Zombie Flash Fiction: Good Eating!

    The end of the world stinks.  When the dead are walking around in the hot Georgia sun with their guts trailing behind them, it's not a good smell.  When you've got to stand guard by an overflowing dumpster and trash compactor and the front of your apartment complex, it doesn't help the situation.

    "What are we going to do with all this trash?" my wife, Karen, asked with her hands on her hips.  "It's not like they'll be collecting it with all the dead around."

   

    "We could burn it?" Larry, the former SWAT Cop suggested.

    "If we burn it," I replied. "We'll just attract the dead."

    "Yeah, but if we pile it up and leave it out we'll attract rats and other vermin." 

    "Yes," Larry said with a gleam in his eye. "And those vermin will be good eating!"

    "Dude," I said shaking my head.

    "That's just gross," Karen said turning away in disgust.

    "Bon Appetit!"

Flash Fiction: No Refuge

The house is quiet now.  I stand in the hallway coming back from the bedrooms.  The walls are covered with family photos from happier days.  A frame with a half dozen photos grabs my attention.  Camping in the mountains.  The time we rode the ferry.  High school graduation.  The canoe trip.  I pull it off the wall, rip off the cardboard back, and take a photo of me, my mom, my dad, and my brother standing in front of a long forgotten restaurant.  The old photo fits in my fanny pack behind the extra boxes of ammunition.  I make my way back to the remnants of the front door.  My eye catches a flash of purple, yellow, and black, as a skink scrambles under the deacon's bench in the front foyer.  It doesn't have to worry.  The cat is long gone. 

I step out and glance at the tattered flag hanging limply from the flag pole in the overgrown front yard.  Little lizards dash for cover as they see me.  They find hiding places everywhere.  But, not me.  The old family home isn't the refuge it once was.  There is no refuge.  There is no stopping.  The neighbors from down the street are dead but still nosy.  They see me and start to shuffle my way.  It's time to go.

Zombie Flash Fiction: The Little Bugout Truck

With a knapsack full of peanut butter, I rounded the corner and ran down the alley behind the grocery store.  I looked over my shoulder to glance back at the horde on my heels.  That was enough of a distraction for me to get my feet mixed up and send me tumbling.  But, in this world, you can't stay down.  I was up in an instant and I hopped, limped, and otherwise made my way back to my little yellow truck.  I climbed in and looked over to see the dead clawing at my windows.  It's always an inconvenient time to dig your keys out of your deepest pocket.

The dead were drooling on my windshield as I finally started the truck.  As it started up with one turn of the key, I smiled and reflected on my little truck.  I  always thought I'd want a really big four-wheel-drive truck with a winch and brush bars just in case the world came to an end.  Now that the world has actually come to the end, I'm glad I have a simple and reliable little vehicle  that sips fuel, cranks every time, and is incredibly reliable.

I put my little truck into drive, accelerated to thirty, and slammed on the brakes.  It was fun to see the dead roll off the hood and down the road.  Escape was simply matter of making a quick turn and hitting the gas.  I left the dead behind me in the rearview mirror.  

When I'm surrounded by a horde, I can't have car trouble.  You can't just call AAA for a jumpstart or a tow.

Photo by:  Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Zombie Flash Fiction Story: Emcee Mike and Apocalyptic Bingo

    "B27!  Ladies and Gentlemen, B27!"

    The bingo crowd scanned their cards frantically.  But, no one seemed to have it.

    "I need a better number than that Mike!" someone in the crowd yelled out.  

    Mike nodded.  He was a large man who worked as a nursing assistant by day and dressed in a traditional black tuxedo to entertain the seniors as the emcee for Bingo in the early evening.  He spun the handle of the bingo cage vigorously to tumble the balls about until another rolled out of the selector.  Beside him sat Betty--a young lady who served as a nursing home administrator.  She looked nervously out at the crowd.

    "G15!" the emcee called out. "Anyone have G15?"

Photo by Cypher789, CC BY-SA 3.0
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>,
via Wikimedia Commons

    "Bingo!  Bingo!  I have it!" a gray haired old lady exclaimed with excitement.

    "Congrats!  Miss Higgins.  You've one this can of SPAM."

