Zomboid Spark by Richard Godwin

ZOMBOID SPARK - RICHARD GODWIN

‘She always said necrophilia would be the death of her,’ Larry said. He paused to flick his Ronson lighter and held it smouldering to his Cuban. ‘And you know what? I agree. She liked a jump and she did it with all sorts. That was her joke. She was getting into some strange areas, bit like a junky needs a bigger hit.’

‘So what happened to her?’

They were sitting in Larry’s restaurant. Lovers Crumble appealed to everyone with its versatile menu, but it appealed particularly to those who loved deserts, especially crumbles. Mick was sitting with Larry at his private table and his eyes wandered around the immaculate shining venue in admiration.

‘Tracy is no more,’ Larry said, blowing smoke upward with a look of satisfaction.

‘Why do I think there’s something you’re not telling me?’

‘Because there is, and I will,’ Larry said.

He took a deep swig of cognac and motioned Mick towards him, watching as he slid his chair forward.

‘How come you gave up the lab?’ Mick said.

‘Tracy always liked a fuck. From the day I knew her she had this thing for waiters, her sparks she called them. The first time she screwed one I ignored it, hired a hooker, but I got madder each time she did it. She said they were a flame that kept her ignited, kept her pretty, well I can tell you she wasn’t too pretty when she fell apart and I mean fell apart.’

‘I figured something was going on with her. I thought she liked your money.’

‘I engineered the serum as you know, I could have retired on that.’

‘The new flesh serum?’

Larry nodded and took another drag.

‘I took Tracy away on a holiday to the Caribbean and hoped she would settle down and stop with her sparks. But there was this one waiter she liked and I found her in bed with him. He was tall and dark, he had the look, women used to turn and look at him. You know the type.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you what happened. I shot him full of serum. I turned him into an android.’

‘So that’s how you made those extra millions.’

Larry leant forward and winked at Mick.

‘All the droids you see, they’re down to me.’

A waitress came over and filled Mick’s glass. He eyed her full figure wrapped inside her skirt and said, ‘She one?’

‘Yeah, she’s a gynoid.’

‘So what happened to this waiter?’

‘I thought I’d take control, see. Let Tracy have her fuck but use the fact that she was screwing an android to curb her dalliances.’

‘So she was fucking a robot.’

‘Not a robot, my droids have human skin, makes them appealing. Touch her.’

Mick reached out and ran his hand down the waitress’s arm.

‘I’d never know,’ he said.

Larry nodded.

‘And they’re good in bed. So I got it all set up, Tracy could get screwed by him but he’s just a machine, except I made one small error.’

‘What?’

‘I’d had too much whisky that night and I mixed the serum with another one I’d taken out there to develop. I created the first Zomboid.’

‘What the fuck is that?’

‘It’s a mixture of a Zombie and an Android.’

‘No shit.’

‘And what happened wasn’t pretty. You see the way it works is the Zomboid can infect a human and that human becomes a regular Zombie.’

‘Which can’t be destroyed?’

‘Oh, no, it can. No brains, no action. Tracy’s getting screwed by the Zomboid one night, I hear her screaming out into the midnight and the next morning she loses a finger in her breakfast bowl. That’s when I figure it out.’

‘So what did you tell her?’

‘I didn’t tell her anything. I let her get screwed again. I always said fucking would kill her in the end but she never listened to me. She was dancing one night, wearing this low cut dress and showing it off, and one of her legs flew off, raced through the air like a prosthetic limb and landed in someone’s desert, a most embarrassing moment. One minute she’s doing a salsa, the next she’s licking the floor. The final scene was tragic-comic, I saw her lying under the Zomboid and he was giving her the action and she was doing that scream she did aah hu aah hu, and, well, let’s just say the mouldy cunt split on us both.’

‘What did you do to her?’

‘I removed her brains, scooped ’em out of her hollow skull like stale scrambled eggs. No more Zombie Tracy.’

‘And what happened to the Zomboid?’

Larry pointed.

‘See that guy front of house?’

‘The good looking dude with the hair?’

‘Yeah. That’s him.’

‘No shit?’

‘Yup. Pulls all the women in.’

‘So you sold the lab?’

‘What do I need to work for now? I got hookers and gynoids.’

Mick stared at the Zomboid as he admitted more customers, shook his head and laughed. Larry flicked his Ronson and watched the sparks rise from his Cuban while he heard the sound of bones cracking beneath a Caribbean sun.

