Undead Worlds 2
A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Anthology
The Reanimated Writers
Ryan Colley
Justin Robinson
Valerie Lioudis
Jessica Gomez
Joshua C. Chadd
R.L. Blalock
R.J. Spears
Grivante
LC Champlin
Arthur Mongelli
Dia Cole
Alathia Paris Morgan
Rich Restucci
Javan Bonds
EE Isherwood
Cover Design By
Christian Bentulan
Copyright © 2018 Reanimated Writers Press
Individual stories copyright © 2018 by their individual authors as listed on their story.
ISBN: 1-62676-027-6
ISBN: 978-1-62676-027-1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the authors.
Cover art by Christian at Covers by Christian
Contents
Introduction
1. Get Undead Worlds 1 For Free!
2. La Petite Mort
About Ryan Colley
3. The Last Day
About Justin Robinson
4. Cookie Jars and Blue Birds
About Valerie Lioudis
5. Inception
About Jessica Gomez
6. First Occurence
About Joshua C. Chadd
7. Dominion
About R.L. Blalock
8. Forget the Mall: Forget the Zombies 1.5
About R.J. Spears
9. First Job (The Zee Brothers)
About Grivante
10. Valley of the Shadow
About L.C. Champlin
11. Airborne
About Arthur Mongelli
12. Breakfast in Hell
About Dia Cole
13. Alone Against Zombies
About Alathia Paris Morgan
14. Gods and Monsters
About Rich Restucci
15. Zombie Beginnings: The Oracle
About Javan Bonds
16. Picking it up in the Middle
About E.E. Isherwood
17. More From The Reanimated Writers
Undead Worlds 1
The Reanimated Rumble
Reanimated Writers Podcast
The Reanimated Reader
Facebook Fan Group
Reanimated Merch
Introduction
Welcome back to Undead Worlds!
If you’re new, here’s what Undead Worlds is all about. Undead Worlds is the flagship publication of The Reanimated Writers and it features brand new short stories from each author’s zombie-filled universe. It gives you a chance to check out what they are all about and decide if you want to read more of their work.
In Undead Worlds 2 we have a mix of new and returning authors. Some of our returning authors have continued their stories from Undead Worlds 1 and others have completely new tales to share. This year we have a great mix and believe there is something in here for every zompoc lover to enjoy!
If you missed out on Undead Worlds 1, you can now grab it for free at your favorite ebook retailer here!
We want to give a special thank you to a trio of individuals who were the winning bidders in our Kill-Starter Fan Auction. These folks donated big money to help us fund this project and we are very grateful! So grateful in fact, that we killed them all, in some cases multiple times! Be on the lookout for their names throughout Undead Words 2 as they die gruesome deaths!
Thank you to
Douglas Kay-Fraser
Neal Smead
&
Jacinda Yotti
Lastly, if you enjoy zombie stories, you may want to come join the companion group on Facebook to hangout with the authors and fellow fans, you can find us at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/reanimatedwriters/
or on the web at www.reanimatedwriters.com
Kevin M. Penelerick
Reanimated Writers Founder
1
Get Undead Worlds 1 For Free!
Enjoy Undead Worlds 1 For Free now @ www.reanimatedwriters.com/uw
2
La Petite Mort
by Ryan Colley
La Petite Mort. That is the name of the restaurant that exists at the end of times. My restaurant. It’s French for “The Little Death”, modern use describing the sensation of an orgasm. Beautiful and deadly. I felt it was an appropriate name for my restaurant. After all, how else would you describe making well-known cuisine at the end of the world?
I wasn’t an amazing chef, not even before the dead started walking. I wasn’t even a good chef, but I knew how to use an oven and what seasoning worked well with which food. I knew how to season meat, and that is all I felt I needed to know. Meat, I believe, is the cornerstone of any decent meal. However, the patrons of my failing pre-apocalypse restaurant didn’t see it that way. They wanted vegetarian options, or even vegan options. Well, now that people are living among the dead, they don’t get much choice when it comes to their dietary wants and needs. They are thankful for meat, tasty meat – nice cuts of meat. Not that meat is so freely available during the end times, not to the everyday survivor anyway. But, if you’re like me, you know how to get it. And that is how I succeeded as a chef in the new world, my dream finally realized. When the dead started to walk, eliminating most of the life on the planet, not many industries survived – and even fewer people who knew how to operate those industries lived. A lot of professions became redundant. This all benefitted me of course, as the restaurant industry was one that became non-existent. Celebrity chefs died. Michelin Star restaurants disappeared. Even readymade dinners went away. So, someone as mediocre at cooking as myself no longer had any competition. I thrived. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying my cooking got better during the end of the world – although I definitely got more creative – but my customers didn’t exactly have a myriad of choice either. When there are very few options out there for people to choose from, you make a name for yourself.
