Zombie Drabble #451: "Walkabout"

“Remember ‘Big Chuck’?”

It was two in the morning, they were on wall duty. Jerry looked up to see Alice pointing down at the footpath approach to the main gate. “Holy shit.” Tattered clothes, hair matted, missing half an arm, and zombified, but it was Chuck. It ambled forward, aimlessly, unconcerned; it hadn’t smelled them yet. “How long since he went missing?”

“Year and a half. Maybe a little more. I remember it was cold.”

“Iris will be happy.”

Alice looked at him aghast. “Happy?”

“Well, at least now she’ll know. Closure,” Jerry insisted. “Think she’ll want to shoot him?”

Zombie Drabble #450: "Patience"

Someone was yelling something in the distance, something indistinct. Maybe a call for help, maybe a threat: no way to know unless they got closer. Below him, in the shadow of the water tower, a zombie turned and started shuffling towards the yelling. Then a second, and a third. Soon more than half the crowd was moving off, crossing the road, disappearing between houses and into the treeline. The ones remaining were distracted, unable to choose between the new noise and the older scent they had been following. He’d have an opportunity, soon, if his luck held.

Keep yelling, motherfucker.

Zombie Drabble #449 "Flammenwerfer"

The only light was the flare they’d dropped, now sputtering and dying on the road a ways behind them, and she strained to make out movement ahead. He’d said to stay in the car, as if she’d ever, in a million years, have gotten out.

A line of flame appeared, at first just for an instant, and then again, swinging slowly across the road ahead, leaving a congregation of shambling figures writhing and burning in its wake.

From the back seat, her mother-in-law muttered in her usual judgmental tone, “And you gave him so much shit for buying that thing.”

Zombie Drabble #448: “People Tell Me Love, Love Is True”

She got up, carefully made her way to the window in the dark, looked out, sighed.

“Any lights anywhere?” Six hours. Phones dead, no internet anyway, can’t read, can’t watch tv. Already had sex twice. No air-con. He was bored and uncomfortable.

“There’s, like, a glow over past the river. But no lights. At least there’s a full moon.”

“I can’t believe it’s taking this long.” He rolled over onto his back, starfished to see if it would cool him off more.

“There’s people on the street.”

“What? In the dark? Doing what?”

“Just… standing. Or walking really slowly.”

“…What?”

Zombie Drabble #447 : “Gatekeeper”

This is crazy. This is crazy.

You know me, Frank, you… we used to live next door, Frank, we lived next door to you on Richmond Road. My wife is Isabelle. Frank. You have a dog, a big dog, like a St. Bernard or something, I don’t remember the dog’s name but my daughter walked him a few times. Hang on, there’s no need for… we had that minivan with the dent in the door. Remember? You offered to bang out the dent, Frank, do you remember?

They’re almost here, they’re… please, can you let us in? Frank, please. Frank.

Zombie Drabble #446: “Right-Of-Way”

Her voice was quiet, always quiet. “Is this a road, Daddy?”

“A kind of road. A railroad. A road for trains.” He didn’t like it, being hemmed in on both sides. “Keep alert.”

“Why do they… why do trains get their own kind of road?”

“Their wheels fit on the rails. See the rails?” He turned, pointed down. “No steering, nothing in the way, they can carry a lot and still go fast.”

“Oh. Okay.” She raised her bow, pulled, loosed an arrow past him. Ahead, a zombie he hadn’t seen dropped like a ragdoll. “Carry a lot of what?”

Fortification

We breached with a front-loader. It was just a fence, really. Reinforced, for sure, but ain’t no way it was gonna stop a front-loader going full tilt. They gave up without us even having to shoot nobody. We explained that there was a masonry supply place about a hundred yards away. Bricks as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of thousands of ‘em. Shit, maybe a million. We pointed to it. You could see it through the hole in the fence.

We made a deal to combine our groups, moved our shit in, repaired the fence. Then together we built the wall just inside the fence. Sometimes the horde gets through the fence, just by the weight of sheer numbers, and gets stuck between the fence and the wall, and we climb up on top the wall and jab ‘em through the top of the head with sharpened poles. Spears. You know.