BIO: Richard Godwin is the author of crime novel Apostle Rising, in which a serial killer is crucifying politicians and recreating the murder scenes of an original case. The novel has received great reviews.


It has just sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary.


He is widely published in many magazines and anthologies and also writes horror and Bizarro as well as literary fiction and poetry. You can find out more about him here. His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are popular and penetrating interviews he conducts with other authors at his Blog.


His second crime novel will be published in April of this year by Black Jackal Books as a paperback.

Review: Quarantined By Michael Moreci

My initial reaction to the ending of Quarantined was Noooooooo!

If you’ve read it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’m going to try and do this review without spoiling it for those of you haven’t had the chance, in the hopes that you’ll get your hands on a copy and give it a whirl.

As I told Michael, two seconds after my initial reaction, my second reaction was, Always leave them wanting more.

And Michael does that in spades (and, fortunately, he has assured me that Book One is just the beginning).

The situation that the town finds itself in at the outset of the story is a typical zombie outbreak situation. No one is quite sure what’s going on and why there are these people that are into eating the flesh of the living.

By the time we meet a character by the name of Cormac, we are in a completely different story. We are in a world within a world, a noir world within a zombie world.

It was at this point that Michael revealed why it must be that noir/crime and zombie fiction are my two favorite genres.

As James Ellroy likes to boil down noir, that is to say, You’re Fucked, the same can be applied to zombie fiction. No matter how long or how far you run, eventually you have to face the horde.

The two genres are so very close in what they ultimately are about that this revelation really smacked me upside the head to the point of saying, Duh!

I was extremely happy to see the noir angle be played up in Quarantined.

But Michael wasn’t even close to being finished with the roller coaster effect. And the rug would be pulled out from under us when we learned the real reason behind why some people are eating other people.

I won’t give it away but I will say that I can’t recall this being used as a plot device before in any of the zombie fiction that I’ve read, comics or otherwise, or any zombie flick I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been a big fan of zombie fiction ever since a friend of mine (hey, Jeff!) turned me on to The Walking Dead.

And, for a while there, I loved The Walking Dead like it was a family member.

But somewhere along the way (I contend that it was issue 68 where the train left the rails), The Walking Dead went into the toilet.

Let me be clear about this:

Quarantined is not The Walking Dead.

Quarantined kicks The Walking Dead’s ass sixteen different ways.

At The Zombie Trailer-Park by Kenneth James Crist

AT THE ZOMBIE TRAILER-PARK - KENNETH JAMES CRIST

 

Clark Simpson and Verna McBride—Derby, Kansas

 

The road was half-covered by blow-sand. That’s what they call it in Kansas. Ever since the dust-bowl era, when drought brought most of the Midwest and plains states to ruin, it’s been a term common to hear and easy on the ear whenever it gets dry enough. Blow-sand. Fine sand and grit that drifts and piles up and gets into everything, sneaks through cracks in siding and BB-gun holes in plate glass windows. Sneaks right up the crack of yer ass, if yer not careful...

 

I figured I was about to see some major blow-flies, too. I don’t know who invented that term, but I know what they are. And I’m very familiar with the term fly-blown, as in carcass.

 

There was nothing on this road but a trailer park. The sand ended there, at a turn-around where the land-lord’s trailer sat. I didn’t know if anyone lived here anymore, much less she whom I sought.

 

Verna had been atypical trailer trash, meaning she was, in fact, trailer trash, but not of the typical variety. She didn’t have the normal dirty-faced kids hanging all over her, as Keith used to say, “Two on the ramp, one at the pump and one in the hangar.” Keith had been Air Force before the shit went down and it definitely warped him. Napalming whole American towns after the shit went down finished the job, and he ate his Beretta one night after we tried to get through two cases of Mickey’s, holed up in a haybarn…but that’s another story and a sad one at that.

 

Back to Verna…She wasn’t fat and sloppy, far from it. And she wasn’t married to some over-the-road trucker and fucking around on him all the time.

 

She had been Keith’s for a while, then she was mine for a while longer, then…probably someone else’s, but I’m not sure. Verna was not the type to be without a man for long and her looks and body pulled ‘em outta the woodwork pretty regular. Hell, when she was all tarted up, she could pull ‘em off the I-135 doin’ 95 miles an hour…she was smooth, stacked and pretty, in a slightly grubby, careless and clueless way that fit the trailer park perfectly. She musta had three or four closets fulla whore-clothes, ‘cause that’s all she seemed to ever wear. No shoes that didn’t have at minimum four-inch heels, no jeans that didn’t hang so low that she had to shave her pubes or risk someone’s cigarette setting her on fire down there…no tops that didn’t show a mile of cleavage and I don’t think her belly-button had ever seen shade…plus rings, ankle bracelets, bangles, beads and just the right amount of makeup to get smeared when she was balling some dude…and it got smeared a lot.

