Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages

by Неизвестный

  Christopher M. Cevasco’s short fiction has appeared in Black Static, The Leading Edge, and A Field Guide to Surreal Botany, among many other magazines and anthologies. He was also the editor/publisher of the award-winning Paradox: The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction from 2003 through 2009. Chris writes in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he lives with his wife and their two young children. Visit him at: christophermcevasco.com.

  S. J. Chambers is the co-author of The Steampunk Bible, and has had fiction published in New Myths, Mungbeing, Yankee Pot Roast, Thackery T. Lambshead’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and in the forthcoming Starry Wisdom Library.

  Sean Eads is a writer and librarian living in Denver. His short fiction has appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture, the Oregon Literary Review, and Shock Totem, among others. He has two novels out, the thriller Trigger Point and the darkly humorous The Survivors.

  Scott Edelman has published more than seventy-five short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, and Science Fiction Review; as well as the anthologies The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Crossroads, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, and Forbidden Planets. A collection of his zombie fiction, What Will Come After, is available. He has been a Bram Stoker Award finalist five times.

  Richard E. Gropp lives on a mountain outside of Seattle with his partner of fifteen years. It is a small mountain. He studied literature and psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has worked as a bookstore clerk, a forklift driver, and an accountant. His debut novel Bad Glass, made Library Journal’s year-end list of Best Books 2012 in Science Fiction/Fantasy.

  Samantha Henderson is writer and poet whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and many other publications both in print and online. She resides in Covina, California by way of England, Johannesburg, Illinois, and Oregon.

  Bob Hole is a science educator in Northern California. He has been fantasizing about being a writer all his life. This is his first sale.

  Dayna Ingram writes things for you to read. Not a lot of things, but she’s still young. Check out thedingram.com for more info about her other zombie-centric thing, Eat Your Heart Out.

  Victoria Janssen writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her fiction includes numerous erotic short stories and three erotic novels. She is a voracious reader, especially of fantasy, mystery, young adult speculative fiction, and historical romance.

  Alex Jeffers has published six books in several genres, most recently the collection You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home and novel Deprivation; or, Benedetto furioso: an oneiromancy. His short fiction has appeared sporadically since 1975 in spec-fic anthologies and magazines, lit-fic journals and anthologies, and on line. He reveals no secrets at sentenceandparagraph.com.

  Stephen Graham Jones has eleven novels and three collections on the shelf. He’s been a Stoker Award finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and has been an NEA Fellow. He has some hundred and fifty stories published. He teaches in the MFA programs at CU Boulder and UCR-Palm Desert.

  E. L. Kemper lives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Between cloudbursts Erinn and her partner walk the dog from coffee shop to coffee shop until it gets too bleak out, then she packs the dog in a bag and joins the birds heading south (or declares it “happy hour” when travel funds are tight). The rest of the time she renovates and writes horror stories that unsettle, provoke, and resonate. She is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association and has a column in their monthly newsletter. “The Cost of Moving the Dead” is her first story to see print. For more about Erinn visit her blog at erinnkemper.com.

  Rajan Khanna, writer, musician, and sometime bon vivant, is a member of the New York-based writing group, Altered Fluid. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Shimmer Magazine and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (among others) and has received Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and the Year’s Best Science Fiction. He sometimes writes articles for Tor.com and occasionally narrates podcasts for sites like Podcastle, Lightspeed, and Pseudopod. Khanna also writes about wine, beer, and spirits at FermentedAdventures.com. He currently resides in New York.

  Ed Kurtz is an author, exploitation cinema buff and tarantula wrangler. He lives in Texas. His short fiction has appeared in Needle: A Magazine of Noir and Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane.

  Carrie Laben was asked to write this story because the editor knew she has a deep fondness for birds. Laben lives in Brooklyn, where she writes software user manuals and other still more dire things for a living, but this is a big improvement over milking cows and selling used books to agitated mental patients. Her fiction has been published in Apex Online and Clarkesworld as well as the anthologies Phantom and Haunted Legends.

