicine cabinet, shrunken and fissured, but the shampoo had turned into some kind of weird blue plastic inside the bottles. Looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. “Oh, well. This is good enough,” he said, carrying to soap into the kitchen.“You ought to take a bath,” Ghost-Harold said. “Might be your only chance for a while.”Brent shook his head. “Too much trouble. It would take me all day to heat up enough water.”“Take it cold,” Harold said. “Are you a man or a mouse?”“Mouse,” Brent said. “Definitely a mouse.”He fetched several more pans of snow, lit his tea candles, and began to warm the water up over their flames. He poured the contents of each pan into one of the sinks as soon as it was room temperature, then warmed the next. When both sides of the sink were full of water, he stripped down to his ragged grey skivvies and began to wash himself. He scrubbed and scrubbed, making multiple passes over his skin, until the left basin was soapy and gray with filth, then he switched to the right side sink and began to rinse off.“God, kiddo, you’ve gotten skinny,” Harold said. “You look like one of those concentration camp survivors.”Brent had noticed. Scrubbing the washrag up and down his ribs was like running his hands up and down an old fashioned washboard. He didn’t reply to his imaginary friend, just dipped his soapy hair in the clean water basin and rinsed it out.“Wash your beard, too. It looks like a bird’s nest,” Harold said.Brent grinned and shook his head. Harold was just as annoyingly helpful in death as he had been in life. He was one of those people who always tried to nudge you aside and take over what you were doing, whether it was cooking, making a fire, or skinning an old dead possum. If he had been a standup comic, his catchphrase would have been, “Here, let me do it!”Brent was just getting ready to put on his clean new clothes when something banged against the front door. He jumped and wheeled around toward the living room.A moment later, he heard a low, piping moan.

8. Deadheads

There were only two of them, thank God. There was a big fresh one, didn’t look like he’d been dead more than a few weeks, a couple months tops. He was dressed in a parka stained black with blood and tan Carharts pants. Judging by the vacant expression on his face, and the soulless gray marbles of his eyes, he was a dumbhead. The other was an old deadhead, smaller, dressed in rags, its limbs like sticks wrapped in dead vines, its face a leathery death’s head. Brent peeked at them from one of the living room windows, peering through the narrow gap between the window frame and the bookshelf he had barricaded it with. The old shriveled one was tottering around in the front yard like an Alzheimer’s patient, the wind tossing its rags and the thin, dark hair of its head. The big fresh one had clambered up onto the porch, and stood just outside the front door. Every so often he would step forward and smack his body against the door, or bat it with one of his hands. After a few minutes, Brent realized the zombie’s lurching movements followed the creak and bang of the barn roof in the back yard. Each time the big section of tin crashed in the back yard, the big zombie would jerk and step forward. Zombies were drawn to loud noises, and that loose section of roofing had been flapping and banging all night.“Damn,” Ghost-Harold said behind him. “Whatcha gonna do, kiddo?”If it were warmer out, he’d just abandon the farmhouse, slip out the back and put some distance between him and his uninvited guests. But it was below freezing outside, and windy. He would very likely freeze to death if he had to travel very far. He didn’t know how far the next house was, and it was just as likely there would be zombies there, too. There was only one thing he could do.“You’re going to take ‘em out, ain’tcha?” Brent nodded.Brent left the window and crept into the kitchen as quietly as possible. He snatched up the shovel he had propped against the cabinet and headed toward the back door. He looked outside, made sure there were no other deadheads stumbling around in the back yard, then eased the table aside.“Be careful, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold said, his voice tight with anxiety.Brent nodded, his lips pressed together.The wind gusted in on him, blowing his hair back from his brow. He slipped out onto the back porch, his heart thumping rabbit-like in his chest. He wasn’t worried about the old one so much. The old ones were slow, easy to take out. It was the fresh one that scared him. They were stronger, faster, more violent. They could be tricky if they retained a little of their human cunning, even if they hadn’t fully reawakened. He had seen them use fake outs and ambush tactics, and it was hard to disable them. They just kept coming at you and coming at you until you brained them.He crept down the porch, keeping close to the side of the house, until he came to the steps. He started down them, slipped on the ice, and had to catch himself on the railing.“Careful!” Ghost-Harold gasped.Brent cursed silently at his clumsiness. He waited to see if either of the deadheads had heard him stumble. They were always very alert to noises. He listened to them moaning around front for a moment or two. They didn’t sound as if they were aware of him. If his fumbling had alerted them, they would have started howling. Perhaps the creaking and banging of the barn roof had obscured the scraping sounds of his near fall.He eased carefully down the last two steps, hanging onto the porch rail with one hand and gripping the handle of the shovel with the other. Now the tricky part. He had to scoot his feet through the snow, rather than move his legs up and down. If he tried to walk normally through the snow, it would make crunching sounds, and bring the deadheads running.Please, God, let them be stiff, he prayed. Cold weather slowed them down a lot. Deadheads would completely ice up if the temperature stayed below freezing long enough. Despite last night’s storm, however, he knew it hadn’t been cold enough long enough to turn them into zombicicles. He just hoped they had been exposed to the cold long enough to slow them down, to give him a bit of an advantage.The wind swirled around the side of the house, blowing fine flakes of snow into his eyes. The big sheet of tin at the collapsed barn went, Creaaaaakkk-BOOM!The zombies in the front yard groaned.He could see the old one now. It was a male, an elderly man when it contracted the Phage. It stumbled around in the snow, its movements jerking and unsteady. It didn’t notice him for several seconds, its cataract eyes rolled up at the heavens, then its head twisted in Brent’s direction and it let out a gravelly moan. It sounded more like a belch than a cry.Brent gripped the shovel tight with both hands, heart galloping in his chest, almost dizzy with fear, and then a kind of calmness settled down over him, a sense of unreality, as if he were viewing everything from outside his body.“Hey, assholes!” he yelled.The big one at the door began almost instantly to howl. Brent heard it thud down the porch, running in his direction. Ignoring the old slow one tottering toward him in the snow, he stepped around the corner of the house just in time to see the big one run into the porch railing with its hips. Its upper body catapulted forward over the railing, like a child turning a flip on the monkey bars, and it plummeted face first onto the ground.He almost laughed at the zombie’s graceless sprawl. He ran forward, lifting the shovel over his head, ready to deliver the coup de grâce before the revenant could recover from its fall.But it was fresh, strong. It lurched forward across the ground at him, hands reaching for Brent’s legs.Brent delivered one solid blow, the shovel clonging on the zombie’s skull, but the hood of the deadhead’s parka had flipped up as he swung on it, and the insulated material had absorbed much of the force of his strike.“Shit!” he grunted, as the zombie latched onto one of his ankles. He twisted free and went stumbling away from the big one.Almost into the grasp of the old leathery one.Belching, the old deadhead swiped at his jacket, gnashing its teeth.Still calm, still with that sense of altered reality that came over him in moments of extremis, Brent stepped back and swung on the old deadhead. He hit it hard, and the zombie’s head flopped over with the muffled crack of breaking bone.It went down on one knee, head rolling loosely on its right shoulder, then sank into the snow.But the big one had clambered to its feet. It sprinted at Brent, fingers curled into claws, mouth agape.Brent swung the shovel, struck it in the shoulder, but the blow was only strong enough to turn the zombie aside.It went to its knees, still howling, then launched itself at him again.Brent was howling, too. He struck the deadhead with a downward blow, catching the zombie in the back of the head. Black blood and a chunk of hairy flesh struck the snow. “Yaawwwpp!” the zombie gurgled, and jumped at him again, and Brent struck it on the head once more. It went down on its hands and knees, its thick, spoiled blood dripping on the snow in globs, and Brent hit it again, driving it onto its belly.“Fucking DIE!” Brent roared, and he hit it again.And again.And again.And again.He stumbled away when he saw brains, and tossed the shovel aside. Gasping, head swimming, he tried to catch his breath. He couldn’t see. The sun reflecting off the snow had blinded him. Blue and green afterimages obscured his vision. He headed toward the farmhouse, wheezing, and slipped. Went down on his knees. Tried to rise. Sprawled forward.“Easy, kiddo, calm down,” Ghost-Harold said. “It’s okay. You killed them. You’re safe.”Brent gasped. His chest hurt. He brought a handful of snow to his face, rubbed it onto his cheeks and forehead. There. That was better.“Oh, shit,” he gasped.“I know, kiddo.”“I hate that.”“I know.”He crawled to the porch, turned around and sat on a porch step. Brent sat there until he had calmed down, until he had caught his breath and his hands quit trembling. He stared off across the side lawn, squinting into the glare.“You need to do something with the bodies,” Ghost-Harold said gently after a little while. “You can’t leave them near the road.”“I know,” Brent said. Back by the barn, the big tin sheet went, Creaaak-BOOM!Brent grinned. “I know what to do with them, too.”