 

She would never smoke because it would make her breath nasty, never eat anything that might put an extra pound on her frame, never drink to excess, because she might miss an opportunity to meet some really cute guy. Her one vice was sex and that was why I was here now. To see if Verna survived and to take her away if she still lived and if she would go.

 

I killed the engine a hundred yards out and shoved in the clutch, clicking the gearshift into neutral and letting the old Dakota pickup coast silently to a halt. I quietly clicked the door latch and slid out, taking the key and the shotgun. It was a Remington model 870 pump gun in 12 gauge, commonly called a “riot gun” even though it had been a good many years since the damn things had actually been used to quell riots, at least in the USA. I’d stolen it from an abandoned cop car after things started winding down. It was the only thing in the car that didn’t burn up and I took that as an omen.

 

Double-ought buckshot really does a great job on zombies. Pretty much sprays their heads all over and solves their problems permanently. Keith used to say there were few problems that couldn’t be solved through the proper use of high explosives…that was before, when he still had a sense of humor.

 

I made my approach, if you could call it that, as stealthily as possible, using the shelter belt to the north for cover. Shelter belt. That’s another Kansas term. They were rows of trees, planted to break up the incessant wind and to mark property boundaries. Consisting of “hedge” trees, really Osage Orange and in some cases cedars, most were left to grow rampantly and this one was no exception. The wind was from the south, so that was good. You wouldn’t think they could smell anything, as rank as they themselves smell, but it’s not so. They can smell fresh meat, as in people who are still alive and walking around. Maybe it’s because we still bathe…

 

When I got directly north of the trailer park, I could hear a radio playing, the sound drifting in and out on the slight breeze. I wondered if the power was still on here. Most places, it had failed a long time ago. No dogs barked and, other than the creaking of a door left ajar somewhere, the radio was all I heard.

 

I slipped quietly between the two trailers at the back and stood still for a full minute, turning only my head, using all my senses to see if I was alone, or about to die. One thing about this new world we live in—if you live for very long, you become sharp-witted.

 

Nothing moved. I looked at the tin box to my left, where the door had been ripped off and was lying on the ground. I made my decision to start there and I quickly moved up and stepped inside. It took me about two minutes to check the place. Finding nothing of note, I moved to the one on the right. Again, nothing to note except that someone had left a fan on and it was still running, mindlessly sweeping back and forth, cooling no one.

 

As I stepped out of the second trailer, I heard a woman scream. I froze in place, waiting to see if it would come again. Some of them had learned to do that, to suck you in so they could jump you. Most could only make low, strangling, guttural sounds, but some…

 

When the scream came again, it had a shrill, gasping quality that made it all too human and it was repeated over and over for at least a full minute. During that time, I made up my mind. It was human, it was alive, it was female and it was in pain. I moved my ass, shotgun at the ready.

 

*

 

Charging in like Batman is never a good idea, especially when you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. I credit combat experience, quick reflexes and my own willingness to shoot, ruthlessly, anything that threatened me, with saving my life that day. As I ran south between the old, scabrous trailers, I was on high alert, every nerve fiber screaming, “Trap! Trap! You stupid bastard, it’s a trap!”

 

I didn’t care. By that time, the screaming had stopped, but I was sure of one thing. The voice I heard had been Verna’s and she was not one to scream just because a roach crawled across her toe.

 

When the first lurching, shambling form stepped out from between a trailer and an old, tin lawn building, I swung and fired, not even raising the shotgun to aim. I had done this enough I was becoming quite the cowboy hip-shooter. I had just a flash of a rotting face and black, syrupy stuff drooling from its mouth before the buckshot removed its face and blew its skull apart. Stinking brownish brains slid down the pocked wall of the lawn building. Just then a hand clamped on my shoulder and I smelled rotten breath from behind me. I dropped and rolled, firing as soon as I could bring the gun to bear, and while on my back, I cycled the action and fired again. The first shot was too low, catching the old dead woman in the breasts. Spectacular, but not effective. The second shot cleaned her off from the eyes up and I mentally congratulated myself. Two down—another million or so to go.