  L Lark’s speculative fiction and poetry have appeared in various literary magazines, including P’an Ku and Coastlines, as well as in the anthologies Lycogeny and Boys of Summer. She was the winner of the 2007 Broward College Creative Writing Award, as well as the 2010 Aisling Award for Fiction, given by Florida Atlantic University. Her flash fiction piece “Five Houses on the Shore” was recently published in issue nine of Innsmouth Magazine.

  Richard Larson was born and raised in St. Louis. His stories have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Subterranean, and ChiZine, as well as the anthologies Beyond Binary and Wilde Stories 2011. He also writes criticism for Slant Magazine and Strange Horizons, and he’s currently pursuing an MFA at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn.

  Livia Llewellyn is a writer of horror, dark fantasy, and erotica. A graduate of Clarion 2006, her fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Sybil’s Garage, PseudoPod, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Her first collection of short fiction—Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors—was published in 2011 by Lethe Press, and nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection. You can find her online at http://liviallewellyn.com/.

  Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and freelancer for Marvel Comics. His novels include Assassin’s Code, Flesh & Bone, Ghost Road Blues, Dust & Decay, Patient Zero, and many others. Nonfiction books include Ultimate Jujutsu, The Cryptopedia, Zombie CSU, and others. Jonathan’s award-winning teen novel, Rot & Ruin, is now in development for film. He was a featured expert on the History Channel special Zombies: A Living History. Since 1978 he’s sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, and poetry. He teaches the Experimental Writing for Teens class, is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse, and co-founder of The Liars Club. Jonathan lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Sara, and their dog, Rosie. Jonathanmaberry.com.

  Alex Dally MacFarlane lives in London, where she is pursuing an academic life. When not researching, she writes stories, found in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and The Other Half of the Sky. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (Prime Books). Visit her online at alexdallymacfarlane.com.

  Joe McKinney is the author of several horror, crime, and science fiction novels, including the four part Dead World series; the science fiction disaster tale Quarantined; and the crime novel Dodging Bullets. McKinney has also worked as an editor, along with Michelle McCrary, on the zombie-themed anthology Dead Set, and with Mark Onspaugh on the abandoned building-themed anthology The Forsaken. His short stories and novellas have been published in more than thirty publications and anthologies. In his day job, McKinney is a sergeant with the San Antonio Police Department. Before promotion to sergeant, Joe worked as a homicide detective and as a disaster-mitigation specialist.

  Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, Silvia Moreno-Garcia lives in beautiful British Columbia with her family and two cats. She writes speculative fiction (from magic realism to horror). Her short stories have a
ppeared in places such as Fantasy Magazine, The Book of Cthulhu, Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, and Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction. Her first collection, Shedding Her Own Skin, is out in 2013. Moreno-Garcia is the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press, a Canadian micro-publishing venture specializing in horror and dark speculative fiction.

  Adam Morrow is an expat of Boston, living with his husband in Andalucía. He is an enthusiast of Near Eastern studies. “The Wedding of Osiris” is his first publication.

  Rita Oakes writes horror, dark fantasy, and historical fiction. A graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, she enjoys history, travel, and Belgian beer—sometimes at the same time. Her work has appeared in Paradox, Aeon Speculative Fiction, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, as well as in the anthologies The Many Faces of Van Helsing and Time Well Bent. She currently lives in New Jersey. Visit her website at ritaoakes.com.

  Elaine Pascale has been writing for most of her life. She took a break from fiction in order to give birth to two children and a doctoral dissertation. She lives on Cape Cod, MA, with her husband, son, and daughter. She teaches at a private Boston university. Her writing has been published in several magazines and anthologies. She is the author of If Nothing Else, Eve, We’ve Enjoyed the Fruit. She enjoys a robust full moon, chocolate, and collecting cats.

