by Hilden, Josh
Dead Flesh
Stories of the Living Dead
By – Josh Hilden
Copyright © 2015 Josh Hilden
Amazon Edition
Publisher: Gorillas With Scissors Press
Literary Editor: Gypsy Heart Editing
Book Formatting: Gypsy Heart Editing
E-Mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @Josh_Hilden
www.joshhilden.com
www.gwspress.com
www.freestoryfriday.com
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This book is a work of fictions. Names, characters, establishments, organizations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, event, or locals are entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Under the Bed
7
Last Train Out
11
The Rising Water
17
It Was The Corn
28
One Foot In Front of the Other
37
Santa Claus VS The Living Dead
47
Frankenstein, King of the Zombies
108
Under The Bed
Terri shivered uncontrollably as she bit down on her lips to stop herself from making a sound. She needed to stay as quiet as possible, but her arm really hurt and she was exhausted. She lay as still as possible under her bed as she could. In her left arm she clutched her Winnie the Pooh. Until today she’d thought maybe ten was too old to still want her Pooh bear.
Now she held onto him so hard that she was sure some of his stitching had split. He’d been a gift from her daddy and daddy had promised to get her all of the characters. But Pooh was the only one he got for her before he left and never came home.
Mommy’s feet passed in front of her eyes again as she stumbled around Terri’s room. One slipper was still on mommy’s foot but the other was bare and Terri could see where the blood dried as it ran down mommy’s leg from the hole on her neck.
Mommy had been going outside to put the trash in the can while Terri was eating her Fruit Loops. As far as Terri was concerned Fruit Loops were the best cereal ever made. As she was watching the cereal float around in the bowl Mr. Johnson from next door walked up to mommy. Terri was watching through the window and she thought Mr. Johnson was walking very funny.
When mommy said hello to Mr. Johnson he’d started to moan and stumble toward her. Mommy tried to run but slipped on the ground and lost a slipper. She’d screamed for Terri to hide as Mr. Johnson dropped on her and started to bite her on the neck and face.
Terri had screamed then ran upstairs to her room and hid.
A long time later Terri heard noises coming from downstairs. It had sounded like glass breaking and shuffling. She gathered up all of her courage and opened her door and tip toed to the head of the stairs to see who was down there. She saw mommy walk by and ran down to her yelling because she was so happy to see her. But just as she was about to jump into mommy’s arms she saw the blood caked and dried on the front of her robe and the weird look in her eyes. Terri tried to run back up the stairs.
But mommy had seen her and grabbed her arm. Terri fought and thrashed. She did not want mommy touching her because mommy looked scary like Mr. Johnson. Then mommy bit her right on the arm! It hurt her so bad and the sight of her own blood made her freak out and actually start hitting and kicking mommy. Terri finally managed to pull free and she ran upstairs and dove under her bed.
Forgetting to shut and lock her door.
For almost an hour now mommy walked back and forth in front of her room and Terri stayed quiet. But it was getting harder and harder to stay awake… maybe she would just take a little nap and everything would be all better when she woke up.
Terri closed her eyes.
A little while later she woke up and joined mommy. They headed outside to find something to eat. Pooh Bear stayed under the bed. Perhaps he was hiding from Terri.
Last Train Out
Tammy Bailey was trapped inside a subway car, of all crazy things and she was pretty damn sure she was going to die there.
All she’d wanted to do was get to her mother’s house in New Jersey after all of the craziness started a few hours ago. The television started talking about riots and other violence in downtown Manhattan and was advising people to just stay in their homes until the police restored order. That had been ok for the first hour. Then the sexy Latina reporter had her cute little nose bitten off by a kid who looked like he was no more than ten. The kid had looked like he was dead for Christ sake.
Tammy decided to get the fuck off of the island.
She’d packed a small bag and headed out onto the streets. There seemed to be a lot of people running around screaming and acting like it was the end of the world. For all Tammy knew it was. There also seemed to be a lot of people who were just aimlessly wandering around and moaning at the people who ran past them. Tammy remembered the demise of the sexy reporter who’d once upon a time filled her solo time with so many pleasurable fantasies and decided to stay away from everyone.
A lot of people acted like they’d gone crazy. They also looked like they had absolutely no business walking around with all of the open wounds and extreme injuries.
She reached the entrance to the subway station and noted with approval that there was an armed guard posted there. She was a bit disturbed by the almost two dozen brown and red stains on the concrete surrounding the entrance.