 

There were more coming and I would soon run low on ammo if I stayed there and merely killed zombies. I rolled again, this time up onto my feet and continued my run, now yelling, calling Verna’s name over and over. The time for stealth had definitely passed. Faintly, from my right, much deeper into the squalor of abandoned tin homes, I heard her feeble voice. She wasn’t screaming now. What I heard was a monotonous repetition… “Help me…somebody help me… please…help me…”

 

I zeroed in on the sound and at last determined that it was coming from inside the oldest and nastiest unit in the park. Through a broken window, I could now hear her clearly, though the window was above me and I was unable to see her. As I stepped up to the door, zombies were turning the corner less than fifteen feet away. Then another one came out the door, almost bowling me over. I stepped aside and he stumbled by. I cracked him across the back of his neck with the shotgun barrel and then fired two more rounds at the ones closing in.

 

Fishing in my vest pockets for more shells, I rolled in the door, looking in the gloom for Verna and at the same time shoving shells into the magazine of the gun. In a few seconds the five-shot magazine was full again and a round chambered.

 

I followed the sounds of whimpering toward the back of the trailer, down a hallway barely wide enough for my shoulders, conscious the entire time that I was now trapped back here—in a few seconds I would be cut off from any way out. In the semidarkness I stepped on something relatively soft and I kicked it ahead of me until it slid into a beam of sunlight coming through a crack in the wall. It was a human foot, size eight, toenails painted a lovely shade of lavender.

 

I heard myself begin to giggle, starting to lose it, and I clamped down mentally, something I’d learned to do early on, when all this crap started. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for whatever was coming next, then I stepped into the back bedroom.

 

Verna was bound to the bed. Which one of them still had enough smarts to tie knots, I was never able to determine. Her leg was bleeding from where the zombie I met coming out had cut off her foot. Getting himself a little snack, I reckoned. Her foot had been the last appendage she had left. For the immediate future, they would continue cutting off pieces and staunching her bleeding, saving her for food as live humans became more and more scarce.

 

The stench in the room was pretty incredible. Not everything that they had cut off her had been eaten and rotting flesh was everywhere. Apparently, she was not the only one they’d been stockpiling. Combined with the smell of urine and fecal matter on the bed, the odor was indescribable.

 

I reached behind me and quickly slammed the door and slid a dresser across to barricade it. I knew it wouldn’t hold them for long, but I didn’t need a lot of time. Verna wasn’t going anywhere.

 

The really wondrous part was that Verna’s face was as lovely as ever. Even in her pain, which must have been unbearable, she managed a weak smile and she whispered, “Hey, Sailor…where ya been all my life?”

 

“Looking for you, Dollface…” It was a greeting we’d used many times when we were still an item. When we’d spent our nights drinking Bud longnecks and humping each other’s brains out. Now, I looked at her and my heart broke as she said, “Do me a favor…lover…”

 

“Anything, Sugar…you name it…”

 

“Kill me?…kill me quick? Kill me good…so I can’t come back…”

 

I smiled at her, a totally false smile of camaraderie, as if we shared some great secret. And maybe we did. I bent down and, in spite of her awful breath, I kissed her one last time. Then I put the shotgun to the side of her head. She didn’t even close her eyes…she stared right at me as I popped her, nothing but love in her eyes…

 

*

 

Took me a while to fight my way outta there. I wound up kicking my way through a flimsy-ass wall and expending the rest of my ammo killing every walking dead piece of garbage I could. I did it through a veil of tears that made my vision swim and my usual deadly aim just a bit off. Once I managed to fight my way clear, I ran like hell for the truck and got away from there.

 

Back at my compound, I took a long shower while my three Bull Mastiffs stood guard, and while supper was cooking, I hoisted a long-necked Bud in a toast to my old lover.

 

There is something to be said for finishing things right and to honor. I toasted both as I toasted Verna…

 

“At the Zombie Trailer Park” was previously published in Yellow Mama, an online magazine from Fossil Publications. It will be one of the stories in a forthcoming book of similar sickening prose, called “Groaning for Burial, The Carrion Men Chronicles.” Kenneth James Crist is Editor Emeritus of Black Petals Horror/Science Fiction Magazine. He has published over 100 short stories in the small press and online in venues raging from Skin and Bones to The Edge, to Kudzu Monthly.  He has published two books of short stories, Dreaming of Mirages and The Gazing Ball, both still available from Fossil Publications.  Kenny is very active with the American Legion Riders and the Patriot Guard. He is an avid motorcyclist and a competition handgun shooter. He is also a retired Wichita, Kansas police officer. Email comments are welcomed at blkptls@yahoo.com and his website is at www.blackpetals.net.

