Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
6 Signs You're About to be Attacked by Zombies
http://www.cracked.com/article_16717_6-signs-youre-about-be-attacked-by-zombies.html
Saturday, January 10, 2009
One Less Human - Chapter 10 of Zombies of the Red Descent
One Less Human
Chapter 10 of the novella, “Zombies of the Red Descent,” by Jason Earls
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Eighty-five miles per hour. Almost daybreak. The Mercury’s motor was wound tight. No streetlights were shining on the highway. Maxine was dead asleep and snoring heavily. The gas gauge was registering dangerously low. Alex’s eyes blinked heavily, he had been fighting to stay awake for hours. He noticed a farm house with lights on ahead. He jolted, his adrenaline surging from the thought of finding other people like him.
“Look,” he said. “Maxine, wake up. There’s a house with lights on up ahead. Maybe there are some people inside. Real people.”
She groaned and leaned up. “W-where?”
He pointed to a large two-story farm house surrounded by a wheatfield and a combine parked not far away. Yellow lights glowed from its curtainless windows. There were no zombies in sight.
“P-Pull in,” she said. “G-go ahead.”
Alex stared at her, attempting to gauge her health and state of mind. He knew the red chemicals could push her into full zombie mode without her being able to prevent it. He suddenly became aware of this fact and didn’t know why it had not registered earlier. He watched as she rubbed her eyes with her shaking grayish-blue hands.
Stopping the Mercury a block from the farm house, he stared at the glowing windows for a moment. No movement inside. Only old furniture visible. An ancient sofa. The edge of the dining room table. A television. A few old pictures on the yellowing walls.
“Stay here,” he said.
He clicked the car door shut and crept lightly and vigilantly through the blackness to the largest window on the west side. He stuck his nose to the bottom of the glass and peered in.
A man was sitting at a large dining room table, cradling his head. His face was showing red through his fingers, but it wasn’t the red of the Red Descent – his skin seemed colored red from intense anger. Alex’s eyes went to the .357 Magnum laying in front of the man’s elbows, then to the man himself: He was slightly overweight, wore a blue flannel shirt, had short graying hair and multiple cuts on his knuckles.
Should I go in? Alex thought. He doesn’t look infected. But what about the gun? Plus he looks upset. He looked down at the grass, then back to Maxine in the Mercury. He rubbed his beard. Fuck it, I’m going in.
He snuck around to the back door. It was standing wide open. He knocked on the door frame and spoke in a loud clear voice: “Hello. Anybody home? My name is Alex O’Haney. I’m a human and I’m not infected. Is anyone home?”
No response.
“Can I come in? Hello in there.”
“Go away!” A deep baritone voice called out, loud and full of rage.
“But we need help. Food and fuel.” Alex took three steps inside. “We can work out a way to pay you for it.” He walked through the kitchen to the dining room, looked down and gasped.
The body of a woman was lying on the floor next to the dining room table. She had blonde hair and wore a green dress. A long mass of stringy red guts were extending from the middle portion of her back, and a U-shaped pool of partially dried blood surrounded her legs.
Her back injury, the meat hanging from it, looked completely unreal.
Alex looked away and tried to ignore the corpse and focus on the man sitting at the table.
“Hello,” said Alex. He tried to decide whether he should ask about the body on the floor. “My name is Alex O’Haney. Who are you?”
The man didn’t respond or look up. He lowered one hand from his face, curled his fingers around the .357. Alex noticed a book on the table near the center. A large book. He stepped closer and read the title: Malleus Maleficarum and underneath: “The Hammer of Witches” (Hexenhammer). What the hell kind of book is that? Alex thought. A book on witchcraft? He didn’t want to ask the man about it so he switched subjects.
“I have a person out in my car,” Alex said. “She’s partially infected by the red powder. We’re searching for a cure.”
A smirk curled up on the man’s lips.
“Have you heard about any scientists working to fix this? Do you know of any laboratories around?”
The man lifted the Magnum, thumbed his nose like a boxer, then narrowed his eyes. He obviously wasn’t in the mood to talk.
I should acknowledge the woman on the floor, thought Alex. Maybe that will motivate him to speak. “Is that your wife laying there?”
The man’s head jolted up, rage in his eyes. “It used to be my wife!”he shouted, glaring hard into Alex’s face. “Those fucking freaks killed her! Those goddamn zombies! They mauled her to death!” He slammed his fist down hard on the table.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Alex said. For the first time he noticed the torso of a zombie on the floor, its body protruding from a doorway several feet ahead with half of its skull missing. “Are you infected, sir?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Do you know of any other people who are not infected?”
“I heard there is a lab over in Hatchberry,” said the man, rising from his chair. “Supposedly some scientists are over there working on this problem. Hatchberry is about 150 miles east of here. Norton Research Labs, I think it’s called.” He stared down at his wife’s corpse on the floor. His eyes widened.
“Thanks very much. That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”
The man didn’t say anything.
“Do you mind if we stay here tonight?”
He could see that the man was not listening. He stood up from the table and moved over to his wife’s corpse. Standing over her body, he examined the mass of stringy red organs extending from her mauled back and he looked at the large pool of blood surrounding her. Alex watched the man’s face twist into a state of complete rage.
“They mauled the guts right out of her back!” he screamed. “They killed her, my first and only wife! Those goddamn red chemically damaged sons-of-bitches!” His voice was loud and unhinged. He stomped and waved the 357.
Alex tried to console him. “Calm down, sir. Just take it easy. We’ll try to help you.”
“Fuck that! How could you! How could you possibly help me now!”
The man went over to the table again and sat down.
Alex waited a full minute before he spoke. “I’m going out to get Maxine. She’s the woman in my car. Do you mind if we sleep on your floor, just for tonight?”
The man bolted up from the table and ran over to the wall. He started slamming his head into the panelling repeatedly and a picture of Jesus Christ crashed to the floor.
“Take it easy!” yelled Alex. “Sit down for awhile, sir. Just try to relax.”
The man stopped beating his head, turned around and stared at Alex, gasping for air.
Alex looked at the man and saw some of the rage flow out of his face. Then he turned and went through the kitchen. Just as Alex stepped off the back porch, a loud pistol shot blasted throughout the countryside.
He stopped and quickly ran back into the house.
The man’s head was face down on the table with the back of it completely blown off, a barrage of splattered blood and brains now staining the wall next to an old wedding picture of the man and his wife.
-end-
(Thanks for reading. This is chapter 10 of the novella, “Zombies of the Red Descent.” You can purchase the full version here: http://tinyurl.com/a7p7vw If you now of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Regards.)
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.