    The crowd looked at Miss Higgins angrily and hungrily.

    "Damn it," one old man cursed under his breath.  "I just needed one more square."

    "Don't worry folks," the emcee said.  "We collected a few more cans on the last run!"

    "We need vegetables, too." a grandma in a mou mou dress complained bitterly.

    "You know this is not the best idea we ever had," the emcee whispered to the nursing home administrator.

    "Mike, I thought they would like it," she whispered shaking her head.

    "Don't fret folks!" the man said loudly into the microphone.                 "We'll go out this week, kill more zombies, and bring back more food."

    "You better," another old lady piped up.  "I'm almost out of Cream of Wheat."

    "What happened to the National Guard?"  Betty whispered.

    "I don't know," Mike replied quietly.  "It's hell out there."

    In the microphone, the emcee announced, "Alright, clear your cards for a new game!"

Zombie Flash Fiction: The Resolution

I can share some water with you.  We have a pretty good filter. There's no ball drop this year.  No parties.  No celebrations.  No champagne toasts.  Nothing.  With the infected and the dead roaming the countryside for most of last year, there's really only one resolution for the upcoming year:  I will survive.

If it means stabbing more zombies in the head, I will do what I need to do to survive.  If it means drinking muddy water, I will do what I need to do to survive.  If it means eating bugs, I will do what I need to do to  survive.  If it means killing cute little animals for meat, I will do what I need to do to survive.  Survival is my resolution.  It is THE resolution.

I've learned a lot in this past year.  I've persevered when others have faltered and failed.  I've become fit when I was once flabby.  I've become ruthless when I was once kind.  I've become cautious in situations when I would have been careless.  I've become bold when I was once timid.  The rise of the dead has really changed me.  It changes everyone who has the will to survive.

I only wish I would have resolved to be healthier, more athletic, more prepared and braver a long time ago.  Then, I could have saved more of the ones I loved.

 

 

Zombie Flash Fiction: Bomber Z

     The year must have been 1981.  The summer was hot and my brother and I were totally bored during our vacation stay with our grandparents.  We found an old zombie movie on my grandparent's 27 channels of that fairly new wonder we call cable television.  We'd just settled down on the couch and the floor.  Grandma was in the kitchen making supper.  We heard our granddad come in thru the backdoor and stamp the garden dirt off one last time for kicking his shoes off in the back hall.  He entered the living room and looked at us in disgust.

     "You kids turn that crap off!"

     "But, granddad, zombies are cool!"

     "I'm paying for this cable and I'm not watching zombies!"

     "OK, granddad, we can watch something else."

     "I don't know why you are so mad.  Zombies aren't real."

     "They aren't real to you.  Put the Braves game on!"

      Granddad had been a pilot during World War II and we did what he said.  I didn't think anything more about it.  But, last week, I saw his old bomber, a B-29, sitting out in front of an Atlanta airbase.

The Tail of a Z Bomber

Front view of the B-29 Bomber "Sweet Heloise"

    

Science Fiction / Flash Fiction: Beyond Time

A fellow author, T. Alan Horne, once lamented on Twitter that so many science fiction stories featured scenes from beyond time or in space where the normal rules of space and time don't exist, but that so much of that temporal fiction followed traditional sequential rules.  I wondered what a story from a setting like that might be like.  



While this blog is typically dedicated to zombie horror, here's my attempt at breaking the temporal rules of science fiction.  It's a little bit of flash fiction from ---

Beyond Time

Turn the wrench. 

Forget the bleeding. 

Dirk screamed, "I'm hit." 

Tethered. 

Thank God for the self-sealing suit. 

Dirk had to repair the jump drive. 

Blood spattered the visor.

Spinning in space. 

Aaaaah. The pain was excruciating. 

Incoming fletchette rocket darts. 

Hard to see.

Turn the wrench. 

Forget the bleeding.

Dirk screamed, "I'm hit."
Tethered.

 

Public Domain photo from George Eastman House / No restrictions

Zombie Flash Fiction: The Beautiful and the Dead

     "Run.  Run," Gina said opening the shop door. "Get on in here girl!"
     "Oh, I'm so glad you're open," Tanya said slamming the door of her Lexus.  She trotted nervously in from the parking lot with her revolver in one hand and a small totebag in the other.
     "We ladies need our hair fixed up," Gina said knowingly.
     "You got that right,"  Tanya said nodding her head.  "My do needs to be done!"
      "How are you and the family?" Gina asked.

