Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  ***

  The End

  Laura Bretz has been immersing herself in fantasy lands, apocalyptic settings and all things impossible since she was a child. Pretending to survive in a post-apocalypse world set fire to her imagination and teaming up with Kirk Allmond to co-author the "What Zombies Fear" series finally gave her an outlet to express and bring her characters to life.

  Graduating from college with a focus in interior design has given her an excellent eye for detail. Combined with her love of painting, that attention to detail allows Laura to create vivid pictures with words.

  When she is not obsessing over tenses and punctuation, Laura is usually spending time with her dogs Marty and Teddy, painting, or singing with her local Sweet Adeline's International chorus in south-central Pennsylvania.

  Laura’s first solo novel project, “The Book of Kris” (www.thebookofkris.com) is coming along well. She also has a high fantasy project in the planning stages, and continues to co-author books in the What Zombies Fear (www.WhatZombiesFear.com) universe with Kirk Allmond. If you’d like to find out more about Laura and the status of her various projects, please join her on her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/LauraBretzAuthor.

  Books in the What Zombies Fear universe:

  What Zombies Fear: A Father's Quest (2011) - 1st in the WZF Series

  What Zombies Fear: The Maxists (2011) - 2nd in the WZF Series

  What Zombies Fear: The Gathering (2012) - 3rd in the WZF Series

  What Zombies Fear: Fracture (2012) - 4th in the WZF Series

  What Zombies Fear: Declaration of War (2013) - 5th in the WZF Series

  What Zombies Fear: LEGION (Due August 2013)

  Short stories set in the What Zombies Fear universe:

  Victor Tookes Adventures: The Farmer’s Daughter

  The Ballad of Ryan Fullerton

  Other Short Stories (As Laura Kirk)

  Will of the Dead

  To purchase any of Laura’s books in any format, please see visit www.whatzombiesfear.com/library for a complete listing of all available retailers.

  Tonia Brown

  Bob

  Bob Fletcher never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the bunch. Nor did he want to be bright. At best, Bob tried to be a little less dim than the very dimmest, which kept him from being cast aside but also kept him from being called upon to shed light on anything. He considered the weakness of his character the strength of his character. Too feeble to rely on, but not so unreliable that he couldn’t handle small tasks. Granted, the task wasn’t too big.

  Or required too much thought.

  Or any actual physical labor.

  Bob had made a fine art of this labor avoidance. For twenty-six years, seven months and three weeks, he had dodged, ducked and narrowly skidded past any real work. Especially at work. On a professional level, this left him as the assistant to the assistant manager of the office supply department for Sutter and Son’s Inc. And that was after eight years with the firm. This might have depressed anyone else in his place, to know that so many years of dedication had produced so little result. But no, Bob was happy being a nobody. A nobody was neither the squeaky wheel, nor the grease, and thus no one noticed him sliding through life. And when no one noticed you, they couldn’t lay you off, or size you down, or zip you up.

  Bob’s pitiful office, the one he shared with the assistant manager, was on the second floor of the Sutter Building, which meant he was one of the first to die when the zombies attacked that bright November morning.

  Becoming a zombie wasn’t much of a career change for the lazy slob in Bob. At first he worried that being dead, or rather undead, would require some effort on his part. But no, he quickly found that all he had to do was lurch about, follow the faster fellow undead folks, let them do the hard work of actually taking down the living prey, then join in the feast afterwards. It seemed zombies were less hung up on sharing or hoarding than living folks were.

  Hording, undead Bob thought. Zombies like to horde, not hoard.

  Bob had a lot of thoughts lately. More than he used to. And a lot more than he supposed a dead man, or rather undead man (he just couldn’t get quite used to that) should have. But who was he to question the ways of the world? One moment he’s eating a hot ham and cheese at his desk, the next he’s dead as a can of said ham. One minute he was living his normal office life, and the next he was dead. Or rather undead.

  Office life, undead Bob thought. Office unlife is more like it.