Since then we only ever lost the one guy, Jerome. He fell between the wall and the fence, and there was a couple zombies still down in there from last time, and one of ‘em got him. Real shame. But, you gotta watch your step up there.

Zombie Drabble #445: “Spontaneity”

He woke to the weight of her against his hip and chest, of her hand over his mouth. Before his brain could process the noises he was hearing, she whispered into his ear, “Don’t make a fucking sound.”

At dusk they’d climbed up atop an eighteen-wheeler to lay out their sleeping bag; now a herd of undead were shuffling past them down the moonlit highway, an undulating chorus of moans and hisses. They listened, frozen, hearts pounding, until the noises grew few and distant.

Eventually her hand left his mouth, brushed down his chest, came to rest on his crotch.

Zombie Drabble #444: “Our Friend In The Lake”

Paulie drowned somewhere here, a few hundred yards out from the North shore, just rowed out, dropped himself into the water. We watched him go, yelling and pleading the whole time for him to come back.

I’m not sure if it’s possible for him to come back up. I don’t think they float, especially once they’re decayed enough that there’s no gasses trapped inside them. But I go out and check every so often, hoping he’s near enough the surface for me to reach with the boat-hook; I can’t stand the thought of him trapped in the murky darkness, forever.

Zombie Drabble #443 “Grounded”

“Mom.” She knocked again, softly, tried the knob again. Her voice was raspy, weak. “Let me out, Mom.”

Her mother leaned against the wall outside, eyes closed, exhausted. “I can’t, honey. Not yet. Just… not yet.”

“LET ME OUT!” The knocking turned to banging, the pleading to yelling, then  screaming, then muffled sobbing.

“I love you. I can’t let you out.” Her mother sat, back to the wall, head in hands. “Not yet. Not until we’re sure you’re ok. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I swear.”

The next morning, the knocking resumed, but slowly, accompanied by moaning.

Zombie Drabble #442 “Gauntlet”

At the other end of the hallway was the entrance to Shankton, a town entirely enclosed in an old brick factory complex. At his end, Frankie’s end, there was Frankie. In between about twenty-five zombies hung by the neck, feet just off the floor, beginning to sway back and forth from their weight shifting as they grasped in vain at him.

“I’ve gotta get through?”

“If you want in, yeah. We don’t want nobody who can’t deal,” a hidden voice called out. “Sorry, that’s the rules.”

People were getting worse; it hadn’t taken long. “Is there, like, a time limit?”

Zombie Drabble #441 “Smol Bean”

There were three of them, hissing and moaning and scratching at the windows of one particular car out of a Monday morning traffic jam’s worth of cars. “Somebody in there.”

Ritchie pushed back his cap. “Yep.”

They picked the zombies off, then — slowly, carefully — approached the car.

“C’mon out.” There was no response, no movement. Ritchie motioned him to go around the other side. “C’mon out of the car, it’s safe now.”

A head appeared, a little boy, maybe five. He peered at them, then knocked on the car window.

Ritchie shook his head, “I ain’t takin’ no fuckin’ kid.”

Zombie Drabble #440 “Human Resources”

“Sit down.”

He could hear the groaning, the scratching,  from somewhere in the darkness. “Listen—”

“You’re going to sit down, and you’re going to answer some questions. If we like your answers, we let you in, and you get to live. If we don’t like the answers, we don’t let you in, and you go back to taking your chances on the outside.”

“The zombies, what are—”

“If we think you’re lying,” there was a pause, a rattling of chains, the clink of a metal key being tapped on metal bars, “Even once, even a little, we open these cages.”

Zombie Drabble #439 “Roommates”

He was a shadow under the door, an indistinct rattle, a muffled slide of worn-out sole across bare floor; she sat with her back to him. “The people in the town have invited me to live with them again.”