9. Cleanup

He listened for the sound of an approaching engine, and when he heard nothing but the wind whistling in the trees, crunched over to the big deadhead. The zombie was dead—what they called dead-dead—its head split open like a crushed cantaloupe, brains oozing out. Brent moved around to the zombie’s feet and took the big guy’s ankles in his hands. He took a deep breath and pulled, and the big deadhead scraped across the ground a couple inches.“Fuck, he’s heavy,” Brent said.“You gotta do it,” Harold said.“Yeah, I know.”In case of a meat patrol.The likelihood of a meat patrol driving down this particular country highway, at this particular time, was pretty low, but if one did happen to drive by, he didn’t want them to see anything out of the ordinary. That’s why he needed to remove the deadheads from sight.. They ate their own, and they might just check the farmhouse if they saw a couple deadheads lying in the front yard. If he planned to stay until the cold weather passed, he needed to eliminate any signs of activity—of the living or the dead-- and do something about that piece of flapping tin! Its banging had already attracted two deadheads. He didn’t want any more uninvited guests.He heaved, and the big deadhead slid across the snow, leaving a trail of black goo. It took the better part of an hour to get the zombie over to the barn, and another twenty minutes to drag him up over the collapsed boards and beams to the section of the roof that kept flapping up and down.Tugging the corpse by the parka, he rolled the deadhead onto the loose tin sheet, then tossed some boards on top for good measure.“There,” he panted, wiping the sweat from his face. The wind raked through his hair, blowing his sweaty bangs around, but the tin didn’t move. The world seemed suddenly very still. Too still, almost.Brent caught his breath, then returned for the other deadhead.Despite its broken neck, the other zombie was still alive. Its eyes rolled in their sockets, just like Mrs. Johnson’s eyes had, while its jaw worked restlessly up and down. And then he realized that Mr. and Mrs. Johnsons’ heads were buried somewhere in the snow nearby, probably still chomping, and he got a cold shivery feeling in his belly. He looked around, suddenly paranoid, then reached down into the snow very carefully and grabbed the ankles of the old deadhead.“Don’t bite,” he muttered anxiously.Following the trail he’d already made, he dragged the second deadhead to the barn and tossed it onto the first one.The second one was much easier to move. It was all shriveled up, light, like old dried sticks.Its face came up close to the big one’s neck when he tossed it onto the pile, and the old dead one started trying to eat the fresh dead one. It gnawed at the fresh one’s neck, making a weird grunting noise.“Ew, gross,” Brent said with a grimace. “Stop that!”He couldn’t stand the thought of the old one nibbling on the fresh one while he stayed in the farmhouse, so he retrieved his shovel and brained the nasty old thing.That done, he trudged to the front yard and used the shovel to obscure the signs of their battle as best he could. He pushed the snow around, trying to cover the streaks and stains of the big one’s blood. He used the flat of the shovel’s spade to smooth over their tracks, and obfuscated the trail of flattened snow where he had dragged the zombies to the barn. He did the best he could, but it was still glaringly obvious to him that something violent had transpired in the front lawn.“Maybe it’ll snow again tonight and cover it all up,” he said.“Ah, it’ll be fine,” Ghost-Harold replied. “You worry too much, kiddo. Go inside and get some rest. There won’t be any meat patrols running around in this weather. You know they hate the cold.”That sounded like a good idea.

10. Caught

He couldn’t rest though. Instead, he made a rabbit trap. He had seen rabbit tracks in the snow earlier, and just thinking of a steaming pot of rabbit stew made his mouth water and his belly gurgle hungrily. His battle with the deadheads had drained him, both physically and emotionally, but he knew that rabbit wasn’t going to catch itself, and so he rigged up a trap for it with a kitchen drawer, a piece of yarn and a wooden spatula. The yarn he tied to the handle of the spatula and a hunk of the ivy that was spreading across the living room walls. There were several green leaves on the ivy. Maybe Mr. Bunny would find them tempting. He hoped they would because he didn’t have anything else to bait his trap with. He didn’t think rabbits were overly fond of uncooked ramen noodles, and the only other food he had was a single can of mixed vegetables, and none of the veggies in the can were large enough to tie a piece of string to.He went out back with the components of his trap. After clearing snow from a four foot by four foot area, he propped the wood box on the end of the spatula and placed the ivy under the box. If Mr. Rabbit came along and gave the greenery a nibble, it would dislodge the spatula and cause the box to drop down over it.“And voila, rabbit stew,” he said, sitting back on his legs and admiring his handiwork.He had made traps like this before. They worked surprisingly well, though a few times he’d trapped wild critters he did not intend to catch. Once he’d caught a skunk, and got sprayed the instant he lifted back the box. Harold wouldn’t sleep near him for a month after that happened. Sometimes he caught feral cats, birds, squirrels. They were all edible, if not as tasty as rabbit.He returned inside. Wiping his cheek with the back of his hand, he realized there was zombie ichor splattered on his face. Grimacing in disgust, he stripped his clean new clothes off and washed again, then selected a second new outfit and put it on. Clean again, he cooked another package of ramen noodles, ate, then ambled upstairs to take a nap.Curling up in his little nest of blankets by the window, he found himself dozing off very quickly. He was exhausted-- by his exertions, and by the adrenaline rush he’d had when he was battling the zombies. His arms and legs felt like they were weighted with lead. His eyelids, too.He shut his eyes, enjoying the warmth of the day’s last light. Tomorrow, if it were warmer, he would think about moving on, maybe walk up the road a little way and see if there were any houses nearby. It was always tempting to stay somewhere secure, but he would never make it to the Free Zone if he gave in to that temptation. Besides, there really wasn’t anywhere safe in the world. Not anymore. Something dangerous would eventually come along-- a meat patrol, a herd of dumbheads, a group of violent survivors. In this new post-apocalyptic world, complacency was the most dangerous things of all. Better to keep running. Better to keep heading for the Free Zone.He finally drifted off, and dreamed about the Free Zone. He had no illusions about the place. It was no city paved in gold—not even in his dreams—but there were people, lots of living people, and they welcomed him through the city gates, embraced him, celebrated his arrival as if he had come to deliver them from their enemies. He was no messiah, no hero come to save them, but their joy was gratifying, all but overwhelming, and the feeling of being swept up in their love, the sense of community, brought tears to his eyes. He was a part of something again. He belonged. He was no longer alone.And then he woke upIt was still light out, but the angle of the light had changed. He knew at once that he had slept through the night, that it was morning. He knew because his bladder was full to bursting, and his body felt refreshed, if not a little sore. Particularly his arms and shoulders. Probably from bashing in those zombies’ heads, then dragging them to the back yard.But there was something wrong, too. He felt it in his stomach. A tingle of fear. The beginnings of panic.A sound, like a distant train rumbling, but there were no trains anymore.A truck engine!“A meat patrol!” Ghost Harold shouted.Brent scrambled up and ran for his boots. He sat and pulled them on and snatched up his backpack. Did he have a weapon? He turned in a circle, surveying the room. No! He had left his knife downstairs, after using it to make the box trap. It was on the kitchen table.“Hurry! Hurry!” Ghost-Harold shouted.There was a crashing sound from below. The scrape of something heavy scooting across the floor. The sofa. Someone was forcing the front door, pushing the sofa out of the way as they entered. There was a second crash, the tinkle of glass, and he heard the kitchen table squawk across the linoleum.“The window!” Harold shouted.Brent ran to the window and started tugging on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. He realized it was locked and flipped the lever to unlock it. He started to heave the window up, and two deadheads came around the corner of the house. They were armed, dressed in heavy winter clothing. Both of them had rifles. Brent stepped back before they glanced up and saw him.“I’m trapped,” he panted.“Hide in the closet,” Ghost Harold suggested.Brent nodded. He ran for the closet door as footsteps thudded on the staircase. Praying he was just having a particularly vivid nightmare, he jerked open the door. As soon as the door swung open, several plastic bins fell out at him. He had looked through them yesterday when he was searching for new clothes, had stacked them back in the closet haphazardly when he was done. That’s what you get for being lazy, he thought. He jumped forward, arms outstretched, and tried to keep them from hitting the floor. He managed to catch them all but the top one. It slid off to the side and hit the floor with a thump.“Oh, shit!” Brent whimpered, looking over his shoulder.He couldn’t remember if he had locked the door or not. He hadn’t barricaded it. He had fallen asleep too quickly.“Here,” a gravelly voice barked.The doorknob jiggled.Johnson’s exercise equipment! Brent let the boxes fall and ran over to the Bowflex machine. He snatched up a couple five pound barbells that were lying on the floor next to the exercise machine and prepared to fight.The door shuddered as one of the invaders kicked it. A crack appeared in the doorframe by the knob, but it held.“Sssomeonesss in there!” a croaky voice cried. “I ssssmell it!”The second kick sent the door flying open in a spray of splinters. It banged against the wall and swung back, but a deadhead was already stumbling into the room. It blocked the door with its elbow, both hands on a rifle, ready to shoot.It saw him.“Yesssss!” it hissed.It was a big deadhead, powerfully built. Obviously some kind of cop or soldier when it was alive, judging by its buzz haircut and the shape and bearing of its body. It had a flat featured, blocky head, and small sunken eyes. Its skin had a bluish-green cast, and there were several open sores on its forehead and cheek through which its bone and muscle tissue were visible. It also had no lips. Its face from the nose down had been gnawed off.“Put down!” it snarled. Without lips, it sounded as if it had said “toot down”, but Brent knew what it meant.Yelling, Brent rushed at the deadhead, swinging for its head with one of the barbells. The zombie jerked back, moving surprisingly quick for its state of decomposition, and the barbell came down on its arm, knocking the barrel of the rifle aside just as the creature pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the floor and ricocheted with a squeal, punching a hole in the closet door. The zombie tried to bring the rifle to bear and Brent struck at it again.Enraged, the zombie dropped its rifle and seized Brent by the shoulders. Brent stumbled back as the creature charged forward, holding him by the sleeves. The creature was nearly a head taller, and much heavier. Brent’s heels caught against a box, and he toppled back, the zombie following atop him.“I’ll tucking eat your cock!” the monster snarled, its bare teeth snapping out the words just inches from his face.“Get—Off--!” Brent grunted, twisting and pushing.The deadhead drew back a fist and punched him.The blow connected with his cheek and turned his head to one side, exposing his throat to those teeth. He saw stars, felt as if he had been knocked just slightly ajar with reality, as if his mind was lying just a few inches to the left of his body. He blinked his eyes, tried to reorient himself, and then another blow landed. And another.“Tucking eatchoo!” the monster was snarling, over and over again.Brent felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. The pain and fear was ebbing as the world dimmed quickly around him. I am just a piece of meat, he thought, seeing his left hand flopping bonelessly on the floor beside him. A piece of meat that feels no pain.A pair of boots stepped into his field of view. Another deadhead had entered the room. He didn’t look up. He couldn’t turn his head. There was blood in his eyes. Blood in his nose and mouth.
“Aw, hell, kiddo,” Harold said.