“Ma’am,” the guard said firmly, “I need to make sure that you are uninjured before I let you in.” He glanced past her at the popping sounds of distant gunfire as he finished the obviously well rehearsed speech.
Tammy started to get indignant. She wanted to scream at this jacked up Rent-A-Cop like when she’d been in High school after 9/11 and there were so many fucking cops everywhere in the city. That one in Times Square had been sorry he’d ever fucked with Tammy Lee Bailey. She was just about to open up at full volume when she noticed that the guards hand was firmly on the butt of his automatic pistol, then she remembered the stains on the ground and for the first time wondered if all of those people that had left those stains were the injured crazy ones or were they people that just had not been able to keep their mouths shut?
Without a peep of protest, a thing that would have shocked her mother, Tammy allowed the guard to look her over for signs of trauma. He then waved her through to the station below.
Below ground was barely controlled chaos. Police officers in Transit uniforms directed people onto cars so packed Tammy was shocked anyone could breathe in them. She jumped a bit when she heard three sharp gunshots from above. Tammy assumed another red and brown stain had been added to the concrete.
It was almost an hour before Tammy was shoehorned onto a train car and by that point she was getting really scared. For the last fifteen minutes the gunfire above had become heavier and heavier. The sounds of hundreds of people moaning could clearly be heard whenever there was a lull in the fire. As the train was leaving the station Tammy thought she saw someone come running down the steps from the surface firing up as they descended but she was never sure.
The train traveled for more than twenty minutes and passed two stations. The first station seemed abandoned.
Tammy could see that the platform was empty and the gates were closed. The second station was something from her worst nightmares. There were dozens of people milling around on the platform but they were all covered in gore. There was blood and body parts strewn all around and the gates seemed to have been torn from their anchors in the walls of the platform. As they passed the creatures, she no longer thought of them as people, all turned toward the train and began to jump off the platform and follow them. The result was several of the monsters made contact with the third rail that powered the electric motor of the train.
The train glided to a stop. In the silence the moans of the dead could be heard coming toward them. The other passengers began to panic there were screams and several people were badly injured. Two men managed to force the doors of the car opened and the passengers started streaming into the subway tunnels. Tammy’s belief that this was a really bad idea was soon confirmed when the screams of the former passengers were carried back to the ones in the car as they met the other travelers in the tunnels.
Tammy helped several others who’d stayed on the car close and barricade the doors that had been forced open. They watched horrified as the people who’d left ran like blind mice trying to avoid being attacked by the people who had to be dead. One by one the screams stopped and one by one the ranks of the dead were increased and their moans and pounding were enough to drive anyone mad. If it were not for the fact that they did not seem to understand that they had to climb up onto the stairs before they could try and enter the train everyone inside would have been quickly consumed.
For many long hours they remained trapped inside the car. Thirteen people, four badly injured, facing a horde of what appeared to be several hundred of the dead. One of the survivors had a radio on her and they listened to the news reports of the dead rising all over the world and the increasingly desperate actions being used to combat them. They learned that large sections of New York City had been abandoned to the dead and it did not take any of them more than a minute to figure out they were right inside the area that had been abandoned.
One of the badly injured died five hours after the train was stopped. One minute the man, by his dress Tammy thought he was a bicycle messenger, was breathing raggedly and the next he was not. Only two minutes later he sat straight up and looked at them, he then let out a low savage moan. The second panic was worse than the first. He lumbered over and began eating one of the other badly injured people, several others tried to stop him but they were in turn bit. Tammy had been listening to the news and she knew what was going to happen. She reached into her purse and drew out the snub nosed .32 caliber pistol her mother bought for her when she moved to the city. In four years she’d never drawn it in anger, but she was a damn good shot.
She put one round in the head of the Bike Messenger, the news had been pretty clear about that, and proceeded to do the same to four others he’d attacked. She ignored their pleas for her not to shoot, she’d seen too much today. She had one round left when she was done the seven other living people in the car stared at her but said nothing. Tammy knew in that moment there was no way she or anyone else was going to get out of this coffin, but she didn’t really give a fuck about the rest of them. Let them figure their own way out.
She put the barrel under her chin and pulled the trigger.
The Rising Water
When the rain began to fall Billy wasn’t too worried even though his mom and dad were both in the city leaving him alone in the house. They’d told him he was big enough to stay home alone while they made the twelve mile trip from the old farm house to the grocery store in town. He’d felt very proud of himself. Then the television began to show him some really scary things.
