But Uncle Geoffrey comes back. And he brings with him Aunt Mildred, cousin Hildegard and a dozen other decomposing occupants of the local cemetery. They shuffle grimly towards the house. You try the back way out, but are stopped by a rotting corpse with green guts dangling from its bloated belly. You bolt the doors and secure the windows, but from somewhere to your left you hear the sound of breaking glass.
Then the front door comes flying off its hinges, and enter Uncle Geoffrey, his face grey and his eyes still bulging from the strain of breathing mucus-covered pillow instead of air. He moves towards you stiffly, rigor mortis turning his fingers into talons and his legs into rigid planks of wood. He’s drooling down the front of his gown, and his bloodshot eyes never blink. From the way he’s staring at you, you can’t tell if he’s overcome with rage or if he just wants to rip your head off and eat your brains.
You fumble with the shells of the shotgun you’ve just wrenched from the cupboard in the corner. You aim at Uncle Geoffrey’s head and pull the trigger. Uncle Geoffrey’s head explodes. But Uncle Geoffrey just keeps coming...
***
Anna is a horror writer and filmmaker. Her debut short story collection, FOR THOSE WHO DREAM MONSTERS, will be coming out later this year. You can view Anna's resume and watch clips from her films here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1245940/
Ally Thomas
Zombie Wolf
The Next Generation Excerpt
By Ally Thomas
Copyright 2013 Ally Thomas
Introduction
The following is a short excerpt from a new paranormal fantasy series by Ally Thomas entitled, “Zombie Wolf”.
Here’s a synopsis of the first installment, “Zombie Wolf: The Next Generation #1” to be released later this year or in 2014:
At twenty-four Zachary has been through many zombie outbreaks and knows how to stay alive. He's been so good at killing zombies for so many years that he makes a living at it. He claims it's the reason he has the nickname the 'Zombie Wolf' because he’s a werewolf who kills zombies. However, that’s not all there is to it. Zachary is no ordinary werewolf.
Zachary's destiny unfolds when he comes face to face with the next generation of zombies and an innocent bystander is bitten. He considers killing the attractive girl because she's as good as dead. But when he sees she has a mark, same as what he was born with, he knows he must save her.
3015 A.D.
“We’re not killing her.” I stood between my team and this girl I had just saved from an existence worse than death. The coffee shop was demolished and we were knee-deep in dead ex-zombies. It had been a normal seek and destroy mission on Earth until this had happened. But I wasn’t backing down, not until I knew who she was, and more importantly why did she have the same mark I had been born with. She was a werewolf too, or at least I was determined to find out what she was before she died.
“Call it in,” I growled to Rex.
“No,” he shouted at me, knowing better than to mess with me as he pushed against the other two guys on my team who held him back. Zombie Wolf was not just a nickname I had gotten for being a werewolf who had killed massive amounts of zombies over the twenty-four years of my life. It was part of my blood. Literally. I couldn’t be killed by them and I couldn’t be infected.
“Maybe we can talk about this,” McCormick offered.
Simon nodded, tugging on Rex’s dark green shirt. Neither of them moved forward one inch. They all had seen my transformation a time or two before, when the fighting got really bad. I had saved all of them more times than I could count. But Rex was the asshole of my team, and the Earth representative. I regretted having made him my point of contact when I visited Earth. I had never used my weapons on any of them, but that could change very quickly.
“Call it in,” I repeated. Slowly and very deliberately, I popped my neck. My eyes flashed gold. I held one hand on the girl’s shirt, trying to keep her still.
Exasperated, Rex conceded to my command and placed his index and middle fingers to his right temple. “This is a mistake.” He mouthed back to me as he made the connection with the Containment facility on our planet. With our implants installed soon after we were born, cell phones weren’t needed for work. They weren’t really needed at all in the year 3015 A.D., but we still had them for personal use because it looked cool. Unnecessary, but cool. And for jobs like this one on Earth, we had to blend in as best we could until the zombie killing started.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw McCormick hit Simon in the shoulder. “Look man.”
