Chivalry is Dead
An ALL male zombie anthology
* * * * *
Edited by TW Brown
Cover by M. Lawrence
Design by Shawn Conn
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
May December Publications LLC
Chivalry is Dead
©2011 maydecemberpublications
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author or May December Publications.
* * * * *
Dedication
Men. Fathers. Husbands. Brothers.
Guys, we should look in the mirror every single day and vow to do better.
Foreward
I “met” T.W. Brown over on the Library of the Living Dead forum and am glad to consider him a friend. He’s a zombie person and zombie people are my kind of people.
It is an honor to have seen the idea of this book spring forth from a simple forum post to become the anthology it is today: a wonderful zombie stew with the usual ingredients of shamblers and runners seasoned with humor, sadness, terror and a dash of hope.
These authors have gone beyond the usual zombie mold and have given us new ideas to keep the undead fresh and alive. That’s no simple task—they’re rotting after all.
I never thought last year when I threw in a title suggestion for this anthology that Todd would select it and offer me a free copy of a May December book, let alone ask me to write this introduction. But, you’re reading these words so it all happened.
I hope you, the reader, enjoy these stories as much as I did. They say that chivalry is dead, but zombies are eternal. Well, unless you get a good headshot.
Carey Burns is a horror writer from the cornfields of Illinois. Her short stories appear in several Library of the Living Dead Press anthologies.
A few notes from the editor:
As always, I have opted to retain the spelling differences in the stories sent in by authors outside the United States. Additionally, this anthology is the only one where I have included a story of my own. Personally, I have a problem with including my own work in an anthology published by May December Publications. However, this one really fit the theme, and I am very proud of the tale.
Daddy’s Little Girl first appeared in the Living Dead Press anthology, Book of the Dead, Volume Two. It was the first story I ever had accepted which makes it all the more special because I wrote it for my daughter, Ronni.
The men did awesome. Enjoy.
Guess who’s home.
TW Brown
June 2011
Daddy’s Little Girl © 2009 T W Brown, first published in Books of the Dead Volume 2, Living Dead Press
Contents
TW Brown is the author of the Zomblog and Dead series. He is deeply immersed in the multiple sequels of each franchise while trying to balance the duties of husband, father, and friend as well as staying busy with the reading and editing of the num-erous submissions for a variety of upcoming anthologies and full-length titles for May December Publications. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and has had short stories published by a few other presses. You can contact him at: [email protected] or visit his website at www.maydecemberpublications.com. You can follow him on twitter @maydecpub and on facebook under Todd Brown and also under May December Publications.
Do you remember how you spent your eighteenth birthday?
Perhaps you were too caught up in the excitement of planning for your upcoming graduation to remember what a milestone birthday event it really was. Or maybe you we the type of kid who couldn’t wait to run down to Town Hall and register to vote once your big birthday arrived.
Or maybe you spent your big day blowing off the heads of the undead and hacking away at brain-starved zombies.
If that’s the case, you and Ronni have a lot in common.
Winter birthdays are the worst. Your friends always cancel out at the last minute due to illness, the zombies’ brains make the snow all dirty when you blow their heads off, and how many sledding parties can you have, really?
Ronni and Todd try to celebrate Ronni’s birthday during the last wintery days of the zombie plague. Although her father tries his best, Ronni’s big day winds up absolutely...chilling.
Daddy’s Little Girl
By: TW Brown
“I failed you, it’s my fault,” the sleeping man moaned.
Todd woke up with a start, the same nightmare he’d been having for over two years still burning in the backs of his eyes. There was nothing he could’ve done. Climbing out of the sleeping bag, he slid his two-foot long blade into its leather sheath, slung one of his holstered nine millimeters over a shoulder and unzipped the tent flap. He cast a glance over his shoulder as he ducked out; the tiny figure was still curled up under layers of blankets, comforters, and at least one sleeping bag.
The morning air was well below freezing, verifiable by the tiny ice crystals drifting in the air. A low canopy of dark clouds promised more snow. If he had to guess, Todd would peg the month to be December. Tossing the rope ladder over the side of the building, and taking one more look around to ensure all was clear, he climbed down and trudged through shin-deep snow to a nearby pine tree. Unzipping his pants, his eyes continued to scan. No indication of anything having come through recently. The snow was pristine and unmarred by the plowed tracks of any zombies trudging along. Whoever had thought that cold weather would stop these things had been full of it. Maybe in someplace with sustained double-digit negatives that might be the case, but he had no desire to live in that sort of climate.
The snap of a branch brought him back to the here and now. There! Moving through what had once been a front yard of a brown two-story was one of them.
Just a single?