  Aimee Payne first became obsessed with Amelia Earhart after watching an episode of the ’70s television show In Search Of . . . with her father. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida, with fellow writer Will Ludwigsen and an assortment of cats and dogs. All are trained to recognize the undead.

  Steven Popkes is a sort of Science Fiction Writer/Software Engineer. Born in Southern California and, nearly being a native Angeleno, he spent most of his life moving. California to Alabama to Seattle to Missouri. He has an M.S. in Neurophysiology, which explains some of the wonderful scientific details in “The Crocodiles.” Recent short story sales include to Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, and Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction.

  Mercurio D. Rivera (mercuriorivera.com) was nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for his short fiction and his stories have appeared in markets such as Black Static, Interzone, Asimov’s, Nature, Year’s Best SF 17, edited by Hartwell & Cramer (HarperCollins 2012), and Solaris Rising 2, edited by Ian Whates (forthcoming). His works have been translated and published in China, Poland, and the Czech Republic. His collection Across the Event Horizon is being published in 2013 by NewCon Press.

  Nate Southard’s books include Scavengers, This Little Light of Mine, Red Sky, Just Like Hell, Broken Skin, and He Stepped Through. His short fiction has appeared in such venues as Cemetery Dance, Black Static, Thuglit, and the anthology Supernatural Noir. A graduate of The University of Texas with a degree in Radio, Television, and Film, Nate lives in Austin, Texas with his cat. You can learn more at natesouthard.com.

  Molly Tanzer lives in Boulder, Colorado along the front range of the Mountains of Madness, or maybe just the Flatirons. She is a professional writer and editor, among other things. Her debut, A Pretty Mouth, was published by Lazy Fascist Press in September 2012, and her short fiction has appeared in The Book of Cthulhu (Vols. I and II), Fungi, and the forthcoming Geek Love: An Anthology of Full Frontal Nerdery. She blogs—infrequently—about writing, hiking, cocktail mixing, vegan cooking, movies, and other stuff at mollytanzer.com, and tweets as @molly_the_tanz.

  Lee Thomas is the Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Dust of Wonderland, In the Closet, Under the Bed, The German, Torn, Ash Street, and the newly released Like Light for Flies. Lee lives in Austin, Texas, where he is working on a new book. You can find him online at leethomasauthor.com.

  Raoul Wainscoting is an occasional writer of speculative fiction and full-time nerd. In addition to the story reprinted in this anthology he has a story in Graveside Tales’ The Beast Within werewolf-themed anthology.

  Publication History

  “Good Deaths” copyright © 2013 by Paul M. Berger. Original to this volume.

  “A Frenzy of Ravens” copyright © 2013 by Christopher M. Cevasco. Original to this volume.

  “The Good Shepherdess” copyright © 2011 by S. J. Chambers. First published on the author’s blog. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  “The Revenge of Oscar Wilde” copyright © 2013 by Sean Eads. Originally appeared in Stupefying Stories. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  “Tell Me Like You Done Before” copyright © 2009 by Scott Edelman. Originally appeared in The Dead That Walk: Flesh-Eating Stories. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  “Promised Land (Wineville, 1928)” copyright © 2013 by Richard E. Gropp. Original to this volume.

  “Hung from a Hairy Tree” copyright © 2013 by Samantha Henderson. Original to this volume.

  “The End of the Carroll A. Deering” copyright © 2013 by Bob Hole. Original to this volume.

  “Seneca Falls: First Recorded Outbreak of Strain Z” copyright © 2013 by Dayna Ingram. Original to this volume.

  “Blood Marker” copyright © 2013 by Victoria Janssen. Original to this volume.

  “The Hyena’s Blessing” Copyright © 2013 by Alex Jeffers. Original to this volume.

  “Lonegan’s Luck” copyright © 2009 by Stephen Graham Jones. Originally published in New Genre. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  “The Cost of Moving the Dead” copyright © 2013 E.L. Kemper. Original to this volume.

