Jane hands David another clip and he continues firing, and then there’s a dead man’s click.
“I’m out.”
Jane can’t reload fast enough. Her trembling fingers keep dropping bullets on the floor of the Tesla.
Zee runs up to the opening beside me where once a door sat on hinges. Fingers grab at the frame of the car, and suddenly I’m shaken out of my lethargy by necessity. Steve has not died in vain, I tell myself as I lash out with my boots, crushing blackened fingers against the rim of the car, and Zee falls away, rolling on the concrete behind us.
“Come on,” Doyle yells, willing the Tesla to go faster.
Our speed increases and the zombies drop off, staggering behind us, snarling and howling.
David keeps a firm hold on the rim of the car as he lowers himself back inside and tends to Jane. I have my back to Doyle, facing the bloody intersection. I can see them—these inhuman creatures, these dark monsters from our nightmares. For me, they’ll always be Zee—a ravenous horde. And yet the mystique is gone, as has the fear. They’re not the undead. They’re wild animals, vicious predators driven by primal instincts.
There’s so much that went unsaid between Steve and I, so much I wanted to say but never did. And then suddenly, it was too late. I feel angry. Cheated. I never got to tell Steve that I love him. I’m sure he knew, but he never heard those words pass from my lips, and now he’s gone. Dead.
Even in those last few seconds, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I love him. And the reason is stupid. It’s so silly and childish it makes me hate myself. I couldn’t tell him because I was selfish. To have told him then would have been to admit he was dying, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t bring myself to accept Steve would die there on a desolate street amidst the massacre of hundreds of zombies.
Steve was supposed to be there for all our tomorrows, that’s what he promised. And I can still picture him as we lay in bed that first night back in the old house on the hill. I can hear the tenderness in his voice. I can feel the soft touch of his fingers, the warmth of his body. I guess, deep down, I wanted that moment again. That’s what kept me from telling him I loved him as his life faded before me.
I left Steve out there, and that realization makes me sick. Steve deserved better than being left on the roadside as carrion. After he died, I should have dragged him out of there, but I couldn’t. My body was so weak it was all I could do to blindly follow Doyle. One step after the other was all I could manage, and yet I cannot help but chastise myself for not being stronger, for not being better.
If only I’d acted quicker. If only I’d realized the extent of his wounds. I should have improvised. I could have made a pressure bandage, but with what? The reality is, I was in shock. I watched him bleed out feeling helpless instead of trying to do something to save him. Deep down, I understand I’m blaming myself for something I could never have stopped. Steve wouldn’t want me to do that to myself, but it doesn’t feel right to accept what happened. Waves of guilt wash over me.
Why is life so harsh? Why must time push on? Why can’t we live through these moments again? Why can’t we make different choices? Heartache endures when hope fails. Reality conspires against me. I feel crushed by the weight of my bloody, torn spacesuit. I feel dejected, defeated.
Doyle focuses on driving.
David tends to Jane.
No one’s paying me any attention, and that’s fine. I need to be alone. There’s something I need to say.
With a heavy heart, I whisper, “I love you.”
No one hears but me. And those words drift on the breeze, floating back toward the intersection where Steve lies dead on the cold, hard concrete.
Tears roll slowly down my cheeks.
As difficult as it is, I know this is the end. Finally, we can win this war. We can protect ourselves from turning. We can target their leaders and turn Zee to fight each other. This is the high water mark, the point at which the tide finally turns. From here, we can push them back. From now on, it is Zee that’s on the run, not us. Steve’s death has not been in vain.
Zee disappears into the distance, growing smaller as the Tesla races on over the rough, concrete road, past weeds growing up through the cracks, and I finally understand. All our tomorrows stem from this one day—the day we learned to defeat Zee.
For me, this is a day of sorrow, but for humanity, it’s a day of victory. Either way, this is a day no one will forget.
The End
Afterword
What We Left Behind and All Our Tomorrows are stories that capture what it means to be human in the midst of chaos and heartache.
