Darlings of Decay
Copyright © 2013 All authors named in this book.
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Cover Art by Damon Za
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.
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Thank you for joining us on these tales of zombie horror. As you begin to read these stories, wrap your mind around this…
The world as we’ve known it has ended. No one, living or dead, can be trusted. Now, desperate times call for desperate measures, because every single day is a struggle to live. The gates of hell have opened and hope seems well beyond reach. But... there are still survivors, and through blood, sweat, and tears, they’ll fight to live in a world where tomorrow is never a guarantee.
Sit back as your favorite authors of zombie lit take you on a wild, horrifying ride that will leave you breathless. Come and meet the women who love to entertain you with their own unique versions of the zombie apocalypse.
CONTENTS
Tamara Rose Blodgett
Vanessa Booke
Chantal Boudreau
Laura Bretz
Tonia Brown
Catt Dahman
Mia Darien
CM Doporto
Jacqueline Druga
Dana Fredsti
Belinda Frisch
April Grey
Michelle Kilmer and Rebecca Hansen
Lori R. Lopez
Suzi M
Tara Maya
Shannon Mayer
Lyra Mcken
Cynthia Melton
Kristen Middleton
Chrissy Peebles
Jeannie Rae
Suzanne Robb
Julianne Snow
Rebecca Snow
Anna Taborska
Ally Thomas
C.A. Verstraete
A.R. Von
Annie Walls
Jen Wilde
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Tamara Rose Blodgett
Excerpt From:
Death Whispers
I am Caleb Hart, son of the first scientist to map the human genome back in 2010. Now, fifteen years later, all us kids (during puberty because we're so lucky) get to draw what's equivalent to a winning lottery ticket. What paranormal power would we have, would I have? It could be anything as benign as Empath, Telepathy, Pyrokenesis, Astral-Projection, and the real creeper, Affinity for the Dead, AFTD. New abilities kept cropping up, like an untended garden. The paranormal ball had begun to roll and it was all downhill from here. As long as I didn't get anyone's attention, I was down with that. I should think Science is the bomb, but it's not, it's a bomb alright-- right on my head.
In eighth grade, we're required to take pre-Biology. My teacher is enthusiastic, so there's never a dull moment.
Especially with me passing out all the time.
That's how it happened the first time. The frogs came in and I went out... like a light.
At least that was the first time I hadn't been able to ignore it anymore.
Xavier Collins had reined in his ranting about bees becoming extinct and other huge rage-topics on the environment, to delight in telling us our next experiment would be dissection.
I didn't have Mark “Jonesy” Jones in this class but my other best friend, John, was here, so not a total loss. Jonesy kept school in balance, making jokes at the expense of the teachers (very wise). John countered with keeping Jonesy from getting us in trouble (not always happening). The drag of it was the two kids that hated my guts in a steaming pile were in Biology.
Carson Hamilton and Brett Mason sat next to each other, never giving me a moment's peace about anything. Carson had everything anyone could want: money, looks (he's a mirror-lover) and parents that didn't care about anything he did. My parents had not caught the disease of indifference yet. Brett didn't have it so hot, but he was as miserable as Carson.
John sat down next to me with two pencils up his nose while Collins was at the whiteboard, discussing how to pin the frogs down.
Nice.
“Did ya make sure the erasers were in there first?” I asked him.
“Yeah, duh.” The pencils bounced as he spoke. For a smart guy, he had some weird ideas about self-entertainment. It was very “Jonesy” of him.
“You still buzzing?” he asked.
I looked at John. “Yeah, it's on and off.” I felt kinda defensive about this part, I was avoiding thinking about it myself, and didn't really want to talk about it.
“I've been thinking about that,” he said.
How he could think with pencils up his nose? A mystery. “Yeah?”
“I think you have the undead creeper, like that Parker dude,” John said.
That would be bad. “He's the one that could corpse-raise, right?” I asked.
John nodded.
Hadn't I just been thinking about how much that ability sucked? However, the rareness of corpse-raising might come in handy. Not likely to happen though.
“It would suck for you.”
Nice, John restating the obvious. Yeah, it would suck. I mean, what's so great about communicating with the dead, locating the dead? Any of that... ah, no. Nothing in it for me but weirdness.
“Government took him. Bye-bye... gone.” John made a fluttering motion with his hand like a bird flying away. The pencils kept bouncing in a distracting way.
I'd heard about that. Corpse-Manipulation, rare-much. Jeffrey Parker was the only recorded case.
“Why do you think?” I was interested for once, sometimes John would lose me in a tech-rant and it was all over.
“Are you shitting me? Dead people... come on.” I got an image of zombies with M-60s, interesting.
“No, think about it. They could get people raised and force them to do stuff. From a distance, they could look like they were alive, important people.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Presidents?”