Chapter 10 of the novella, “Zombies of the Red Descent,” by Jason Earls
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Eighty-five miles per hour. Almost daybreak. The Mercury’s motor was wound tight. No streetlights were shining on the highway. Maxine was dead asleep and snoring heavily. The gas gauge was registering dangerously low. Alex’s eyes blinked heavily, he had been fighting to stay awake for hours. He noticed a farm house with lights on ahead. He jolted, his adrenaline surging from the thought of finding other people like him.
“Look,” he said. “Maxine, wake up. There’s a house with lights on up ahead. Maybe there are some people inside. Real people.”
She groaned and leaned up. “W-where?”
He pointed to a large two-story farm house surrounded by a wheatfield and a combine parked not far away. Yellow lights glowed from its curtainless windows. There were no zombies in sight.
“P-Pull in,” she said. “G-go ahead.”
Alex stared at her, attempting to gauge her health and state of mind. He knew the red chemicals could push her into full zombie mode without her being able to prevent it. He suddenly became aware of this fact and didn’t know why it had not registered earlier. He watched as she rubbed her eyes with her shaking grayish-blue hands.
Stopping the Mercury a block from the farm house, he stared at the glowing windows for a moment. No movement inside. Only old furniture visible. An ancient sofa. The edge of the dining room table. A television. A few old pictures on the yellowing walls.
“Stay here,” he said.
He clicked the car door shut and crept lightly and vigilantly through the blackness to the largest window on the west side. He stuck his nose to the bottom of the glass and peered in.
A man was sitting at a large dining room table, cradling his head. His face was showing red through his fingers, but it wasn’t the red of the Red Descent – his skin seemed colored red from intense anger. Alex’s eyes went to the .357 Magnum laying in front of the man’s elbows, then to the man himself: He was slightly overweight, wore a blue flannel shirt, had short graying hair and multiple cuts on his knuckles.
Should I go in? Alex thought. He doesn’t look infected. But what about the gun? Plus he looks upset. He looked down at the grass, then back to Maxine in the Mercury. He rubbed his beard. Fuck it, I’m going in.
He snuck around to the back door. It was standing wide open. He knocked on the door frame and spoke in a loud clear voice: “Hello. Anybody home? My name is Alex O’Haney. I’m a human and I’m not infected. Is anyone home?”
No response.
“Can I come in? Hello in there.”
“Go away!” A deep baritone voice called out, loud and full of rage.
“But we need help. Food and fuel.” Alex took three steps inside. “We can work out a way to pay you for it.” He walked through the kitchen to the dining room, looked down and gasped.
The body of a woman was lying on the floor next to the dining room table. She had blonde hair and wore a green dress. A long mass of stringy red guts were extending from the middle portion of her back, and a U-shaped pool of partially dried blood surrounded her legs.
Her back injury, the meat hanging from it, looked completely unreal.
Alex looked away and tried to ignore the corpse and focus on the man sitting at the table.
“Hello,” said Alex. He tried to decide whether he should ask about the body on the floor. “My name is Alex O’Haney. Who are you?”
The man didn’t respond or look up. He lowered one hand from his face, curled his fingers around the .357. Alex noticed a book on the table near the center. A large book. He stepped closer and read the title: Malleus Maleficarum and underneath: “The Hammer of Witches” (Hexenhammer). What the hell kind of book is that? Alex thought. A book on witchcraft? He didn’t want to ask the man about it so he switched subjects.
“I have a person out in my car,” Alex said. “She’s partially infected by the red powder. We’re searching for a cure.”
A smirk curled up on the man’s lips.
“Have you heard about any scientists working to fix this? Do you know of any laboratories around?”
The man lifted the Magnum, thumbed his nose like a boxer, then narrowed his eyes. He obviously wasn’t in the mood to talk.
I should acknowledge the woman on the floor, thought Alex. Maybe that will motivate him to speak. “Is that your wife laying there?”
The man’s head jolted up, rage in his eyes. “It used to be my wife!”he shouted, glaring hard into Alex’s face. “Those fucking freaks killed her! Those goddamn zombies! They mauled her to death!” He slammed his fist down hard on the table.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Alex said. For the first time he noticed the torso of a zombie on the floor, its body protruding from a doorway several feet ahead with half of its skull missing. “Are you infected, sir?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Do you know of any other people who are not infected?”
“I heard there is a lab over in Hatchberry,” said the man, rising from his chair. “Supposedly some scientists are over there working on this problem. Hatchberry is about 150 miles east of here. Norton Research Labs, I think it’s called.” He stared down at his wife’s corpse on the floor. His eyes widened.
“Thanks very much. That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”
The man didn’t say anything.
“Do you mind if we stay here tonight?”
He could see that the man was not listening. He stood up from the table and moved over to his wife’s corpse. Standing over her body, he examined the mass of stringy red organs extending from her mauled back and he looked at the large pool of blood surrounding her. Alex watched the man’s face twist into a state of complete rage.
“They mauled the guts right out of her back!” he screamed. “They killed her, my first and only wife! Those goddamn red chemically damaged sons-of-bitches!” His voice was loud and unhinged. He stomped and waved the 357.
Alex tried to console him. “Calm down, sir. Just take it easy. We’ll try to help you.”
“Fuck that! How could you! How could you possibly help me now!”
The man went over to the table again and sat down.
Alex waited a full minute before he spoke. “I’m going out to get Maxine. She’s the woman in my car. Do you mind if we sleep on your floor, just for tonight?”
The man bolted up from the table and ran over to the wall. He started slamming his head into the panelling repeatedly and a picture of Jesus Christ crashed to the floor.
“Take it easy!” yelled Alex. “Sit down for awhile, sir. Just try to relax.”
The man stopped beating his head, turned around and stared at Alex, gasping for air.
Alex looked at the man and saw some of the rage flow out of his face. Then he turned and went through the kitchen. Just as Alex stepped off the back porch, a loud pistol shot blasted throughout the countryside.
He stopped and quickly ran back into the house.
The man’s head was face down on the table with the back of it completely blown off, a barrage of splattered blood and brains now staining the wall next to an old wedding picture of the man and his wife.
-end-
(Thanks for reading. This is chapter 10 of the novella, “Zombies of the Red Descent.” You can purchase the full version here: http://tinyurl.com/a7p7vw If you now of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Regards.)
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Which Cover Do You Like Better?
Here are the two covers I made for my zombie book, which one do you prefer?
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Chapters 6 & 7 of Zombies of the Red Descent
Below are chapters 6 and 7 of my zombie novella, “Zombies of the Red Descent.” Purchase the full version of the book here:
http://tinyurl.com/a7p7vw
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Chapter 6: First Conversation and More
He squeaked open the metal door of his shelter. The rusty hinge was noisy, he would have to oil it soon. He stepped out and looked around and listened hard for zombies and thankfully there weren’t any. He walked twenty paces over to an old green Toronado, unbuttoned his pants and urinated for a long time. He inhaled the early morning air and today it actually didn’t smell so foul for some reason, then he zipped up and turned around.