The Scent Of Rotting Leaves by Chris Rhatigan

THE SCENT OF ROTTING LEAVES - CHRIS RHATIGAN

That only three people were in the audience was testament to Jansen’s skill as chairman. Over the years he took pains to ensure the city council’s meetings were so opaque and meaningless that even the community activists and reporters quit attending.

 

He put on his glasses, glanced at the night’s agenda and spoke the only name on the list.

 

“Calvin Motts.”

 

Dressed in a gray wool suit with a plaid bow tie and hush puppies worn without irony, Motts approached the podium.

 

As he passed them, the council members murmured to themselves.

 

Was that dreadful sound his joints creaking? And that odor -- like leaves plastered to the bottom of a pool filter -- was that coming from him?

 

“Good evening.” He paused as if he were catching his breath. “Myself and the two other senior members of the reanimated community have urgent matters to discuss with this council.”

The murmuring from the council grew louder verging on cat calls and jeers – everyone knew they were out there, but to reveal themselves in public like this? Jansen brought down the gavel. “Silence, silence, silence! Please continue, Mr. Motts.”

“As you may be aware, a fully functioning reanimated community has been established about ten miles outside of city limits.” Motts blinked very, very slowly, eyelids like parchment paper. “We do not, contrary to popular opinion, sustain ourselves on human flesh. We are respectful of all others. Yet we have not been treated with respect. Our members have been murdered, tortured, kidnapped, harassed, even raped.”

 

The council rose as one, their voices strident.

 

Councilwoman Lambert said, “To listen to this, this thing is absurd. I know for a fact that we don’t have necrophiliacs here in Pine Valley.”

 

Councilman Bukis said, “And the accusation of murder? That isn’t even possible. Aren’t they already dead?”

 

Laughter and shouting erupted from the council. What do these corpses want? We give into them and soon enough they’ll take over the town!

 

The council was unsettlingly energized by this new development. Jansen gaveled repeatedly.

 

The Mayor chimed in, soothing Jansen’s irritation, “Might I remind the council that there is no action item on tonight’s agenda regarding the, uh, reanimated community. All the council need do is listen to Mr. Motts.”
 
“All we want,” Motts said before taking another eerie pause, “is for you to leave the reanimated community alone. To this end, we implore you to consider rewriting the laws so that they respect our fundamental rights.”

The rest of the meeting went by in a fog, Jansen’s mind exploring each permutation of where this new information might lead.

Many of these permutations were dissatisfactory.

Often the best strategy, Jansen found, was acquiescence. Make a series of meaningless concessions until the opponent grew weary.

 

But this case posed unique problems. If the council even placed such laws on its agenda, it would be a public admission that zombies were among them. The effect on property values alone would be catastrophic. Not to mention the inevitable demand for more police and firefighters and the hundreds of angry, stupid residents who would show up at every council meeting.

 

For more than a decade, Jansen and the Mayor had, with the utmost care and skill, constructed a machine that, above all else, was silent. The machine’s lubricated gears spun and locked and distributed its product without so much as a whir or a clink. Fifty years into the future – perhaps a hundred! – the machine would reign supreme. Pine Valley would be the same community it had always been, without crime or chain stores, without traffic or undesirable persons. The machine’s power, Jansen and the Mayor understood, was beyond mere legacy.

But now it was in jeopardy.

So immediately after Jansen said “Meeting adjourned,” he rushed to the Mayor’s office.

The Mayor closed the door and pulled the chain on a desk lamp. He spoke first. “Who can we trust?”

Jansen had discovered that the Mayor’s political instincts were stronger than his own. While Jansen fretted about the potential results of this calamity, the Mayor was already searching for allies. “Police Chief Myerson?”

The Mayor steepled his fingers. “This problem is too complex for him.”

“State Senator Mooney?”

“The incentives are inadequate. Pine Valley is less than a third of his district.”

Jansen smiled for the first and last time that evening. The one man with connections, discretion, and no official title restraining him. “Robert Ford.”

The Mayor said nothing. Picked up the phone and dialed.

*

 

Early the next morning, Jansen stood on a ridge ten miles outside of Pine Valley. He watched state workers in protective yellow suits use driptorches to set the woods and fields ablaze. Ford had called this a “controlled burn.” Other towns had this zombie problem in the past, and this was the method Ford (and, for that matter, the state) considered the most efficient solution.

