Excerpt
– Dying Days
One
Lazy Eye held the pistol to
Darlene’s head and licked his lips. “I said to take your fucking clothes off.”
Darlene held her hands up and away from
her body. “Is that a two-twenty six?”
Lazy Eye looked confused. He shook the
pistol and motioned at her with his free hand. “I won’t ask again.”
“I think you’re right about that.”
Darlene slipped her head down and to the left, bringing her extended fingers up
and into his throat. Before he’d even stumbled she had gripped his arm,
dislodged the pistol and heard his shoulder pop out of its socket.
Lazy Eye went to scream but she covered
his mouth, drove her knee into his stomach, and picked up the pistol in
seconds.
“Shut the fuck up or I will shoot you,
motherfucker.” She had no intention of actually shooting him, since they were
surrounded by undead. None of them were close enough to be an immediate threat,
but they were there. The gunshot would get them moving toward her for miles out
here.
Under her the man struggled vainly.
Darlene pointed the pistol at his head and he finally took the hint and stopped
struggling. “This is a Sig Sauer 226 model, and a nice one at that. You don’t
strike me as being a Navy SEAL or a Texas Ranger, so I’m guessing you found it.
Too bad. It’s an excellent piece. Mind if I keep it?”
Lazy Eye didn’t say anything. His good
eye focused on her face before looking down at her dangling boobs at eye level.
He licked his lips again.
“Idiot.” She sat up, pulled a hunting
knife from her boot and shook her head. “Here you go; the last thing you’ll
ever see.” With that she pulled her dirty T-shirt top up and revealed her tits
to the man, who openly drooled on the ground.
“Nice, I know.” Darlene leaned close to
him and just as his fingertip brushed against her hard left nipple she plunged
the blade into his stomach and twisted. He gurgled as she drove the blade
deeper into him and Darlene closed her eyes and tried to think of happy
thoughts. She couldn’t and began to cry softly. As much as a scumbag as this
guy was, he was still living and didn’t deserve to die. “Better you than me,”
she mumbled. She cursed herself for not hearing him sneak up on her to begin
with. So busy scanning the distance for the dead she’d not heard the living
until he was on her.
At this point in the game the only
people still living were usually those stealthy enough, fast enough or lucky
enough to keep from being ripped apart. Lazy Eye had obviously been lucky until
today.
She cleaned the blade on his clothes
and checked him for supplies, food, anything. He had nothing in his pockets.
His boots were too big for him and he wore three pairs of socks despite being
out in the Florida heat of summer. “Where did you come from?” she whispered to
his lifeless body before doing the horrific task of sawing through his neck
with her knife to keep him from reanimating and trying to rape her again.
He looked decently well-fed and he’d
bathed in the last few days. His underwear was clean and his shirt still had a
slight laundry detergent smell to it, something Darlene hadn’t smelled in too
long. He had a camp somewhere close, possibly a home where he had a makeshift
washer.
She was in the dunes near the beach,
with several undead lurking on the road behind her. Any noise would alert them.
Darlene scanned the beach itself and watched as two zombies shambled from the
surf and moved in different directions. They were everywhere.
Three days ago Darlene had cold-camped
on a Georgia beach in a lifeguard chair. She’d woken to five zombies chasing
after a child, no more than seven, down the sand. Before she could jump down
and help three undead fell from the dunes behind her and gave chase as well. It
was all she could do to sit in silence without making a sound as more and more
came into view and went north in pursuit of fresh prey.
Now, she decided to journey the way
Lazy Eye had appeared and see if she could find his camp. The going was slow,
especially since she was trying to be as quiet as possible. A dead man, clothes
shredded and covering only his shoulders, stumbled a few feet to her left and
she froze. His penis was engorged with blood, rivulets dripping from its
bloated head. He was one of the dangerous ones: the undead that still had a
functioning sexual organ and would love nothing more than to use it on her,
stretch her and rip into her and kill her. She shuddered at the thought.
Five tense minutes later he suddenly
stopped and turned away from her and crashed through the sand toward the road.