Maxine was standing no more than ten feet from his shelter.
He shielded his eyes from the red sun – (which the Red Descent had permanently stained) – then he squinted, trying to get a good look at her. The slight wind made her hair blow over into her eyes. Her hair actually looked shiny now, not as dirty as it had before. Maybe she washed it, he thought. Her skin had a light bluish-gray tint and the red radiation blotches caused it to glow slightly.
He waved and motioned for her to come closer. She did, looking down as she moved around the rusty car frames, the big truck tires, the stacked batteries, the thick rusty pipes that could roll and perhaps crush her at any second. He stared at her blood-stained sweater with the gaping holes as she walked toward him, smiling shyly. She moved rather slowly, even though Alex knew she was a runner and possessed formidable speed. He knew that much from seeing her save his life the other night.
I wish I had my .38 right now, he thought. I might have to put a bullet in her brain before this is all over. Maybe her note was just a trick to get food.
She stopped within five feet of him. Clasped her hands and did not look into his face. She adopted another bashful smile, pushed the hair out of her eyes. She wasn’t acting like a zombie at all. But he knew she was still infected. Probably 25% of her was still full-fledged “ghoul,” and he stared down at her blood covered sweater. Through one large hole, he could see part of her left breast. She realized what he was looking at, but she did nothing to cover herself.
It had been months since Alex had seen any type of female up close – even a woman who was half-zombie – and lust surged throughout his body. He looked up at the dried blood on her neckline, at her slightly yellow eyes stained with chemical radiation and the tiny red dots spotting her face. Still, his lust remained.
Remember, he told himself. She’s still half-zombie, don’t ever forget it. Now say something. Anything.
“Hello there,” he managed.
“H-Hi,” Maxine said.
Her voice was soft yet raspy with chemical fatigue. Upon hearing it, a voice slightly similar to the other zombie voices he had heard in the middle of the night, Alex instinctively reached for his .38. But it wasn’t at his side. He saw her eyes follow the movement of his hand.
“Are you sick?” he asked.
“Y-Yes. But n-not all th-the way. I-I think I’m g-getting better.”
“When did you get sick?”
“S-Soon as the r-red fell f-from the s-sky. H-how about y-you?”
“The red chemicals never affected me. I must have some kind of natural immunity. But I don’t know how strong it is. Maybe the chemicals are working on me right now, just a little slower. I may turn into a zom– ...”
He didn’t finish the word. His face flushed with embarrassment and he dropped his eyes.
“I-I’m not g-getting worse,” Maxine said. “I-I know I-I’m getting b-better.”
Then a pause in the conversation.
He stared down at the ground, not knowing what else to say.
She took a few slow steps forward, reached out and touched his chest. He felt an adrenaline rush from the danger, but could immediately tell she had no bad intentions.
He looked up at her. Her mouth was open in an inviting way and there was a special glint in her eyes. He stepped backward. Maxine advanced and lifted his hand, placing it on her left breast. He put his arm around her and led her toward his shelter. After opening the squeaky door, they both slowly stepped inside. Then Alex slammed the door closed and ratcheted the numerous locks into place.
Chapter 7: A Good Plan
The wind blew through the numerous cracks in the shelter and made ominous whistling noises. Alex stood staring out one of the cracks, pondering what he had just done.
Sex with a zombie.
Or, she was half-zombie, to be precise.
Nevertheless, he would have never thought himself capable of doing such a thing.
It hadn’t been bad sex either.
Some of the best he’d ever had, to be honest.
A little awkward at first, but she was definitely a wild one, which he had discovered toward the end of the session.
Maxine lay not far away from him on three old truck seats that he’d crammed together as a makeshift bed. A yellow blanket was covering her legs.
“D-d- you h-have a p-plan?” she asked, her voice shaking a little.
Alex turned and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
He was wearing only boxer shorts and suddenly grew self-conscious about his ribs protruding from the drastic and rapid weight loss he’d suffered. He took a black T-shirt from the floor and slipped it on.
“Wh-when are y-you going to leave h-here?”
“The junkyard? I’m not leaving. Why would I?”
“Y-you will r-run out of f-food, w-won’t you?”
“Probably. But I guess I’ll just have to starve here since I don’t know where else to go. And I’m sure it would be just as bad somewhere else.”
“I-I heard on the r-radio once, a w-week after th-the red d-descent came, there was a r-report about s-scientists w-working on a c-cure.”
“Where?” Alex lifted his eyebrows.
“H-H something. It s-started with an H. C-Can you t-take me to th-the scientists? Can you h-help m-me get c-cured?”
He stepped over and sat down on the edge of the makeshift bed. “We don’t know where the scientists are, Maxine. And how would we get there if we did? Walk?”
“W-we can’t stay h-here much l-longer though. We’ll st-starve, or there will be m-more z-zombies that come and k-kill us. There are l-lots of c-cars around h-here. I-is there a c-car that r-runs?”
He rubbed his beard and looked out another crack in the shelter. A mangled zombie ran by not far away. He stared and thought for a few minutes. “I never tried to get one of the cars to run. But maybe there is one capable of being fixed.”
“W-we should t-try it.”
“Maybe you’re right. I guess we should leave before we completely run out of food.”
“Y-yes, w-we should.”
“I guess it’s time to take action.”
Thanks for reading. Purchase the full version of the novella here:
http://tinyurl.com/a7p7vw
Also, it would help out the author greatly if you purchased one of his other books from Amazon.com, or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.
http://tinyurl.com/a7p7vw
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Chapter 6: First Conversation and More
He squeaked open the metal door of his shelter. The rusty hinge was noisy, he would have to oil it soon. He stepped out and looked around and listened hard for zombies and thankfully there weren’t any. He walked twenty paces over to an old green Toronado, unbuttoned his pants and urinated for a long time. He inhaled the early morning air and today it actually didn’t smell so foul for some reason, then he zipped up and turned around.
Maxine was standing no more than ten feet from his shelter.
He shielded his eyes from the red sun – (which the Red Descent had permanently stained) – then he squinted, trying to get a good look at her. The slight wind made her hair blow over into her eyes. Her hair actually looked shiny now, not as dirty as it had before. Maybe she washed it, he thought. Her skin had a light bluish-gray tint and the red radiation blotches caused it to glow slightly.