In the 21st Century, we have a degree of control over our lives such as no generation has ever experienced before, and yet even with the marvels of science and modern medicine, our lives are frail and short lived. For me, zombie stories epitomize this dichotomy. Life is precious. Complacency breeds contempt, or so the saying goes, and the lives we live are so luxurious by the standards of human history over the past million years that it’s easy for us to lose sight of what’s really important—each other. Fictional zombie outbreaks make this more obvious.
The first fan art produced from these books comes from my daughter, Sarah.
I am an optimist. I don’t for a moment think a zombie apocalypse could ever arise in our world. We’ve defeated polio and smallpox, viruses more cunning and insidious than anything a science fiction writer could dream of, and yet there is no arrogance in this position but rather humility. It is humbling to benefit from the research undertaken by tens of thousands of scientists around the world, often working in obscurity and without adequate funding to pioneer the techniques and scientific knowledge that ensures our health and wellbeing into the future.
My thanks to my editors Ellen Campbell and Kat Fieler for their assistance, and to Janice Mann, T. Jazzy Davies, Buzz Dunning, and Mike Mountjoy who took the time to read beta versions of this novel.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this story as much as I have.
Please, spread the word. Tell a friend. Encourage them to read these novels.
And be sure to leave a review online with your thoughts.
Other books by Peter Cawdron
Thank you for supporting independent science fiction. You might enjoy the following novels also written by Peter Cawdron.
ALIEN SPACE TENTACLE PORN
A 1950s hospital. Temporary amnesia. A naked man running through Central Park yelling something about alien space tentacles. Tinfoil, duct tape, and bananas. These are the ingredients for a spectacular romp through a world you never thought possible as aliens reach out and make contact with Earth.
MY SWEET SATAN
The crew of the Copernicus is sent to investigate Bestla, one of the remote moons of Saturn. Bestla has always been an oddball, orbiting Saturn in the wrong direction and at a distance of fifteen-million miles, so far away that Saturn appears smaller than Earth’s moon in the night sky. Bestla hides a secret. When mapped by an unmanned probe, Bestla awoke and began transmitting a message, only it’s a message no one wants to hear: “I want to live and die for you, Satan.”
SILO SAGA: SHADOWS
Shadows is fan fiction set in Hugh Howey’s Wool universe as part of the Kindle Worlds Silo Saga.
Life within the silos follows a well-worn pattern passed down through the generations from master to apprentice, ’caster to shadow. “Don’t ask! Don’t think! Don’t question! Just stay in the shadows.” But not everyone is content to follow the past.
THE WORLD OF KURT VONNEGUT: CHILDREN’S CRUSADE
Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five: The Children’s Crusade explored the fictional life of Billy Pilgrim as he stumbled through the real world devastation of Dresden during World War II. Children’s Crusade picks up the story of Billy Pilgrim on the planet of Tralfamadore as Billy and his partner Montana Wildhack struggle to accept life in an alien zoo.
THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED TODAY
The Man Who Remembered Today is a novella
originally appearing in From the Indie Side anthology, highlighting independent science fiction writers from around the world. You can pick up this story as a stand-alone novella or get twelve distinctly unique stories by purchasing From the Indie Side.
Kareem wakes with a headache. A bloody bandage wrapped around his head tells him this isn’t just another day in the Big Apple. The problem is, he can’t remember what happened to him. He can’t recall anything from yesterday. The only memories he has are from events that are about to unfold today, and today is no ordinary day.
ANOMALY
Anomaly examines the prospect of an alien intelligence discovering life on Earth.
Mankind’s first contact with an alien intelligence is far more radical than anyone has ever dared imagine. The technological gulf between mankind and the alien species is measured in terms of millions of years. The only way to communicate is using science, but not everyone is so patient with the arrival of an alien spacecraft outside the gates of the United Nations in New York.
THE ROAD TO HELL
The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
How do you solve a murder when the victim comes back to life with no memory of recent events?
In the twenty-second century, America struggles to rebuild after the second civil war. Democracy has been suspended while the reconstruction effort lifts the country out of the ruins of conflict. America’s fate lies in the hands of a genetically engineered soldier with the ability to move through time.
