The International Writers Magazine:USA 2012

---

The Raving Zombie Killers • David Tavernier Oh my God were these two dudes crazy. Two rednecks from southern Alabama who carried nothing but a pair of shotguns and a double bladed axe and a sword. Neither one of them remembered exactly how they had met, but they had just run smack dab into each other in the middle of a horde of the undead.

It was the apocalypse, and all hell had broken loose on earth. For many years people had disregarded the predictions and lead complacent lives, but Bob Thomas hadn't. No way. No how. He had been preparing from the beginning for what he knew would be the catastrophe of the future. He'd seen all the signs and heeded all the warnings. Zombies were coming. The Mayan temple along with the Egyption pyramids were going to pour fourth a dreaded plague that would change the populace into raving zombies. It was something in the air, and Bob had for some reason or another been dumb enough to wear himself a mask. Now he was stuck on the planet earth as one of the last living human beings... and that just wasn't right.

"Damn it!" he swore. "Damn it all to hell!" he blasted the hell out of a zombie that was looking at him funny and then rode around dodging and weaving. "These mother fuckers are gonna kill me!"

Not in a million years would anyone would have actually predicted or understood that it really was the end. Everyone was attached by the eyeballs to their computer screens and televisions. They were vegetables already. Zombies. Of course they all turn back into humans or something if they really wanted to. At least that's what Bob Thomas thought. But somehow he felt that things weren't going to change. Something in his heart quivered and shook and he felt all sick and cold all over and sweated. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead.
"Brains... I want to eat you!"

Bob Thomas was the one who was groaning. How could they even keep talking with all of their flesh rotting off of their moving cadavers? It was too horrible to be true, and that was the scary part. No one was human anymore and no one could even give a guy a buck, and in fact, all of the cards were melting under the hot sun in the daytime and moldering like rusted hulks of grease and globs of steel in the night. Zombies teemed from every corner of the city and hustled through the streats searching for food and corpses to nibble on as if it were their time to shine and the party of the undead was one happening and groovy shuffle. No one was safe, and upstairs and downstairs Bob Thomas somehow knew that there were people somewhere stockpiling food and fighting these misfits off with shotguns and bows and arrows, crossbows or whatever they could get their hands on.

And the killer was, they had done it to themselves. Humanity had in one way or another killed off all of its ancestors and buried them six feet deep thinking that they'd always stay down there underground, rotting and festering and moldering away and eventually disintigrating. But they didn't. Somehow or another they had remained preserved like mummies under the earth awaiting their revenge upon the living. And all the while the living had partied as if it were the end of the world, they had been clawing their way up out of those boxes and banging them open, digging with hands and teeth and whatever else they had to escape from their early graves.

Everyone knew why there were earthquakes. God was angry. But nobody could tell why the dead had risen that fateful day. June 23rd, 2012... and it had been just like the movies. What the hell? This was no Hollywood blockbuster.
Dean was just an ordinary man. He was a lover and he'd found himself in bed with a hooker who'd shot too much cocaine and bought the big one. What he didn't know was that soon enough she was going to give him one hell of a killer kiss.
"Oooaaargh..." she had moaned, rising from the bedsheets while Dean had been showering off in the bathroom. He hadn't even known until a cold, dead, and peeling hand had clamped itself over the top of the shower door and her corpse began pounding on the front. He could even see her bleeding teeth through the doorpane and he quivered.
"Oh shit!" he swore, jumping. Luckily he'd lain his pistol where there was supposed to be a bar of soap hanging on the soaprack and he pumped sixteen holes of lead in her zombie face. It wasn't right. No. It was horrible. He probably should've let himself be eaten. She was gorgeous after all and they could've made a lovely couple. But I'll be damned if Dean Gibson hadn't been riveted head to spine to toes with fear and if he hadn't pulled that trigger he could've been dead... or undead... or something. That just ain't right.

She was just on the point of rising again when Dean slipped out the door of the apartment and was shocked to find that almost all of the tenants were walking, talking, dead people.
"Oh my God..." was the only phrase that could escape him. They were insane. This was insane. He was insane! This was not exactly Planet of the Apes, or something. He was toast.
Hobbling down the stairway he almost tripped and fell when he saw his own mother clawing around the laundry room moaning and howling for her long lost son.
"Hey Ma!" he said with a yell. But as she turned he knew it was too late. She was gone... toast... kablooie. It was over.

Without a doubt there was no turning back now. He'd have to finally move out now that he was thirty five and everyone was... undead? That was the killer. He'd been looking for an excuse to hit the road for a long time but he had been trying to get a job and take care of his mom and pop in their old age... but now? Oh the horror. Oh the humanity. How could that have happened to his dear old mom and dad? Was it something they ate? Was it something they smoked? Was it a bad trip on his part? He didn't even want to go to sleep or wake up from this mess. He felt that if he closed his eyes it would be burgers for him. They were gonna tear him to pieces like a flame broiled hamburger or something. Jesus Christ!!!

With only a single clip and a Beretta .45 magnum, he was good to go, and then again he was dead meat. He was living meat! He was a living, walking, talking burger to all these undead freaks of nature. Was that politically correct? Could he call them undead freaks of nature? Somehow or another he had visions of a zombie president and even zombie-run prisons where everyone would toss his salad for being in the wrong place at the wrong time yet again. How they'd been able to lock him up against his Constitutional Rights still puzzled him. Hadn't we come to America to get away from all of this bullcrap? And now he was stuck in the same mess and he wondered exactly what the penitentiaries were like. Good God man, to be trapped behind bars with one of these puppies... now that must be hell. Because even if you plugged one of them straight in the eyeball they'd come back in a second. You knocked them down and they were back up. That was the killer. The human race was going to be extinct in no time.
© David Tavernier June 2008
tavernier.david@gmail.com

David is working on a novel about the World of Jorb 3.

Dreamscapes Fiction

Home

© Hackwriters 1999-2008 all rights reserved - all comments are the writers' own responsibility - no liability accepted by hackwriters.com or affiliates.