  “Hauntings and Hungers on the Banks of the Vipasa” copyright © 2013 by Rajan Khanna. Original to this volume.

  “Deathless” copyright © 2013 by Ed Kurtz. Original to this volume.

  “The Fledglings of Time” copyright © 2013 by Carrie Laben. Original to this volume.

  “The Wailing Hills” copyright © 2013 by L Lark. Original to this volume.

  “Dead in the Water” copyright © 2013 by Richard Larson. Original to this volume.

  “Cinereous” copyright © 2013 by Livia Llewellyn. Original to this volume.

  “Pegleg and Paddy Save the World” copyright © 2007 by Jonathan Maberry. First published in History is Dead (ed. Kim Paffenroth, Permuted Press). Reprinted with permission of the author.

  “Selected Sources for the Babylonian Plague of the Dead (572-571 BCE)” copyright © 2013 by Alex Dally MacFarlane. Original to this volume.

  “Starvation Army” copyright © 2007 by Joe McKinney. First published in History is Dead (ed. Kim Paffenroth, Permuted Press). Reprinted with permission of the author.

  “The Gringo” copyright © 2013 by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Original to this volume.

  “The Wedding of Osiris” copyright © 2013 by Adam Morrow. Original to this volume.

  “As the Crow Flies” copyright © 2013 by Rita Oakes. Original to this volume.

  “Dead Reckoning” copyright © 2013 by Elaine Pascale. Original to this volume.

  “The Fated Sky” copyright © 2013 by Aimee Payne. Original to this volume.

  “The Crocodiles” copyright © 2010 by Steven Popkes. Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2010. Reprinted with permission by the author.

  “The Rickshaw Pusher” copyright © 2013 by Mercurio D. Rivera. Original to this volume.

  “Immortals” copyright © 2013 by Nate Southard. Original to this volume.

  “Tantivy” copyright © 2013 by Molly Tanzer. Original to this volume.

  “Grit in a Diseased Eye” copyright © 2013 by Lee Thomas. Original to this volume.

  “Theatre is Dead” copyright © 2007 by Raoul Wainscoting. First published in History is Dead (ed. Kim Paffenroth, Permuted Press). Reprinted with permission of the author.

  The Editor

  Steve Berman’s curriculum vitae includes editing over a dozen anthologies (including Bad Seeds: Evil Progeny for Prime Books), nearly one hundred articles, essays, and short stories sold, and a young adult novel, Vin
tage: A Ghost Story, a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. He does have a voodoo doll collection. He resides in New Jersey, the only state in the Union with an official devil.

  Footnotes

  1 Strain Z often presents with similar symptoms to malaria, as do Strains V and X. See Appendix IV.

  2 Before this document surfaced, it was commonly believed that initial discoverers of Strain Z assumed its means of contagion were tactile. Much time was wasted on erroneous preventative measures, such as the burning cleanse illustrated here. For more on this topic, read Dr. Blackthorne’s On Methods of Contagion During the First Zombie Insurgence.

  3 The pre-attack moan described here has only been recorded in cases of Strain Z infection. For more on strain differentiation, see Appendix IX.

  4 This assessment is not entirely correct. Mrs. Mott’s discussion of the disease on the following pages is also flawed. For a more comprehensive understanding, see Dr. Heinrich’s The Anatomy of Strain Z.

  5 This is the first recorded supposition that Strain Z’s origins may be supernatural. For a full list of origin theories, see Appendix II.

  6 This is the only known document which refers to the infected as “sombies.” For a deeper etymological exploration, see Dr. Vidal’s Etymology of the Undead.

  7 Unfortunately, neither the Motts nor the Coffins kept written records of their “sombie queller” heritage.

  8 A live-action dramatization of this struggle has been created as an invaluable resource for learning basic combat techniques when defending oneself against a Strain Z zombie (Caution: certain techniques displayed here will not work against Strain V’s or W’s). A link to the download code can be found in Appendix X.