Photo by Goldmund100 / CC BY-SA
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

      "Good, good," Tanya replied adding in a low voice. "You know my husband and my boy managed to break into the drugstore down the road."
      "Oh they did," Gina said.  "How'd they manage that?"
       "Through the roof with a chainsaw," Tanya said proudly.  "Once they were in, they had the whole place to themselves."
       "Ooooh, but girl, didn't the noise of that saw bring them in from miles around?"



       "Hell yeah," Tanya exclaimed.  "The hubs and little Johnny barely got back to the truck.  Johnny almost got bit, but he's real good with a knife now."
       "Oh that's good.  Useful skill now."
       "So how's your mama doing with all this?"
       "Oh she's real worried about  her sugars and running out of her medications," Gina said.  "And it's not like she can go to the doctor now."
       "You said the doctors got her on Metformin right?"
        "Oh yeah, she takes Metformin and she was taking Gly, Glybur-something, but we don't have enough food for her to be messing with that anymore."
        "I thought you said she was on Metformin so I got you some," Tanya said with a smile.  "That totebag is for you."
        "Oh thank you honey," Gina exclaimed giving Tanya a big smile. "And look you got us some canned food too."
        "I'll hook you up," Tanya said proudly.  "But, I'm kind of mad at my hubs.  He was in that store for an hour and he didn't bring me any makeup, lotion, or anything."
        "Not even a lipstick?"
        "They didn't even get soap."
         "Men," Gina said shaking her head.  "They got no sense of priorities."
         "They were in a whole drugstore full of makeup and aisles of product."
          "You and me should go," Gina said.  "When the dead walk, I can make do with drugstore product."
           "We could go through the store with a more refined eye.  I know I've got a list."
           "Alright,  we've got a ladder and a van in back.  We'll go in a little bit."
           "We'll have fun!"
           "First though," Gina said getting back to business, "what are we going to do with this hair?"
           "Well, these bangs are getting on my last damn nerve . . ."

Zombie Bites: Standing Tall

My name is Buddy Lumpkin and I was up in a Tower Crane by the new baseball stadium when it all went down.  With a corporate headquarters to build, there was no slack in the schedule.  I got to the job site at 6 a.m., made my long climb, put my lunch in the mini-fridge, and looked down to see that we had a whole line of trucks to unload.  It was going to be girders all day.

After a sausage biscuit and a bit of coffee, my bellman, Jeff, finished jawing with the super and got on the horn.  I like working with him because he's got a good eye and he's real good on the radio.  

Pretty soon we were getting it done.  All morning long I was hearing: 

"Left, left, left, 15 feet, 10 feet, 5 feet, hold."
"Trolley out. Trolley out. 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, hold."
"Load on.  Hoist!"
"Right, right, right, 20, 15, 10, 5, hold."
"Lower, lower, lower, 10, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, hold."
 
Then, just before lunch, Jeff starts hollering into the radio.
"Holy crap!  Holy crap!  Holy crap!"

I just about crapped my pants.  I had a load of girders on and thought I'd dropped something.  

"What the hell is going on?" I hollered right back.
"Zombies!" came the reply.  "They are eating us!"
"I thought the news proved that zombies were B.S.?"
"Looks like they were wrong, Buddy."

I grabbed my binoculars and, sure enough, there were swarms of monstrous looking people surging onto the construction and just laying into people.  They were just tearing people up and eating them alive.  People running.  Then some of the workers grabbed pipes and heavy tools and started fighting back.  A thin line of orange vests took form and stood toe-to-toe with the horde.

