Dying Days

by Armand Rosamilia

  Dying days

  Armand Rosamilia

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without expressed written consent of the author and/or artists

  This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All stories copyright 2016 by Armand Rosamilia

  Cover copyright Jack Wallen

  Darlene Bobich: Zombie Killer first printing February 2012

  Dying Days first printing April 2011

  Updated May 2016

  This one goes to

  The Extreme Zombie Readers…

  Jeff Beesler, M.J. O’Neill and Robert Clark

  I couldn’t have done this one without you Undead Three…

  And to the real Darlene Bobich, the inspiration and name-sake herein…

  This rerelease consists of two novellas: Darlene Bobich: Zombie Killer and Dying Days

  The original covers

  And now, a message from the real Darlene Bobich…

  "I am a zombie aficionado. I have always loved the zombie genre. Something about them, the look, the idea that they just keep coming, the fact that you can shoot one and not worry about the consequences, has always intrigued me. For decades now I have imagined them. Coming in hordes or singularly down the road. Where would I go at that moment? What would I do? Would I really have what it took to shoot one? To bash one in the head with a rock? What if I looked up and saw my grandmother coming for my brains? A child? What just may terrify us about zombies is the fact that they represent humanity at its worst. Taking and never giving. Rotting and filling the world with stench and destruction. Perhaps thats what frightens us the most. They are us.

  "Yet I still adore them. I appreciate the opportunity to read about Darlene Bobich the Zombie Killer. It gives me hope that when they do come down that road, I will be strong enough to slay them. Getting to know Armand and his particular brand of brainwaves has been an adventure on its own. I'm riveted, wanting it to go on and on, to never end. Keep me alive out there in Zombie World, Armand, it gives us all hope that we will have the strength to stand up to the hordes."

  PART ONE

  DARLENE BOBICH: ZOMBIE KILLER

  Chapter One

  Anything But Luck

  Darlene Bobich never believed in luck. There was a reason for everything, and whether it was the good graces of God Above or skills and experience that got you through, it was never a random occurrence. Things happened for a reason, as her daddy used to say.

  This morning she put a bullet through her daddy’s heart. He didn’t stop trying to kill her, so she put another through his stomach.

  The one between his eyes and the one through his left eye stopped him.

  The gun, a Desert Eagle gas-operated semi-automatic, was given to her as a gift from her daddy. This was one of the first that he’d had a hand in creating when the Israeli manufacturer had moved its operations to Maine.

  A small five year window before the Desert Eagle was once again back in Israel. Her daddy had been working in a factory in Dexter making footwear for twelve years. When it was announced that better paying jobs were right in town instead of thirty miles away, he’d jumped at the chance. Her daddy knew nothing about weapons but it didn’t stop him from being hired, and he was a fast learner.

  Darlene remembered the look on his face when he handed her the present, a large box wrapped in Christmas paper with a silver bow. “I made this for you,” he’d said and kissed her cheek. Darlene was seventeen, on the verge of graduating high school and going off to college in the fall, when he’d given it to her.

  Ten years of weekends on the gun range with daddy had taught her how to handle the weapon and defend herself. She’d never needed to until the dead started to rise.

  Fittingly, ironically or just plain horrifically, the first zombie she’d had to kill was her own daddy. Her aim hadn’t been off; she thought that a bullet through his heart would stop him, but now she knew that his heart had given up the fight already. The second shot was meant to slow him down so she could think, but he didn’t double over in pain. Pain was not an option for him anymore, only the hunger.

  Darlene took the last two shots in quick succession, hitting both targets perfectly. Daddy would have been proud of the accuracy. Even as he fell, lifeless, to the kitchen floor she knew that it wasn’t luck that had put this weapon in her hand and the skill to use it.

  It was her sweet daddy that had.

  Chapter Two

  The Neighbors

  There was a time for praying and a time for thinking. Right now, for Darlene Bobich, those times had passed.

  She stood on her front porch, her hands shaking and the Desert Eagle brushing against her thigh in tandem. The McCrory's house across the street was on fire. Normally that would have scared her, bothered her, and maybe caused her to leap into action.

  Mister McCrory, blood running down his chin, dragging his teenage daughter onto the sidewalk and ripping at her clothes while he tried to bite her, caused Darlene to hesitate.

  "Has the world gone fucking mad?" she whispered. Darlene had a bad habit of whispering to herself, spilling her thoughts with no filter when she was alone. She glanced back through the open front door and sighed. Her daddy, four bullets in his lifeless body, was still in view. Absently she checked the Desert Eagle to make sure she'd loaded it again, patting her jeans pocket to make sure she had more bullets.

  Darlene walked calmly across the street, ignoring all sounds from east or west. Her eyes were focused on the back of Mister McCrory's head. "Tunnel vision," she murmured. There was no way she wanted to think of what he was trying to do to his daughter. Was God really going to let this happen? To his daughter, to all of them?