“What?” Simon asked.
“She has the same mark Z has. Look.”
I ignored that they were now staring at my neck and the girl’s neck. I knew she had the same birthmark. That had to mean something. Was she like me? Was she truly like me?
I heard Rex verify the location and coordinates. The room immediately filled with a blue mist that I knew would do two things: clean up the zombie mess and make a big enough distraction for me to vanish. I grabbed the girl by the elbow, probably rougher than I should have, and pulled her into my arms. She fit perfectly against my body. I sighed. Wouldn’t you know it? I’d meet my mate and she was dead, or soon to be dead? No one could survive the new virus I had been getting reports about. Luckily, I already had it. I had been born with it. No blood virus affected me. I was immune to everything. That’s what made me ‘unique’ as my mother phrased it.
“We’re getting out of here and you’re not going to leave my side.” I whispered to the girl, letting my lips brush past the top of her head. She was a few inches shorter than me at six feet. My height I had acquired from my dad’s side of the family. Werewolf descendants of his ancestry were extremely tall. I wasn’t seven-feet-tall like him but when I wore my ‘zombie killing’ hiking boots I came close.
“Or what?” the girl snapped back.
“Or you die. My friends are ready to kill you.” I grabbed her shoulders, facing her toward the team I had been assigned while on Earth for my mission. “Humans have itchy trigger fingers.” I shook her a little, hopefully to drive my point home. I had about thirty more seconds as they bungled around in the fog before they realized I was gone. “You want to stay here with them?” I asked.
“I’m as good as dead. I know that.”
“Not necessarily,” I replied.
“You have a cure,” she whispered.
I heard the astonishment in her voice. I didn’t have to see the shocked expression on her angelic face. I had heard that voice before. It was about time I tested the cure I had been working on. Rex and the guys thought I was nuts. But Rex and the guys didn’t understand a lot of things when it came to me and who I really was.
“Possibly,” I said, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I’ve got you. Don’t let go.”
***
“Where are we?” She asked me that question when we surfaced in the familiar surroundings of my room on my planet.
I already loved the sound of her light, whimsical voice. Pointing at my favorite chair, I offered it to her, grumbling to myself as I considered my options. I didn’t really want to tell her just how far from home she currently was. Space travel was very difficult the first time. What could I tell her? ‘Fancy this, I zapped you to Kepler 1. Welcome.’ Ugh. Hopefully she knew about the outlining planets that had been cleared for human habitation in 2063 A.D. It amazed me that some humans still didn’t know they could leave Earth and travel to other planet, ones not infected with zombies. It was still an option for any of us, werewolves, humans, vampires, whoever. It never occurred to the humans to consider space travel in the face of ongoing outbreaks.
I shoved off my boots and tossed them in the corner. I ran my fingers through my shortly cropped black hair, thankful I had recently gotten a haircut. For obvious reasons, zombie killing and space travel made me sweat. Get to the point, I thought. You don’t have time for that. You don’t know how long she has!
“You’re in my room. That’s all you need to k
now,” I uttered, turning away to quickly change my t-shirts. I’d have to forego the shower. I hoped the tone I used with her made me sound like a bad ass and an individual not to be questioned.
She glared back at me. It melted my heart. I gritted my teeth. Fucking fate. This is why I don’t date, especially on Earth, I said to myself as I tried to ignore her beauty. Her small frame made her look like a petite doll resting in my chair. I thought of my charming self that I changed into when I needed a huge favor from my mother. It never worked on my dad because I was too much like him. He could always see through my crazy schemes. ‘You get that from your mother I’m afraid,’ he told me often. Watching the girl try to assimilate where she was, I elected to present my charming self to her.
“How do you feel?”
She swished her big blue eyes side to side, analyzing my room, and rubbed her hands along the bite wound on her right wrist, examining it. “I feel okay. Is that normal?”