He waved and motioned for her to come closer. She did, looking down as she moved around the rusty car frames, the big truck tires, the stacked batteries, the thick rusty pipes that could roll and perhaps crush her at any second. He stared at her blood-stained sweater with the gaping holes as she walked toward him, smiling shyly. She moved rather slowly, even though Alex knew she was a runner and possessed formidable speed. He knew that much from seeing her save his life the other night.
I wish I had my .38 right now, he thought. I might have to put a bullet in her brain before this is all over. Maybe her note was just a trick to get food.
She stopped within five feet of him. Clasped her hands and did not look into his face. She adopted another bashful smile, pushed the hair out of her eyes. She wasn’t acting like a zombie at all. But he knew she was still infected. Probably 25% of her was still full-fledged “ghoul,” and he stared down at her blood covered sweater. Through one large hole, he could see part of her left breast. She realized what he was looking at, but she did nothing to cover herself.
It had been months since Alex had seen any type of female up close – even a woman who was half-zombie – and lust surged throughout his body. He looked up at the dried blood on her neckline, at her slightly yellow eyes stained with chemical radiation and the tiny red dots spotting her face. Still, his lust remained.
Remember, he told himself. She’s still half-zombie, don’t ever forget it. Now say something. Anything.
“Hello there,” he managed.
“H-Hi,” Maxine said.
Her voice was soft yet raspy with chemical fatigue. Upon hearing it, a voice slightly similar to the other zombie voices he had heard in the middle of the night, Alex instinctively reached for his .38. But it wasn’t at his side. He saw her eyes follow the movement of his hand.
“Are you sick?” he asked.
“Y-Yes. But n-not all th-the way. I-I think I’m g-getting better.”
“When did you get sick?”
“S-Soon as the r-red fell f-from the s-sky. H-how about y-you?”
“The red chemicals never affected me. I must have some kind of natural immunity. But I don’t know how strong it is. Maybe the chemicals are working on me right now, just a little slower. I may turn into a zom– ...”
He didn’t finish the word. His face flushed with embarrassment and he dropped his eyes.
“I-I’m not g-getting worse,” Maxine said. “I-I know I-I’m getting b-better.”
Then a pause in the conversation.
He stared down at the ground, not knowing what else to say.
She took a few slow steps forward, reached out and touched his chest. He felt an adrenaline rush from the danger, but could immediately tell she had no bad intentions.
He looked up at her. Her mouth was open in an inviting way and there was a special glint in her eyes. He stepped backward. Maxine advanced and lifted his hand, placing it on her left breast. He put his arm around her and led her toward his shelter. After opening the squeaky door, they both slowly stepped inside. Then Alex slammed the door closed and ratcheted the numerous locks into place.
Chapter 7: A Good Plan
The wind blew through the numerous cracks in the shelter and made ominous whistling noises. Alex stood staring out one of the cracks, pondering what he had just done.
Sex with a zombie.
Or, she was half-zombie, to be precise.
Nevertheless, he would have never thought himself capable of doing such a thing.
It hadn’t been bad sex either.
Some of the best he’d ever had, to be honest.
A little awkward at first, but she was definitely a wild one, which he had discovered toward the end of the session.
Maxine lay not far away from him on three old truck seats that he’d crammed together as a makeshift bed. A yellow blanket was covering her legs.
“D-d- you h-have a p-plan?” she asked, her voice shaking a little.
Alex turned and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
He was wearing only boxer shorts and suddenly grew self-conscious about his ribs protruding from the drastic and rapid weight loss he’d suffered. He took a black T-shirt from the floor and slipped it on.
“Wh-when are y-you going to leave h-here?”
“The junkyard? I’m not leaving. Why would I?”
“Y-you will r-run out of f-food, w-won’t you?”
“Probably. But I guess I’ll just have to starve here since I don’t know where else to go. And I’m sure it would be just as bad somewhere else.”
“I-I heard on the r-radio once, a w-week after th-the red d-descent came, there was a r-report about s-scientists w-working on a c-cure.”
“Where?” Alex lifted his eyebrows.
“H-H something. It s-started with an H. C-Can you t-take me to th-the scientists? Can you h-help m-me get c-cured?”
He stepped over and sat down on the edge of the makeshift bed. “We don’t know where the scientists are, Maxine. And how would we get there if we did? Walk?”
“W-we can’t stay h-here much l-longer though. We’ll st-starve, or there will be m-more z-zombies that come and k-kill us. There are l-lots of c-cars around h-here. I-is there a c-car that r-runs?”
He rubbed his beard and looked out another crack in the shelter. A mangled zombie ran by not far away. He stared and thought for a few minutes. “I never tried to get one of the cars to run. But maybe there is one capable of being fixed.”
“W-we should t-try it.”
“Maybe you’re right. I guess we should leave before we completely run out of food.”
“Y-yes, w-we should.”
“I guess it’s time to take action.”
Thanks for reading. Purchase the full version of the novella here:
http://tinyurl.com/a7p7vw
Also, it would help out the author greatly if you purchased one of his other books from Amazon.com, or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
First 4 Chapters of "Zombies of the Red Descent"
Zombies of the Red Descent
by Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Chapter 1: Eight Kills Today
The zombie charged Alex, squealing and running at full speed, its diseased eyes narrowed, its thin arms outstretched with long fingers twitching from the deadly poisons boiling inside it. The zombie tried to yell something and red chemicals sprayed from its rotted decaying mouth as Alex casually propped up his boot on the bumper of a ‘76 El Camino and put a round from his .38 in the center of the zombie’s forehead. The top half of its skull shattered as the rest fell backward, yet its body continued to run. It must have travelled about fifteen more feet before veering off and slamming into an old Chrysler. The undead thing lay there on its back, twitching and spasming in the dust, as Alex watched more chemicals and blood pour from its neck – the “life” inside it gradually dissipating out on the ground.
“Hell of a lot of toxin in that one,” Alex said.
He heard another zombie squeal behind him, but he had plenty of time to spin around. He tucked the .38 in his pants and pulled a double-barreled shotgun from a holster on his back. Luckily, this one was a slow-mover. It squealed again, but Alex didn’t see how the sounds were even possible. Half its face was gone, including its bottom jaw. He looked down at its mid-section to see only a huge gaping hole – the meat from the top of its left hipbone, all the way to the bottom of its ribcage and over to its spine, was completely gone. Its vertebrae glowed white and its body was leaning toward the injured side as it charged him.
“I’d be slow too if I had 20 pounds of organs missing,” Alex said, taking his time to aim.
He allowed the zombie to creep within four feet of him, then put the shotgun barrel to the bridge of the thing’s nose and slowly pulled the trigger.
