The Chasing of Zombies
Beautifully Undead, Volume 1
L.C. Mortimer
Published by L.C. Mortimer, 2021.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE CHASING OF ZOMBIES
First edition. August 31, 2021.
Copyright © 2021 L.C. Mortimer.
Written by L.C. Mortimer.
Also by L.C. Mortimer
Beautifully Undead
The Chasing of Zombies
The Way We Were (Coming Soon)
Enchanted Academy
The Wolf
The Fairy
The Hook
Enchanted Academy Box Set: The Complete Collection Books 1-4
The Beauty
Hybrid Academy
Hybrid Academy: Year One
Hybrid Academy: Year Two
Hybrid Academy: Year Three
Stay Dead
Lost Undead
Wild Undead
Which Village
A Hex A Day
Once Upon a Curse
Standalone
Swords of Darkness
The Lost Fallen
Outbreak: A Zombie Novel
Hybrid Academy: The Complete Collection
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse
Shifter Falls Academy: Year One
Shifter Falls Academy: Year Two
Shifter Falls Academy: Year Three
Beyond Rainbows: A Zombie Novel
Blood Rum: A Vampire Story
She Smiles at Midnight
Spunky
The Darkness We Seek: A YA Epic Fantasy Novel
Outcasts
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By L.C. Mortimer
The Chasing of Zombies (Beautifully Undead, #1)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Author
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Further Reading: Beyond Rainbows: A Zombie Novel
Also By L.C. Mortimer
Zombies never stay dead.
The end of the world wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be fire and ice and chaos and burning, but it wasn't. It was slow, and it was quiet, and it was unexpected.
Ten years after the fall of civilization, Velvet lives alone. She lurks in the shadows, she never stays in the same place twice, and she does whatever it takes to protect her only companion: a mangy orange cat who started following her sometime in June.
When Velvet unexpectedly stumbles across a group of survivors, she realizes that life isn't always what it seems, and that maybe the end of the world wasn't quite as final as she thought it was.
THE CHASING OF ZOMBIES is a dystopian adventure story by L.C. Mortimer, author of Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse. It’s the first book in the Beautifully Undead series and features LGBTQIA+ characters.
Dream big.
Stay brave.
Lock your doors.
Chapter One
“Dennis, watch out!”
Velvet cringed as the zombie swung, trying to hit her in the face. She ducked easily – thanks to daily stretching exercises, she was wildly flexible – and dodged his attack. Raising up her bat, she swung back and hit the zombie in the head. The mangy undead creature flopped backwards and landed hard on his backside.
Good riddance, thought Velvet. The last thing she needed was to waste a lot of time fighting this guy. It was always easier when zombies fell hard and fast. There was just something satisfying about knowing that when an infected fell over, that was it. They were done. She didn’t have to worry anymore about trying to fight this stupid creature.
She could get on with the better part of her day, which was nice. She didn’t want to just hang out slapping zombies around. It was a nice autumn day, and it was breezy. It was the kind of day where Velvet may have once curled up with a cup of hot apple cider and a good book and just let all of her responsibilities fall to the wayside.
As it was, she had stuff to do, places to go, and zombies to slay.
She looked over to see if Dennis was okay. Velvet’s orange cat looked less like a tiger than he usually did. Today he looked more like a frightened child, and Velvet felt a little bad for him. Dealing with zombies never got easier, did it?
Even after all of this time, it was still hard.
Dennis was a cat, which meant he was much younger than Velvet. She doubted there was a time in his life when zombies didn’t exist. Unless he was older than ten years old – which she doubted – he’d been born into the apocalypse, and with that came certain problems.
She took a few steps over to her companion and squatted down. She reached for Dennis and patted him on the head. He didn’t growl or purr. He was quiet as he allowed Velvet to touch his fur.
“Scared you, didn’t he?”
Dennis looked up at Velvet, but he didn’t respond. He only blinked a few times before looking away. Guilt washed over Velvet. She’d never had a pet before, but she was trying to do a good job taking care of Dennis and keeping him safe.
Apparently, she hadn’t done a very good job. The zombie she’d just killed had gotten dangerously close to hurting her cat. He was her best friend, her sweetest companion, and she’d almost lost him.
Velvet shivered as she thought about what she’d do without her little cat. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to keep on going. The world of the undead was a place nobody wanted to have to live in, yet there they were.
Living.
“Come on,” she muttered. She kicked the fallen zombie as they walked past. His body jerked with the hit, but the zombie wasn’t getting up again. The nails that had been carefully hammered into her bat made sure of that. Velvet liked her weapons, and she liked them pokey.
