Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  Of course, my mother was dead, and she would never be able to see my current state. She had been in the first round of the infected and they had disposed of her and hundreds of others before they had a chance to spread the disease. That is what they called being zombified in the beginning. They called it a disease.

  As I continued to drag myself across the parking lot, I wondered how things could have been different.

  Chapter 1

  The Longest School Day

  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, and it was the age of foolishness….” The teacher was reading the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities while I was attempting to construct a note to my best friend, Ellen, about how good Brett Nathan’s hair looked that morning. He was the love of my twelfth grade life. Having just turned seventeen, I was now a woman. It was time to make my move. I was getting up the nerve to ask him out, but right now I needed to tell Ellen how fantastic he looked when he got out of the car that morning and the sun hit his perfectly shaped coif.

  Horror filled me as I felt the paper slip from beneath the pen I was writing with. I looked up into Ms. Hamrick’s stern eyes, behind impossibly large glasses, and knew that my life was over. She was not happy with my note writing, and I knew for a fact she loved to read notes out loud. I prepared myself for the embarrassment of my innermost desires being revealed to a classroom full of Neanderthals.

  She pursed her lips, which only made the fact that she had a hairy upper lip stand out. This woman had never seen a wax strip or a pair of tweezers in her life. I found myself momentarily mesmerized by the amount of hair in between her very unkempt eyebrows. The look of bliss on her face meant I was in for a big humiliation.

  “Well, Ms. Williams,” here it came, “while I am sure that Ms. Davis desperately needs to know that Mr. Nathan is way hotter than Leo, with an ass you could just cling to; we have a book to read through. Start at the third paragraph.” She walked back to the front of the classroom, as the idiots around me erupted into laughter, and I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  I pulled my dark brown hair around my face to hide. I was thankful I had opted to wear it down that day. Too bad it was summer and I was wearing my favorite baby blue tank top instead of a sweatshirt. I wished the worst things ever on my teacher as I began to read from the book. I was just thankful Brett was not in the classroom to hear that display of teenage puppy love. How ridiculous it sounded when she read it out loud that way. There was no doubt in my mind it would get to Brett. I felt like the bathroom would be as good a place as any to eat my lunch today.

  I stumbled through the third paragraph, my face burning with embarrassment. The smug look on the teacher’s face made me angry, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  Ellen gave me a sympathetic look when Ms. Hamrick finally called on someone else to read. I shrunk down in my seat and willed time to go faster.

  I looked at my oversized, white Fossil watch and saw the time was five until two. One more class for the day and I could go home and relax with my favorite book.

  When the bell finally rang, I rushed out of the classroom, to my locker, as fast as I could. Ellen was there shortly after and I rolled my eyes at her as I slammed the locker shut. I jammed my hands in my distressed dark jeans and looked dejected. I was glad I had worn my favorite pair of tennis shoes, with the pink laces, so I could make a quick get-away if I saw Brett coming.

  “Ms. Hamrick is a mean old witch.” I was angry and taking it out on the teacher was the best thing I knew to do.

  “She is, and that was beyond embarrassing.” Ellen lowered her voice to a whisper. “You wrote me about his butt.” She tilted her head and we both giggled at her statement.

  I sighed loudly and hoped like hell people would just forget about it, and then something amazing happened. An announcement, from the principal, came over the speakers telling everyone to get into a classroom and lock the doors. The school would be on lockdown until further notice. Ellen and I locked eyes, standing still for a minute, not sure what we should do.

  Panic ensued, and there was talk of a shooter in the building, or some type of wild animal; no one knew what was going on. Of course, Ms. Hamrick’s classroom was the one we were closest to, so we all got ushered inside.

  I was horrified to see that not only were most of the kids I had just experienced the single most humiliating moment of my life with were there, but so was Brett. He must have been caught in the group of students Ms. Hamrick pushed into her classroom. He caught me staring at him and flashed an adorable smile. His teeth could be the stars of a tooth paste commercial. Getting out of my head, I pulled my gaze away from him, knowing I had stared too long. I thought the day could not possibly get any worse, but I could never predict how wrong I was about that.

  I checked my watch and it was almost three o’clock. An hour had gone by and we still hadn’t heard anything from the principal. We were all supposed to be quiet and Ellen and I were writing notes back and forth to pass the time.

  I squinted at her chicken scratch across the page. Brett is in here.

  I wrote her back. Duh, I am not blind; I see that.

  Just then, a guy caught my eye outside the classroom window. The blinds had been pulled shut, but I could see him through the cracks on the side. He looked bloody and his movements seemed slow. He reminded me of an ant that had just been stepped on, the way he jerked almost as if it were painful to move.

  I stared for a minute before I drew attention to him, trying to figure out what he was doing. I raised my hand and watched Ms. Hamrick look at me and look back down. Why was she acting like that?

  I nudged Ellen. “Look, something is wrong with that man.”

  The clothes he wore looked torn and his shirt was hanging open. I wondered if he had come from the street and been in some kind of accident. His skin was a little gray-looking and his cheeks were sunken in like he had been hungry for a while.