 

Crude mud huts and structures made of trash and scrap plywood crackled, flickers of the intense heat nipping at Jansen’s cuffs. He looked left and then right, half expecting to see them swarming, sharp teeth posed to tear apart flesh.

 

But he saw nothing, just the flames in the distance. He tugged at his sport coat, shook away the sudden wave of emotion. The reanimated community apparently didn’t even want to live – or whatever it was they did – none of them bothered trying to escape the blaze.

 

Satisfied that things were under control, Jansen walked the trail back to his car. The sun was pushing away wisps of clouds, but darkness still reigned in the forest.
 
Jansen called the Mayor.

 

“It’s done.”

“You’ve seen it for yourself?”

Somewhere, a twig snapped. Jansen accelerated his pace. “Yes. Exactly as Mr. Ford described.”

“Good. Meet me in my office.”

Jansen reached a clearing. Bent over, rested with his hands on his knees, chest expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting. Not a young man anymore. Should see Dr. Phillips more often, like his wife told him to.

He pressed the button to unlock his Buick when an icy hand reached out, clamped over his bony wrist, blood in his veins screaming like a child locked in a closet.

Calvin Motts said, “We tried to be civil, Mr. Chairman. But that’s not the game we’re playing, is it?”

 

Behind Motts, in the growing dark, hundreds of translucent eyelids blinked slowly. Very, very slowly. And the scent of rotting leaves.

Behind Closed Doors: A Quarantined Story by Michael Moreci

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: A QUARANTINED STORY - MICHAEL MORECI

 

*The following is taken from the notes of journalist Edward Walker

 

The doors to the furniture warehouse were not only locked, but they had been chained from the outside. I approached with extreme caution when I heard them banging—it was the slamming sound I heard first, not the screams. I figured there was infected within, pounding to get out, though I proceeded nonetheless, disregarding my judgment. It would have been better had I chose to stay away, assumed the worst, and kept moving. Because what I encountered within gave new meaning to what the worst could be.

 

I parked a good twenty yards away, thinking I could reach the doors undetected. Every banging caused me to jump, as if it was an unexpected sound bursting through an otherwise normal, peaceful night. It wasn’t until I got closer that I heard the screams—the articulated yells, cries for help. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past sixty hours, it’s that the infected have no control over language. They don’t communicate in any way I could see, and they certainly don’t plead to be saved.

 

Still, I was hesitant to make my presence known. There was a scaffold running alongside the building that allowed a view inside, through the windows that ran along the very top of the wall. I scaled the scaffold, my chest pounding; I hoped there were people within, but I feared it as well. My means of survival—alone, always on the move—had become, to me, a vital routine, and I trembled at the thought of interrupting it.

 

But then I saw. Through the smoky glass, I looked down to the source of the relentless, desperate, pounding, a pounding that had become so intense it was bound to shatter the hands and feet of those causing it. It was a group of teenagers, maybe fifteen of them, and they were trapped.

 

The chain around the door, I assumed, must have been a precautionary measure taken by the warehouse owner—an extra bit of protection in a time of chaos. At least, that’s what I hoped was the case, that people were being locked out, not in. As I approached the doors, instinct still told me to turn away, to run and not look back. The struggle between conscience and survival instinct is a contentious one; I’ve learned there’s no telling what a person will do when backed against a wall.

 

I fought the urge to flee and approached the doors.

 

“Hey,” I yelled, “you okay in there?”

 

The response was a unified burst of elation and ecstatic relief. One of the kids from the group, a stocky defensive linesman type who had been pounding the door, spoke above the cacophony.

 

“Get us out of here! We’ve been trapped inside for like three days. None of our cell phones work; we have no idea what’s happening.”

 

As much as I wanted to race off into the night with the singular task of rescuing this imprisoned lot, there was still a lingering something. A hesitation that, despite my best motivations, held me back from doing the noble thing without question.

 

“How did you get locked in there? I mean, why are you guys in a furniture warehouse to begin with?” I asked.

 

“What? We, um…”

 

In that moment of hesitation, my mind told me to run. It convinced me this was a trap, an elaborate set-up that I was playing directly into. As I backed away, the kid on the other side of the door must have felt me receding, because his next words rushed out of his mouth.

 

“We broke in, okay? We broke in three nights ago to party. That’s all we did. And when we went to leave, all the doors were, like, bolted shut.”

 

I was silent, weighing my options—help or turn away.

 

“Hello?” the kid called out, almost pleading. “Please, you have to get us out. We’re starving, we’re thirsty; we just want to go home.”