“I don’t know really. The virus works fast on humans. You were born on Earth?”
From my favorite large lounge chair, she smiled at me and flipped her legs out from under herself. She couldn’t sit still. The virus was working on her.
I knew what she was. I wanted to know if she knew. The ‘w’ word didn’t come up with unless the person brought it up.
Crossing her legs again - left knee over right and then right knee over left - she couldn’t get comfortable. “I’m not human.”
“What are you then?” I asked.
“I’m were.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever, dude. Werewolf, you know.” She flicked her long blond hair over her shoulder and then gathered it up into a ponytail and started playing with it.
I wanted to bury my head in her thick hair. I’d never seen such a honey blond hair color, except maybe on some of the fledglings of the vampire angel, Michael. All my kind had the ‘dark look’ as we call it. Both my mom and dad, a vampire and a werewolf had black hair and dark features.
“That’s not what my family calls it,” she retaliated. “It’s just being ‘were’. I haven’t gone through the change yet, so technically I’m not…”
Before she could finish her sentence, she started convulsing. Her blue eyes rolled up in her head. This was not going to be easy…at all.
I rushed to her side. Of course, she was oblivious to my movements, but I knew I had to keep her from getting away from me or leaving my room. It was my only chance. It was her only chance.
I wrestled with her, finally pinning her into the large recliner. “Hold still,” I shouted. Christ, I don’t even know your name, I thought. The realization stabbed into my heart. How fucking sad, I said to myself.
“How fucking sad, is this?” I asked her as she thrashed about. At times, her long hair covered her face.
She growled at me. Viciously. Sadistically. When she threw her head upwards, I saw the demon virus surface in her white eyes. She struggled against me, biting, snapping, heaving her head, the only part of her body she could move, at me. A faint smell of roses hit me. Strawberry shampoo, I wondered. I’ve got to at least know your name.
Suddenly visions of my demonic aunt flashed before my eyes. The stories my mom and dad had told me. The images I had seen myself, in my nightmares. The snakes. The hounds. The pits. The pain. The torture. The sacrifices. It was the origin of the new virus, the one I had feared my entire life would finally arrive, the one passed on to me when my demonic aunt had bitten my mother when she was pregnant with me. Succumbing to it and becoming one of them was Hell for human, werewolf, vampire, or zombie. The virus didn’t play any favorites. Somehow my mother survived and I was born mostly normal. It didn’t affect me. Well…sort of.
Even with the countless transfusions I had been given since birth, the blood virus didn’t leave me. It was a part of me. It was in my DNA. It was the reason I was a different type of werewolf. It didn’t matter if most people I met didn’t ‘get me’ or understand what I was. I knew I’d never be rid of the virus, and I’d probably never be understood by another. One day I want to meet my aunt and show her what I am, I thought. I knew on a new level why my mother despised her sister now. She was the reason this girl before me was fighting for her life.
A pain surfaced on the side of my neck. My birthmark burned again, same as it had when I had seen the zombie bite the girl. Amid the chaos in the coffee shop, the tingling sensation had gotten my attention. Was it a call to another creature like me?
Now in my room, the girl slammed her head into the back of the chair, whisking her golden locks over her shoulders. I got a glimpse of her neck. The mark on her neck was glowing as well. I knew I had a chance to try something insane.
Maybe my cure would work. If not, the girl would be dead quick enough like the others infected who didn’t make it. But I had to figure out something. A cure had to exist for this new virus that was jumping species. Werewolves, vampires, humans were all at risk now. We had been getting reports about instances of such cases.
Afterwards I wouldn’t have time to send a seek and destroy distress signal to my dad or my team. I didn’t want to be destroyed or have this girl destroyed, but we’d need to be if this didn’t work.
I repositioned my body on the girl again, this time straddling her. I growled at her, baring my teeth. The zombie wolf was always in me. I didn’t have to work at it anymore. He was only a moment’s notice away, always waiting, always ready. All I had to do was visual the zombie wolf and I’d turn into him. To what degree I transformed, sometimes did matter. I could control how far ‘zombie’ I’d go.