“Rulers or whoever,” John said. “He was a five-point. He could do the whole tamale. I think the government exploits whatever they can; using whoever they can.”
I laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“I can't take you seriously. You look like a dumb-ass.” The pencils dangled indignantly inside each nostril, humiliated.
John pulled them out, checking the ends for gold.
Huh.
I'd been wondering why my head was buzzing. Now memories surfaced. When had the buzzing started exactly? What triggered it? Could John be right?
“Okay people, zip up here and pick up your trays. Your sterilized utensils should already be at your desks,” Collins said.
John went for our trays, minus the attractive pencils. I stared out the window, the splatters of rain causing rivulets that looked like gray streamers marring the glass.
I shoo
k my head, clearing fuzziness. I couldn't shake the buzzing, a dull noise that ebbed and flowed. I felt it today the strongest. As soon as I entered class, the buzzing increased, like whispers.
“Here you are. One frog for the both of us.” John plunked down a frog that had once been green but was a bone-gray now, staking pins gleaming under the LEDs.
That's when the screaming started.
The whole earth felt like it was swiveling on its axis, and I was on top. The whispering grew in volume until images flooded my head. There were marshes and swamps. A frog, in the bloom of its life, shiny with amphibian iridescence, leaped to a log, hoping to fool a small water moccasin close enough to take it.
(NO!)
Right behind you! I shouted in warning. But I couldn't be heard, these were images... memories.
A motor boat was closing in on the frog, getting ready to take it with a metal pole and loose net on its end. Caleb heard the frog's thoughts, strange predator must seek cover... noise... hurts...
(NO! NO!!!)
It wasn't the only frog with memories. Every cut my classmates made, a new flood of memories came. I realized through some dim sense that I was on my back on the Biology floor. Carson and Brett in the background wheezed with laughter.
“He bit it over a frog? Seriously?” Carson ranted.
Brett, not to be outdone caterwauled, “He's a total girl!”
Collins was moving his hand in front of my face, holding up fingers, but I was caught in the grip of the death memories, absorbing my consciousness. The last thing I remember was John's anxious face taking turns between telling the dumb-ass duo to shut up and seeing if I was gonna live. My vision became gray at the edges, a pinpoint of black expanding to clear my mind of everything and I knew no more.
CHAPTER 1
Trees surrounding the cemetery danced in the languid breeze of the mild spring night. I looked behind me at the pair of eighth grade boys who'd come to egg me on. They had discovered my secret: that I knew the dead, heard the dead.
Headstones glimmered like loose teeth in the moonlight, the whispering like a steady thrumming of white noise in my head. My hands grew clammy.
“Caleb, show them you're not a frickin' poser,” said Jonesy.
“I don't pose.” My thoughts raged against each other in contrary purpose. Proving to Carson and Brett that I had AFTD wouldn't keep them off my back completely, but it'd notch down their stupidity to something me and my posse could manage. That's where it was, managing their shit behavior.
I took a step through the high, Victorian-style gate, my foot touching its reluctant toe on hallowed ground.
The feeling of being forced pressed uncomfortably against my mind.
Crossing the threshold of sanctified ground, the whispering turned into voices. One voice whispered to me the strongest. I stopped feeling tentative and like an invisible string pulled, was drawn toward one of the gravestones, standing sentinel near the middle of the cemetery, glowing softly in the moonlight. I came to stand in front of the headstone which read: “Clyde Thomas, born 1900, died 1929.”
“Wake me...” it said.
“What?” I whispered.
It speaks.
“Wake me...” it repeated.
“Caleb, who are you talking to?” John asked, lack of understanding clear on his face.
My head swung in slow-motion as if through quicksand, moving in his direction, blood rushing in my ears and my heart beating thick and heavy in my chest. Everything became crystallized in that moment. John's frizzy hair and freckles stood out like measles. A microscopic chip lay like an imperfect shadow on the headstone, shining stark contrast to the white marble.
Something... something... was building, rising up as if underwater, rushing to the surface. I was supposed to finalize something, but what? The whispering of the corpse in the earth was so loud it drowned out John's words. John's mouth was moving but no sound was coming out.
What-the-hell? He was arguing with Jonesy, his teeth a pale slash against his dark face.
Flailing, Jonesy's hand suddenly connected with my face. My teeth slammed into my tongue and the taste of copper pennies filled my mouth. I leaned over and a drop of blood hung tremulously on my bottom lip, falling to the grave like a black gem.
Everything clicked into place, vertigo spinning the graveyard on its side as if it had been waiting for this moment. The ground rushed toward my face and I threw my hands out to brace my fall, fingers biting into damp earth. A clawed hand broke through the ground like a spear through flesh. Searching, it grasped my wrist, the bones pressing in a vise-like grip that captured my breath, the intense coldness of the grave lingering on its dead flesh.