TO BE CONTINUED...
AND
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Cattle: Chapters 1 - 5

It is ten years after the global apocalypse. The Phage, the zombie virus that brought the world to its knees, has mutated, restoring the minds of its undead victims: their personalities, their memories and even their dreams. The hungry dead are no longer the mindless monsters that drove mankind to the brink of extinction. They possess once again the human cunning that once made man the masters of the world.But they still have their relentless hunger for human flesh...


1. Illinois

“Try to keep up, Harold!” Brent Scarborough gasped, racing through the forest as fast as he could go. His lungs were burning, his heart thudding in his chest, but he didn’t dare slow his pace, not even for his friend. They’d been running together for two years now. Harold Killian was like a brother to him—closer than a brother, to be honest—but the deadheads were on their tail, and he was determined to get away, to survive, and make it to the fabled Free Zone, where they could live among their own kind and have some kind of normal life again, without worrying about deadheads eating them alive their every waking moment.“Just go!” Harold gasped, limping several yards behind him. “Don’t you wait… on me, Brent Scarborough!”Harold had twisted his ankle pretty badly when they took off through the forest. A meat patrol had come up unexpectedly on them as they were foraging for food in an old service station—caught them dead to rights as they were coming out of the crumbling Pack’N’Tuck—and they had rabbited into the woods. It was autumn. Probably late October or November. The floor of the forest was thickly carpeted with leaves, and Harold had stepped into a chuckhole, nearly breaking his ankle. They would have been fine if their pursuers were dumbheads. They were good at eluding the dumb ones. But it was a meat patrol, and the zombies had squealed to a stop and given chase. It was the reapers’ job to find and catch wild humans. The deadheads were well trained, and they were armed, and they never gave up.Brent could hear the reapers calling out to one another behind them. Their bone chilling grunts and snarls echoed in the distance, but they were closing in, and Brent felt almost faint with terror. Terror for himself. Terror for his friend.This is it, he thought. We’re going to die! And we were so close!The Free Zone was a city populated and controlled by living men and women. Once it had been called Peoria, but it was the Free Zone now. The people of the Free Zone had ensured their survival by rigging their fortress city with nukes. Any aggressive move by the zombie nations and they would blow themselves up, vaporizing every man, woman and child in the city. There were so few living human beings now the deadheads didn’t dare move against them, and sometimes they even protected the living men from herds of mindless dumbheads. In exchange, the people of the Free Zone gave the zombies their dead. The zombies couldn’t starve to death—they were already dead—but they were always hungry. It was a suicide standoff, but it worked, and the zombies were content to pick off any wild runners who tried to make it to the Shangri-La of the Living.A shot rang out, its report rolling through the forest, and Brent cried out. He couldn’t help himself. The yelp had jumped out of his mouth before he could catch it, like a frightened frog. He tried to increase his speed, but his strength was rapidly flagging. He couldn’t run all day without stopping. He was only a man. But his pursuers could.Harold grunted loudly and fell, the dry forest duff crunching under his body as he hit the ground and rolled.For a second, Brent thought his friend had been shot, and he started to turn back to help him, zombies or no zombies.“Go, go!” Harold panted, struggling to get back to his feet. The barrel-chested older man was sweaty and red-faced, his bright orange hair disheveled, a long scratch on his cheek where some broken branch had gouged him. As Brent wavered between obeying and helping his companion, Harold yanked off his backpack and threw it to the younger man. The bag held all his worldly possessions: supplies, a few keepsakes, and the little bit of food they’d found in the abandoned service station: some old canned vegetables, a few packs of Ramen noodles. “Harold, no,” Brent wheezed, looking down at the backpack like it was going to change into a hungry alligator at any second.“If you don’t go, they’re going to catch both of us today,” Harold said. He tested his ankle and groaned at the pain. “Go on. I’ll catch up if I can get away from them. Get to the Free Zone. Don’t throw your life away on me.”Another shot rang out, and Harold Killian’s eyes bulged out. His body stiffened, and then he dropped to his knees.“Harold!” Brent howled.Harold tried to talk, but his last words came out a froth of blood and spit. He toppled forward onto his face and didn’t move. A moist red stain expanded around a tiny hole in the back of his denim jacket.Brent squeezed his hands into fists, screaming through his clenched teeth. He spotted one of the reapers then, trudging up over the rise, a rifle in its decayed hands. He ducked, snatched up his friend’s backpack, and started running.They wouldn’t follow him any further, he knew. They were like sharks. They wouldn’t be able to resist the smell of his friend’s blood. They would tear the dead man apart, eat until their bellies couldn’t hold anymore, then take the rest to the nearest town and put it on the meat market. Harold was a big man. He’d probably fetch a handsome price, even if they ate half of him here in the forest.Brent ran.He ran for his life.



2. Night

There was one thing more frightening than death, more horrible than the zombies who had inherited the earth, and that was being alone.Brent was 23 years old when the zombie apocalypse went down, a junior studying at Western Tennessee University, still living at home with his parents to save money on tuition, and engaged to a bright, funny, sexy little bookworm named Naomi Richardson. Naomi was a sardonic feminist, wore crazy hornrim glasses to damper her rather stunning beauty, and only read novels written by dead authors. Her only nod to conventionality was dating him, and a longtime addiction toThe Days of Our Lives, of which she was both proud and embarrassed. The soap because it was so ordinary, and him because there was really nothing special about him apart from his looks. Your typical college jock, that was Brent Scarborough, studying business and partying on a football scholarship. His mother loved Naomi and couldn’t wait for them to marry and start having beautiful babies for her to spoil. His dad thought Naomi was strange, and that Brent should sew his wild oats before settling down, though he would never say something like that in front of his wife or future daughter-in-law. He only said it to Brent after he’d had a few too many drinks.But that was before the Phage. That was before people started getting sick and eating each other. That was before his mother and father and fiancé died, and he was cast adrift on the churning whitecaps of a global catastrophe.He had survived because he was strong and fast and lucky. He might not have been the sharpest utensil in the silverware drawer, but he quickly found that he possessed a keen instinct for self-preservation. It had kept him alive when so many others were dying, kept him going when other smarter people gave up.He wanted to live, and that survival instinct drove him on when any other rational being would curl up into a fetal position and surrender.But he hated being alone.He was crouched in the corner of some sort of derelict pumping station now, a squat little shed with a tin roof and cinderblock walls. In the center of the bare concrete floor was an abstract sculpture of pipes and gauges. He hadn’t the faintest idea what the station was for, but he was glad that he had stumbled across it. He had almost wept with joy when the door gave way under his first few kicks. It was safer, and a whole lot warmer, sheltering inside the shed than it would have been sleeping out in the open.“What do you say, Harold old buddy old pal?” Brent murmured, huddled under his jacket and threadbare blanket. “It’s a lot better than sleeping outside,” Ghost-Harold replied.Teeth chattering, Brent nodded. “Yes, indeed!”He knew there weren’t any ghosts in the shed with him. He wasn’t that crazy, but he was still too juiced up on adrenaline to sleep, and it was a way to keep his brain occupied until exhaustion finally claimed his weary soul. It was that or replay the day’s events in his mind, and he certainly didn’t want to do that.“Remember how we met, Harold?” Brent said, grinning a little in the dark.“Oh, yeah,” Ghost-Harold said with a chuckle. “Sorry about that.”“It was about two years ago,” Brent said. “I was on my own at the time. The girl I was traveling with just before you, girl named Angie Wright, had just died. She scratched her hand trying to climb over a barbed wire fence and got some kind of infection. It was pretty bad.”“You guys fuck?” Ghost-Harold said.“I told you already,” Brent said. “No. She was a lesbian.”“Oh, yeah, right. I forget.”“Anyway, I was on my own. It was a hot summer afternoon, and I decided to cool off in a creek. I was splashing around buck naked when you came out of the woods with your rifle. ‘Put your hands where I can ‘em!’ you yelled. Oh, man, I about messed myself. And then you told me to turn around, and I thought for sure you were going to shoot me in the back. That, or cornhole me. Or both!”“Naw, man, I don’t swing that way!” Ghost-Harold guffawed. “I just wanted to rob ya!”“You did, too. Took everything I had. Even my clothes.”“Yeah, but you followed me. You followed me for the rest of the day, naked as a baby, until I felt sorry for you and gave you your stuff back.”“Yeah,” Brent said, smiling at the reminiscence. The smile faded and he sniffed. “We got off to a rough start, but we ended up making a pretty good team.”“We sure did, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold said.“Always stayed two steps ahead of the meat patrols. Always… Ah, hell, man, why’d you have to go and die today? I hate being by myself!”“Sorry, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold said. “I couldn’t help it.”“I know.”“You just keep running, kid. You’ll make it to the Free Zone, and then you can find you a nice live girl and get married and have a whole passel of fat little live babies.”Brent snorted. “Is that all you think about?”“What? Making babies?”“Yeah.”“What else is there to do? We gotta repopulate the world, kiddo.”Brent sighed. “I think our time has came and went.”“You and me?”“No… humanity.”“Oh… That’s fucking grim, kid. Why you gotta say stuff like that? It’s depressing.”Brent laughed. He pulled his backpack around and laid his head down on it. He wished he had some light to see by. He hated being in the dark almost as much as he hated being alone. But he couldn’t make a fire, and it was too cold out to leave the door of the pumping station open, even just a crack.“I don’t think I’ll ever have kids,” Brent said. “I used to want kids, when Naomi and I were engaged, but not now. Not anymore.”He imagined he heard a scraping sound as Ghost-Harold lay down on the other side of the pumping station.“They’ll just get eaten,” Brent said.Ghost-Harold didn’t speak, but only because he wasn’t really there, and Brent was finally falling asleep.