  And the more he thought about it, the more life as a zombie resembled life in the office. This mindless shambling from place to place with no clear objective. Taking directions from the lead zombies as they consumed everything in sight. Eating what was left, castoffs and scraps, while crawling over the carcasses of your enemies on your way to the top of the heap. But Bob was used to leftovers, as he usually bought a big takeout meal from one of the many local food chains at the beginning of the week, then ate off the thing until it started to smell a bit. And even then he might hang on a day or two longer to keep from having to talk to the takeout guys again.

  So why did it bother him? This new undead life of his? It wasn’t much different from the old one. He had spent a lifetime of being pretty much everything he was now. So why, now that he had everything as easy as he could ever want it, was he not happy? Bob knew he wasn’t happy because when he was happy he had a very satisfied feeling all over, from head to toe, especially in certain tender regions. And even considering that his all over was missing an arm, and his right ear lobe, and a handful of teeth, and most of his intestinal tract, Bob was still sure that the all over left to him wasn’t feeling satisfied.

  He felt, in fact, very, very, empty.

  Despite the three men he ate just under an hour ago.

  “Can zombies be happy?” undead Bob asked, of no one in particular. This of course came out as a strained series of moans and grunts, which scared the beejeebus out of a teenager hiding in a trashcan on which Bob was resting his left elbow. But Bob ignored the trembling can in favor of turning his rotten mind to his dead dilemma. Or rather undead. (He really needed to get used to that!)

  Bob tapped the can as he pondered the makings of a zombie’s mind. What made the average zombie tick? And in this makeup, where there was rage and pain and hunger and hunger and more hunger. And hunger. And even more hunger. Did he mention hunger? Because hunger should be on that list, preferably at the head of the list, just after hunger. Wait, where was he? Oh yes, and in this makeup filled with various emotions, one of which was definitely hunger, could zombies feel happiness?

  How about joy?

  Delight?

  Arousal?

  Ugh, it was probably best not to contemplate that one. Bob shook the gruesome images of nude undead ladies—most missing their vital naughty bits thanks to his warped sense of worthlessness—from his mind and wondered if perhaps a handy catchphrase would help him get a handle on what he had become and why it irked him so much.

  I lurch, therefore I am?

  No, that just seemed silly.

  I am zombie, hear me groan?

  That was even worse.

  Give me liberty or give me … no, that wouldn’t work in this case.

  It was no use. Bob had spent twenty-six years, seven months and three weeks avoiding this kind of brainstorming, so diving into it headfirst wasn’t effective for him. And that’s when Bob realized what was wrong with his new unlife, aside from his being so very, very dead.

  He missed the challenge.

  For twenty-six years, seven months and three weeks he had avoided everything ever handed to him by everyone he ever met. He avoided his mother and her constant nagging about him never amounting to anything at the firm. He avoided making friends, because friends wanted to rely on you, and that was the last thing he needed. He even avoided baths when he could, which probably helped with the whole no friends thing when one thought about it.

  But the point was this: it was work to avoid work.

>   Work he missed now that it was gone. He always thought of himself as a lazy slacker, but how was he to realize there was such an art in knowing just what to say or do when the possibility of real work arose in his life? And now? Now all he had to do was follow the horde and eat when they ate and moan when they moaned and lurch when they lurched.

  We all lurch to the beat of a different heart?

  No, that was almost embarrassing!

  The challenge of avoiding the challenges of life was gone, and with it, so was Bob’s happiness.

  Perhaps, undead Bob thought, this is why zombies eat people, because the dead are jealous of the living. Perhaps consuming the flesh of those alive is just an empty attempt to make myself whole again.

  Now there was an idea! It didn’t explain the unending hunger, of course, but philosophy wasn’t supposed to explain everything, just some things. The important things. And Bob couldn’t think of anything more important than himself.