The Road to Hell deals with a futuristic world and the advent of limited time travel. It explores social issues such as the nature of trust and the conflict between loyalty and honesty.
MONSTERS
Monsters is a dystopian novel exploring the importance of reading. Monsters is set against the backdrop of the collapse of civilization.
The fallout from a passing comet contains a biological pathogen, not a virus or a living organism, just a collection of amino acids. But these cause animals to revert to the age of the mega-fauna, when monsters roamed Earth.
Bruce Dobson is a reader. With the fall of civilization, reading has become outlawed. Superstitions prevail, and readers are persecuted like the witches and wizards of old. Bruce and his son James seek to overturn the prejudices of their day and restore the scientific knowledge central to their survival, but monsters lurk in the dark.
FEEDBACK
Twenty years ago, a UFO crashed into the Yellow Sea off the Korean Peninsula. The only survivor was a young English-speaking child, captured by the North Koreans. Two decades later, a physics student watches his girlfriend disappear before his eyes, abducted from the streets of New York by what appears to be the same UFO.
Feedback will carry you from the desolate, windswept coastline of North Korea to the bustling streets of New York and on into the depths of space as you journey to the outer edge of our solar system looking for answers.
GALACTIC EXPLORATION
Galactic Exploration is a compilation of four closely related science fiction stories following the exploration of the Milky Way by the spaceships Serengeti, Savannah, and The Rift Valley. These three generational starships are manned by clones and form part of the ongoing search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. With the Serengeti heading out above the plane of the Milky Way, the Savannah exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy, and The Rift Valley investigating possible alien signals within the galactic core, this story examines the Rare Earth Hypothesis from a number of different angles.
This volume contains the novellas Serengeti, Trixie and Me, Savannah, and War.
XENOPHOBIA
Xenophobia examines the impact of first contact on the Third World.
Dr. Elizabeth Bower works at a field hospital in Malawi as a civil war smolders around her. With an alien spacecraft in orbit around Earth, the US withdraws its troops to deal with the growing unrest in America. Dr. Bower refuses to abandon her hospital. A troop of US Rangers accompanies Dr. Bower as she attempts to get her staff and patients to safety. Isolated and alone, cut off from contact with the West, they watch as the world descends into chaos with alien contact.
LITTLE GREEN MEN
Little Green Men is a tribute to the works of Philip K. Dick, hailing back to classic science fiction stories of the 1950s.
The crew of the Dei Gratia set down on a frozen planet and are attacked by little green men. Chief Science Officer David Michaels struggles with the impossible situation unfolding around him as the crew members are murdered one by one. With the engines offline and power fading, he races against time to understand this mysterious threat and escape the planet alive.
REVOLUTION
How do you hide state secrets when teenage hacktivists have as much quantum computing power as the government? Alexander Hopkins is about to find out on what should have been an uneventful red-eye flight from Russia. Nothing is what it seems in this heart pounding short-story from international best selling author Peter Cawdron.
HELLO WORLD
Hello World is a short story set in the same fictional universe as Alien Space Tentacle Porn.
Professor Franco Corelli has noticed something unusual. The twitter account @QuestionsLots is harvesting hundreds of millions of tweets each day, but never posting anything. Outwardly, this account only follows one other twitter account—@RealScientists, but in reality it is trawling every post ever made by anyone on this planet. Could it be that @QuestionsLots is not from Earth?
In addition to these stand alone stories, Peter Cawdron has short stories appearing in:
• The Telepath Chronicles
• The Alien Chronicles
• The A.I Chronicles
• The Z Chronicles
• Tales of Tinfoil
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright 2015
Dedication
Synopsis
Chapter 01: Moonlight
Chapter 02: Trapped
Chapter 03: Forgotten
Chapter 04: Hunted
Chapter 05: Thunder
Chapter 06: Spaceman
Chapter 07: Mall
Chapter 08: Heaven & Hell
Chapter 09: Lab Rats
Chapter 10: Milkshake
Chapter 11: Warehouse
Chapter 12: Moonwalk
Chapter 13: Checkmate
Afterword
Other books by Peter Cawdron
All Our Tomorrows Page 23
