by Samie Sands
When he found himself at the bottom of the stairs, he saw that there was only a ten-foot hall separating him from the outside world. The front door stood open as so many doors did these days. He could see out into the street in front of the building as a cool late March breeze blew in on him. He had forgotten to look for a coat in the room and as a result, he was still very cold. What he found odd was the fact that he wasn’t shivering. Jonathan was one of those people who would shiver at the drop of a hat, but now he was colder than he had been in a long time yet was not shivering. Perhaps that was a good thing, he thought. Because if a zombie saw him shaking with cold that might blow his cover.
As he trudged down the hall, he practiced his “zombie” walking doing his best to replicate their clumsy gate always keeping his hand inside his jacket pocket on the handle of his gun. When he got about three feet from the doorway a zombie shuffled into view out on the street stopping right in front of the opening staring directly at Jonathan. The beast was no more than fifteen feet away. A lump of apprehension arose in Jonathan’s throat and for a moment, he almost gave up. The front door was only a foot or two beyond his reach now and he knew that he could easily grab it and slam it shut before the creature got to him, but he was determined to see if his idea worked.
He kept his head down continuing to drag his way toward the doorway looking upward under his turned down brow to see what the creature was doing. Sure enough, the zombie looked the other way with complete disinterest and continued on its way. Jonathan couldn’t believe his luck. This truly was as important a discovery as learning about shooting them in the head. As soon as he found some survivors, he’d make certain he passed the word. Now that he thought about it, this could mean the salvation of all mankind.
He stepped down onto the street and still keeping his head cast downward, he could see that there were many of them, perhaps ten or twenty wandering about aimlessly. Jonathan recalled how when they were not busy eating someone these creatures could be almost comical to watch as the milled about imitating things that they once did when alive. He remembered one time seeing a female zombie in a filthy torn tennis outfit slowly swinging a broken racket into empty air. The racket face had been frayed with strings missing and those remaining hanging in complete disorder. He recalled a zombie soldier sitting on the side of a curb with one hand holding his rifle saluting at no one in particular.
After walking for a time Jonathan noticed that he was in what once was the downtown shopping area surrounded by the living dead roaming in and out of burned out businesses. He made his way onto the pavement noting a grocery store not too far away on the corner. If he could get inside, he might be able to find something to eat or drink without the creatures noticing.
Suddenly Jonathan’s thoughts were interrupted by a high-pitched scream. He looked up to see a young woman, a living human survivor standing about ten feet in front of him panting, drenched with sweat and out of breath. She must have come around the corner stumbling onto his street by mistake while being pursued by other zombies and suddenly realized she was really in big trouble. Jonathan lifted his head and his eyes met hers he never felt so helpless in his life. Already the zombies were had started to surround her, their moaning increasing. He tried to speak quietly to tell her to run but when he attempted to speak nothing came out but a crackly groan.
“Damn!” He thought to himself. He hadn’t had anything to drink for hours and his throat must be too dry to speak.
Again, she screamed helplessly staring right at him as the zombies closed in on her. He didn’t know what he should do. It was too late to try to help her escape. His experiment had worked perhaps too well. He and the girl were in the middle of at least twenty zombies, surrounding her and they still didn’t recognize that he was not one of them. There was no way he could shoot his way out of the situation with his pistol and if he blew his cover, he’d likely die along with the woman.
“Survival of the fittest,” he thought to himself and put his head down as the zombies fell upon the woman first ripping out her stomach and intestines then eventually ripping her limb from limb in a savage feeding frenzy.
Jonathan stood staring at the spectacle unable to move. After a few seconds, he felt a bump against his legs and noticed that the woman’s hand must have been thrown in the struggle for food and had landed right at his feet. He stood staring at the severed limb dumbfounded, as if in shock. Then he saw the blood pooling under the hand and he suddenly noticed how pink and warm the flesh of the hand looked. For the first time since he had awoken in that apartment, he felt a rush of warmth climbing through his body. Then he actually felt a growing savage hunger as if he should bend down lick the flesh and taste the blood of the severed limb.
Jonathan thought that he must be losing his mind, going insane with hunger. In disgust, he turned away and found himself staring at a zombie version of himself in the glass door of the grocery store. Slowly he staggered toward the door mouth agape, as the image grew larger and clearer. He raised his arms leaning them against the glass placing his face against the reflection. His eyes were no longer sharp and focused but were covered in a gray cataract-like film of death. He lifted his head away from the glass and noticed that his jacket sleeve had slid down revealing a large maggot riddled wound on his lower right arm caked with dried blood.
He thought back to the night before when one of his zombie attackers had grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. The thing must have cut him infected him. Perhaps the days of sleeping had allowed the infection to spread. Jonathan understood now that he had not really been fooling the zombies, he had been fooling himself. He was becoming one of them and the transformation was almost complete.
He looked back at the severed hand looking beautiful, pink and delicious in the morning sunlight and felt his thoughts start to slip away as a red fire of hunger began to take their place. The last human thought he had before his mind slipped completely away was “Bright of the Living Dead”, but it didn’t seem so funny anymore.
