Death, Be Not Proud Read online

  Death, Be Not Proud

  Edited by Thomas A. Erb

  Dullahan Press

  Howell, NJ

  www.darkquestbooks.com

  Copyright © 2011 by Dark Quest Books

  All stories ©2011 by the individual authors

  ISBN (trade paper): 978-1-937051-14-3

  All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  All persons, places, and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Interior Design: Danielle McPhail

  Sidhe na Daire Multimedia

  www.sidhenadaire.com

  Cover Art: Thomas A. Erb

  For the love of all that is undead and sacred…

  why another zombie anthology?

  ….Why Not?!

  Why not? My excited, mad-about-zombies-mind didn’t even hesitate as I decided to create and edit an anthology full of amazing undead.

  I have often wondered why I am drawn to the walking, flesh and brain eating dead. I could write a ten page (or more) essay on “How I love you, o’ zombies…let me count the ways.” However, many other great writers and editors (John Skipp is the first to come to mind.) have done a far better job than I could ever hope to. I will just say that I know when I’m walking by a cemetery, day or night; I always get the same pervasive thought that someone, something is watching me. And when I walk on the soft grass of the graveyard, I swear that I can almost feel the soggy earth giving-way and my mind races as horrific images of rotted, hungry skeletal hands ripping and tearing at my feet and legs. Sparkling vampires, manic depressive werewolves and garden tool wielding wack-jobs don’t make me want to change my Levis like the mortality challenged do and the mere thought of being eaten alive by my Aunt Dodie however, (while I loved her and she was an amazing woman,) is not something this humble guy can bear the thought of. And yet… yes I can. That’s why I read dark and gory tales of zombies crawling out of their graves and feeding on the unsuspecting living. I have a feeling that you too, dear reader may often have that same overwhelming fear as you pass by, or through your local permanent vacation spot.

  I have been reading many of the great zombie authors for some time and the idea of working with as many of them as I could wrangle inspired me more. So, once I had the skeleton of the idea fleshed out, I went to Ambrotos Press and suggested the anthology and it was met with a rousing “we really dig the idea! Let’s do it!” So I set about hunting down my favorite zombie authors and what you now hold in your dirt stained, grave digger hands is the result of a lot of hard work, passion for the undead genre and with a little bit of luck tossed in for good measure.

  I hope you enjoy this collection. If you are anything like me…some of these fine stories will make you cringe, laugh, ponder your own mortality, or maybe, just maybe, shiver, and quicken your pace the next time you pass by your favorite cemetery. Have no fear dear reader, that wasn’t the sound of dragging footsteps or clawing of dirt behind you…No, you are safe.

  Read on and walk faster.

  —Thomas A. Erb

  Deep in Hell’s ½ Acre New York

  Acknowledgement

  I want to deeply thank all the great contributing writers who shared their dark, bloody, satirical tales of the walking dead. Your talents and precious time has made this zombie collection one that all zombie fans will need to add to their already stuffed bookshelves.

  It was an honor to have read your tales and I’m sure the readers will dig them as much as I did.

  You all did the flesh-eaters proud!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Unplugged / Gord Rollo

  Quality of Life / Joseph Mulak

  State of the Union / Joe McKinney

  The Elephant in the Room / Gregory Hall

  The Great VüDü Linux Teen Zombie Massacre / Lucy Snyder

  Surprise / Rick Hautala

  Deep Throat with Zombies / Steven Shrewsbury

  Nuke Love / Scott Christian Carr

  Dead Man and the Sea / David Dunwoody

  Where the Dead Go to Die / Sheldon Higdon

  Cindy’s Condition / Skip Novak

  Bone Manor Revisited / Dave Brockie

  The Wind Through the Fence / Jonathan Maberry

  UNPLUGGED

  Gord Rollo

  Get up.

  On your feet, dammit!

  Hey, where you going? Don’t leave me.

  Please.

  At least shoot me again…

  When the first zombies broke out of quarantine, and I saw those grainy video clips on the news, I thought it was a joke. I mean really, a dozen pale-faced dudes in combat fatigues twitching, moaning, and walking stiff-legged like cartoon Frankensteins from the Trenton Air Force base. Ridiculous. This was Ontario, man, Canada for christsake! Had to be some sort of shitty new reality series.

  I flipped stations, trying to find the ball game and damned if similar film footage wasn’t being run over on CNN. The infected men and women were attacking anyone in their path, the epidemic spreading faster than the police and armed forces could contain. It was something in the zombie’s bite—blood or saliva maybe—no one had any answers. Over the next six days I sat glued to the television as the violence spread. Every network broadcast a scrolling message at the bottom of the screen that the way to kill zombies was to put a bullet in their brains. Trouble was, most peace-loving Canadian’s—myself included—didn’t own a gun.