I remember the first time I cooked for someone during the apocalypse – not as a restaurant owner but it was definitely a preface for it. I had been out scavenging, trying to find something to make myself a decent meal. I had found some roadkill – amazingly still a thing in the post-apocalypse. It wasn’t a lot, but a couple squirrels were more than enough to satiate my hunger. On the way back I was forced to take an alternate route. My normal path seemed a lot more active with the undead than usual, and a quick journey back wasn’t worth the level of risk. As I was not familiar with my new path, I took my time returning to ensure I was careful. I looked for paths that I could take if I needed to make a quick escape or detour from the living or undead, both were just as much a threat as the other. Being hyperaware of my surroundings, I noticed a rosemary bush growing on a bit of public greenspace – or it would have been public greenspace if that was still a thing. I took several sprigs from it and made a mental note of where the bush was – herbs were hard to come by and a living herb in the city was like gold dust. If the cuttings I took didn’t grow when I planted them, I would always have the original bush.
I wasn’t one for taking risks; I always tried to be careful when I left the safety of my home. I avoided the undead and the living alike – I wasn’t much of a fighter and had only survived through cunning. However, on that day, the stars aligned in a peculiar way. Maybe it was the scent of the roadkill, or maybe I had gotten lax with my own safety when I spotted the herb. Regardless of the reason,
a lone zombie wandered out from one of the many destitute buildings that I had strayed to close too. It wasn’t a particularly fresh zombie, so it couldn’t move very quickly. Nonetheless, the decrepit husk made its way towards me. You couldn’t avoid the undead in the new world, but spotting them before they saw me was key to my survival. On that occasion, the zombie had seen me first. I should have smelled it immediately, but I was too busy rolling the herb between my fingers and inhaling the aroma. The ghoul was nearly on me by the time I’d realised what was happening, but I couldn’t move. I mentally and physically couldn’t run. People always say you have a “flight or fight” response to danger. They never mention the third “F”, which a lot more people do, and it’s exactly what I did. I just … froze. I just stopped in my tracks and stared, mouth agape and trembling. I didn’t know what to do! Shockingly, considering I had survived for so long, I hadn’t needed to kill one of the undead before. Hell, I hadn’t killed anything before. Not even an animal. It was the reason I never served lobster in my restaurant! I just couldn’t bring myself to kill.
The zombie continued to shuffle towards me. Hand outstretched and its own mouth a hungry maw on its ragged and grey face. Its clothes hung from it, misshapen, filthy and torn. The zombie was almost beyond recognition as having once been male or female – the tell-tale sign being the bra that hung from its shoulder. A ripped breast was exposed, and that only held on due to a few slivers of vein and stretched flesh, supported and resting on the loose bra. Its belly was swollen, distended and full of flesh that would never be digested. It would only be a matter of time before the lining of its stomach was pushed beyond its limits and tore, depositing the malodorous gore onto the ground – would the zombie move on, or see it as a new meal and feast again? That, or it would be forced through the entire digestive tract by the consumption of more muscle and tissue, exiting the same way all human waste did. At least, that’s what I hoped had caused the distension. The alternative was an unborn child that had never been given a chance in the world. A stillborn forever resting in the body of unlife that carried it. The zombie still made heavy, uncoordinated steps towards me. Its body swayed and moved to some unheard and macabre song that all the undead seemed to hear – the call of the flesh. My flesh. It came, as if I was the one who sung the siren song and her rotten form was the lustful sailor being pulled to its doom. I was as good as dead – I didn’t have the mental or physical fortitude to save myself. I had given in to my fate, unwillingly but resigned nonetheless.
Then someone appeared, as if they had answered my silent and fearful prayers. He seemed to materialise from the shadows, as if he had stepped out of the wall like some sort of ethereal being entering our world. How long had he been there? Had he been watching me the entire time? Did he mean me harm? In that moment, none of it mattered. Whether I died by the hand of the undead or the man, I was just happy that I may have had a few moments extra of life. The stranger wore dark clothes, stained with cruor. From a sheath on his belt, he produced a large kitchen knife. He moved quickly and silently, each step methodically executed. The zombie didn’t even see him coming. He stalked the creature, closing in swiftly. He was no more than an arm’s reach away from the undead woman when he placed a hand gently on her shoulder, holding the creature steadfast. Before it had chance to react, his other hand thrust the knife into the base of its skull and through its neck. It didn’t burst through the throat as I expected, but the zombie collapsed heavily in a heap on the ground. I stared in shock as the man casually wiped his knife off on his trousers. My eyes fell to the zombie on the floor, its own eyes watching me back and mouth forming a snarling motion. At first I thought it was going through its death throes, a repeated motion as dying electrical impulses scattered along its nervous system. That was before I realised its eyes were moving back and forth between the mysterious man and myself. It was still cognisant! I stared with morbid curiosity – I had never had a chance to observe one of the undead so closely – but that didn’t last long. The man raised his foot and slammed the heel onto the head. He did this again, and again, and again – until the eyes no longer moved and the rest of the head was pulp. I just stared at the man, dumbfounded as he began walking towards me.
“Th-thank you!” I stammered out. The hulking figure continued in my direction. I couldn’t help but think I would die in that moment.
“No problem,” he replied gruffly and simply, sheathing his knife and continuing by me. And that was it. I didn’t die. He didn’t even make an attempt on my life. All the fear and anxiety dissipated and I felt like I owed him.