  Shuffling along with this new philosophical idea taking root in his rotting brain, Bob began to contemplate just how he could return to his previous state of bliss. Bob had loved his life. Most folks didn’t, but Bob sure did. And he knew he loved it, because now that he was undead, he missed it. He didn’t know at the time how much he loved his life. But who does? The whole thing was very much like not realizing how often you use a body part until it gets injured. Or goes missing. And since he was now missing a whole arm, Bob was pretty sure he qualified as an expert on that.

  What was a depressed zombie to do?

  There were no powers to be to fight. There was no head office at which to file a complaint. There wasn’t even a random sacking or system-wide layoff to look forward to. One didn’t get fired from being undead.

  Fired, undead Bob thought. Ready? Aim? Fire!

  That was it. There lay the solution to his problem. If being this dead was too simple, then there was only one answer for it. He had to get deader. He had to get dead for realsies. It was going to be a challenge, perhaps even involving real work, but he thought that maybe, just this once, he was up to the task. There was just one problem he could see with the whole idea.

  Bob was going to need help to re-kill himself.

  He knew—from years of watching movies and reading books and just some inherent awareness that came with the job of being undead—that the only way to die this time was going to include a hole in his head big enough to drive a truck through. On a normal day, he might be able to accommodate himself. (After all, he spent a lifetime handling his own head, of both varieties.) But here lately, Bob was feeling, well, a little shorthanded. As a result, he knew that he wouldn’t have the strength required to end himself. Besides, what if another zombie saw him re-kill himself? It might start a movement, and then he would re-die knowing that his unique effort was for naught.

  Why buck the trend and re-kill yourself if every other zombie was going to do the same darned thing?

  He had to act fast, right now in fact. Bob moved along, picking up his pace from lurch to stagger, keeping his one good ear and both good eyes open for any signs of life that was willing to fight back. Maybe someone with a shotgun or a machete. Or maybe even a sexy, nubile, half-naked Amazonian with a machine gun and a thing for dead guys. Yeah. That would be nice. A nice, sexy way to die a second time. It would be much better than the way he died the first time: as the mid-morning snack for some zombified postal worker with a penchant for earlobes.

  Bob got excited as he groaned and staggered and sought out his Amazon Queen to do him in. But he knew it wasn’t just a living person with a weapon he needed; it was privacy too. He needed somewhere off the beaten path, so other zombies wouldn’t see him willingly lay down his undead life. This was going to take some time, but that was okay, because he quite literally had all the time in the world. He’d searched high and low, deep and wide, and several other clichéd phrases about distances, when, after several hours of lurching, he came across a pair of teenage boys hiding at the end of a dead-end alley (how apropos!) with a single rifle between them. He knew they had a rifle because one of the kids fired it at him as soon as he saw Bob.

  Fired, and missed.

  “Hurry up, Randall,” one said.

  “Shut up, Jerry!” the other one said.

  “Reload! He’s going to attack!”

  “What do you think I’m doing? It takes a second, okay?”

  “We don’t have a second. Kill it!”

  To a zombie, this conversation was tantamount to a dinner bell. Bob’s undead belly grumbled at the prospects of easy pickings. He moaned and lurched ahead, his stomach on autopilot, while his mind continued to mull over his little problem.

  Wait! his undead brain said. This is what you’re looking for, Bob! Let them reload and shoot you. It’s either this or wander around for another couple of hours, and who wants to do that? That sounds like work!

  At the thought of this four-letter word, Bob stopped, arms poised for rending, teeth mid-gnash. Yes, yes this was what he was looking for, a weapon and a living person to fire the weapon. So there he stood, mid-lurch, waiting for the kid to reload and shoot him.

  “What’s it doing?” one kid asked.

  “I don’t know,” the other said. “But I’m not going to find out.”

  The second kid, now having reloaded, lifted the rifle and fired at Bob. And somehow, at almost point blank range, firing at a single unmoving target, with no crosswind or interference, the kid still missed. Was the weapon old? Was the kid a moron? Why couldn’t it be both? Bob panicked, wondering what he was going to do now. Should he eat them? If he did, how long would it take to find another armed and isolated person?

  The slacker in Bob kicked in and took care of him.