  Putting my hand back down, I watched him walking slowly towards the classroom. The look on his face was scary and his eyes stared straight ahead. I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think I saw him blink. He kept coming at the same steady pace like it was difficult for him to walk.

  He didn’t stop when he got to the window; he pressed his face up against it and opened his mouth wide, revealing blood inside. There was definitely something wrong with this guy, and I was scared. He started to bang on the window of the classroom, and I began to scream.

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  Author Bio:

  Emily Walker loves creating worlds and stumbling around in them. She writes under her name and the pen name Lyra Mcken. She is constantly losing her chap-stick, and has an obsession with the color pink. Currently a resident of the mountains and loving the view she writes mostly paranormal fiction, and horror. Her small family consists of her red bearded other half, a rat terrier named Rebel, and a cat called Mr. Creepy.

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  Website – http://www.authoremilywalker.com

  Blog – http://www.selfpublishordie.com

  Review site – http://www.reviewsfrombeyondthebook.blogspot.com

  Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/authoremilywalker

  Twitter- http://www.twitter.com/authorewalker

  Cynthia Melton

  ZOMBIE AWAKENING

  (A Zombie Short Story of what happened before and during The Darkening)

  A Prequel

  By Cynthia Melton

  1

  “Lock it down!” Rachel Moore raced down the halls of the government facility building. “Meteors are striking all around us. If that thing gets out, we’re all dead.”

  She pulled a card key from her lab jacket. If she could destroy the lock on the cage so the, she couldn’t bring herself to say person, escaped, then maybe, just maybe, she could save the world from an unimaginable horror. A h
orror she had a hand in creating. Sometimes scientific experiments of germ warfare went horribly wrong.

  The door opened with a whoosh just as the building shook with an explosion. Rachel screamed and fell to the floor, covering her head with her hands. Another hit and the building shook as if rattled by a giant child’s hand. She smelled smoke and glanced up.

  The door to the thing’s cage buckled. It snarled and reached blood-stained hands through the bars. Rachel had known for a while now that the live chickens they tossed it would not be enough to sustain its hunger. Even now, feathers stuck to its lips.

  She got to her knees and scrambled out of the room. She needed a gun—fast! One more hit and the building would come tumbling down, unleashing the monster.

  Plaster and ceiling tiles rained on her head. Screams filled the halls.

  Rachel glanced over her shoulder. It was loose. The zombie, the closest thing she knew to call the man who’d once been a prisoner on death row, grabbed a fellow scientist and bit off the man’s nose. The building’s janitor hit the zombie over the head with a metal trashcan, transferring its attention to him.

  While the zombie bit into his forearm, the scientist on the floor twitched, died, and climbed to his feet. The nightmare had begun. Rachel ducked into a corner and vomited. She’d had a hand in unleashing hell.

  She thought of giving herself over to it. After all, she deserved nothing else, but the human’s will to survive was stronger than her guilt. She shoved away from the wall and ran as the building continued to be battered by falling fireballs from heaven and screams rose as one after the other her co-workers fell. A few escaped into the horrors outside, as she did, and not one of them armed.

  Taking refuge in a cement culvert, she covered her ears and cowered, praying for it to end. What had she done? God, forgive her.

  By the time the firestorm ended, a semblance of night had fallen. Thick clouds obscured the sun, casting the afternoon into dusk. The meteorologist had warned it would take months for the ash and dust to clear after the meteor shower.

  The hands on Rachel’s watch were frozen at two p.m under the cracked lens. The groans from inside the fallen building rose and fell like the swell of waves. There were many of them now. Like cockroaches they’d spread across the continent, even possibly, the world once they dug themselves free.

  She couldn’t stay where she was. Crawling from the culvert, she merged with a group of escaping living.

  “They can’t get out,” one woman said. “Their brains are dead.”

  “They’ll push free from their sheer need for food. Their forward momentum will carry them across the debris,” a man answered. “Some will have been crushed, others too maimed to continue, but some will get out and create more of the walking dead. I should know. I created the virus that made the first one.”

  Rachel recognized her boss under the blood-covered face. The man with the genius to recreate something that only previously existed in books and movies. Genius or fool? And she’d known all along and said nothing. It had been her job to record the thing’s actions and how much it ate. It never wanted to stop eating. Well, she wouldn’t keep the secret any longer. If she ran across someone who could spread the word of the danger, she’d tell them everything she knew.

  She paused to glance back at the building that housed a basement designed to protect them from the meteor shower. What had happened to the man responsible for alerting them once the shower started? Had he fled to protect himself and left the rest of them in a building with no buildings? Left them blind? “They’re coming!” She turned and raced down the road, hoping, praying for an undamaged vehicle she could take.

  The facility was in a deserted section of the desert. Although the parking lot behind her was full of cars, she couldn’t go back to search for one that would start. Not with at least twenty zombies shuffling in their direction. As long as she continued forward, she could stay ahead of them. Until someone fell and they descended upon them.

  Her steps faltered. “Bill? Did you destroy the virus that made the first zombie?”

  He shook his head and covered his face with his battered hands. “No. I know I was ordered to. But, damn it! I worked for years on that assignment. I couldn’t just toss it away.”