Across the room, the window was open a crack, as it always was, to keep air flowing. From outside came sounds of a breeze ebbing and waning and birds chirping, and no traffic sounds at all.

“They say I can’t bring you.” She leaned her head back, closed her eyes. “Maybe after I’m there a while, I could sneak you in.”

Zombie Drabble #438 “Crow’s Nest”

“See anything?”

“Lights,” Mabel said, calling down in a stage whisper, “to the Northwest, maybe two miles. Looks like a school.” She had the binoculars, and was small and limber enough to climb up cell repeaters and water towers and utility poles to get a view of the way ahead. At dusk, she looked for lights.

“Come down.”

When she was back on the ground, she said, “Doesn’t look like a solar roof. Maybe they’ve got a generator? Lots of cars in the parking lot to syphon gas. Couldn’t see how many people…”

“We’ll go around. Too dangerous.”

She nodded.

Zombie Drabble #437 “Temperance”

He kept the shogun levelled at the screen door, positioned so that he could still see down the hall into the front room. “Anything?”

From the darkness of the basement came, “There’s a shit-ton of wine, man. Like, fuckin’ racks and racks. These people musta been alcoholics.”

A zombie was shambling across the backyard towards the sounds of their voices. “Grab a couple and let’s go.”

“A couple? Are you kidding? Come help me.”

“Time to go.”

“Fuck off, man, I’m gonna get fucked up.”

He walked over to the back door, propped it open, and left through the front.

Zombie Drabble #436: “The Socials”

“Remember Twitter?”

“What? Yeah.” He ran a hand over his eyes, his mouth, through his hair. He rolled over to face her, squinting at the firelight. “Waste of time.”

“You were following the wrong people. I told you that, like, three times. You followed people who were good at other things. You should have followed people who were good at Twitter.”

“What on Earth does it matter now?”

She sighed. “It doesn’t, I guess. I just…”

“What?”

“I almost broke up with you over that. I thought, ‘he can’t figure Twitter out, really?’. I figured we didn’t have a future.”

Zombie Drabble #435: “The New Guy In Town”

crack.

One of the distant figures went limp, mid-stride, and fell hard to the ground. He didn’t look up from the scope. “What’s my count?”

“Twenty-two.”

Someone whistled. “Two more and you’re tied with Hank.”

He chambered another round. “Who the fuck is Hank?”

“Old deputy Mayor. Lost him on a run two years ago. Good guy, always—”

crack.

Another figure spun in place, dropped to lie motionless. “Twenty-three”

“Anyway, Hank: he was always making sure the kids had sweets. You know, candy, stuff the other guys wouldn’t bother with.”

“Kids? What kids?”

A long silence followed.

crack.

“Twenty-four. Tied.”

Zombie Drabble #434 “Never Goes Out Of Fashion”

“Somebody help!”

Someone was in the hall, the hall outside the apartment, running back and forth, knocking on doors, yelling: a girl, young, panicked, desperate. He listened from the floor of his front closet between ski boots and suitcase-with-wheels.

“Please somebody! Help me!”

There was the old wooden bat, the one with A-Rod’s signature burned into it by a machine, the one his dad had given him when he turned ten, a million years ago in a world that still made sense. He grabbed it, clutched it in both hands.

He white-knuckled it as he listened to her being eaten.

Cry When It’s Over

Hide from the dead people. Keep hiding, even when they’re close. Run only when you have to. Always have an escape plan. Look for ways you can go because you’re little that they can’t because they’re big: gaps in fences, holes in walls, windows left partway open.

If you get cornered, slide down the storm drain and wait for night. Move away through the drain without splashing. Come out somewhere else.

Eat when you can, even if you’re not hungry. Food goes bad. If it smells bad, don’t eat it. Stuff that’s bad for you lasts longer. Drink when you can, even if you’re not thirsty. Don’t drink dirty water, sip the dew from the big leaves in the mornings.

Don’t cry. You make noise when you cry, you close your eyes when you cry, and your eyes can never be closed. Look around, be aware, know what’s coming. Survive.