Darlene continued to move as the sun beat down upon her, sun-burnt and hurting.
Six or seven months ago she was freezing, stuck in a blizzard during winter
near Baltimore. She’d nearly died from sickness and watched as the living
around her had succumbed to frostbite or the undead that hadn’t frozen. She
imagined that by now they’d thawed out and were hunting for the living.
A service road came into view, devoid
of immediate danger. She joined the sandy strip up into the dunes. From this
vantage point she could see for miles: A1A ran from north to south, riddled
with moving bodies; a small town was to the west, smoldering and destroyed; and
to the north over a collapsed bridge stood a gas station, which looked intact
from this distance. She decided to make for it. Maybe there was some food left
over, a stray can of soda. Crumbs would suffice at this point. Darlene hadn’t
eaten since yesterday morning and that meal was a rotting orange and some rain
water. For weeks she’d stayed away from mirrored surfaces when possible,
knowing that her once full figure was now a mess. “Even at the end of the
fucking world you’re still worried about how your ass looks in a tight pair of
jeans,” she whispered and grinned.
In order to get to the gas station she
needed to traverse the broken bridge or wade through fast-moving sea water from
the ocean. She didn’t know if she had enough strength to make it. That had
never stopped her before.
Praying to a God she no longer believed
in, she moved slowly in that direction, skirting the undead and glad that they
were so spread out.
She wondered why there were so many
zombies concentrated in this strip of land. Once she’d gotten safely across the
river and onto A1A she thought she’d be safer. With the Atlantic Ocean to the
east and the river to her west, land consisted of a block or two of houses in
length at any given point, but where she stood there wasn’t much of anything
but sand dunes. Usually the dead convened around destroyed towns, burnt-out
buildings or car pileups.
There were no undead pulling themselves
from the river as she stood on its banks. The bridge was unmanageable to cross,
with a large chunk of it missing and presumably sitting at the bottom of the
river. Darlene wondered how zombies could destroy a bridge like that, but
decided that her fellow humans had most likely done the deed.
Most of the property damage she’d
encountered since this had begun was man-made, with looting, raping and fires
done without the zombies’ help. Man had turned on man. Instead of helping one
another they’d decided to kill for that last scrap of food. Safety in numbers?
Not if it meant having to share a can of soup. It was easier to bash your
former friend and neighbor in the head with the can rather then sharing it.
With the sun overhead and the smell of
the water before her, Darlene could almost imagine that everything was normal
again. Somewhere a bird actually chirped and she could almost sense the fish in
the water and the ants and spiders in the grass. She was on vacation with her
father, enjoying the Florida beaches and the warmth before heading back to the
harsh Maine winter. They would stop later and eat at an amazing local
restaurant that sold fresh seafood platters, local beer, and had tiki torches
and real palm trees adjacent to the open-air dining room.
She took in a deep breath to get the
rich taste of suntan oil, mixed drinks and fried fish into her nostrils. When
she choked on the stench of the undead moving silently toward her she sighed.
The machete strapped to her back was quietly unsheathed and she said good-bye
to her father and her vacation dreams once again.
About the Author
Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently
living in sunny Florida, where he writes when he's not watching zombie movies,
the Boston Red Sox and listening to Heavy Metal music...
"Highway To Hell" and "Dying Days" extreme zombie novellas are part of the growing Extreme Undead series of books/stories created by Armand...
He is also an editor for Rymfire Books, helping with several horror anthologies, including "Vermin" and the "State of Horror" series, as well as the creator and energy behind Carnifex Metal Books, putting out the "Metal Queens Monthly" series of non-fiction books about females into Metal...
You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com and e-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal: armandrosamilia@gmail.com
"Highway To Hell" and "Dying Days" extreme zombie novellas are part of the growing Extreme Undead series of books/stories created by Armand...
He is also an editor for Rymfire Books, helping with several horror anthologies, including "Vermin" and the "State of Horror" series, as well as the creator and energy behind Carnifex Metal Books, putting out the "Metal Queens Monthly" series of non-fiction books about females into Metal...
You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com and e-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal: armandrosamilia@gmail.com
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