Together, Velvet and Dennis continued walking down the narrow alley that led to the heart of what used to be a bustling city. It had been a couple of years since Velvet had been to this particular place, but long ago, she’d been a college student attending classes and trying to get her bachelor’s degree.
That really was a lifetime ago, but sometimes it felt like much longer.
Fossilwood Grove looked much different than it did when Velvet had been a student, but she tried not to dwell in the past too much as she stepped forward onto the overgrowth that now covered the city. Cracks in the roads caused by determined plants made the city look old and tired.
That was how everything looked now.
Now, the world looked dusty and tired. It looked grim and worn out. Velvet had seen quite a few places, and all of the places she’d gone had been the same. They’d been covered in dust. They’d been dirty. Perhaps most of all, they’d been sad.
It really was the people that brought the world to life, Velvet thought. Without people who were actually living, the cities became these desolate places where the weeds grew wild and the zombi
es roamed free. Sometimes it still felt fake. Sometimes Velvet felt like someone had pressed “pause” on the entire world and one day, they’d press “play” and bring everything back to the way it was.
It was just a dream, though.
She knew that.
Velvet and Dennis reached the end of the alley and stopped. At the edge of the narrow alley, the tall buildings were replaced with a four-lane road. Across from where she was standing, there was a large park filled with trees and bushes and all sorts of plants that had sprung up over the years.
Velvet couldn’t see the opposite side of the park because it was so large and broad. She looked both ways to see tall city buildings curving around the park, but the park extended so far ahead of her that all she could see were trees.
Even with the obstructed view, Velvet knew what was on the other side. She’d lived in Fossilwood Grove long ago, and the college was close to this park. On the opposite side of this space, they’d find apartment buildings. That is, if they hadn’t collapsed over the years.
“This is it,” she said. She wasn’t sure whether it was weird to talk to Dennis or not, but sometimes it felt better to speak out loud than to stay quiet all of the time. “Let’s go.”
The two of them crossed the street, passing abandoned cars and corpses in various states of decay. There were only three bodies that she counted before they got to the actual park. That wasn’t too bad.
Velvet glanced around to make sure there weren’t any survivors lurking around. She was pretty sure that she was alone, though. She didn’t want to risk wandering into someone’s territory, but rumor had it that Fossilwood Grove was all but abandoned these days, so she figured she was pretty safe.
The park was surrounded by big iron gates. They were heavy. Velvet tugged a few times but couldn’t seem to get them open.
“Shit.”
She stared at the gates and quickly realized what the problem was. The park hadn’t been blocked off or anything, but vines had grown up on the bottom portion of the gates.
“Dennis, keep watch,” Velvet commanded the cat.
Dennis just stared at her.
Squatting down, she pulled out a knife and began to cut the vines away. She looked over her shoulder from time to time, just to make sure they really were alone. Zombies tended to shuffle and make noises as they moved, and over the years, Velvet’s hearing had gotten better than she could have ever imagined.
Still, she didn’t want to have one sneaking up on her and surprising her. Not when she’d just arrived in town and was tired. Dying now would be quite inconvenient, in her opinion. If Velvet was going to die, she wanted it to be at the end of a very good day: preferably one that involved pie.
A few minutes later, the gates swung free, and Velvet felt herself relax.
“We did it, Dennis.”
She stood and stepped through the gates, gesturing for her little pet to do the same. Dennis pranced through with his head held high. He looked around cautiously, but Velvet figured they were going to find that the park was a pretty safe place to relax for a little while. She closed the gates behind them and then turned back around to admire the park.
“It looks the same,” she told Dennis.
Dennis only meowed.
When Velvet had been in college, she’d spent afternoon upon afternoon sitting right here in this park. She’d brought her books and a comfortable blanket to sit on, and then she’d just relaxed and studied. Now, it was like she was journeying back through time.
Back to before.
Back to the start.
She walked until she spotted a bench. It was dusty and covered with leaves and mud, but she quickly cleaned it off, wiped her hands on her already-dirty jeans, and sat down on the bench. Dennis didn’t join her. Instead, he walked around sniffing different things.
Velvet had quickly learned that Dennis was a free cat who did as he pleased. He’d stick around Velvet and follow her from place to place, but whenever they stopped, he wasn’t afraid to explore. Velvet often wondered how old the cat was or how he’d managed to survive during the apocalypse for so long, but some questions were better left unspoken.
Now, she looked around the park. The grass was mostly dead with a few stray patches of clovers here and there. The walkways were worn and covered with leaves and sticks. Over the years, storms had brought down some of the branches from the nearby trees and nobody had cleared those out, either, but Velvet didn’t care.
There weren’t zombies here.