Jeff came back on the radio.
"Hoist that load," he commanded.  "Up 15.  Trolley out."
"What's going on down there?" I asked.
"5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  Hold," Jeff responded.  "We're going to flatten the dead."
"I got ya,"  I told him.
"Swing left, left, 10, 5, 1, hold."
I tried to see what was happening with the binoculars, but there was no time.
"Put the load down hard,"  Jeff ordered.
"Hammer time!"
"We got 'em!"  Jeff replied, "Now hoist 3 feet!"
"Alright," I said.  "What's the plan?"
"Let's smack 'em around," Jeff replied.  "Swing right just a little, 10, 5, 3 ..."
"Did we get them?" I asked.
"A whole bunch," he said.  "Now we got to go the other way."
"Say the word."
"Now right quick," he said.  "Swing left 20, 5, 4, 3 ... that's good!"

Photo by High Contrast / CC BY 3.0 DE (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en)

Up in my cab, a whole bunch of red lights came alive on my dashboard.  The load of girders was swinging like a pendulum and was straining the jib--that's what you might think of as the boom.

"We're gonna have to slow down brother," I radioed down.  "The computer ain't too happy with our batting practice."
 "Well, we don't have much time," Jeff replied urgently. "There's another big mob of them coming through the gate."
"You guys are going to have to pull back," I told him.


 I tried to slowly move the joystick to slew the jib.  I hit the button to hoist the load.  But, the computer wasn't having it.  I could re-boot, but that might take a couple of minutes.  There was only one thing to do.  Take a deep breath and give it a little time to calm down.

"One Mississippi.  Two Mississippi,"  I said to myself grabbing the binoculars.

At three Mississipi, I saw one of the Mexican concrete guys  brandishing a long pipe in an effort to fend off three of the zombies.  The dead didn't care.  By the fifth Mississippi, he was down and being disemboweled.

I looked down again and I saw the Super with his megaphone.  I don't know what he was saying, but all the workers started running into the building.  The Super ran right behind them.  He moved pretty fast for an old guy in khakis and a collared denim shirt.

By the time I counted to the fifteenth Mississippi, I couldn't see anyone below.  The joystick was beginning to respond again.

"Jeff!  Jeff," I called out.  "Are you still down there?"

Sixteen Mississippi.  Seventeen Mississippi.

"Hey Buddy," the breathless bellman finally responded.  "I'm about fifty feet up on your ladder."

"Good,"  I told him. "I've got slew control again."

 "Well alright," he says.  "Let's get to work smashing zombies."

We survived that day and so did most of the workers on the job site.  As soon as the coast was clear, we all headed for our vehicles and headed home.  I remember picking my way through flattened and mangled zombies.  Some of them were still jawing and rasping.  Most of them were just pulp.  I remember walking by the pile of steel girders we left in the entrance.  The blood was just dripping off of them.  It made a big red puddle.

I hope Jeff made it home.  I'd like to work with him again when we start rebuilding this world.

Zombie Microfiction: Last Stop Z

One shift selling kicks and one flipping burgers left Leon drained. On his bus, he just put on his Beats, played his list, and napped through a dozen stops. Oblivious to the biters and blood, when the driver made his turn, Leon just pulled the wire for his stop.

Zombie Flash Fiction - Rhonda's Ride

     Rhonda loved her new car.  It had everything she ever wanted in a car:  leather seats, a kickin' stereo, a back up camera, phone connectivity, internet radio, and all kinds of safety features.  The car could practically drive itself.  It was smart!  But, today, Rhonda was getting a little worried about the news.  S*&t was getting real!  People got some freaky ass disease and were running around biting people.  Today, Rhonda just wanted to drive straight home.  Of course, she had to go through the old Cumberland Village to get there.  Bumper-to-Bumper:  as always!

Photo By Niels de Wit from Lunteren, The Netherlands [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

      Last week, the sorry ass DJ's on the car radio were laughing it up.
     "There's no such thing as zombies!" they said.
     "Watch out for Frankenstein," they laughed.
 
      They were saying something different today.  Their asses were on the radio beggin' for someone to please bring them some food.
     "Oh, I have food," Rhonda yelled at the radio.  "I have food for my children!"
     "I just have to get it home," she muttered to herself.

     Rhonda looked to her right and some dude was biting an old lady in the neck.  She looked to her left, at the oncoming traffic, just in time to see a redneck dude plow his pickup right into the back of a stopped car--kaabam!  Airbag deployment and everything.  Everybody was looking at the carnage surrounding them.  Everybody was in shock.  But, Rhonda didn't have time for that kind of mess.  She had to get the groceries home and lock up tight.  The kids weren't going anywhere!