Kablam. The head vanished. The shattered bone and brains spattered over several cars in the salvage yard, the skull fragments echoing off and sounding like BBs plinking tin cans. The zombie toppled onto a pile of hubcaps and pipes and a brass rod leaning against a pickup penetrated its rotting chest tissue, stopping it from hitting the ground. The zombie hung there, propped up like a menacing scarecrow of mutilated flesh and chemical waste.
Alex turned around and shadowed his eyes with his forearm.
He saw no movement now among the wreckage.
Only a spot of fire burning off in the distance.
“Eight kills today,” he said. “Not too bad.”
He kicked an air filter out of his way, moving down the narrow path, adjusting his guns as he carried them back to his small hovel hidden among the cars and piled up wreckage.
Chapter 2: Alex O’Haney and the Red Descent
Seven months ago, red dust and large chunks of debris had fallen from the sky. Tons of the stuff. Most of the rocks were the size of softballs, yet they were lightweight with numerous veins running through them. The rocks emitted strong radiation and chemical poisons. Anyone who touched the rocks or came within a few feet of the patches of dust became violently ill. They would soon be vomiting black and red bile and turning into either a “runner” or a “slow-mover,” as Alex called each of them. The Red Descent quickly turned almost everyone on earth into hungry zombies that consumed human flesh.
But some people had a natural immunity to the radiation.
People like Alex O’Haney.
Something inside his body had prevented him from getting sick. And although he noticed he was not the only one with this ability, most of the others were quickly killed off by the runners or the slow-movers.
Two days after the Red Descent came, Alex heard part of a news broadcast about the tragedy. The reporter speculated that an object – possibly a small asteroid – had struck the RS-343 Dome Space Station, and when it had hit the force combined with a multitude of onboard chemicals had created a huge explosion – one of the biggest ever in outer space – and the resulting red moon rocks of radiation fell to the Earth. Even if the reporter’s explanation was not entirely accurate, it was still good enough for Alex O’Haney, since he knew it really didn’t matter at this point.
His apartment was a block away from a small gun shop that his uncle Rex O’Haney owned. Upon witnessing his entire town becoming insane and killing each other from the Red Descent, the gun shop was the first place that Alex ran to.
Out on the street, he saw people he once knew, but now they were vile zombies, eating their fellow humans and fighting everything around them. Alex found his uncle laying part of the way out the door of the gun shop, his whole throat ripped out, and two zombies in a frenzy fighting over his fresh corpse. Alex ran past them, went inside and grabbed a double-barreled shotgun and a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chiefs Special. Taking as much ammunition as he could carry, he ran out the back door and tried to decide where he should go next.
The salvage yard, he thought. He knew the zombies would have difficulty navigating through the piled-up junk with their off-kilter equilibriums and their minds scarred by chemical radiation.
He arrived at the salvage yard without any major problems, having to shoot only one female zombie along the way. Three bullets in her chest did almost nothing. So he put a round in her left eye and she went down and stayed there.
The first night he slept in a ‘94 Dodge Dynasty. And the following day he worked to build a perfunctory shelter in a vacant space surrounded by several junk cars that were stacked up as a barrier to invading zombies. He used truck doors, windshields, car hoods, trunk lids, and seats from other vehicles to build his shelter. Everyday he worked a little bit more on improving his new home.
Eventually, Alex fell into a set pattern. He would go out around 6 PM for two hours of shooting as many zombies as possible, then he would scavenge through the homes in the area for food, or clothing, ammunition, anything else of value that he might run across. He found that if he didn’t kill as many zombies as he could just before bedtime, he would usually wake up with several of the ghouls beating on the walls of his shelter, their foul fingers sticking through the cracks as they squealed and groaned, releasing harmful chemicals from their diseased mouths and polluting his living quarters.
Finding food was always a problem. But water was not. A working faucet stood near the rear of his salvage yard from a garage that used to stand there, and surprisingly the zombies never came near the source of water. They seemed to have no need for any liquids, other than human blood of course.
Alex’s other main problem was running out of ammunition. It was too dangerous to go back to the gun shop for more bullets. He had already tried that. Now he figured he had enough ammo to last about two more months, if he was supremely conservative (which he always was). After that, he knew he would have to move on.
Some nights, when he didn’t hear a plethora of zombies moaning and fighting off in the distance, or when he didn’t witness too much gore prior to bedtime, he would stare through the cracks of his shelter, up at the moon or the bright stars above.
And at times like those, his life didn’t seem quite so tragic.
Chapter 3: Maxine
Alex picked up the female zombie’s hand. He marveled at the spotted grayish-blue skin and the small red scaly blotches that covered it like a crude pattern from a Persian carpet, then he let the hand drop gently to the car seat.
She was not dead. Only sleeping. He could hear her breathing – heavy with a slight chemical wheeze to her voice. He had never seen one of the infected up close before – a zombie that was still “alive” anyway.
He assumed this was Maxine. She was a highly unusual zombie. One that wasn’t fully infected. For some reason, Maxine still retained some of her previous mental abilities and humanlike qualities. Alex knew this because two days ago, after his evening hunt, he had found a piece of paper sticking out of his shelter door, a note from her that read:
Do not kill me. I will help you fite them. I am not one of them, all the way. I am not completly damuged. Let me help you. I can speek, and do other things to. You must take me to a sceintist. A labrutory. Have them wurk on me. Have them fix and ssave me. Pleese.
- Maxine
Alex’s thumb shook slightly against the piece of paper as he read the note. His mouth fell open. He did not understand how this could happen. Maxine was an example of an evolution in the zombies that he had not expected. He took the note inside his shelter, sat down on his makeshift bed, and read the piece of paper repeatedly, again and again, squeezing his forehead, trying to understand what was happening, trying to decide what he should do.
Now he had found Maxine asleep while scavenging through the junkyard in an area that he did not normally visit. She was lying in an old Chrysler; sound asleep; and he figured it had to be her. He stepped away from the open car window, his foot bumping a hubcap and flinging it into some junk with a loud clang. He jolted and spun around to look at Maxine. But her eyes did not open. He continued staring at her for quite awhile.
How the hell can she survive out here among these things? he thought. She must be a damn good fighter. I remember in the note she said she would help me fight them. Tomorrow maybe I should come back here and try to speak to her. Maybe this is where she stays regularly. But what if it’s all just a trap?
He moved his gaze from her face down to some of the jagged rusty metal jutting out everywhere in the salvage yard. He thought the debris looked like like tiny deformed pyramids setting in the middle of an iron desert. He didn’t see or hear any zombies moving around, even though he knew a few had to be close. He ran his thumb under the rope that he had attached to his shotgun which functioned as a strap. Then he stepped through the junk, trying to be silent as possible.
Chapter 4: Maxine the Warrior
Evening hunt... Six zombies surrounding him... Deep groans, high-pitched squeals... Metal clanking and banging... It would soon be dark...