3. Morning

It was the dim gleam of sunshine around the edges of the door that woke him. That, and a throbbing bladder.Brent swam up from terrible dreams, dreams of blood and wormy monsters, and sat up. He looked around the dingy interior of the pump station, disoriented and a little bit afraid, before remembering where he was, how he had gotten there, and that his best friend Harold was dead. Harold was probably just bones by now, he thought. Broken bones with the marrow sucked out.“Stop it,” he said very firmly to himself, and he struggled up to his feet. His body was stiff and achy from sleeping on a cold concrete floor all night, but it was better than being dead.Maybe.He put his jacket on, rolled up his blanket and stuffed it into his backpack, then shuffled to the door.He put his ear to the crack, feeling the cold autumn wind snuffling through the narrow gap, lapping at his ear like a dog. After a moment or two of listening, he opened the door a crack and peeked out with one eye. It was still early, the sun barely clear of the horizon. The area immediately visible to him was free of any deadheads, dumb or otherwise. It was just him, a field of waist high wildgrass gone to seed and the gently stirring forest on the far side of it. Birds were twittering, the sky was deep and blue, and he had to piss like a ruptured racehorse.His grandfather used to say that.Gramps Scarborough had died the year before the zombie apocalypse. He had lived a long full life, loved many women, had a passel of young’uns, and passed in his sleep of a coronary thrombosis at the hoary old age of 82. He didn’t have to see his family and friends get sick, turn into monsters, and start killing and eating everyone in sight. He never sat in front of the TV and watch in stunned disbelief as the pope got dragged from his popemobile and torn apart by a mob of mindless cannibals. He would never have to stab his own parents in the brains with an icepick to make sure their dead bodies didn’t reanimate, or sit with a comatose fiancé after her insulin ran out and her non-functioning pancreas slowly poisoned her with her own blood sugar.Lucky guy, Gramps Scarborough.Gritting his teeth at the cold, Brent unzipped, opened the door just a little wider, and eased his shrunken pecker through the gap. Little puffs of steam curled up from the arc of piss that pattered on the frosty ground outside. Brent emptied his bladder, then tucked El Toro away and retreated into the pump station.“We’ll never make it to the Free Zone before the weather turns,” Brent said, as he returned to the far corner of the shed. “We need to find some place to hole up for the winter. Someplace warm and safe, with plenty of fresh water and food.”“While you’re at it, why don’tcha wish for a tropical island with lots of nubile young native girls, too?” Harold said. “We can lay on the beach all day and drink from coconut shells while they fan us with great big palm leaves.”Brent laughed. “I wouldn’t turn my nose up at that!”“I imagine not!”He eased down and pulled Harold’s backpack to him. There was just enough light coming through the seams of the door to see by. He unzipped the backpack, fingers clumsy with the cold, and started dragging out Harold’s things. The food he set carefully to one side. Lighters, eating utensils, can opener, bowie knife—he put those aside, too. He would keep Harold’s pistol, even though bullets were as rare as four leaf clovers now. He pulled out a ragged issue of Hustler and set it aside. It was bloated with moisture and some of the pages were stuck together, but the paper could be used to start fires, or for toilet paper. There was a yellowed copy of Fifty Shades of Gray and another book called The Road. He kept those for the same reason he kept the Hustler. He had never been much of a reader.He put on an old sweater that was in the backpack, but tossed aside a pair of spare blue jeans. They were too big for him. He threw away a pair of holy underwear (pinching it between his forefinger and thumb). Kept the extra socks. Tossed the flashlight. Good batteries were as rare as bullets now. Aspirin: keep. Nail clippers: keep. Half-full bottle of Jack Daniels: keep!He turned the backpack upside down and shook it.“Now, you’ll wanna keep those,” Ghost-Harold said in a low voice.A plastic freezer bag full of photographs had fallen out. Brent unsealed the bag and took the pictures out. He had to hold them close to his face to see them in the low light. Here was a picture of Harold looking young and trim and happy, leaning against the grill of a nice sports car with a young woman on his arm. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and had nice long tan legs and curly brown hair.“Your wife?” Brent said.“My first wife,” he murmured.“She was pretty.”“Yeah.”Brent flipped through the rest: Harold with a blonde, Harold with a redhead, Harold with a couple kids who looked like miniature versions of their father. Here was another ginger kid. And another one.“How many kids did you have?” Brent asked.“Didn’t I ever tell you?”“No.”Ghost-Harold didn’t answer.Brent put the photos in the bag and resealed it.“I can’t take them with me,” he said, and he tossed the bag over by the too-big pants and dirty underwear. “It would be stupid. I don’t have enough room in my backpack as it is. Besides, they’re not my pictures. They’re yours, and you’re dead.” Then he got up and retrieved one of the photos from the bag. The one of Harold leaning against his car with his first wife. He folded the picture and put it in the interior pocket of his jacket.“Maybe just one,” he muttered.He took stock of his keep pile and tried to stuff as much of it into his own backpack as he could fit. It was so tightly packed when he was done he could barely run the zipper. That finished, he opened the canned food and sniffed the contents suspiciously. The green beans and mixed vegetables smelled fine, but the creamed corn had gone sour, and he put it aside with a grimace. He drank the water out of the green beans can, then took up his fork and began to eat.He ate until his stomach throbbed, putting as much of the canned vegetables inside of him as he could fit, then he rose and prepared for another day of walking. He and Harold had crossed two states on foot, trying to get to the Free Zone. They had been travelling steadily north since the night, over a year ago, they found a working radio and heard the broadcasts coming from the city of living people. They had listened to those broadcasts whenever they could pick up the signal—usually on overcast days—until their batteries had run dry. The signal was always weak and crackly, but it had become a beacon to them, a bright ray of hope. The first time they heard the radio station, they had both wept. It was a Barry Manilow song, “Looks Like We Made It”, faint and distorted. When Brent first heard the music issuing from the radio’s speakers, his breath had caught in his throat and the blood rushed to his head, and he thought he was going to pass out.After the music played, a man and woman began to speak. They called themselves the Last Living Deejays. It was a husband and wife duo named Rick and Ronni Parker, and they were transmitting from Peoria, Illinois, a city they called the Free Zone, where the survivors of the zombie apocalypse still lived something like a normal life.“If you are out there listening to this broadcast right now, know that you are not alone. And know that you have a home here with us, a place where you can live in peace and security, among your fellow living men and women,” Ronnie had said. She had a purring, angelic voice. “Come, if you can. There is a place waiting here for you. There are fifty thousand living men and women here. There are children, and there are dogs. You can have a life again. You can be free.”They gave reports on the activities of nearby meat patrols, warned of herd movements, reported the local news, the births, deaths, and engagements of the citizens of their Free Zone, and commented on the politics of their burgeoning civilization. The Free Zone was a democratic parliament, much like England’s government before the Phage, though they called their legislature the Board of Trustees and “mayor” was the title of their head of state, rather than “president” or “prime minister”. The day they restored electricity to the entire city they held a wild celebration, and played rock and roll music all day long. They observed all the old holidays, like Easter and Christmas. They reported on their dealings with the nearby zombie nations, and put on old-fashioned radio dramas. They had fortifications, highly trained military defenses, and nukes.It was an education for Brent and Harold, who had done little besides run, hide and scrounge for food for the past eight years. It gave their lives purpose again, gave them something to live for, something to hope for.And something, ultimately, to die for.But that was better than the life they had been leading.Stomach sloshing with all the vegetables he had eaten, Brent shouldered his backpack and went to the door. He listened again, then peeked carefully outside. In the field beyond the chain-link fence that encircled the pumping station, a small herd of deer were grazing silently. The sight of the animals brought a smile to his lips, and he stood there for several minutes just watching the majestic creatures. Finally, he eased the door open wider and stepped outside. The sun had risen further, dispelling some of the night’s chill. He felt its light on his cheeks like a benediction. The deer continued to graze for a moment, flicking their tails, then a buck with a large set of antlers noticed him, and they all bolted away toward the forest, some of them scrambling in fear, other leaping above the grass. He watched them vanish into the wilderness, then stood there for a moment, listening to them crunch and crash through the woods until the sounds had faded.“You don’t see many deer anymore,” Brent said to Ghost-Harold.“Naw. The deadheads eat ‘em when they can’t get any human meat.”There were not many dogs, cats or cows anymore either. Dogs were vulnerable to the Phage and had gone all but extinct shortly after the pandemic swept across the globe. The cats and cows had been caught and eaten by the eternally hungry zombies. Birds and fish had thrived, but not any of the larger or more friendly mammals. Zombies would eat anything warm-blooded they could get their claws on.Brent crossed the small yard and stepped carefully across a section of the fence that had fallen over. He eyed the waist high wildgrass, looking for any suspicious movement. One of his old companions had been bitten by a legless zombie in high grass. They hadn’t seen it until it was too late. Usually they moaned or snarled, but sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they couldn’t. The one that had gotten his old companion had had its throat ripped out, but it was still bitey.
Brent put the rising sun to his right and headed north.