 

The word, the idea of ‘home,’ made me flinch—these kids had no idea, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell them. Not yet.

 

“Look, I need to go get some bolt cutters,” I said. “All of you sit tight; I’ll be back soon.”

 

“No!” a girl yelled from within. “Don’t—don’t leave us!”

 

“Listen,” I said, trying to buttress the group’s frayed nerves, “I’m coming back. Stay calm and stop pounding on the door—you don’t want attract any attention.”

 

“What does that mean?” the kid, the leader, asked.

 

I stammered. “Nothing. Just…keep it down.”

 

As I turned away, the kid called out one more time. “Hey!” he said. “You don’t happen to have any matches or a lighter or something, do you? Something you can slide under the door?”

 

I wasn’t thinking—my mind was too focused on my already building sense that, somehow, I betrayed myself. Helping these kids was a mistake, going out into the night to find bolt cutters a complete lack of better judgment. And for that, I was going to pay. I was busy silencing these ugly doubts as I slipped a half-used book of matches underneath the door, never considering what they’d be used for.

 

The thumping had grown louder. I carried a rhythmic pulse in my mind the entire trip to the abandoned farmhouse—looted for the needed tools—and back. It was a knocking, a call, a temptation; only this temptation wasn’t to enter, it was to leave. Thoom thoom thoom it went, a tell-tale heart in reverse. Not revealing what I’d done, but pushing me to what I was capable of doing—abandoning people in need, placing my survival above anyone else.

 

The actual sound coming from within the warehouse was different from before—it was a drilling, violent thud, louder, and more forceful.

 

I parked closer this time, and left the keys in the ignition.

 

“Hey,” I called out, standing five feet away from the door, which shook beneath every blow. “You kids in there?”

 

No one answered.

 

I took a step back even my feet were beginning to feel numb; I took in a deep breath and felt it quiver in my chest. Something, I knew, had gone terribly wrong behind that door. Everything become quiet, the thumping subdued as the world began to dim—and that’s when I heard. Heard the sound of water sprinkling of glass. I looked up and saw droplets raining onto the warehouse windows.

 

It immediately came to me: the matches were used to set off the sprinkler system, which in turn drenched the virus on the entire group.

 

Something took hold of me—fear, real, palatable fear clouded my thoughts. I climbed up the scaffold, trying to get a look inside. What I was looking for, I couldn’t say—there was no way I would ever open those doors, yet I was compelled to see inside nonetheless.

 

Not everyone had turned yet—two remained—a boy and a girl, a couple I assumed—two who evidently didn’t use the sprinkler system to quench their thirst. They were surrounded, backs against the wall. The last thing I saw were their hands joined together, fingers interlaced.

 

Quarantined is copyright Michael Moreci, Monty Borror, and Markosia Publications

Bagging Some Zs by Katherine Tomlinson

BAGGING SOME Zs - KATHERINE TOMLINSON

 

Ike Hackett had been unemployed for two years before signing on with the county as a Z-catcher. The work wasn’t hard but it was dangerous and most of Ike’s colleagues had been as desperate for an income as he was. The hazard pay was generous but the life expectancy of a Z-catcher was only slightly longer than patients with stage IV pancreatic cancer.

 

At first, Ike had been shit-scared every minute of every shift. His training officer was so careless about following protocol that Ike was convinced he was trying to get himself killed and Ike along with him.

 

Ironically, his training officer did have stage IV pancreatic cancer and was hoping to die on the job so his wife would inherit a fat insurance payout.

 

He got his wish but Ike barely escaped without being bitten.

 

After Brian’s death, Ike was assigned a new partner, Randy.

 

Things were better after that.

 

Ike admired Randy. He never asked Ike to do something he wouldn’t do and there was nothing he couldn’t do better.

 

He taught Ike the best way of checking the zombie traps on their route and the safest way to deliver them to the euthanasia centers (known as the House of Zzzs because it was where they put the Zees to sleep).

 

The delivery was the most dangerous part of the job. Zees weren’t smart but they could sure as hell smell the stench coming from the crematorium at the back of the facility. They knew that nothing good happened there.

 

Randy was a popular guy and the alpha of a group of catchers who called themselves Z-Dawgs.

 

Once he teamed up with Randy, Ike became an honorary member of the Z-Dawgs and started hanging out with them on their time off.

 

It was Randy who introduced him to the Zee Fights. One of the Z-Dawgs had built a holding pen in his basement and after hours and on weekends, the guys would get together to hold Zee Fights, death matches between undead contenders fought in a backyard sand pit.