  “You’ve condemned us all.” Tears ran down her face. “If we aren’t overcome by them, we have a good chance of succumbing to the virus. Some of us here are already infected, if not all of us.” Her stomach rolled.

  How long would it take the virus to spread across the country? It had taken the first zombie less than three hours to change over. She looked at the group of survivors around her. She needed to hide out. Find somewhere she could be alone. Either she would change or be unaffected. If she survived until morning, she’d find a way to get from Nevada, where she was, to Colorado where another underground bunker waited, designed ‘just in case’.

  They’d experimented on four death row inmates. All but one had turned. She had a slim chance.

  “Go.” A large man she didn’t know pointed behind them then gave Bill a shove. “You’ve killed us all. Go meet your subjects, Zombie King!”

  “No.” Bill held up his hands. “You can’t do this.”

  The man hefted a tire iron from next to a crushed car and swung it, effectively breaking Bill’s leg at the knee cap. “If nothing else, you’ll slow them down for the rest of us.”

  Bill screamed and crumbled to the ground.

  Rachel raced down the highway ahead of the others.

  2

  As the sun disappeared over the mountain, Rachel snuck into a roadside motel and holed up in one of the rooms. By morning, she’d either be one of … them, or unaffected and in a battle for survival. It was a definite toss up as to which she preferred.

  She dropped her lab coat on the floor of the bathroom. She’d never wear it again.

  Disrobing the rest of the way, she stepped into a frigid shower, not caring that she hadn’t waited for the water to heat. She needed cleansing, of more than dirt and sweat. She needed to wash away the crushing weight of guilt.

  Maybe she hadn’t created the monster virus, but she’d kept the discovery a secret. She’d kept records on the experiment. Inmates or not, they’d subjected humans to an experimental virus. In her book, that was a close second to actually being responsible.

  Something banged against the window. Rachel froze, straining to hear over the sound of the shower. Another thump, louder than the first, then a scream. She jerked the handle to off and thrust aside the shower curtain.

  From the alley behind the motel, a scream bust forth, then the frenzied sound of ravenous eating. Rachel clamped a hand over her mouth and plastered her back against the wall. The cool tile caused goose bumps to rise on her wet skin.

  Could they smell her? Hear her heart beating? There was so much left undiscovered about the furious eating machines. The certainties were … a bite left you infected, and the only way to kill the things was to scramble the brain.

  She gathered her clothes in her arm and moved out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her. The thing she’d studied had never learned simple motor skills such as opening doors. She doubted it had enough brain waves left to squeeze through the small bathroom window, but Rachel wasn’t taking any chances.

  Once dressed, she moved every available piece of furniture in front of the large front window and the door. Then, she found the few sheets of paper left in a drawer and the cheap ink pen to make a list of things she would need.

  Food and water were her first priority. Then…a weapon. Loud noises attracted the beasts so she’d prefer to stay away from guns if she could. Then, warm clothing and a permanent place to hide. Possibly, a vehicle of some kind. Something large enough to carry other survivors, if she had the courage to pick them up. By morning, the immediate area would either be infected or showing those immune to the virus.

  There was a large chance she wouldn’t need her list come morning. It was also possible that she’d barricaded her
self into a room where she’d spend eternity as one of the undead unless some poor unfortunate soul broke through the door. If so, she wanted to stay a non-dead prisoner in the room. She didn’t want to prey upon the living, even if the human side of her no longer existed.

  When she’d finished her list, she wrapped one of the blankets around her and scooted into the corner. Sleep would be a long time coming.

  *

  She woke lying on the floor wrapped in the blanket like a cocoon. No groans reached her ears from the other side of the door. She crawled to the window and peered out. The street swarmed with shuffling undead. Some whole, others missing limbs. One woman, missing the lower half of her body, pulled herself along the sidewalk on her elbows. A child, missing half of its face and dragging a dirty doll, glanced toward the motel.

  Rachel let the curtain fall and sat back. She was alive. Immune, at least to the airborne part of the virus. Sobs burst from her, and she covered her face with her hands. Why had she been spared when so many others, innocents and children, were not?

  Peering out the window, she searched for a way out. Several cars sat mere feet away from her room. She doubted any of them had keys left in them. Could she hot wire one if it were an old enough model? She tried to remember how. It’d been so long since she’d gone for a joy ride with her brother as a teenager. There. A 1962 Chevy pickup. That shouldn’t crumble under the onslaught of zombies.

  God, what if it weren’t unlocked? A broken window would do her no good. She needed to move before anymore zombies wandered into the parking lot. One small child should be easy enough to dispose of.

  Rachel went to the bathroom and shattered the mirror with the shower rod. The longest piece of glass should suffice to stab something through the eye. She shuddered at the thought and tied a wash cloth around her hand to keep from cutting herself.

  After moving the furniture, she opened the front door and stood still. When nothing paid her overdue attention, she stepped out and crouched behind a concrete pole. Potential safety was only feet away. She took a deep breath and gagged. The air was filled with the sick, sweet smell of death.