Todd waited a moment before drawing his blade. No sense in making a racket. This one had been a boy, no older than twelve. One arm was gone just above the elbow. There were several smallish bites on the other arm. Also, since all it had on were a pair of underpants that seemed to be fused to the flesh, he saw bites on both legs. The upper right leg had been chewed on fairly extensively.
It trudged through the snow, still several yards away, giving Todd plenty of time to observe as well as be ready to put it down one last time. Its mouth was already working, teeth clicking as it anticipated biting into warm, living, flesh. Like many of the zombies he’d seen lately, this one looked drawn and emaciated.
Many resembled the bodies he could recall seeing in graying photos taken at the Nazi concentration camps. Still, they showed no sign of just falling over. If anything, they’d become more dangerous.
Pokey.
That’s what Ronni said. It’s how she described their hands that had basically become talons. He’s had to tackle one a few weeks ago. Even through his thick leather jacket he’d felt ribs poking him. That night while cleaning up, he’d been momentarily frightened. In the dim light of the lantern, the bruises had looked bad. He’d gone over them carefully, ensuring the skin hadn’t been broken.
&
nbsp; Finally, the pitiful thing was a few steps away. Todd took aim and brought the machete-like weapon down. The blade bit deep, grinding to a halt just above the left eye-socket.
“Savini-style,” he whispered as the thing dropped, almost pulling the hilt of the machete from his grip.
Taking one last look around, Todd was confident that there were no further threats nearby. The blade needed only a bit of wiping to clean it. He kicked snow over the corpse to cover it and then climbed back up the rope-ladder.
Ronni was still asleep. Good. He could get breakfast ready. If it was December, it would be close to Ronni’s birthday. She’d be eighteen on the fifteenth. Wow. He would be able to have unsupervised, legal contact with her now. Well…if the rules still applied.
Todd had done a ten-spot in prison. An ugly divorce from wife number two had grown more so when allegations of sexual abuse arose. He’d denied the charges and, like most every other person he’d met in prison, insisted on his innocence. The jury had deliberated for less than twenty minutes. Where was the twelfth angry man?, he’d thought more than once.
Ronni’s mom had been in the courtroom that day. He and Donna had never been married. But they’d lived together for almost three years. She’d never believed the stories…even visited him a few times while he was doing time and brought pictures of Ronni.
He had been on his first authorized and supervised visit with Ronni after a year of being the model parolee. It was her fourteenth birthday and he’d been approved to have lunch at a restaurant with Donna and his daughter. That was the day it happened.
He’d tried. Every time he played those events over again in his mind, or relived it through the recurring nightmares, Todd was certain that he’d done everything possible to save Donna that day.
“What’s for breakfast?” a sleepy voice startled Todd, causing him to splash a bit of hot water on one leg from the cup he’d just poured.
“Guess,” he tried to sound cheerful.
“Hmmm…eggs Benedict…a slice of honey-cured ham and fresh squeezed orange juice.”
“Close,” Todd turned to the side enough so Ronni could see the Coleman stove, “how about venison and fried bread with some dried apple and cherry mix stirred in?”
“Isn’t that the last of the apple?” Ronni raised an eyebrow.
“Yep.”
“What’s the occasion?”
Todd considered his answer carefully. They didn’t mention Ronni’s birthday. That day had a dark cloud over it. She’d seen her mother try and claw her way through the car window…throat still a gaping and jagged hole where it had been torn out minutes before. She’d seen her mother turn and lunge at the policeman, biting off a piece of his face. Tearing into his body…
“I figured it would motivate us to do some real foraging,” Todd lied.
Ronni wasn’t stupid. She watched her dad fuss over breakfast while watching the snowflakes drift lazily in the air. She hated snow. She hated cold. And she hated how her dad tried to find a way to celebrate her birthday every year without saying so.
She accepted her cup of warm water. Today she would imagine it was hot chocolate with marshmallows. Closing her eyes, she sipped form the steaming mug just noisily enough to annoy her dad.
Walking to the edge of the building they’d spent the night on, she took a look around at the remains of what had once been a little one-stoplight town. They were on top of some sort of convenience store—long since looted of anything useable—situated at the very edge of things. There were a few residences that they would no doubt search and most likely come away empty. There was a diner; she couldn’t help but smile at the remnants of the sign. All that was left was “D”, “I”, and an “E”. It looked intentional.
The ground was unmarred except for what had to be her dad’s footprints and…
“A single?” Ronni looked over her shoulder. Her dad stopped in mid-flip of a chunk of fruit-laced fried bread.
“Yeah,” he sighed. She watched him. He’d gone still and very tense. There had been a lot of tension between them lately.
“Maybe we’ll have an easy time foraging,” Ronni turned back gazing over the snow covered landscape.