  The Canadian government panicked, sending out military, police, and even civilian forces to shoot zombies on sight. The President of the United States assured us help was on the way, but I had a bad feeling it was already too late. The zombies were moving South, and West into Quebec, devouring and assimilating as they went. Nothing short of Armageddon was going to stop them.

  I was still watching CNN, totally absorbed by the spectacle of the U.S. Paratroopers dropping out of the sky by the thousands, when three female zombies came through my front window, busting the jagged glass with a reckless indifference to the injuries they inflicted upon themselves.

  With nothing to defend myself with, the trio of women took me down easily. The attack, brutal and bloody as it was, ended quickly and never really hurt. I was in shock, screaming, shaking, trying so hard to cling to life I didn’t have time to register much pain. I floated in a haze for several minutes, feeling feverish, strange, numb all over. When I opened my eyes again, the women were gone.

  I climbed to my feet, wondering if I was one of them now. Unsure, I walked outside and ran straight into the barrel of a rifle carried by my neighbor, Charlie Grant. I tried to tell him to put the gun down, but my mouth wasn’t working right and nothing came out except a low moan. Charlie smiled and pulled the trigger.

  They’re all wrong: the government, the soldiers, CNN, even Charlie. Zombies aren’t mindless corpses and bullets in the brain don’t kill us. It just leaves us disconnected from our bodies, unplugged, trapped in the prisons of our slowly rotting flesh.

  Can anyone hear me? Charlie?

  Get up.

  On your feet, dammit!

  I’m getting hungry…

  * * *

  GORD ROLLO was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, but has lived in Southern Ontario, Canada since 1971. His short stories and novella-length work have appeared in many pro and semipro publications throughout the genre and he is currently at the en
d of a four book novel contract with Leisure Books in New York City. His novels include:The Jigsaw Man, Crimson, Strange Magic, and Valley Of The Scarecrow. Besides novels, Gord edited the acclaimed evolutionary horror anthology, Unnatural Selection: A Collection of Darwinian Nightmares. He also co-edited Dreaming of Angels, a horror/fantasy anthology created to increase awareness of Down’s syndrome and raise money for research. He’s just finished work on his next novel tentatively entitled The Translators and can be reached through his website at www.gordqrollo.com.

  QUALITY OF LIFE

  Joseph Mulak

  The man who came into my office was obviously upset. Of course, everyone who came to see me was. If they weren’t, there’d be no reason for them to procure my services.

  This guy was middle-aged, a little on the short side, balding and wore thick glasses. I got the impression he was pretty nervous when he came in. His voice was shaking as he greeted me.

  “Have a seat, Mr…”

  “Edwards,” he said, taking the chair directly across from my desk. “Nathan Edwards.”

  “I got your name from my friend, Mi—”

  “Won’t do any good to give me his name. I’ll neither confirm nor deny that I know the person. I protect the identity of all my clients. I’m sure you understand, considering the nature of my business.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. And of course, the same will go for you as well. No one will ever know you were here.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  He seemed to relax a little, which was good. After all, my job was pretty much to provide peace of mind to my clients. I liked to think I was good at my job.

  The sign on my door read “Tom Hutchens: P.I.” It was only half-true. I kept my business private, but there was no investigating involved at all. Since what I did wasn’t exactly legal, I needed some sort of front, and P.I. was just as good as any.

  “So, I need to know the situation we’re dealing with.”

  “It’s my mother…” he trailed off as tears began to form in his eyes. I waited for him to regain his composure so he could continue. This wasn’t an unusual situation. Most of my clients were in a very emotional state when they came to me.

  “Take your time,” I told him.

  “She’s in one of those asylums. I couldn’t look after her myself anymore. Lord knows I tried. I just…I just can’t bear to see her there anymore. It isn’t the place for her.”

  “I understand, Mr. Edwards. Your mother, is she here in town?”

  He nodded, unable to speak because he was choking up again.

  “And is it safe to assume her last name is the same as yours?”

  Again, he nodded.

  “Okay then. That’s all I need. The only thing left is the matter of payment.”

  “Yes…I….well, I came to you because I heard not only were you the best, but you did the work…humanely, and that you were also the…”

  “Cheapest?” I finished for him.

  “Uh…yeah.”

  I smiled at him. PR was a big part of my job. “Mr. Edwards, I didn’t get into this business for the same reason most of my competitors did. I believe in what I do, and I believe I am providing a valuable service. The fact is I do it because it needs to be done and because it’s the right thing to do.” I paused for a brief moment to let that sink in. “I don’t do this for the money. Hell, I’d operate for free if I could afford to, but unfortunately, one needs to make a living.”