A slow mover stumbled toward Alex in the gloom, its hips bumping against twisted metal. He could see one of its eyes glowing and dangling from the socket by two thin strings of yellow and red membrane. More than half of its face had been melted away. He casually put a bullet into the zombie’s temple and it fell forward slowly, slamming its damaged skull into the hood of a Cadillac. Alex then spun around just in time to see a runner coming for him. He pulled the shotgun from his back, extended it with considerable force to jab both of the barrels into the thing’s cheek, simultaneously pulling the trigger and making its head vanish.
Another zombie grabbed him from behind, tackling him against the side of a pickup. He dropped his shotgun and twisted his body until the zombie was in front of him so that he could keep it from sinking its teeth into his flesh. He stared deep into the zombie’s eyes. Black circles surrounded the whites, with wrinkled gray skin on the outside, making them even darker. Maggots fell from the thing’s matted black hair and it growled and pulled back its lips to display green teeth and red liquid oozing from blackened gums.
The stench was horrific – like chlorine and sulfur mixed with kerosene and death.
Alex strained, trying to push the thing away, keeping it from sinking its lethal teeth into his body. The zombie reached up and gradually worked its hand over Alex’s face, pawing him as its fingernails grazing his cheek. It grabbed his right ear and ripped away a small part of the ear lobe.
A loud scream from behind... The sound of pounding feet...
Alex felt something slam into him and into the zombie as well. Something was attacking the zombie that held him. Whatever or whoever it was, it yelled in an animal-like way and the zombie gradually released its hold on Alex when the bites and tears to its back and neck became too much. The zombie turned around to fight whatever was attacking it and Alex picked up his shotgun and reloaded and put it to the rear of the zombie’s skull. He pulled the trigger and a thick spray of brains and skull fragments flew over the junk and splattered back into his own face, almost covering it with the sickness of the Red Descent. He wiped his eyes and spat over and over again, trying to clear the deadly chemicals from his face.
When he opened his eyes, he saw her standing there panting.
Maxine.
She had saved his life.
She had been the one attacking the zombie.
After he looked at her and their eyes met briefly, she turned and went back into action, attacking two of the others: slow-movers shuffling through the junk. She bit and slashed at them with her long fingernails and screamed loudly, wrestling them to the ground with a demonic fury, slamming their skulls with a rusty railroad spike she found, trying to kill them by destroying their brains.
Alex backed away, eyeballing the salvage yard for more zombies. She’s actually helping me fight them, he thought. She actually saved my fucking life just now.
He reloaded his .38 and ran to where she was still rolling on the ground with two of the infected.
“Maxine! Get out of the way!” he yelled.
She moved off one of them and he efficiently put a bullet in each of the zombie’s foreheads.
She stood up and looked at Alex. He saw her take a step forward, but then confusion registered in her eyes, so she turned and ran away. He called out to her, but she did not stop or come back, and he watched her tangled hair bounce as she dodged numerous vehicles and eventually disappeared among the junk.
Alex slipped the shotgun strap over his shoulder and glanced around for more of the undead. Nothing. He lowered his head and walked toward the few surrounding houses to scavenge for more food (even though he knew it would probably be futile), thinking all the time about Maxine; and how she had just saved his life.
(Read the rest of this novella by clicking the cover of "Zombies of the Red Descent" at the top of this blog. Thanks.)
by Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
Chapter 1: Eight Kills Today
The zombie charged Alex, squealing and running at full speed, its diseased eyes narrowed, its thin arms outstretched with long fingers twitching from the deadly poisons boiling inside it. The zombie tried to yell something and red chemicals sprayed from its rotted decaying mouth as Alex casually propped up his boot on the bumper of a ‘76 El Camino and put a round from his .38 in the center of the zombie’s forehead. The top half of its skull shattered as the rest fell backward, yet its body continued to run. It must have travelled about fifteen more feet before veering off and slamming into an old Chrysler. The undead thing lay there on its back, twitching and spasming in the dust, as Alex watched more chemicals and blood pour from its neck – the “life” inside it gradually dissipating out on the ground.
“Hell of a lot of toxin in that one,” Alex said.
He heard another zombie squeal behind him, but he had plenty of time to spin around. He tucked the .38 in his pants and pulled a double-barreled shotgun from a holster on his back. Luckily, this one was a slow-mover. It squealed again, but Alex didn’t see how the sounds were even possible. Half its face was gone, including its bottom jaw. He looked down at its mid-section to see only a huge gaping hole – the meat from the top of its left hipbone, all the way to the bottom of its ribcage and over to its spine, was completely gone. Its vertebrae glowed white and its body was leaning toward the injured side as it charged him.
“I’d be slow too if I had 20 pounds of organs missing,” Alex said, taking his time to aim.
He allowed the zombie to creep within four feet of him, then put the shotgun barrel to the bridge of the thing’s nose and slowly pulled the trigger.
Kablam. The head vanished. The shattered bone and brains spattered over several cars in the salvage yard, the skull fragments echoing off and sounding like BBs plinking tin cans. The zombie toppled onto a pile of hubcaps and pipes and a brass rod leaning against a pickup penetrated its rotting chest tissue, stopping it from hitting the ground. The zombie hung there, propped up like a menacing scarecrow of mutilated flesh and chemical waste.
Alex turned around and shadowed his eyes with his forearm.
He saw no movement now among the wreckage.
Only a spot of fire burning off in the distance.
“Eight kills today,” he said. “Not too bad.”
He kicked an air filter out of his way, moving down the narrow path, adjusting his guns as he carried them back to his small hovel hidden among the cars and piled up wreckage.
Chapter 2: Alex O’Haney and the Red Descent
Seven months ago, red dust and large chunks of debris had fallen from the sky. Tons of the stuff. Most of the rocks were the size of softballs, yet they were lightweight with numerous veins running through them. The rocks emitted strong radiation and chemical poisons. Anyone who touched the rocks or came within a few feet of the patches of dust became violently ill. They would soon be vomiting black and red bile and turning into either a “runner” or a “slow-mover,” as Alex called each of them. The Red Descent quickly turned almost everyone on earth into hungry zombies that consumed human flesh.
But some people had a natural immunity to the radiation.
People like Alex O’Haney.
Something inside his body had prevented him from getting sick. And although he noticed he was not the only one with this ability, most of the others were quickly killed off by the runners or the slow-movers.
Two days after the Red Descent came, Alex heard part of a news broadcast about the tragedy. The reporter speculated that an object – possibly a small asteroid – had struck the RS-343 Dome Space Station, and when it had hit the force combined with a multitude of onboard chemicals had created a huge explosion – one of the biggest ever in outer space – and the resulting red moon rocks of radiation fell to the Earth. Even if the reporter’s explanation was not entirely accurate, it was still good enough for Alex O’Haney, since he knew it really didn’t matter at this point.