4. Road

He pushed through the waist high wildgrass until he came to a road, if that’s what you wanted to call it. It was really just two gravelly ruts zigzagging through the high grass and brush. It would not be safer following the tracks, but he would make better time, and expend less energy, if he followed it.“Just have to keep my eyes and ears open,” he said.“Yep,” Harold said behind him. “We don’t want to get caught with our pants down again. Not like yesterday.”They had been so excited to find some canned food and ramen noodles at the Pack ‘N’ Tuck yesterday that they hadn’t heard the approaching drone of the meat wagon until it was too late. The last thing they’d eaten was a possum they’d found dead on the forest floor two days before. It had looked fresh dead, not too bloated or maggoty, so they’d made a fire and cooked it. Possum flesh was disgustingly greasy and gamey, but they’d tucked into it like a couple of zombies that hadn’t had brains in a month. Compared to possum, canned vegetables and ramen noodles would make for a gourmet banquet. When they finally noticed the rumbling of the truck engine, they had hurried outside, intending to retreat into the forest, thinking they’d have time to duck out of sight before whoever was coming ever saw them, but they were just a minute too late. They had stumbled out of the collapsed service station just in time to see a vehicle come zooming around the bend in the road. It was a huge red Ford with a barbed wire cage in the bed, a cage meant to hold wild runners. It shot past them so fast the wind blew their bangs back. For a moment, Brent hoped they would just keep on going, that they were too distracted, or too slow in the head, to take note of the two live men standing like dummies on the side of the road. But the deadheads had seen them as the big red Ford whooshed by, and the truck had screeched to a halt, smoke curling up from the wildly sliding tires.“We should have just ducked down inside the store,” Brent said. “Waited for the vehicle to pass.”“True,” Harold said. “Well, the truck startled us. We weren’t expecting it. We hadn’t seen a meat patrol for weeks. It was just instinct to run.”“And look what it got you.”“Ah, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault, kiddo.”Brent walked most of the morning, stopping to rest only once. The gravel ruts he was following wound back and forth and up and down through the wooded countryside. Sometimes the forest closed in and formed an arching green roof over the road, like the ceiling of a church, and sometimes it fell back to prairie grass and brambles. He heard no sounds but the sounds of the forest.You had to be careful following roads nowadays. The zombies had begun driving again shortly after their awakening, which was what Brent had dubbed the reemergence of their consciousness. They didn’t drive very well, for intelligence did not counteract the damage that had been wrought to their bodies while they were mindless, but they drove really fast, and they weren’t afraid to chase you over rough terrain if they saw you. They were, after all, already dead. What was left to be afraid of?Thankfully, there were not many running vehicles, not after a decade of disuse, and he supposed they had to ration their gasoline, too. Deadheads didn’t have the numbers, or the mental capacity, to take up the industries they had manned when they were alive. They might be smart, but he had seen very few of them actually working. They didn’t clear or repair the roads. They didn’t restore their houses. They didn’t even mow their lawns. They just ate. Ate and fought and hunted the living. Mankind had been replaced by the most debased, cruel and voracious version of itself imaginable. It had been consumed by its own evil twin.At noon his stomach started gurgling queasily and he walked out into the grass to void his bowels. He dropped his pants and held onto the trunk of a small tree so he could squat and relieve himself. He kept a wary eye on his surroundings as he took care of his business, then wiped himself on a page torn out of Fifty Shades of Gray. He pulled up his pants, slung his backpack back over his shoulders and continued on.The gravel road finally came to an end. Brent leaned out, like a safari guide peering from elephant grass, and scanned the paved blacktop the gravel road abutted. Time and the elements had shattered the once smooth surface of the road into a jigsaw puzzle made of concrete. Grass and saplings had sprouted from the cracks, but it was still navigable, and frighteningly open to the environs. He looked up and down the long stretch of highway, listening for car engines, or the telltale moans of the forgetful dead. The smart zombies had taken to killing and eating the ones who’d never recovered their minds—less competition for resources, he supposed—but there were still plenty of them shambling around in the wilds. Sometimes whole herds of them.On a distant hill was a derelict farmhouse, its roof partially caved in from past snows. It was a big house, two stories with a porch and gables facing the road and the back yard. The house was barely visible amid the grass and trees that had quickly reclaimed the world once man quit chopping it all down regularly. There was a collapsed barn behind it, and what looked to be an old farm truck rusting slowly in the front. There didn’t appear to be any signs of occupancy, but you never knew. Nevertheless, it was in the direction he was headed, and it would be dark in another three hours or so, so he decided to make it his next goal. There might be food inside, supplies he could use. Maybe even a bed he could sleep in for the night.Nerves taut, he eased his left foot out onto the highway. He took a calming breath, then shifted his entire body out. Clear of the concealing grass, he felt terribly exposed and vulnerable.“Just stay alert and you’ll be fine,” Ghost-Harold said reassuringly.“Easy for you to say. You’re dead.”He walked down the center of the highway, for it was safer to stay in the middle where nothing could snatch at him from the grass. He was about halfway to the farmhouse before he began to relax a little, though he did not dare drop his guard completely. He pulled his jacket together in the front, shivering. The sky overhead had grown more and more overcast as the day wore on, and the blustering autumn wind was getting a bit moist, almost nippy. He had begun to suspect that there was some bad weather on the way. The clouds in the west were gray and pendulous.“Might be some snow coming,” he said.“I think you might be right,” Ghost-Harold said. “First snow of the season.”“I hate snow.”“I no longer have an opinion.”Brent laughed softly. Even dead, Harold was a cut up.He heard a guttural moan then and bit the chuckle off. He jerked his bowie knife from the side pocket of his backpack, reaching up and behind him with practiced speed. Body tense, he turned in a circle, trying to locate the source of the moaning. Already his adrenaline had kicked in, and his heart was rattling in his chest. A greasy film of sweat oozed from his pores. His skin felt prickly, like someone was poking him with hot needles.“Careful, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold murmured.He heard another low moan, and realized it was coming from the yard of the farmhouse. He started forward, staying low. It sounded like there was just one, but sometimes they didn’t groan. He peered up as he came around the bend, scanning the property. Near his left elbow was a mailbox, nearly cocooned in ivy. The mailbox said The Johnsonson the side in fancy cursive script. The paint had all but worn away over the years, but it was still legible. In the center of the yard was a tall, broad-shouldered deadhead.Judging by the way it was moaning softly, just swaying back and forth like a hypnotized cobra, it was still brain dead, one of the living dead that hadn’t regained its senses. It was dressed in bluish gray rags that might once have been bib overalls. It’s visible flesh looked like beef jerky stretched over bone, and in some places the bone shone through where animals, or some other zombie, had gnawed on it a little. It was too old and withered to be wormy. Probably couldn’t move much further than it was already moving. When they didn’t get enough fresh flesh to eat, the Phage sucked them dry from the inside out. They sort of locked up, like a rusty old hinge in need of oil.Brent tiptoed forward, keeping the truck between them. He crouched behind the vehicle, breathing through his mouth, trying to make as little noise as possible. He was planning to rush up behind the creature and stab it in the base of the skull, but before he made his move, he spied a rusty shovel laying in the bed of the truck amid years worth of fallen leaves and windblown debris. He put away his knife and gently lifted out the shovel. He hefted it in his hands. Better. If he used the shovel, he wouldn’t have to get so close.The zombie seemed to notice his furtive movements. It let out an inquisitive gurgle and tried to turn its head. The desiccated flesh of its neck crackled and split open as its head twisted around.Brent trotted forward and swung the shovel at its head with all his strength. He did it silently, moving as quickly as he could. The shovel connected with the zombie’s head with an almost comical clunking sound, and the withered creature’s head went flying across the yard. He had knocked it clear off the deadhead’s shoulders!The head hit the ground and went rolling through the grass. The zombie’s body swayed from the blow, then just stood there. It was too dry and stiff to fall.Lips curled back from his teeth, Brent used the shovel and pushed the dead thing forward.It toppled over with a thump.He waited, listening intently. If there were any other deadheads in the vicinity, they would be roused by the clonk of the shovel. He jumped a little when a bird came fluttering from beneath the roof of the farmhouse’s porch, squawking irately, but that was the only sound he heard besides the hoot of the wind in the eaves and the susurration of the shifting grass.The front door of the farmhouse stood open. The doorway was a dark maw through which he could see little of the house’s interior. A framed picture on the wall. What looked like the arm of a sofa. There could be anything in there. Zombies. Wild animals. Food. Weapons.“If you’re lucky, there’ll be a hot nymphomaniac hiding out in there,” Ghost-Harold said. “And she hasn’t seen a live man in ten years.”“Somehow I doubt it,” Brent whispered.
“Never know ‘til you look,” Harold replied, and Brent nodded and eased toward the door.