Todd stared at his daughter’s back. That’s it? She wasn’t gonna bitch him out for trying to hide the body or for treating her like a baby…which was practically a daily complaint from her lately.
A few moments later they were eating. Neither of them spoke during breakfast, each for their own reasons. Todd didn’t want to risk a potential argument. Ronni was daydreaming about hot chocolate with marshmallows.
***
The door took some work to open. It had swollen in its frame over the years and took a couple of hits with the shoulder for Todd to break it free. Ronni continued to peer through the portal of grime free glass she had rubbed clean.
“Nothing moving inside,” she whispered.
The door gave with a slight ripping sound and a pop. Todd brought the lantern up and shone it about the entry. A dull glow down the hall to the right indicated an open door and likely a broken window.
Years of spider webs and a slurry of crud covered most intact windows to the point of blocking out almost all ambient light. The advantage being if you found an intact residence—either empty or able to be emptied—you could make camp out of the elements and not worry that your lantern would be seen at a distance at night. The disadvantage being that, obviously, zombies could lurk in the gloom and shadow.
This house was a simple single-story affair with an attached two-car garage. There was a mustiness in the air, but no sign of—
“I don’t smell any zeds.” Ronni ducked under Todd’s arm and peeked around.
“We still need to do a sweep before looking for any goodies,” Todd reminded.
Together they moved from room to room. Once the house proper was confirmed empty, they pulled the front door shut and powered up two more lanterns. The last place to check was the garage. They’d peered in the window to discover a pair of motorcycles and a four-wheel drive pickup. Technically they didn’t have to sweep the garage if they didn’t plan on staying but if one of those things was in there, it would start a racket. That would draw anything in the area straight to them.
That was a lesson learned during the first full year of this whole disaster. That was when they’d left a group behind that they’d met at a FEMA shelter. Of course the government had crumbled and, after two weeks of no word or any supply trucks, people started abandoning the shelters. He and Ronni had been in a group of forty-seven survivors who decided to venture out. That journey out of Portland had cost them half their numbers. Those first months, being the heart of winter had cost them another handful. Suicide claimed three more. By spring there were eleven of them. Ronni was the only female, and Todd began to notice the looks. Late one night he woke Ronni and they slipped away.
That summer hadn’t been terrible. Like a really long camping trip. They’d gone out into the beautiful wilderness of the Mount Hood National Forest. They’d camped in the foothills and lived mostly off the land, occasionally sneaking into an abandoned house or farm and gathering food and supplies.
As that summer began to fade to fall, they’d sought shelter. A house that would’ve cost more than Todd made in a lifetime was discovered on a gentle bluff looking over a shallow creek. The place had been empty…almost.
The one in the garage, well…half of one if you wanted to get technical since it was missing everything from the waist down…began clawing, scratching and pounding on the door in the middle of the night their second night there. It hadn’t been for longer than ten or fifteen minutes by the time Todd had grabbed a fireplace poker and gone in to dispatch the thing. By morning there were a couple dozen of those things outside.
Together, Todd and Ronni ventured into the garage. The smell was there…faint…but there nonetheless. Blade in hand, Todd knelt down and shone the light under the truck. The tires had long since gone flat, so there wasn’t much clearance. Perhap
s it was trapped underneath. Bringing his cheek to the cold concrete floor, he looked…nothing.
Venturing into the garage, the two lanterns lit up the interior well enough to reveal anything that could’ve been in a corner or under the long workbench along one wall. The rafters were clear.
“Dad,” Ronni whispered. She was peering into the cab of the truck.
Todd joined her, raising his lantern to fully light up the interior. There, crouched on the floor of the passenger’s side was what had been a little girl no more than five. She had on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. One sleeve was torn, a bite clearly visible just above the elbow. It simply stared back through milky, black-bloodshot eyes, its mouth opening slightly in a low raspy moan.
Todd looked a little closer at the sweatshirt. Having been out of the elements and, from the looks of the interior with the dark stains confined to the carpet on the one side, this thing’s clothing was well preserved and intact. On the pink sweatshirt’s front was something in blue, cursive script: “Daddy’s Little Girl”.
“Let’s find someplace else,” Ronni pulled on her dad’s sleeve.
“We’d have to basically find another small, mostly abandoned town,” Todd swallowed the lump growing in his throat. “Once this thing starts pounding…”
“So what,” Ronni snapped and walked back to the doorway that separated the kitchen from the garage. “We can leg it out one or two more days.”
“Sweetie,” Todd turned to face his daughter who now stood glaring down at him with arms folded across her chest, “there is a storm rolling in. You can see it in the clouds same as I can. Also, what have I said about overlooking something adequate on the hopes that something better is around the corner?”
Chivalry Is Dead Page 1