When my long claws came forth, elongating and extending from my fingertips, I felt the zinging sensation. Fuck, I thought. I hate that feeling. But I didn’t will them to retreat again into my hands again. There was no turning back now.
I watched as they grew longer, some twenty-four inches – one inch per year of my werewolf age. My claws were as strong as steel. I slammed my hands down into the rungs of the recliner chair. They dug in further than I had intended. My claws ripped through the soft pillow fabric, slamming into, and then pass, the metal frame. My muscles filled out, the upper portion first followed by my thighs and legs. I stopped changing any further in front of the girl. My sunken skull face I could save for another day. She didn’t need to see the complete zombie wolf just yet.
The girl paused for a moment. With the basic appearance of my werewolf self, I had probably scared the last fiber in her being.
“You’ve never seen the likes of me, have you?” I asked, my wolf sense bringing out the cocky attitude I possessed.
Her eyes widened. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry to say it gets worse.”
She simply nodded.
“If this doesn’t work,” I said to her. My eyes flashing werewolf gold. My mouth full of the one inch razor sharp demon teeth I had inherited from my demonic grandfather who was the other member of my mom’s family who she refused to let me to meet. “If this doesn’t work, we’re both dead,” I told the girl.
Telepathically I sent the signal to my dad. He’d have to destroy us both. My mom would never forgive me, but I had to know if the girl was like me. She had to be like me. I couldn’t be one of a kind, a freak of nature because of a demonic blood virus.
When I sank my fangs into the girl’s neck, into her birthmark same as mine, she calmed down for a few moments. The burning sensation in my neck subsided as well. I worked feverishly sucking away the poison. Its bitter taste was the first thing I felt sliding down my throat. As I drank from her, spitting out the poison in between breaths, I hoped and prayed I’d eventually taste blood. Then I’d know the virus had been cleaned out of her system. She had to be worth saving.
***
“Zachary, we need to talk.”
When I opened my eyes, my vision registered everything upside down. This can’t be right, I thought to myself. Did my cure not work? Quickly I realized my dad was standing in the middle of my room, and
I was hanging from the ceiling upside down. His tall, muscular frame commanded a presence that was all his own. Seven feet tall. There was no missing him in a crowd. He wore a tightly fitted gray t-shirt and black nylon gym shorts which was his normal attire and complimented his dark looks. Black hair. Gold eyes. Rugged features. I was my dad’s son through and through, I thought. Except for the scaring and tribal tattoos I had across the right side of my face, from the virus, I looked just like him. My mom had told me that many times.
“The old man saved your ass again,” my dad said.
Dad was not old by any means. When you’re immortal, how can you grow old? He had been a pure werewolf for a very long time.
“Thanks,” I said, understanding that tone he took with me when I had fucked up. “Can you let me down?”
Casually he strolled over to my corner of the room. I hung upside down by a few sturdy ropes, one wrapped around each ankle. He sighed loudly, blowing steam in my face.
Momentarily, I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Son, explain to me one thing. You go on a mission to kill zombies. And you bring one home? What is this girl doing here on our planet?”
I wiggled around in my constraints. “That’s a great question, Dad,” I offered, hoping I could stall long enough to cut myself down. Before I could move, he reached up and slashed the cords with his long claws. There was no getting around my dad. He’d see right through me in an instant.
I fell in a heap on the floor. When I collected myself and stood up, I saw the girl. She had been placed in a large steel cage on the other side of the room, probably for her own protection. Instantly I was angry. Calm down, Zachary, I told myself. Dad will not deal well with you if you freak out. I ran through my options in my head.
“Son?”
Fuck it, I thought. I’ll just tell the old man the truth. I’d tell him what had been buzzing around in my head since I had seen the girl. My wolf sense could be way off, but I didn’t think so.
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