5. House

One of the most vital skills to possess during a zombie apocalypse was a very basic thing: knowing when to move fast, and knowing when to take it slow. When a zombie was after you, you ran. You ran as fast as you could. Didn’t matter if it was a slow, stiff, dumb one, you hauled ass. You hauled ass because even the slow ones were dangerous if there were enough of them, and they tended to travel in herds. Even if they seemed to be alone, you either killed them or ran, because they were attracted to noises, and even the solitary ones grouped up with terrible alacrity, and you let just one of them lay their cold, lifeless hands on you and nine times out of ten you were dead. But when entering a house, or any other kind of artificial construction, you took it slow. Especially if the building was closed up. Dumbheads didn’t remember how to use doorknobs, so if some poor sucker changed into a zombie inside of a house or shed or some kind of public building, they just wandered around inside, shuffling ceaselessly from corner to corner until someone blundered in on them. But even when the doors were open, you had to watch your step, because even the dumb ones tended to congregate around objects and places that had been familiar to them in life. That’s why towns were so dangerous, and forget trying to forage for supplies at supermarkets or malls. The parking lots of the big chain stores were like watering holes at the height of the dry season in the Serengeti. Wal-Mart was the worst. Wal-Mart parking lots looked like a free U2 concert in Central Park. It was safer out in the country, away from the cities, away from any human things that might be attractive to the wandering dead, but even out in the country you had to be very careful when entering houses. Out in the countryside, houses were often the only artificial constructions visible for miles and miles, and they tended to attract the dead like a beacon on a rocky promontory.Take this one for instance. The door was wide open, the windows busted, but there was no telling what horrors might be wandering around its cold and silent halls, ready to jump out and sink its teeth in him the instant he stepped inside. There might be a dozen of them in there, just shuffling around like contestants in some nightmarish cakewalk, their minds as still as mausoleums until some sound, some glint of movement, roused them to their hunger.Brent eased up the front steps, holding the shovel in front of him, and started across the porch to the doorway, waiting for some chomper to spring out at him like a jack-in-the-box from hell.The floorboards of the porch were warped and creaky. They gave under his weight with spongy elasticity. He reached out with the spade of the shovel and tapped it against the doorframe a couple times, then waited to see if anything came stumbling out of the darkness.“Give it another whack,” Harold said behind him. “Sometimes they don’t hear so good.”Brent almost shushed him before he remembered that his travelling companion was dead. Harold’s voice wouldn’t alert any nearby deadheads because he wasn’t really there. He was just a figment of Brent’s imagination.Nevertheless, Brent nodded. He clanked the doorframe again and listened.Nothing.He licked his lips and stepped forward. His left foot crossed the threshold……and an all-but-mummified deadhead whose body was missing from the ribs down latched onto his boot with a bony claw. He cried out as the withered creature jerked his ankle to its mouth and started gnawing on the leather. It was female, naked, its hair as fine as spider silk, but it was surprisingly strong. It almost pulled him off of his feet.The deadhead snapped and chomped at his boot, its movements frantic and crablike in its hunger. Thank God he was wearing boots! If he had been wearing tennis shoes, it might have been able to bite through to the skin.Stumbling around in its grasp, Brent put the spade of the shovel to the back of its neck and pressed down. He put his weight upon it and the sharp edge of the shovel sliced through. With a crunching sound, the zombie’s head came free and rolled over on its cheek. He twisted his ankle free of the deadhead’s jittering fingers and stumbled back. The zombie’s jaws continued to gnash together, its one visible eye rolling in its socket.“Jesus Christ,” he whispered shakily. He shook off his surprise and brought the shovel back up, ready to do battle with the next mindless chomper.He surveyed the room he was standing in. It was a small livingroom with country-style furniture, a flat screen TV sitting atop an old-fashioned console TV, and several bookshelves lined with paperback romances. The matted carpet was covered in several season’s worth of blown leaves, and the wallpaper was peeling from the water-stained gypsum. Some of it had unfurled all the way down to the wainscoting. Ivy had infiltrated the house through the broken windows and green runners of vegetation wavered up the walls and across the ceiling like thick green veins. Beside one of the recliners was a wooden basket with skeins of yarn still in it. On the wall above the couch was a large framed reproduction of “The Last Supper”. On the wall above the TV was a framed print of praying hands. It seemed the Johnsons were a god-fearing couple. Didn’t keep Mr. Johnson from eating his wife from the waist down, though. That’s what he assumed had happened-- her pelvis and leg bones were scattered about the living room, looking somewhat gnawed upon.The female zombie had lain there beside the doorway for so long her body had kind of fused to the floor. The arms of the creature had stopped moving, but the head was still animated, its teeth snapping like a metronome, the milky gray eyes rolling to follow him as he crept toward the kitchen doorway.The kitchen was even more dimly lit, the windows coated with dust so that only a weak yellow light shone through. The room was like a sepia-toned photograph brought to life, everything stark and colorless. The dingy yellow wallpaper bore an apple motif. The kitchen table was made of a heavy, dark wood, and set with chunks of plaster that had rotted and fallen from the ceiling. There were, however, no zombies, but before he ransacked the cabinets for food, he needed to case the entire house, make sure there were no more surprises lying in wait for him.He crossed the kitchen and checked out the rest of the first floor. Past the kitchen was a short hallway that connected to four other rooms as it circled back around to the livingroom. Two of them were bedrooms, and the third looked like it had once served as Mr. Johnson’s office. It was wood paneled and masculine, with a large boxy desk, several filing cabinets and a wide-mouthed bass mounted on the wall. There was a calendar with a photo of a pretty blond bent over a tractor engine. She was grinning, her daisy dukes riding so high the globes of her butt were visible. She was wearing a flannel shirt tied around the waist so that her midriff was bared, and there was a little smear of grease on her cheek. There was also a gun cabinet standing beside the filing cabinets, but the front glass was shattered. Whatever firearms it had once held had long ago been pilfered.“Ammunition too, I bet,” Brent muttered.The final downstairs room was a bathroom. It was small, very blue, and featured an old-fashioned clawfoot tub. Beside the bathroom door was a narrow staircase.He crept up the creaking steps. The second floor was partially obstructed by the collapsed roof, an impenetrable jumble of drywall and wooden beams and mounds of yellow insulation. The two rooms he could get into were empty but for some boxes and plastic storage bins and some physical fitness equipment.“You should work out up here,” Ghost-Harold said. “Try to get buff for the ladies.”Brent chuckled. “You’re the one that needs to work out. I don’t know how anyone could stay fat after the Phage, no food to eat, always running from deadheads.”“This ain’t fat, kid. This is muscle.”“I’ve seen you without a shirt,” Brent said. “That isn’t muscle.”“When you get my age, it’s not so easy to stay trim. You can starve and workout every day, don’t make any difference. It’s just middle age, my boy. One of these days you’ll get fat, too.”“I’ll get eaten before that ever happens,” Brent said, going back down the stairs.Before he settled in, he stepped out the back door and scanned the rear lawn, making sure there were no other deadheads nearby. The wind was blowing even stronger now, whipping the trees and grass back and forth almost violently as it whooshed across the yard. A section of the collapsed barn’s tin roofing wagged up and down like a giant rusty tongue, creaking and booming. The gusting winds had driven the lumpy, steel-colored clouds completely across the sky, and with the overcast an early twilight. The temperature had plummeted while he was exploring the old farmhouse. In the west, the sun was just a dim, glowing patch pasted above the horizon.“Snow for sure tonight,” Brent whispered. “Or a… what did they use to call it?”“A wintry mix?” Ghost-Harold suggested.“Yeah, a wintry mix.”Shivering, Brent retreated inside. He pushed the heavy kitchen table against the door, then walked quickly into the livingroom and used the shovel to scrape Mrs. Johnson off the floor. The two zombies might not be the original Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, but that was what he’d dubbed them.He scooped her head up first, wrinkling his nose at the sight of her snapping jaws and roving eyes. He stepped out onto the porch and gave her head the old heave ho, tossing it in the direction her husband’s noggin had rolled, then he returned inside and did his best to pry her body off the carpet. He got a good portion of it up, wincing at the fibrous tearing sound her flesh made as it pulled loose of the carpeting. One of her arms tore off at the shoulder with a dry crunching sound as he lifted her up so he had to make an extra trip outside, but he got most of her out. He even scooped up her scattered and gnawed on bones, so old now they were gray and striated.He blocked the front door with the sofa, pushed the bookshelves in front of the broken windows, and then he sat and rested for several minutes. He was sweaty and out of breath, and utterly exhausted, but he would rest easier tonight knowing he had made his hideout as secure as possible.
 They caught him two days later.