Thomas M. Malafarina
THOMAS M. MALAFARINA is a horror fiction author from the South Heidelberg Twp area of Berks County, Pennsylvania. He was born July 23, 1955 in Ashland, Schuylkill County, PA where he lived until moving to Berks County in 1979.
Many of Thomas’s stories take place in his native Schuylkill County and also in Berks County settings. Thomas’s books are published by Sunbury Press of Mechanicsburg, PA.
Thomas’s early novels included 99 Souls, Burn Phone and Eye Contact all three of which are now out of print, having been reworked and re-titled by Thomas from 2016-2018. They were replaced by the new books, It Waits Below, Burner and From the Dark. His novel, Fallen Stones is currently still available although this also is being reworked by Thomas and will eventually be called Circle of Blood and re-released. Other novels include three in his Dead Kill series, Dead Kill Book 1: The Ridge Of Death, Dead Kill Book 2: The Ridge of Change and the third installment, Dead Kill Book 3: The Ridge of War.
His short story collection 13 Nasty Endings is no longer available having been replaced by 13 Deadly Endings. Several of his earlier short story collections, Gallery of Horror, Malafarina Maleficarum Volume 1, Malafarina Maleficarum Volume 2 are no longer available. His other short story collections, Ghost Shadows, and Malaformed Realities Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3 are currently available. Another short story collection, Malaformed Realities Volume 4 will be released in 2019, Malaformed Realities Volume 5 is currently in the works as well. He also has a collection of single-panel cartoons called Yes I Smelled It Too. In addition, many Thomas’s stories appear in many a variety of anthologies currently on sale online.
Thomas has had a life-long love of the horror and monster genre in all its form of books, movies and art. Annually, Thomas creates works of horror art, props and scenery, which he donates to a local non-profit Halloween Barn Of Horror.
Thomas lives just outside of Wernersville, PA with his wife JoAnne. They have three grown children and three grandchildre
n.
Hunger
Jensen Reed
I WAS ONE OF THE LUCKY ones. They picked me towards the beginning when I still had use of both feet, ankles, and legs. My arms were intact, save for some bite marks, but I wasn’t very rotten. I vaguely remember being carted away and placed in a cement cell. It’s hard to keep track of time but I was there for a long time because I grew...so...hungry. When they finally came to free me, I managed a satisfying mouthful of the beefy man who unlocked the door. I later saw him in a cell.
The restorative process hurt; I was simultaneously raging flames and solid ice. My first coherent thoughts, or rather feelings, came when I woke to find myself chained to a hospital bed. The hunger left me feeling so hollow. I looked around desperately for food but instead met the gazes of the men and women in the room surrounding me. I tried to speak, but my voice wouldn’t work. A woman in her mid-thirties with a bouncy afro stepped forward and offered me a kind smile.
“Can you understand me?” she asked slowly. I nodded.
“Do you remember your name, sir?” she asked. I shook my head.
“That’s normal, Mr. Keaton.” She looked over her shoulder briefly at the men watching her. When she turned back to me, she stepped a little closer. “How do you feel?”
I frowned as I tried to make words work. I just needed food. She held up a chart and my eyes zeroed in on the square with a burger and fries. Yes. Food. I pointed excitedly, making her jump back a little even though the chains stopped my hand before I was near her.
She looked to where I pointed and nodded. “Very well. We can get you some food! Welcome back, Mr. Keaton.” She turned and began whispering with one of the males as they left the room. I watched them until they were lost from view. I tugged at the chains until a door on the opposite side of the room opened. My attention snapped to the mousey man who carried in a tray and uncovered it. He set it on the bedside table, and the smell of meat wafted over me. My stomach clenched painfully, and drool rolled across my chin as I stared at it. The small man jumped away in surprise as I lunged myself at the tray. I stuffed pieces of the burger into my mouth, forgetting to chew before I forced it down. The man watched with wide eyes as I devoured the food in moments and began licking the tray. I needed more. I eyed him until he turned and scurried out of the room.
IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS and I’m still hungry. I watched people stroll by my little alley, cheering and celebrating Mardi Gras without fear for the first time in a decade. Amongst them I could count those who had been infected; The Restored as they called us. Our skin would forever be slightly ashy and scarred. Any wounds we gained during our time infected were permanent. Most limped or walked around with a missing limb. Once the scientists had figured out the final cure, they stopped being picky with who they restored unless they were too far rotten.
The body under my foot started writhing again so I smiled down at the girl. She was probably no older than sixteen and had been walking alone. She stared up at me with wide, tearful eyes and shook her head as I scooped her up. She started screaming through the thick gag in her mouth, but no one heard. Most of my muscles had atrophied and it had been a battle to build them back up, but I was much stronger now. Her flailing around did nothing to stop me from carrying her deeper into the abandoned alley to a faded grey door.
I took her inside and set her on the plastic, tarp-covered table. She writhed and screamed but she wasn’t going anywhere. I ensured the plastic tarps were all in place across the floor before I brought out more rope and secured her so she couldn’t move.