  “Of course. I understand that completely. It’s just that…well…”

  “Money’s a little tight right now.”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. As you said before, I’m the cheapest around.” Actually, I’d said it, but I didn’t feel the need to split hairs. “The reason for that is because I don’t believe you and your loved ones should suffer because you’re not as well off as some others. It’s also because, like I said, I believe in what I do. I don’t think people should suffer if they don’t have to.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “So, I try to be as accommodating as I can. I’m willing to work on a payment plan, providing you can give me something up front. Not that I don’t trust you, but even though I want to help you, like I said, I need to make a living.”

  He stared past me, as though deep in thought.

  “And I only take cash.”

  “Umm…I can give you Two hundred cash right now.”

  “That’ll do,” I told him. “How much can you afford per month?”

  “I don’t know…maybe four hundred?”

  “You don’t sound too sure of yourself. Let’s make it two-fifty. I think that might be more within your budget.”

  Again, he nodded. I was pretty sure he’d start bawling again if he tried to talk. This was never easy for anyone. If it were, I wouldn’t be dealing with those people. I was here to ease suffering, not help get rid of those who were treated as burdens. I didn’t operate that way.

  He gave me the cash and left. I did my best to reassure him his mother wouldn’t feel a thing, and it would be done by tomorrow night. Even though Edwards seemed calmer as he left, I knew he was second-guessing himself. Understandable. This was a grey area, and no one was ever one-hundred percent sure they had made the right decision. No amount of reassuring I did was going to change that.

  I watched him leave, my heart breaking. I knew exactly what he was going through. I knew what it was like to suffer the way he was suffering. It was hard when a loved one turned. They looked at you as if they didn’t know who you are anymore. The blank stare they gave you, the occasional attacks, it got hard to deal with. Which was why the asylum seemed like a good choice at first.

  It didn’t take many of them long before they came to see me.

  I knew the way to the asylum well enough I could have driven there with my eyes closed. Probably about ninety percent of my business was there.

  I didn’t necessarily enjoy my job. I mean, by definition, I suppose I was a hitman. That bothered me a lot. I never liked to think of it as killing people for money. Some people didn’t. They never thought of the victims as “people” and I always figured it was to help them feel better about what they did. I couldn’t rationalize that way. I think because my situation was different from most in my line of work.

  The plague, as it had come to be known, started a few years ago. Scientists are still trying to figure out why it started. No one knows for sure, though everyone seems to have a theory.

  All anyone knows for certain is people just started coming back from the dead one day.

  And of course, the government reacted to all the brain-dead corpses walking around just like you’d expect them to. They gave the order to shoot them on sight.

  A special task force was instituted in Aspen Falls specifically to deal with this epidemic. They drove around shooting the things in the head. Most of the cops assigned to this duty loved it. They got to kill things all day. For most of them, it was heaven.

  There was one cop who hated it. He did it because he was told to do it, and that was it. He would rather have been back on the beat writing tickets if he could. Unfortunately, Zombie Duty—as it came to be known—wasn’t voluntary. You just got assigned to it.

  It was that cop who discovered something no one else picked up on.

  It happened during one of their raids. There were more zombies than usual in the group, and the cops weren’t able to dispatch them as quick as usual. They were on the streets, firing at anything moving, and some of the zombies were getting a little closer than they would have liked.

  So this particular cop, when one zombie got about a foot away from him while he was shooting at another mobile corpse, turned to see this other one in his face. Instinct made bring up the butt of his shotgun—since those seemed to work best for blowing apart the head and disabling them—and rammed him in the face. The zombie stumbled backward, far enough for the officer to aim the muzzle of the shotgun at
it. There was a slight moment of hesitation. Just enough for the cop to see something in his prey’s eyes. Fear.

  It was at that moment this cop realized something. These things weren’t brain-dead after all. Something happened to them to make them appear that way, but this “thing” had felt the pain of the gun smashing into its face, and right now, it was feeling fear.

  Without another thought, the cop dropped his gun and walked away, unable to bring himself to kill any more.

  Of course, there were the feelings of guilt that came with the knowledge he had been killing people all this time. These feelings led the cop to start drinking and life for him went downhill from there.

  It didn’t take long for the media to get involved. Once it was discovered why one the members of this task force had simply walked off the job in the middle of a raid, people began to get involved. Scientists wanted to figure out how it was zombies could appear to have no brain functions and rely only on their animal instincts, while apparently still having cognitive thought. People also formed groups in order to preserve the rights of zombies, since it was now evident they indeed did possess some sort of cognitive ability. These groups staged protests, demanding zombies be treated like people and given equal rights.

  It being an election year, the government caved in to the demands and zombie-ism became a form of mental illness.

  The families of those infected did their best to care for their loved ones at home, but this rarely lasted very long. Some places opened up homes for zombies and colleges even began to offer diploma programs specifically designed to train people who were willing to work in such homes.

  Other cities with mental hospitals—such as Aspen Falls— devoted a ward or two to care for the living dead.