Cattle by Rod Redux

Cattle

It is ten years after the global apocalypse. The Phage, the zombie virus that brought the world to its knees, has mutated, restoring the minds of its undead victims: their personalities, their memories and even their dreams. The hungry dead are no longer the mindless monsters that drove mankind to the brink of extinction. They possess once again the human cunning that once made man the masters of the world.But they still have their relentless hunger for human flesh.The last few living humans still at large in this twisted new world now find themselves hunted for a far more insidious reason. If captured, they will be kept, farmed, and forced to produce the living flesh their hungry masters crave...

This is the first installment of an ongoing story I'm working on for you, my friends and readers. I can't promise to work on it any more regularly than the mood strikes me, but I hope you enjoy it all the same! 


1. Illinois

“Try to keep up, Harold!” Brent Scarborough gasped, racing through the forest as fast as he could go. His lungs were burning, his heart thudding in his chest, but he didn’t dare slow his pace, not even for his friend. They’d been running together for two years now. Harold Killian was like a brother to him—closer than a brother, to be honest—but the deadheads were on their tail, and he was determined to get away, to survive, and make it to the fabled Free Zone, where they could live among their own kind and have some kind of normal life again, without worrying about deadheads eating them alive their every waking moment.“Just go!” Harold gasped, limping several yards behind him. “Don’t you wait… on me, Brent Scarborough!”Harold had twisted his ankle pretty badly when they took off through the forest. A meat patrol had come up unexpectedly on them as they were foraging for food in an old service station—caught them dead to rights as they were coming out of the crumbling Pack’N’Tuck—and they had rabbited into the woods. It was autumn. Probably late October or November. The floor of the forest was thickly carpeted with leaves, and Harold had stepped into a chuckhole, nearly breaking his ankle. They would have been fine if their pursuers were dumbheads. They were good at eluding the dumb ones. But it was a meat patrol, and the zombies had squealed to a stop and given chase. It was the reapers’ job to find and catch wild humans. The deadheads were well trained, and they were armed, and they never gave up.Brent could hear the reapers calling out to one another behind them. Their bone chilling grunts and snarls echoed in the distance, but they were closing in, and Brent felt almost faint with terror. Terror for himself. Terror for his friend.This is it, he thought. We’re going to die! And we were so close!The Free Zone was a city populated and controlled by living men and women. Once it had been called Peoria, but it was the Free Zone now. The people of the Free Zone had ensured their survival by rigging their fortress city with nukes. Any aggressive move by the zombie nations and they would blow themselves up, vaporizing every man, woman and child in the city. There were so few living human beings now the deadheads didn’t dare move against them, and sometimes they even protected the living men from herds of mindless dumbheads. In exchange, the people of the Free Zone gave the zombies their dead. The zombies couldn’t starve to death—they were already dead—but they were always hungry. It was a suicide standoff, but it worked, and the zombies were content to pick off any wild runners who tried to make it to the Shangri-La of the Living.A shot rang out, its report rolling through the forest, and Brent cried out. He couldn’t help himself. The yelp had jumped out of his mouth before he could catch it, like a frightened frog. He tried to increase his speed, but his strength was rapidly flagging. He couldn’t run all day without stopping. He was only a man. But his pursuers could.Harold grunted loudly and fell, the dry forest duff crunching under his body as he hit the ground and rolled.For a second, Brent thought his friend had been shot, and he started to turn back to help him, zombies or no zombies.“Go, go!” Harold panted, struggling to get back to his feet. The barrel-chested older man was sweaty and red-faced, his bright orange hair disheveled, a long scratch on his cheek where some broken branch had gouged him. As Brent wavered between obeying and helping his companion, Harold yanked off his backpack and threw it to the younger man. The bag held all his worldly possessions: supplies, a few keepsakes, and the little bit of food they’d found in the abandoned service station: some old canned vegetables, a few packs of Ramen noodles. “Harold, no,” Brent wheezed, looking down at the backpack like it was going to change into a hungry alligator at any second.“If you don’t go, they’re going to catch both of us today,” Harold said. He tested his ankle and groaned at the pain. “Go on. I’ll catch up if I can get away from them. Get to the Free Zone. Don’t throw your life away on me.”Another shot rang out, and Harold Killian’s eyes bulged out. His body stiffened, and then he dropped to his knees.“Harold!” Brent howled.Harold tried to talk, but his last words came out a froth of blood and spit. He toppled forward onto his face and didn’t move. A moist red stain expanded around a tiny hole in the back of his denim jacket.Brent squeezed his hands into fists, screaming through his clenched teeth. He spotted one of the reapers then, trudging up over the rise, a rifle in its decayed hands. He ducked, snatched up his friend’s backpack, and started running.They wouldn’t follow him any further, he knew. They were like sharks. They wouldn’t be able to resist the smell of his friend’s blood. They would tear the dead man apart, eat until their bellies couldn’t hold anymore, then take the rest to the nearest town and put it on the meat market. Harold was a big man. He’d probably fetch a handsome price, even if they ate half of him here in the forest.Brent ran.He ran for his life.



2. Night

There was one thing more frightening than death, more horrible than the zombies who had inherited the earth, and that was being alone.Brent was 23 years old when the zombie apocalypse went down, a junior studying at Western Tennessee University, still living at home with his parents to save money on tuition, and engaged to a bright, funny, sexy little bookworm named Naomi Richardson. Naomi was a sardonic feminist, wore crazy hornrim glasses to damper her rather stunning beauty, and only read novels written by dead authors. Her only nod to conventionality was dating him, and a longtime addiction toThe Days of Our Lives, of which she was both proud and embarrassed. The soap because it was so ordinary, and him because there was really nothing special about him apart from his looks. Your typical college jock, that was Brent Scarborough, studying business and partying on a football scholarship. His mother loved Naomi and couldn’t wait for them to marry and start having beautiful babies for her to spoil. His dad thought Naomi was strange, and that Brent should sew his wild oats before settling down, though he would never say something like that in front of his wife or future daughter-in-law. He only said it to Brent after he’d had a few too many drinks.But that was before the Phage. That was before people started getting sick and eating each other. That was before his mother and father and fiancé died, and he was cast adrift on the churning whitecaps of a global catastrophe.He had survived because he was strong and fast and lucky. He might not have been the sharpest utensil in the silverware drawer, but he quickly found that he possessed a keen instinct for self-preservation. It had kept him alive when so many others were dying, kept him going when other smarter people gave up.He wanted to live, and that survival instinct drove him on when any other rational being would curl up into a fetal position and surrender.But he hated being alone.He was crouched in the corner of some sort of derelict pumping station now, a squat little shed with a tin roof and cinderblock walls. In the center of the bare concrete floor was an abstract sculpture of pipes and gauges. He hadn’t the faintest idea what the station was for, but he was glad that he had stumbled across it. He had almost wept with joy when the door gave way under his first few kicks. It was safer, and a whole lot warmer, sheltering inside the shed than it would have been sleeping out in the open.“What do you say, Harold old buddy old pal?” Brent murmured, huddled under his jacket and threadbare blanket. “It’s a lot better than sleeping outside,” Ghost-Harold replied.Teeth chattering, Brent nodded. “Yes, indeed!”He knew there weren’t any ghosts in the shed with him. He wasn’t that crazy, but he was still too juiced up on adrenaline to sleep, and it was a way to keep his brain occupied until exhaustion finally claimed his weary soul. It was that or replay the day’s events in his mind, and he certainly didn’t want to do that.“Remember how we met, Harold?” Brent said, grinning a little in the dark.“Oh, yeah,” Ghost-Harold said with a chuckle. “Sorry about that.”“It was about two years ago,” Brent said. “I was on my own at the time. The girl I was traveling with just before you, girl named Angie Wright, had just died. She scratched her hand trying to climb over a barbed wire fence and got some kind of infection. It was pretty bad.”“You guys fuck?” Ghost-Harold said.“I told you already,” Brent said. “No. She was a lesbian.”“Oh, yeah, right. I forget.”“Anyway, I was on my own. It was a hot summer afternoon, and I decided to cool off in a creek. I was splashing around buck naked when you came out of the woods with your rifle. ‘Put your hands where I can ‘em!’ you yelled. Oh, man, I about messed myself. And then you told me to turn around, and I thought for sure you were going to shoot me in the back. That, or cornhole me. Or both!”“Naw, man, I don’t swing that way!” Ghost-Harold guffawed. “I just wanted to rob ya!”“You did, too. Took everything I had. Even my clothes.”“Yeah, but you followed me. You followed me for the rest of the day, naked as a baby, until I felt sorry for you and gave you your stuff back.”“Yeah,” Brent said, smiling at the reminiscence. The smile faded and he sniffed. “We got off to a rough start, but we ended up making a pretty good team.”“We sure did, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold said.“Always stayed two steps ahead of the meat patrols. Always… Ah, hell, man, why’d you have to go and die today? I hate being by myself!”“Sorry, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold said. “I couldn’t help it.”“I know.”“You just keep running, kid. You’ll make it to the Free Zone, and then you can find you a nice live girl and get married and have a whole passel of fat little live babies.”Brent snorted. “Is that all you think about?”“What? Making babies?”“Yeah.”“What else is there to do? We gotta repopulate the world, kiddo.”Brent sighed. “I think our time has came and went.”“You and me?”“No… humanity.”“Oh… That’s fucking grim, kid. Why you gotta say stuff like that? It’s depressing.”Brent laughed. He pulled his backpack around and laid his head down on it. He wished he had some light to see by. He hated being in the dark almost as much as he hated being alone. But he couldn’t make a fire, and it was too cold out to leave the door of the pumping station open, even just a crack.“I don’t think I’ll ever have kids,” Brent said. “I used to want kids, when Naomi and I were engaged, but not now. Not anymore.”He imagined he heard a scraping sound as Ghost-Harold lay down on the other side of the pumping station.“They’ll just get eaten,” Brent said.Ghost-Harold didn’t speak, but only because he wasn’t really there, and Brent was finally falling asleep.