Yes, it had been two years since I was restored, but the human’s cure for zombies did nothing to cure my need for flesh. Her muffled scream was music to my ears as I sank my teeth into her soft belly. I was glad that I had managed to save enough to afford the teeth sharpening procedure, it made my meals so much easier. My mind stopped planning the next meal as warm blood and meat soothed the ever-present hunger that gnawed away at me. Soothed for now, anyway.
Jensen Reed
JENSEN REED IS A PUBLISHED author, co-owner of Pixie Forest Publishing, mama to two young boys, and married to her high school sweetheart. She dabbles in reading and writing genres but particularly enjoys feeding characters to zombies and making readers cry. An all-around nerd, she could spend hours talking about shows and movies. Find her book links, flash fiction, and connect with her at https://authorjensenreed.wordpress.com/
Unnatural
GJ Stevens
HE WATCHED THEIR MOVEMENT without the soundtrack, their eyes closed to the shouted snippets of tunes he all but recognized. At the edge of the dance floor, he stood, a long-drained glass in his hand, the wallet in his pocket almost the same. Still, he had enough to get a headset lit by color either side, enough to put down to join the masses in the darkness. He chose not to. He chose not to shut out the atmosphere surrounding, chose not to listen only to what came to their ears. He stood at the side-line thinking because thinking was what he did best.
Or so he thought.
He watched something he knew he didn't want to join in with, left only to wonder why. Instead, without turning his head, he listened to the conversation to his left. To someone else's friends pouring their hearts out. Telling each other why they were the best. Why they were the ones who could sort out their problem with a woman called Janice, or Jan, to the chorus of whoops naked of the guiding baseline.
His eyes flicked to the right, to the corner of the room and the fire exit he knew shouldn't have been letting in the cold dark night unless the bells were ringing. His attention drew back to the conversation, guilt returning as he listened to information they shouldn't be broadcasting, his breath pausing as he caught a word. Isolated. Without context.
Unnatural.
The conversation drifted out of his mind, a sudden blurted snippet of a song he'd not heard for such a time he'd been thankful. Then to someone tall, wide-shouldered, un-assailed by alcohol. Someone who should have been responsible. Someone who should have known better than to push back, to take in what stumbled through the fire door with their mouth dripping dark with liquid, their expression much like those who paid no attention to anything but the music pouring through their ears and to what hung beyond their arms reach.
The glass slipped from his hand but only he heard it shatter at his feet. Only he felt the crunch under his shoe as he took a step, leaning forward, eyes squinting between the bodies swaying their heads from side to side, light shining at their ears. He looked to their dance which was like no other. Hands raised. Arms grabbing. Holding close like a slow romantic song speeding to a rate which made little sense. He watched their bodies twist and turn as they ducked in and out of view, huffed air blocked in and out by a renewed wave of whoops and hollers from the crowd. The joy of those oblivious to the exchange couldn't mask the scream of a man who hadn't called out that way before. Hadn't reacted to such pain in all his life. His body flinching, falling to a heap as his calls went unanswered.
He looked around to the friends who had re-joined the bouncing masses and for the TV cameras filming his reaction, hidden in each corner ready to capture the moment panic struck. He couldn't make out the glass of the lens, the black nothingness beyond. He looked for others who'd heard the call, who'd seen the bouncer fall to the ground, but there was no one else. All others in the room all but silent for the feet slapping to the ground with disorganized rhythm.
They were good. The setup must have taken time. His admiration for his friends grew. The attention to detail for the prank warming his heart even more as he lost count of the costumed actors streaming through the doorway with the empty-headed stares and their quickening pace as they sought targets.
It took the third, or maybe it was the fourth headset to fall to the floor. The screams joining to a chorus before people took note. Before they pulled down the cans at their ears, heads tilting to the side, eyes widening with pain. Before the screams reverberated and legs ran in the opposite direction, stopping, pausing when they saw the
same expressionless crowd heading from the way they wanted to run.
His admiration grew as he looked from eye to eye, saw fear on their addled faces curled in confusion as he held his chest against the laughter pouring from his mouth. His admiration grew as he took a step back, bumping against the wall as people ran left and right. Movement caught him by surprise, but still, he smiled. The laughter without control even when the stale stench of sewerage wafted across his face. Even when the dark figure bared down, intense pain radiating from his neck.
GJ Stevens
GJ STEVENS STARTED writing fiction at the age of thirty. Even as an engineer with a large family and a full-time career with plenty of adult responsibilities, he has always had a creative side. After years of self-suppression, the floodgates opened and his novel, In The End, is the culmination of many years of finding time from nowhere to learn the craft.
Whilst working to independently publish and make a success of his novels, Gareth lays bare his publishing journey through his blog, drawing together advice and knowledge from those already in the industry.
As a lover of the outdoors, every year he spends weekends out in the desolate countryside of the UK hiking and camping with his long-time friends which he uses as inspiration for both his creative fiction works and the subject of many a blog post.
The Package
Ryan Colley
CRUNCH. The sound of a boot on broken glass. Another crunch. Another set of boots followed the first. Solitary figures moved among the dead city. They worked their way through the streets—like blood moving through veins. Street by street the figures stalked with their guns raised and pointed, ready to defend themselves against any of the undead that should see them.