 

Ike had seen the videos on YouTube but nothing prepared him for the thrill of the real thing. It was the bloodiest of blood sports and best of all—unlike fighting dogs or fighting cocks—you couldn’t kill a fighting Zee just by wounding him or her.

 

Even the winning zombies were only good for a couple of fights though, because after that, the minute they started fighting, limbs started falling off and they just stood there as their opponents chopped them up like the Black Knight in the old Monty Python routine.

 

So there was always a need for fresh meat, so to speak. No one could build up a stable of fighters to gain an advantage.
On the other hand, some of the Zees were natural-born fighters, and not the ones you might think.

 

A lot of the former athletes were crap in the pit, for instance. Ex-military were often pussies. Given his druthers, Ike always bet on the housewives. The zombiefied soccer moms were fierce competitors, ferocious and wily.

 

Ike found that playing recordings of a distressed baby’s cry was all he needed to do to get their blood up before a match. It was too bad you couldn’t breed the Zees to fight, to pass those competitive genes on.

 

The fights brought in big money.

 

You had to know somebody who knew somebody to get invited to them, but word got out and the crowds grew.   
The Z-Dawgs shared out the profits even-steven and they were all rolling in cash.

 

Ike invited his brother Mitch to a fight and he was so upset Ike had to talk him out of calling the police.

 

Randy wasn’t too happy about that.

 

Randy was big on rules and he had a whole series of protocols they were supposed to follow when they were alone with their fighters before and after matches. No one wanted the gravy train to come to a screeching halt, so the Z-Dawgs followed his rules.

 

But accidents happen.

 

It was absolutely not his fault that Ike got bitten by a victorious Zee who had been a gym teacher in her former life. She’d come lurching out of the pit and thrown her arms around him. Ike was so surprised by the human moment that he stood there a second too long—long enough for her to bite half his cheek away.

 

Randy shot her in the head and then turned the shotgun on Ike.

 

Ike had grabbed the gun out of Randy’s hand and used it like a baseball bat to lay his friend out.

 

Well, ex-friend.

 

Zees don’t have friends and Ike was a Zee-to-be now.

 

He knew Randy would be coming for him.

 

He knew he should just turn himself in at a sleep center.

 

But before that, he was going to get himself a good meal.

 

Mitch looked like he’d be some good eating.

 

BIO: Katherine Tomlinson used to be a reporter but prefers to make things up. Her zombie story “Z-Cruise” will appear in the Hersham Horror anthology Alt-Dead this fall. Her story “A Dream of Blood and Fire” will be published by Trestle Press as part of Paul Brazill’s Drunk on the Moon anthology. She writes the serial novel NoHo Noir for the local news site patch.com.

The End Of Our Zombie Days by AJ Hayes

THE END OF OUR ZOMBIE DAYS - AJ HAYES

I’m washing dishes when Davey comes crashing into the kitchen. “Dad,” he yells. “There’s a Zombie on the corner.”

 

I drop the dishrag, grab the rifle and head for the door, the kid following close behind. Sure enough, there it is at the end of the block. It’s just standing there, not moving.

 

“Me’n and Lester saw it when we came out to play ball,” Davey says. “I got pretty close and--”

 

“Davey!” He looks sheepish and toes the lawn.

 

“Wull,” he says. “Me ’n  Lester watched it for a long time and it didn’t move, so--”

 

“So you decided to disobey a direct order? Decided to get close enough to let it make a move?”

 

“No, Dad,” he says. “I’m not stupid.”

 

“Sometimes, son, I wonder.” I’m not too hard on him. He didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done when I was his age, but still.

 

“It never looked at me,” he says. “It was just staring at our yard. At the house. I don’t think it even noticed me.”

 

I bring the rifle up and take a look through the scope. Center the cross hairs on its face.

 

“That’s the first one in a long time, Dad.”

 

I agree. Last two years we haven’t seen but a couple of shamblers. The new radio network says the same about the rest of the world. The Zees are just disappearing. No one knows why. There’s some thought that the epidemic has run its course. Most of us hope for that, but keep our rifles handy all the same.

 

“I think it’s a female, Dad.”

 

I drop the scope. See the breasts. The remains of a yellow housecoat.

 

“Yes, it is,” I say.

 

“There’s something wrong with her eyes, too,” Davey says. “It looks like she’s crying.”

 

I lift the scope and look at her face.

“Yes, she is, son.”

 

I pull the trigger and watch her head explode.

 

I’ll try not to think about her eyes again. But I know I will.