  Darlene put a bullet in the back of his head, the gore splashing on the girl. His daughter was already dead. Darlene didn't even know their names, even though she'd lived across the street from these people for at least ten years.

  When the daughter stirred Darlene pushed his body off of her and held out her hand, a part of her brain screaming to stop. How could she, when this child might need medical attention? She was still alive.

  The teenager's mouth snapped at Darlene's fingers. Without a second's thought Darlene pulled the trigger and her forehead exploded. She fell back to the grass, now engrossed with blood.

  A car alarm down the street echoed, police sirens in the distance, a scream just audible. The smoke was getting thick, billowing from the windows and opened door.

  Darlene needed to run, but didn't know where. She had no real family left now. She glanced at her Toyota Tacoma pickup and smiled. "Three more payments on it."

  A real laugh escaped her lips and she thought she was losing it. In the last half an hour she'd killed three people - one of them a young girl - and here she was, standing on the neighbor's lawn, with the proverbial smoking gun. Thinking about car payments.

  She decided that she would stay, go back inside her house and board up the windows and doors, and get as much news as she could before the power went out or the television stations stopped broadcasting or the radio signal died.

  But first, she needed to go inside the McCrory home. She was positive that the wife was home. If her husband hadn't killed her the smoke and fire might.

  Or Darlene.

  Rechecking her bullets in her pocket, Darlene moved across the lawn.

  Chapter Three

  Mall Food

  The last can of tuna went down hard. Darlene wondered what had possessed her
daddy to purchase twenty cans of tuna on sale. She was getting sick of tuna but with no power there weren't many choices. The stale crackers - she guessed they had been stale before the neighbors turned into flesh-eating zombies - didn't help, either.

  Three weeks after she'd shot her daddy and buried him in the yard she was running out of options. They lived like any typical middle class American family: paycheck to paycheck, and grocery day hadn't come up yet before the world took a crazy turn.

  She needed food, supplies, a quieter weapon than her Desert Eagle, and an idea of what was happening in the world. The power had gone out, cutting her off from the television and radio. Unlike those zombie movies that freaked her out, the streets weren't teeming with shambling, moaning corpses. She was too scared to venture out again after the debacle on the neighbor's lawn. Inside the house the undead woman had attacked her and it was all she could do to push her into the fire of her blazing home and then vomit the entire escape.

  Her stomach recoiled, either from the memory or from the tuna.

  Darlene decided a recon would be necessary, but where? She could list every one of her friends on one hand, and they all worked with her at the mall.

  "Trip to the mall?" she whispered. She remembered when she dated Jason Nagle and he tricked her into seeing some scary zombie movie where they got trapped in a mall. Maybe that was the answer.

  The drive was only forty minutes in light traffic, but she didn't know what it would be like now. It could take her five with a straight drive and no stopping, or it could be blocked off.

  Or it could be gone. Darlene glanced out the window. There were plenty of smoke plumes in the air, and the fire across the street had taken down at least six houses before puttering out.

  It was now or never. She had no idea what she would need besides her weapon, all the spare bullets she could carry, and her car keys. "So much for preparing for the end of the world," she muttered. She hoped the mall's power was still on so she could buy a cup of coffee and a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese. "Yes, yes, that is stupid, but damn I'm hungry for something good," she whispered.

  She took her daddy's F150, glad that it had a full tank of gas. She would stick to the side streets as much as possible, since the highway would most likely be crowded with cars and... She started the truck and pulled out of the driveway.

  Darlene wondered if she'd ever see her house again.

  * * * * *

  At the corner of Main and Goddard, even though the power was out, Darlene automatically stopped for the red light. In the ten years since she'd been driving she'd never once made this light.

  To her left was the Goddard Grocery, where she'd walk to as a teenager and play the Ms. Pac Man machine and buy candy. Now it was a burning husk of a building, smoke drifting and mingling with the rest of the destruction.

  Darlene looked closer at the building and was shocked: two zombies were ripping apart Old Man Goddard. She couldn't look away even though she now saw exactly what they were doing.

  Both zombies, obviously males, were attacking her orifices with their bloated sex organs in a grotesque parody of sex. Not content to bite her and eat her like the news had reported initially, these two seemed to be raping her. This is insane.

  The sound was subtle at first, a dull tap on her tailgate. She glanced in her rearview mirror and her first instinct was the woman was sick from the way she shuffled.

  Darlene hopped out of the truck to help but stopped when she saw the tell-tale glazed eyes and blood-ringed mouth. She got back in and put it in drive, hitting the gas pedal just as a score of undead swarmed the street to either side.

  The pickup clipped one of them as she sped away and for a second she felt horrible for hitting someone. Not some one, some thing, she reminded herself.

  * * * * *

  Bangor Mall boasted Macy's, Dick's Sporting Goods, Sears and JC Penney, where she worked the makeup counter. The one-level mall had nearly eighty stores, most of which looked ransacked as she pulled into the parking lot. The far end was smoking and Macy's was just a pile of ash.