  As if hit, he grabbed his chest, groaned and teetered. Then Bob fell down—well, it was more like a slump to the ground—and there he did his best to hold still. He hoped, prayed, that the kids would make sure the zombie—he—was truly dead before they scampered away.

  “Did you hit him?” one kid asked.

  “Of course I did,” the other said.

  “It didn’t look like you hit him.”

  “He fell down, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe you should shoot him again.”

  “Why waste the bullets?”

  “Yeah, but in that movie they said to double-”

  “That was a movie! Who has the gun right now? I’m not wasting the ammo. That thing is dead. D-E-D. Dead. Now stop harping on about it and light up another spliff. I lost my buzz killing that thing.”

  Bob rolled his undead eyes. That explained a lot. End of the world, and the stoners were still hiding out in an alleyway to smoke. Well, morons or not, they had his end in hand. He gave his leg a little twitch, just to assure them that he wasn’t quite as dead as they hoped he was. Or as dead as he wished to be.

  “There!” one kid shouted. “It moved.”

  “No it didn’t,” the other said. “Those are just aftershocks.”

  “After what?” Bob asked, which of course came out as a low groan.

  “It groaned!” the first kid shouted.

  “No it didn’t,” the second said. “It’s just gas.”

  “Gas?”

  “Sure. When a person dies, all the gas caught up in the body releases at the same time. My dad was a mortician. He told me all about it.”

  Gas indeed. These kids were starting to sound more like lunch and less like his deliverance. Bob groaned again, just to prove his undeadness.

  “It groaned again!” the first kid shouted.

  “Did it?” the second asked.

  “Yes! Now will you please shoot it?”

  “No.”

  Great gravy! What did a corpse have to do to get shot in this town? Bob rolled over and sat up, facing the two as he let out an extra-spooky, gut-rattling moan that meant something along the lines of, “Just shut up and shoot me already!”

  “Arrgh!” the first kid screamed.

  The other kid didn’t
yell. Instead, he fired his rifle and missed yet a third time. Too high and too wide he fired, scattering buckshot all across the alleyway behind Bob. This kid couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with a bull. Even if the bull was less than an inch from the barn and all the boy had to do was nudge it. Bob slumped where he sat, frustrated and hungry and tired and hungry and hungry and hungry. And hungry. Boy was he ever hungry. What was he going to do now?

  “What’s it doing now?” one kid asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the second, “I’m trying to reload.”

  “Who brings a single-cartridge buckshot rifle for defense against zombies?”

  “Better than no gun at all.”

  “With the way you shoot, it’s about the same.”

  The armed kid aimed his now-loaded weapon at his companion. “You’re lucky I’m trying to save ammo.”

  “No, I’m lucky you’re a lousy shot.”

  Bob growled, to remind the kids they were lucky he hadn’t eaten them. Yet.

  The first kid turned the gun on Bob. Good, that was a start. Now if there were a way to guarantee that the kid wouldn’t miss. This time, the kid didn’t fire right away, and that was good too. At least he was taking his time, measuring his shot. Perhaps, fingers and intestines crossed, the boy wouldn’t miss.

  “Look at it,” the armed kid said.

  “I am looking!” the unarmed kid yelled. “Now shoot it!”

  “I mean look, it’s just sitting there.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just sitting there. Why is it just sitting there?”

  “Maybe you stunned it with your last shot. Finish it off. Put it out of its misery.”

  Finally! A word of wisdom from Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.

  The armed kid shrugged away his worry and tried to aim his piece at Bob. And from where Bob was seated, he could tell the shot would once again go too high. So, to help the kid out—and not to mention save himself a whole lot of work trying to find another armed and isolated pair of idiots—he reached up and grabbed the barrel of the gun and pressed the end of it tight against his forehead. There was no way the kid could miss now. Bob closed his eyes and waited for the blessed end. The real end. The final end. All the kid had to do was pull the trigger. Just pull the trigger and that would be it. Just pull the trigger.