“Let me cook for you!” I exploded suddenly. He stopped midstride and my heart leapt into my throat. Why did I say that? Then there was a long pause that hung in the air like the fetid stink emanating from the corpse on the ground.
“Ok,” he finally said. He then turned to face me, waiting for me to lead the way, and I did.
I lead the man back to where I had been living – an old restaurant. Not my pre-apocalypse restaurant, but it had been someone’s. I disarmed the trap that I always set up before leaving, being careful to obscure my technique to the man – in case he chose to come back and kill me later, as opposed to killing me then and there. I showed him through the door and shut it behind us. We were in a corridor entrenched with shadow – it had been a staff entrance once upon a time. My hand reached out and found a flashlight I had hung from the wall – it was an instinctive action. I unhooked it, clicking it on and waiting for the light to flicker to life. Once it was fully illuminated, I guided our way through the darkness and into the kitchen. There were many clean, stainless steel sinks and ovens. The pots and pans hung meticulously and not a single one was out of place. Cutlery and utensils polished and in their appropriate location. Of course, they weren’t clean when I found my way into the kitchen originally. Rotten food and stagnant water was everywhere. Meals that had once been mid-creation and in the process of being cooked. Dead and undead in the kitchen. Broken glass on every surface. Well, it just needed some love and care! After I guided the undead out and lost them in the streets, I made my way back to the kitchen and moved the corpses outside. It wasn’t an easy task, they were heavy and cumbersome and I couldn’t decide where to leave them either. Once all corpses, walking and stationary, had been removed I had to focus on cleaning the kitchen. Luckily, the power and water was still operational at that point, so it wasn’t an issue. Loading up dishwashers over and over again while scrubbing the surfaces using a healthy dose of elbow grease got the place up to my standard. It was an impressive feat and only took a few days – I happily hide away from the madness on the streets. The real irony was that the moment the kitchen was spotless, the power went out and the water soon followed. I had spent so long making everything pristine, that I didn’t even get chance to use it. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I had to eat everything cold and uncooked. Not long after, I found a generator and the fuel needed to operate it. I hooked it up to the duel plug-in hob I found at a travel store and used that to prepare my own food going forward. So much beautiful equipment around me and I couldn’t use any of it. It was the chef equivalent of riding a bicycle around a racetrack designed for a Lamborghini, but it was where I would live. Sometime later I would find a much bigger and better generator to operate more of the kitchen. I could have found a hundred other places to call my home and survive. Places with more secure doors and windows. Somewhere with fewer problems. Less undead and less bodies to move. However, I felt drawn to that kitchen. It felt safe. It needed my love and care. It felt like home, so home is what I made it.
I told my companion to sit down and then I attempted to skin the squirrels. After all, I had promised my saviour a meal. I hacked away at one of the tiny creatures, cutting through the fleshy sinew attaching skin to meat. The body slid around, gore making the surface slippery and an almost impossible task. More often than not, I left most of the meat attached to the fur that I was trying to separate it from. The entire time, the man wa
tched me intently and unspeaking. It was unnerving, but it pushed me to focus on the squirrel even more. I did this for several agonising minutes until I had finally finished the first one. I sighed and pushed the poorly skinned squirrel to one side. I moved the second one in front of me to begin the process all over again. In one swift motion, the man stood up and was next to me, one hand on the unskinned squirrel and the other on the knife I was using.
“Like this,” he said, softly this time. He then took the squirrel and chose another knife from my selection. The one he selected was longer but narrow than the one I was using – a filleting knife. He then began slicing away at the body, quickly and smoothly – nothing like the hacking motion I had done. In what felt like mere seconds, the second body was neatly skinned. He nodded at his handiwork and then sat down again. I smiled and went back to work.
I cut portions off the squirrel and into serving size pieces. The next step was preparing something I had found in one of my previous scavenges – buttermilk. Admittedly it was powdered buttermilk and just needed the addition of water, but nonetheless I mixed it up. I added powdered garlic, paprika and cayenne pepper. It was dried herbs and spice, and out of jars. It wouldn’t compare to anything fresh, but it would do the job. I added the squirrel bits to my concoction. I left it to soak while I added salt, pepper and flour to a Ziploc bag. I drained the squirrel in a colander before placing it into the bag and then I shook it until the squirrel was sufficiently coated. I heated up my skillet, put in a couple of teaspoons of vegetable oil and dropped in the prepared squirrel bits. I fried the rodent meat, flipping it with tongs, until it was golden brown. I placed the thoroughly seasoned squirrel onto, what was obviously, the good plates. A sprig of parsley for decoration and then placed in front of my guest, who had remained silent and motionless the entire time. He didn’t move and just stared at me. I put out some clean cutlery. He still didn’t move. He just continued to watch me, unblinking. I sat down anyway, I had worked hard on the meal in front of me and I wanted to enjoy it. I began eating and, when I swallowed my first mouthful, he began to eat also. I suppose you couldn’t trust strangers to cook you a non-poisoned meal in the post-apocalyptic world.
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