She’d met someone early on in the apocalypse who had told her that zombies didn’t go to parks, so they were almost always safe places to stay, at least for a little while.
“Why not?” Velvet had asked. She’d never been able to imagine that there was a zombie-free place to rest. Not when the rest of the world was overgrown with the dead.
“There aren’t any humans there,” her friend had said.
And it had been true.
Because humans rarely hung out in parks anymore, there were very rarely zombies there. Partly, it was because nobody turned into a zombie at the park. Partly, it was because zombies went after food. They chased the living. They chased things they thought might sate their hunger, and those things weren’t going to be found in empty parks.
Now, Velvet closed her eyes and tried to remember what it had felt like before. She did this sometimes. She tried to remember. Over the years, it had gotten harder and more challenging, but every once in a good long while, she’d be able to find a place where the world didn’t feel like it had been tainted.
Today was one of those days.
Today, she could close her eyes and she didn’t smell decay. She didn’t smell the rotting flesh of the undead. She didn’t smell food that had long ago gone stale and sour.
One of the things Velvet missed most in the world was freshly baked bread. She hadn’t smelled that for as long as she could remember, but now...well, now she wanted to smell it. She almost could. Not smelling zombies was nearly as good as actually being able to smell something new.
So, she kept her eyes closed.
And she was quiet.
Chapter Two
Velvet wasn’t sure exactly when she dozed off, but when she opened her eyes, it was dark outside. She could see the moon and the stars, but there were no longer streetlamps to guide her out of the park. There were no longer residents in these apartment buildings who could flip on their exterior lights and brighten up the darkness of the park.
“Shit,” she muttered. Being outside at night without protection and without a plan was a bad idea. Usually, she didn’t wander around outside without knowing where she was going or where she was going to stay. Coming to Fossilwood Grove had seemed like a good idea when Velvet had left her last safe house. She made it a point not to stay in the same place for very long, which meant it was hard for her to relax.
That was why she liked Dennis.
Even though everything in her life was tumultuous, she had something that kept her grounded. She had someone to take care of: someone to love. Still, it was times like this, when she was trapped in the darkness, that she wished she still had a mom or a friend or someone who could physically help her.
A partner.
Dennis was great, but he was only a cat, and judging from the way he was curled up just below the little bench, Velvet didn’t get the impression that he was very fierce.
“Come on,” she whispered to her cat. She looked around. They needed to get out of the park. Even though there weren’t zombies here, it wasn’t a particularly secure place to stay overnight.
Besides, at night, the zombies had the advantage. They were wild hunters. They didn’t care about things like tripping over branches or falling in holes. Velvet did. If she was going to try to fight at night, she was going to risk getting hurt in a really stupid way. She’d made it this long, and she didn’t want to die because she tried being brave in the darkness. There was a time and a place for bravery, but it wasn’t right now. Nope.
“Dennis,” she whispered again, but her cat continued sleeping peacefully.
Awesome.
Then the sound came. Velvet’s stomach turned as she heard the deep, low growl of a zombie. It was close, but not right on top of her. Was that why she’d woken? Had she heard the noises in her sleep?
It probably wasn’t in the park, right?
But what if it was?
Zombies didn’t usually hang out in parks because there weren’t people in parks, but Velvet was a person, and she was in the park. Maybe she’d been snoring. Maybe she’d been talking in her sleep, and a zombie had heard. The undead creatures of Fossilwood Grove had the advantage here. They had spent their afterlife hanging out here. She’d been gone for years, which meant she was going to have to figure out where to go.
And fast.
She needed to get inside quickly for the night. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to location. She’d been in this city long ago, but it had been just that: long ago.
“Come on, Dennis,” she said. The cat finally stood up, stretching. Then he looked at her, obviously irritated that she’d woken him up. Velvet ignored him.
Hoisting her backpack up onto her back, Velvet was pleased to remember that she traveled light for reasons like this. She didn’t keep a lot of mementos. She wasn’t the type of person who held onto things because they were linked with some sort of memory.
Instead, she brought only the bare essentials. That was enough for her.
Packing light meant Velvet was able to move swiftly when she needed to and seek shelter where she wanted to. She didn’t need to worry about things like saving childhood toys or carrying around letters from friends.
When the apocalypse happened, she lost everything.
Now she was alone – except for Dennis – and her bag reflected that.
The moon was shining bright and despite the tall buildings surrounding the park, Velvet was able to see pretty clearly ahead of her. The moon, coupled with the bright stars that still shone in spite of the glooming world around her, guided her as she made her way from the bench and to the walkways that led through the park. She headed toward the opposite side of the park than she’d entered.
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