     The noise of the collision seemed to bring all the crazy biter bastards out.  They were everywhere.  The car in front of her hit the gas and opened up a gap in the traffic.  But, the biters just walked right into the road and filled the gap in.  There were dozens of them.  Rhonda had to get through zombies or no zombies.  She saw a spot on the sidewalk and punched the accelerator.  If the biters wouldn't get out of the way, she would just run their asses down.

     Suddenly, a big red light lit up on her dashboard and the car came to a halt just six inches from a couple of the monstrous pedestrians.  She punched the gas and car wouldn't move.  She slammed it into reverse, the backup camera came on revealing more dead pedestrians.  The car lurched backwards and came to a half after moving all of two feet.  The red light on the dash warned her again.  The car revved and went no where.  The car would not be used as a weapon.  It would not run down pedestrians.

     "Oh no," Rhonda cried.  "This ride is too damn smart!"

Zombie Nanofiction - The Hand

THE HAND

Something dead was in the middle of the street. It had attracted a whole murder of hungry crows. They were pecking at it, screeching at each other, and fighting over it. It was a human hand. I looked around for a human. But, no one I saw fit that description anymore.

I fought back my bile. I didn't tell anyone. Karen was driving. Vijay was in back desperately trying to stop Charan's bleeding. I kept my finger indexed along the slide. I kept my muzzle pointed down. We needed to reach the hospital. If there still was one. 

A murder of crows - Photo By liz west from Boxborough, MA (murder of crows) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Zombie Flash Fiction - Waiting

Waiting

Jeb decided that the world was going to need more butter beans.  That's why he spent all morning putting up extra poles, stringing lines between them, and laying out a half-dozen rows for planting them.  He had a bucket full of pole beans ready to plant.  But, it was hot and Jeb was an old man.  He needed to sit for a spell.  That's why his house had a front porch with built in ceiling fans.

Myra had made him some lemonade.  She was a good woman, but she was nervous wreck.  It was a good thing she had plenty of preserves to put away.  It kept her busy and stopped her from speculating about the news out of Atlanta.  The latest news from up there just didn't make any sense.

Earlier in the week, all the government officials and medical experts were confident that they could simply round up and treat all the crazy people.  It was a disease they said.  They were telling folks not to shoot the afflicted.  But, Betty had said the afflicted were out trying to bite people.

"Y'all just need to get in your van and come on down to the homeplace," Jeb remembered telling her on the phone.  "Just round up Robert and the kids and you drive on down here as fast as you can."

Jeb didn't really take to Robert.  He was a trifling husband who needed a haircut and a real job.  But, Betty said they were coming.  Now, there was nothing to do but sit on the front porch swing, look down the road, and wait.  Jeb wiped the sweat from his brow and had a sip of lemonade--a nervous sip.

[For the next Chronicle of Jeb story, read "Something You Oughta Know."

Zombie Nanofiction - Daily Scrum of the Dead

Alright Spike, what did you do yesterday that contributed to this supply sprint?

We brought in 12 cases of bottled water from the drug store.

What were your obstacles?

About four dozen biters in the store and a pair of bandits outside.

What are you going to do today?

Go back, load up more supplies, get Tanya, make sure she's really dead, bring her home, and bury her.

Do you see any obstacles or impediments today?

Well, our team is short one member and we know one of the biters now.

Zombie Drabble - Faster

Here is a bit of zombie nanofiction (100-word Flash Fiction) that I originally posted over on the Zombie Squad Forum. Enjoy!

Faster

I ran with her, I  trained her, I encouraged her, and I even slept with her when her  husband was away on business.  But, her training regime was never going  to work, she wouldn’t cut back on all her fancy iced coffees.  She blew  off aerobic workouts regularly.  She huffed and she puffed, but she paid  me.

I bet she doesn’t worry about her husband’s pretty  receptionist now.  Her protein diet and her half-assed workouts don’t  matter.  Back when we had a hundred dead people shuffling along behind  us on our run, only one thing truly mattered. I was faster.

Photo by Ed Yourdon [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]