  Cars stood silent in neat rows and she wondered who remained in the mall alive and who had turned into a monster. Three weeks was a long time to stay alive, although she guessed smart people would have gathered food and supplies from the mall and barricaded themselves.

  Unlike the zombie movie she'd seen as a teenager, the ride over hadn't been as bad as she'd thought. The back streets were crowded with abandoned cars and she was forced to use I-95 the last few miles, but she weaved around the staled traffic and made it here.

  The far parking lot seemed to be crowded with people, but they were moving slowly and she knew what that meant. She pulled up and parked in the fire lane outside JC Penneys and stared at the still-intact doors. Worth a shot.

  They were locked and as a part-time associate she didn't have keys. She put her hands in front of her face and looked inside, searching for movement.

  When Robin Landry appeared, just off to the right in the shoe department, Darlene ducked. She didn't want to be spotted by a zombie and especially one of her only friends. She hadn't thought of anyone else she knew turning into one of those creatures, and Robin had always been one of the only things about her job that she enjoyed.

  Robin smiled and ran to the door, unlocking it as slowly and quietly as she could.

  "I thought you were…" Darlene said, hugging her friend as soon as she entered and the door was locked behind them.

  Robin smiled but pushed Darlene away. "I need to check you."

  "Huh?"

  "To see if you've been bitten."

  "I haven't been." Darlene tried not to get defensive but her nerves were beyond frayed.

  "That's what Nichole said, but she had a chunk missing from her leg and turned on us. We can't take chances. I'm sorry."

  Darlene understood. "Frisk me."

  "My pleasure," Robin said with a smile and began checking Darlene, pulling up her shirt and her pant legs.

  "Lesbian," Darlene said with a laugh.

  "Bull dyke," Robin said and patted Darlene on the ass. "Looks like you've been eating well the last month."

  "Looks like you've been bitten on the face… oh, no, wait, that's just your ugly mug."

  The two shared a laugh. Darlene looked at her friend and knew it was probably the first time Robin had laughed in weeks as well.

  "Who's left?" Darlene asked.

  "Only a few of us. We were all working when it started, but Ray Banner had the presence of mind to lock everything up when the newscasts started coming in. At first we fought him to let us leave but now we're glad he didn't."

  "Ray Banner?"

  "The cute visual manager. You definitely know who I'm talking about," Robin said and winked. "Let's get away from the doors. Most of the monsters flooded through the other side of the mall. There are dozens of them marching around near Sears."

  "Do you have food?"

  "Plenty. We took all of the cooking gear like the fryers and stuff and set them up in the break room."

  Darlene followed Robin through the dark store. For a second it felt like another early morning shift before the store was open and flooded with customers. "What about power?"

  "We're running generators in the main stockroom."

  "Isn't that dangerous?" Darlene asked.

  "Yes, but better than not getting a cooked meal and cold soda."

  Darlene snorted. "Wow, you guys are roughing it. I've lived on tuna for three weeks, three meals a day."

  "Excellent. We have tuna for you," Robin said with a laugh. They entered the office area. An older woman was sitting at the receptionist desk trying in vain to get something other than static on a portable radio.

  The break room had been converted into a mish-mash of fast food cookers, soda fountains and grillers. People swarmed around the areas preparing food and serving others.

  Darlene estimated there were at least twenty-five survivors, and she knew a few of them from work. The other
s she figured were customers.

  "Grab a plate and get some food before they shut it down. After that we can go clothes shopping." Robin grinned. "You smell like shit."

  Darlene got right in line, listening to her stomach growl. The smell of burgers, fries and onion rings was a nice welcome. She hesitated when the woman handing out food asked if she wanted two cheeseburgers.

  "No, just one."

  "Seriously? You look hungry, and this stuff will all go to rot in a couple of days. We're trying to cook it all and hand it out before it spoils." The woman glanced back. "I have about fifty burgers that need to be eaten and a ton of fries."

  "Thank you. Pile it on," Darlene replied.

  She finished her food and when the woman caught her eye Darlene smiled and went back up for a plate of onion rings. She washed everything down with freshly made iced tea.

  "Ready to shop?" Robin asked.

  "I guess." Darlene followed her back into the main area of the department store. "Why are the lights out?"

  "We don't want to advertise we're here." Robin stopped. "It's not only the zombies that we're worried about, it's the looters. We lost the other part of the mall thanks to a riot and not the zombies. People are greedy bastards, you know?"

  They passed a few more people, busy cleaning up and moving racks of items around.

  "We're trying to board up all the doors except one and make a communal area in the middle of the store, for everyone to be comfortable. The only problem is the generators, which you can't keep wasting all the time. We only turn them on when we're cooking. Ray says if we can find more of them and get to the nearest gas station and get fuel we might be able to turn on one of the fifty-inch TV's and watch some videos, once we get settled."