His apartment was a block away from a small gun shop that his uncle Rex O’Haney owned. Upon witnessing his entire town becoming insane and killing each other from the Red Descent, the gun shop was the first place that Alex ran to.
Out on the street, he saw people he once knew, but now they were vile zombies, eating their fellow humans and fighting everything around them. Alex found his uncle laying part of the way out the door of the gun shop, his whole throat ripped out, and two zombies in a frenzy fighting over his fresh corpse. Alex ran past them, went inside and grabbed a double-barreled shotgun and a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chiefs Special. Taking as much ammunition as he could carry, he ran out the back door and tried to decide where he should go next.
The salvage yard, he thought. He knew the zombies would have difficulty navigating through the piled-up junk with their off-kilter equilibriums and their minds scarred by chemical radiation.
He arrived at the salvage yard without any major problems, having to shoot only one female zombie along the way. Three bullets in her chest did almost nothing. So he put a round in her left eye and she went down and stayed there.
The first night he slept in a ‘94 Dodge Dynasty. And the following day he worked to build a perfunctory shelter in a vacant space surrounded by several junk cars that were stacked up as a barrier to invading zombies. He used truck doors, windshields, car hoods, trunk lids, and seats from other vehicles to build his shelter. Everyday he worked a little bit more on improving his new home.
Eventually, Alex fell into a set pattern. He would go out around 6 PM for two hours of shooting as many zombies as possible, then he would scavenge through the homes in the area for food, or clothing, ammunition, anything else of value that he might run across. He found that if he didn’t kill as many zombies as he could just before bedtime, he would usually wake up with several of the ghouls beating on the walls of his shelter, their foul fingers sticking through the cracks as they squealed and groaned, releasing harmful chemicals from their diseased mouths and polluting his living quarters.
Finding food was always a problem. But water was not. A working faucet stood near the rear of his salvage yard from a garage that used to stand there, and surprisingly the zombies never came near the source of water. They seemed to have no need for any liquids, other than human blood of course.
Alex’s other main problem was running out of ammunition. It was too dangerous to go back to the gun shop for more bullets. He had already tried that. Now he figured he had enough ammo to last about two more months, if he was supremely conservative (which he always was). After that, he knew he would have to move on.
Some nights, when he didn’t hear a plethora of zombies moaning and fighting off in the distance, or when he didn’t witness too much gore prior to bedtime, he would stare through the cracks of his shelter, up at the moon or the bright stars above.
And at times like those, his life didn’t seem quite so tragic.
Chapter 3: Maxine
Alex picked up the female zombie’s hand. He marveled at the spotted grayish-blue skin and the small red scaly blotches that covered it like a crude pattern from a Persian carpet, then he let the hand drop gently to the car seat.
She was not dead. Only sleeping. He could hear her breathing – heavy with a slight chemical wheeze to her voice. He had never seen one of the infected up close before – a zombie that was still “alive” anyway.
He assumed this was Maxine. She was a highly unusual zombie. One that wasn’t fully infected. For some reason, Maxine still retained some of her previous mental abilities and humanlike qualities. Alex knew this because two days ago, after his evening hunt, he had found a piece of paper sticking out of his shelter door, a note from her that read:
Do not kill me. I will help you fite them. I am not one of them, all the way. I am not completly damuged. Let me help you. I can speek, and do other things to. You must take me to a sceintist. A labrutory. Have them wurk on me. Have them fix and ssave me. Pleese.
- Maxine
Alex’s thumb shook slightly against the piece of paper as he read the note. His mouth fell open. He did not understand how this could happen. Maxine was an example of an evolution in the zombies that he had not expected. He took the note inside his shelter, sat down on his makeshift bed, and read the piece of paper repeatedly, again and again, squeezing his forehead, trying to understand what was happening, trying to decide what he should do.
Now he had found Maxine asleep while scavenging through the junkyard in an area that he did not normally visit. She was lying in an old Chrysler; sound asleep; and he figured it had to be her. He stepped away from the open car window, his foot bumping a hubcap and flinging it into some junk with a loud clang. He jolted and spun around to look at Maxine. But her eyes did not open. He continued staring at her for quite awhile.
How the hell can she survive out here among these things? he thought. She must be a damn good fighter. I remember in the note she said she would help me fight them. Tomorrow maybe I should come back here and try to speak to her. Maybe this is where she stays regularly. But what if it’s all just a trap?
He moved his gaze from her face down to some of the jagged rusty metal jutting out everywhere in the salvage yard. He thought the debris looked like like tiny deformed pyramids setting in the middle of an iron desert. He didn’t see or hear any zombies moving around, even though he knew a few had to be close. He ran his thumb under the rope that he had attached to his shotgun which functioned as a strap. Then he stepped through the junk, trying to be silent as possible.
Chapter 4: Maxine the Warrior
Evening hunt... Six zombies surrounding him... Deep groans, high-pitched squeals... Metal clanking and banging... It would soon be dark...
A slow mover stumbled toward Alex in the gloom, its hips bumping against twisted metal. He could see one of its eyes glowing and dangling from the socket by two thin strings of yellow and red membrane. More than half of its face had been melted away. He casually put a bullet into the zombie’s temple and it fell forward slowly, slamming its damaged skull into the hood of a Cadillac. Alex then spun around just in time to see a runner coming for him. He pulled the shotgun from his back, extended it with considerable force to jab both of the barrels into the thing’s cheek, simultaneously pulling the trigger and making its head vanish.
Another zombie grabbed him from behind, tackling him against the side of a pickup. He dropped his shotgun and twisted his body until the zombie was in front of him so that he could keep it from sinking its teeth into his flesh. He stared deep into the zombie’s eyes. Black circles surrounded the whites, with wrinkled gray skin on the outside, making them even darker. Maggots fell from the thing’s matted black hair and it growled and pulled back its lips to display green teeth and red liquid oozing from blackened gums.
The stench was horrific – like chlorine and sulfur mixed with kerosene and death.
Alex strained, trying to push the thing away, keeping it from sinking its lethal teeth into his body. The zombie reached up and gradually worked its hand over Alex’s face, pawing him as its fingernails grazing his cheek. It grabbed his right ear and ripped away a small part of the ear lobe.
A loud scream from behind... The sound of pounding feet...