The head of the corpse broke free of the ground, its shadowed gaze meeting mine, the hand releasing me. I scuttled backward, standing up, swaying, overcome with, excitement? Fear? I had done this thing and now, didn't know how to undo it. The corpse moved with purpose, pacing me as it used the undisturbed ground to leverage itself as another drop of my blood fell and landed with a dull plop on the corpse's forehead.
The zombie's gaze fixated on mine, it put a hand on its knee and began to push itself upright. Dull, lank strands of hair hung loosely from a scalp strung together by a tight mask of rotten sinew.
Jonesy had long since run out of the cemetery and was at a “safe” range from what the ground had disgorged.
He better get his ass back here. He couldn't get away with whacking me and not helping me with corpse-boy.
“Why have you awoken me?” The words sounded garbled, maybe there was some tongue in there?
Must not be rude, not my strongest point.
Out loud I said, “You asked me to.”
John was standing at my right, trying to mask a fine, all-over tremble. His freckles stood out on a pale face like beacons of fright.
“What the hell is this?” John asked.
He didn't really just ask that? John... duh.
The zombie looked at me with eyes that clung from threads of sinew; moving wetly in its sockets, sucking like a vacuum.
“Why have you woken me?” it repeated, shambling a step closer. The smell... wow. It rose like a torrent of rotting garbage. John clapped his hand over his nose, taking a step backward.
The corpse took another step closer.
“Got any brilliant suggestions?” I asked John, my eyes steady on the zombie, hoping like hell John would lend an intellectual hand.
“Do not have the Zombie Handbook handy,” John said, his eyes a tad wide.
Not helpful.
The corpse looked at me, head tilted, “You're just a boy... how could you know for what purpose you have disturbed my slumber?”
Uh-oh, coming up with an excuse, so not my thing.
“I didn't... mean to wake you up...” I fumbled out. I wasn't usually this tongue-tied but meeting a corpse in the flesh (ha-ha) stole my speech.
“You do not know what you would have of me? You use your life-force to waken me and yet... without purpose? Put me back,” he said thickly. His clothes hung in tatters and the smell was definitely old, dark coffin, not that I knew what that smelled like.
John's look clearly said, do something! I guess what I hadn't told my friends was that I had never thought that I could actually raise the dead. But here he was, standing before me in all his rotting glory.
Looking out amongst the teenagers collected outside the cemetery, “To whom much is given, much is expected. Put me back,” he said.
Adults were all the same, even dead, lecture, lecture.
“How?” I asked.
“You are the necromancer, boy, not I.” Again that quizzical brow over rotting facial countenance.
Interpretation challenge... but I was managing.
“A what?” I asked, surprisingly calm, for the first time, there were no whispers. Perfect, blessed silence filled my head. It was the most natural thing in the world; talking to the dead. Looking at the corpse, its eyeballs like inky marbles stared back at m
e with uncanny devotion.
“A diviner of the black arts, magic...” he replied.
All that time with the star in my basement, huh, right.
I could still taste distressingly metallic blood in my mouth. I was connecting dots here, but I had an epiphany, I could put it back with blood! Things had only gotten über-weird when I had my lip busted open by Jonesy. I looked back at the corpse, Clyde-- no longer feeling that sense of swimming power just underneath the surface. Now was not the time to get queasy with the dead. I needed to regain that essence, fast.
“Ah... hang on a minute,” I said to the corpse, who stared blankly back... ah-huh.
“John, give me your blade.”
“What the heck Caleb? What are you planning to do with this...” John said pointing his finger at the patient corpse, “...thing?” who was as immobile out of his grave as in.
“I figure my blood made it jump out of its grave, now I need some to put him back and you're going to help me,” I said in a one sentence rush.
John's face got paler, if possible. “Ah, we're good friends and all but no, not a good plan! We don't know that for sure anyway.” The logic-master was not feelin' it. Couldn't say I blamed him, me holding a knife and all.
“... here's the deal, let's do a little 'friendship blood bank' just for the sake of putting the dead guy back in his grave, eh?” I began tapping my foot on the disturbed mess of the grave. John would ante up the blood or this was gonna be a long damn night.
“What?” strained trust crowded his eyes.
“Just here, give me your forearm.” I placed the side of the blade on his forearm where it shone black in the pale moonlight. My left hand wrapped tight, steadying his flesh for puncture.
John took a deep breath,“Okay, but you're going to owe me, big time.” The whites of his eyes bulging.
I pressed the point of the blade against his arm until the pressure broke the skin. John sucked in a lungful, blood welled and I let up the pressure. The zombie's head jerked at the sight of the blood, causing the disturbing sound of neck bones popping.
Would I ever get used to that noise? I repeated the process with my own arm. Our identical wounds pressed together, I offered it to my zombie. I could feel somehow that he was mine, I knew it.
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