Oldest Living Vampire Betrayed Is Here!

The fourth volume of the Oldest Living Vampire Saga is complete, and I have submitted the files to Amazon's servers for publication. The new novel should be available for purchase for the Kindle ereader sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours. I'm very excited to have it finished, and I hope you all enjoy it!

I will be working on the Nook and iTunes versions, as well as a trade paperback edition, in the days to come. I don't have a working link to the product page yet, but keep your eyes peeled. It will probably go live sometime today!






UPDATE: The book is now live on the Kindle bookstore. Follow the link to download your copy today!


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GW0FDKE

The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice -- A Review

About midways through Anne Rice's newest novel, the protagonist Rueben Golding, while contemplating a Christmas display, prays to the Christ child, "Please show me how to be good. Please, no matter what I am, show me how to be good."

That simple prayer might be the main theme of the entire novel, if not most of the author's works. The aching desire to be good in the face of adversity and Otherness.

Her most famous literary creation, the vampire Lestat, also shared this longing to be good-- as, I believe,  the author does herself. Substitute "alcoholism", "homosexuality", "doubt" or "lasciviousness" for "vampire" or "werewolf" and I think you come to the heart of her fiction's thematic core. Anne Rice's fiction is about coming to grips with one's own Otherness, that part of every person's soul that is not acceptable to normal, judgmental, oppressive society. Whatever failing you might believe you have, or society declares that you have, Rice's fiction is about finding acceptance and joy in one's own goodness. It is about redemption. As a Catholic and a deeply spiritual woman, I think Mrs. Rice is intimately familiar with that conflict.

But while The Vampire Chronicles explored this theme subtly, in the Wolf Gift series, that subtext is illuminated in a much more overt manner. I'm not sure it's really subtext at all! The werewolves she has created for this series, for example, can smell evil, and have an instinctive revulsion to harming the innocent. It's just a little too blatant for my tastes. I prefer her more ambiguous vampire creations. It seems, at times, almost like a superhero comic book, although to give credit where credit is due, the Wolves of Midwinter is much more realistic than The Wolf Gift in that she introduces some moral ambiguity into the proceedings. For me, it really saved this series, and I hope she explores that further as she continues with it.

As for the plot itself, I found it to be an interesting, intimate tale about a group of friends (who just happen to be werewolves) coming together to celebrate the Yuletide. Mrs. Rice explores the pagan roots of the Christmas holiday, and even introduces several new species of immortals-- all very interesting. There were times I felt she spent too much time describing the various settings, but it did not ruin the story for me. She has a real love of architecture and history and material things, and I think her sensuality gets away from her sometimes.

All in all, I do recommend this book to readers of supernatural fiction. I am sure there will be a few people scandalized by her frank discussion of religion and sexuality and the violent content of the novel, but it held my interest from beginning to end, and reaffirmed my faith in my own goodness, despite my own particular idiosyncracies.

Anne Rice declared in an interview once, "We're all vampires!" And that's the aching beauty of it.

There's nothing quite so fascinating, or deserving of sympathy, as a monster who wants to be good.

New Kindle Paperwhite, A Review

If you don't look below the surface, you might be disappointed with Amazon's latest ereader offering, or maybe I should say unmoved. The new Kindle Paperwhite looks exactly like last year's model. Even the packaging is all but the same. They say it's .2 grams lighter, or something like that, but to be honest, I don't have the tactile sensitivity to feel such a minute difference in weight. Of course, it's probably wise not to change a product that is already basically perfect. I mean, what else do you need? It's got an adjustable built in light-- which is, by the way, improved over last year's built in light, i.e. more evenly distributed across the screen. It's got a higher resolution e-ink screen with "whiter whites and darker darks", though I really find it hard to see too much of an improvement there either. The page turns are slightly faster, with fewer refreshes, and the touch screen sensitivity is adequate to the task. Most of the improvements, incremental as they are, are under the hood, and it is these improvements that made me want the new Kindle Paperwhite. I really like the x-ray feature, which is useful when you need to look up a character-- like, say, in the Game of Thrones books, which have hundreds of different characters with odd names. There is a neat vocabulary type app built in that takes the words you've looked up and puts them into flashcards so you can memorize them. And it has picture-in-picture, where you can flip back through the ebook in a secondary window without losing your place. Still, that is about all that's new from what I've seen so far, so I have to say there is really not much reason to upgrade this year if you already own last year's Paperwhite. I was hoping this year would be the year Amazon releases a 7 inch e-ink Kindle, or maybe a DX with a color screen, like the Jetbook Color, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. My verdict: spend your money on some new books-- you could buy one of mine!-- and wait for something a little more innovative to come out. This year it's just baby steps for Amazon and the new Kindle Paperwhite.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King-- A Book Review

The Shining was never one of my favorite Stephen King books. Of course, I recognize it as the classic haunted house novel that it is, second only to Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, in my humble opinion, but it's never been my fav. That honor would probably go to Salem's Lot or maybe Pet Sematary. Still, when I learned that King was writing a psuedo-sequel to the book, I got excited. It's always exciting when King publishes a straight up horror novel. As stereotyped as he is as America's King of Horror, he really doesn't write as many horror novels as you might think. Joyland was a mystery novel. 11/22/63 was a sic-fi thriller, as was Under the Dome. The Dark Tower series is fantasy, and many of his more well-known books, the Green Mile for example, are more fantasy than horror as well. So, yes, a return to the horror genre by one of its masters tends to get me excited, especially since he described it on his website as "a return to balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror."

So is Doctor Sleep "balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror"?

In one word, nope.

Now, I'm not saying it's a bad book. It isn't. It's a very entertaining read, and there were passages that tugged on my heartstrings a bit, or made me ponder some of the themes King was trying to evoke with the book-- mostly about family and that great mystery we share but cannot share (as King so insightfully puts it).

But it just ain't that scary.

I think one of the problems keeping this book from being "balls-to-the-wall" horror was the villains. The True Knot are a bunch of polyester pants wearing, Gypsy-like old folks who cruise the US in RVs looking for children who possess the shining to feed on. Beneath their ridiculous facade, they are actually psychic vampires, and they torture these kids in order to get them to produce "steam", a sort of psychic cloud that floats up out of their mouths at death, which the True Knot inhales to maintain their youth and vigor. As villains, they are more pathetic than creepy. In displaying them so prominently in the novel, King commits one of the cardinal sins of horror writing: he shows the monsters too much. They are displayed so prominently in the book, their powers and motives explained so meticulously, that he completely pulls their fangs. That, coupled with their silly names, and quite a bit of scatological humor, turns them into cardboard caricature villains. I couldn't even feel very sorry for them in the end, when (I think) King tried to save face by pulling the sympathy card. They're not evil. They're just doing what predators do. Umm, lame.

The main character of the novel is Danny Torrance, now Dan, a scruffy but handsome forty-something-year old who is battling alcoholism, the nightmarish memories of his childhood experiences in the Overlook Hotel,  and some major guilt. He gets a job at a hospice and joins AA, and eventually comes to befriend a young girl named Abra, who is also gifted with the shining. When the spunky teenager runs afoul of the True Knot, Dan steps in to protect the girl from the ravenous old geezers who want to suck up all her youth. Throw in some stereotypical New Englander sidekicks, an extraneous quest to fetch a baseball glove, and you have a slightly formulaic but satisfying race to the finish line. I won't tell you where the book reaches its climax, but you can probably guess pretty early on where King is going with all of it.

Doctor Sleep is a fast-paced supernatural thriller (fast-paced for King, who tends to ramble), flawed in only two ways. One, he spends too much time and effort trying to justify the True Knot's actions and make them seem more desperate. I think he felt they needed more motivation to pursue Abra so relentlessly. They didn't. And two, he spent too little time fleshing out the Doctor Sleep aspect of the book. I found Dan Torrance's hospice work far more riveting than the True Knot's measles or Grampa Flick pooping his pants. The parts of the book where Dan helps his terminally ill patients "pass on" to the other side had me glued to my Kindle. So basically, the main flaw is the book's pacing, but it certainly didn't ruin the experience, just left me wanting a bit more of Doctor Sleep and a bit less of the True Knot.

Kudos to King for coming back to the genre that made him a literary superstar, but he's going to have to dig a little deeper if he really wants to nail our balls to the wall.