Alex felt something slam into him and into the zombie as well. Something was attacking the zombie that held him. Whatever or whoever it was, it yelled in an animal-like way and the zombie gradually released its hold on Alex when the bites and tears to its back and neck became too much. The zombie turned around to fight whatever was attacking it and Alex picked up his shotgun and reloaded and put it to the rear of the zombie’s skull. He pulled the trigger and a thick spray of brains and skull fragments flew over the junk and splattered back into his own face, almost covering it with the sickness of the Red Descent. He wiped his eyes and spat over and over again, trying to clear the deadly chemicals from his face.
When he opened his eyes, he saw her standing there panting.
Maxine.
She had saved his life.
She had been the one attacking the zombie.
After he looked at her and their eyes met briefly, she turned and went back into action, attacking two of the others: slow-movers shuffling through the junk. She bit and slashed at them with her long fingernails and screamed loudly, wrestling them to the ground with a demonic fury, slamming their skulls with a rusty railroad spike she found, trying to kill them by destroying their brains.
Alex backed away, eyeballing the salvage yard for more zombies. She’s actually helping me fight them, he thought. She actually saved my fucking life just now.
He reloaded his .38 and ran to where she was still rolling on the ground with two of the infected.
“Maxine! Get out of the way!” he yelled.
She moved off one of them and he efficiently put a bullet in each of the zombie’s foreheads.
She stood up and looked at Alex. He saw her take a step forward, but then confusion registered in her eyes, so she turned and ran away. He called out to her, but she did not stop or come back, and he watched her tangled hair bounce as she dodged numerous vehicles and eventually disappeared among the junk.
Alex slipped the shotgun strap over his shoulder and glanced around for more of the undead. Nothing. He lowered his head and walked toward the few surrounding houses to scavenge for more food (even though he knew it would probably be futile), thinking all the time about Maxine; and how she had just saved his life.
(Read the rest of this novella by clicking the cover of "Zombies of the Red Descent" at the top of this blog. Thanks.)
What Is A Zombie?
A zombie is a reanimated human corpse. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou, which told of the people being controlled as workers by a powerful sorcerer. Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.
There are several possible etymologies of the word zombie. One possible origin is jumbie, the West Indian term for "ghost". Another is nzambi, the Kongo word meaning "spirit of a dead person." According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word entered English circa 1871; it's derived from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, which in turn is of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. It is akin to the Kimbundu nzúmbe ghost.
...
According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or Voodoo sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Vodou snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the voudon tradition the zombi astral which is a human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power.
...
Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), the poison found in the pufferfish. The second powder is composed of dissociatives such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the victim's will would be entirely subject to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice.
...
In the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the souls of the dead could return to earth and haunt the living. The belief in revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) is well documented by contemporary European writers of the time, such as William of Newburgh and Walter Map. According to the Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were[6], particularly in France during the Middle Ages, the revenant rises from the dead usually to avenge some crime committed against the entity, most likely a murder. The revenant usually took on the form of an emaciated corpse or skeletal human figure, and wandered around graveyards at night. The "draugr" of medieval Norse mythology were also believed to be the corpses of warriors returned from the dead to attack the living. The zombie appears in several other cultures worldwide, including China, Japan, the Pacific, India, Persia, the Arabs, and the Native Americans.
The Epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Sumer includes a mention of zombies. Ishtar, in the fury of vengeance says:
Father give me the Bull of Heaven,
So he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the doorposts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!
...
Modern zombies, as portrayed in books, films, games, and haunted attractions, are quite different from both voodoo zombies and those of folklore. Modern zombies are typically depicted in popular culture as mindless, unfeeling monsters with a hunger for human brains and flesh, a prototype established in the seminal 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Typically, these creatures can sustain damage far beyond that of a normal, living human (generally these can only be killed by a wound to the head, such as a headshot) and can pass whatever syndrome that causes their condition onto others.
Usually, zombies are not depicted as thralls to masters, as in the film White Zombie or the spirit-cult myths. Rather, modern zombies are depicted in mobs and waves, seeking either flesh to eat or people to kill or infect, and are typically rendered to exhibit signs of physical decomposition such as rotting flesh, discolored eyes, and open wounds, and moving with a slow, shambling gait. They are generally incapable of communication and show no signs of personality or rationality, though George Romero's zombies appear capable of learning and very basic levels of speech as seen in the films Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead.
Modern zombies are closely tied to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, the collapse of civilization caused by a vast plague of undead. The ideas are now so strongly linked that zombies are rarely depicted within any other context.
-Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie
There are several possible etymologies of the word zombie. One possible origin is jumbie, the West Indian term for "ghost". Another is nzambi, the Kongo word meaning "spirit of a dead person." According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word entered English circa 1871; it's derived from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, which in turn is of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. It is akin to the Kimbundu nzúmbe ghost.
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According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or Voodoo sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Vodou snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the voudon tradition the zombi astral which is a human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power.
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Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), the poison found in the pufferfish. The second powder is composed of dissociatives such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the victim's will would be entirely subject to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice.
...
In the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the souls of the dead could return to earth and haunt the living. The belief in revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) is well documented by contemporary European writers of the time, such as William of Newburgh and Walter Map. According to the Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were[6], particularly in France during the Middle Ages, the revenant rises from the dead usually to avenge some crime committed against the entity, most likely a murder. The revenant usually took on the form of an emaciated corpse or skeletal human figure, and wandered around graveyards at night. The "draugr" of medieval Norse mythology were also believed to be the corpses of warriors returned from the dead to attack the living. The zombie appears in several other cultures worldwide, including China, Japan, the Pacific, India, Persia, the Arabs, and the Native Americans.
The Epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Sumer includes a mention of zombies. Ishtar, in the fury of vengeance says:
Father give me the Bull of Heaven,
So he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the doorposts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!
...
Modern zombies, as portrayed in books, films, games, and haunted attractions, are quite different from both voodoo zombies and those of folklore. Modern zombies are typically depicted in popular culture as mindless, unfeeling monsters with a hunger for human brains and flesh, a prototype established in the seminal 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. Typically, these creatures can sustain damage far beyond that of a normal, living human (generally these can only be killed by a wound to the head, such as a headshot) and can pass whatever syndrome that causes their condition onto others.
Usually, zombies are not depicted as thralls to masters, as in the film White Zombie or the spirit-cult myths. Rather, modern zombies are depicted in mobs and waves, seeking either flesh to eat or people to kill or infect, and are typically rendered to exhibit signs of physical decomposition such as rotting flesh, discolored eyes, and open wounds, and moving with a slow, shambling gait. They are generally incapable of communication and show no signs of personality or rationality, though George Romero's zombies appear capable of learning and very basic levels of speech as seen in the films Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead.
Modern zombies are closely tied to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, the collapse of civilization caused by a vast plague of undead. The ideas are now so strongly linked that zombies are rarely depicted within any other context.
-Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie
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