That was yesterday morning.
When mom and dad left he’d done what every kid does when they are left alone for the first time. He’d turned on the television louder than his mother ever would have allowed and he’d dug into the junk food in the kitchen. He was talking to his best friend Brandon via Instant Messenger when the TV began to make that stupid Emergency Broadcast noise.
“Damnit!” Billy said and giggled because he could swear out loud without having to worry that his mom would hear him. It never occurred to him that his parents might have wired a camera to keep an eye on him.
He reached over and grabbed the remote to hit the mute button. He spun the chair around, aimed the remote at the television, and then stopped cold. The scene was one of chaos and for a second Billy actually thought it was a city scene from the latest “Left 4 Dead” game.
The scene was shot from a stationary traffic camera. There was a man running down a street and below the image a caption said “Downtown Boston”. Behind the man was a pack of what looked like sick people stumbling and falling as they pursued him like a swarm of ants. To Billy it looked like something they would see in the fields when they were rounding up the cows at night. The man was limping like he’d hurt his leg and Billy could see that he was soundlessly screaming for help.
“This can’t be real,” Billy whispered to the empty room as he watched the man being overrun and taken down by the pack. The last image was of the man’s single arm reaching for help. Then the picture switched back to the daytime weather girl sitting behind the anchor desk.
Billy turned the volume back on and listened as the somewhat hysterical anchor tried to explain what they were seeing. She attempted to convince the audience and presumably herself that this was some kind of terrorist attack and that the people doing the killing were infected with some sort of toxin or virus.
Billy shook his head in disgust. Even at twelve he knew what was going on. He knew that it could only be one thing.
Zombies!
The first thing he’d done was to retrieve his bat from his room and then make sure all of the windows and doors were locked. Then he turned all of the exterior lights and every light in the house off except for the flashlight he carried with him. He knew from the plethora of zombie movies and books he’d consumed that the dead would be drawn to the light. He then camped out in his parent’s room and turned on their television to watch the chaos unfold.
The rain that had been falling steadily all day began to increase in intensity not long after he established his command center in his folk’s room. The winds picked up and whenever he peaked through the heavy blinds the water was falling faster and faster.
He considered going out to the barn and checking on the animals while there was still light. But he had no desire to encounter one of the dead whose numbers seemed to be increasing exponentially according to the TV. Even though they were relatively isolated out here on the farm the valley still had a population of nearly twenty five thousand.
After an hour he made the first attempt to call his parents on their cell phones. After more than fifteen attempts it became clear to him that the circuits were so overloaded it could be days before he would be able to make a connection. Besides he was sure it would only be a matter of time before they came home. Then they could all ride out this crisis here on the farm safe and sound.
The rain kept falling.
He fell asleep sometime around midnight. His parents had yet to return home and he’d begun redialing their numbers every five minutes. The images on the television were becoming more frightening as scenes of death and insanity filled the screen. Sometime around eleven the female anchor had a meltdown and began sobbing and screaming for somebody to please go to her house and check on her children because the police would not allow her to leave the studio.
Billy switched over to Netflix at that point and started watching old episodes of Adventure Time to calm himself.
The power went off sometime before five in the morning as best as Billy could figure. When he woke the air conditioner was off and the room was chokingly hot already. He was covered in a thick sheen of sweat and was forced to take a very cold shower in order to relieve the greasy unpleasantness. He changed and then went downstairs to check the doors and windows.
Billy went to each door and every widow and assessed the situation outside. He saw none of the dead but he was disquieted by the amount of standing water he could see in the fields and on the lawn. His father had complained that it had been an unusually wet and hot spring and that too much of the snowpack had melted. He’d been concerned they would be unable to get a good crop this year because of oversaturation. The rain was still falling as hard as ever.
Then he saw the shape by the barn.
It looked like the outline of a person but Billy was not able to determine who it was. His first instinct was to go out there and greet them. The idea that it was an adult who would help him was just too appealing. He sprinted from the window to the door and was just about to throw the door open and race into the torrential downpour when his calmer nature took over. He considered the possibilities.
What if it was one of the dead people?
What if it was a living person who was looking to steal from the farm?
What if it were somebody who was hurt?
What if they were lost?
What if he knew them?
That last thought was the one that spurred him into action. The valley was a close knit community and there were very few people who he didn’t have a passing acquaintance with. He grabbed his rain slicker from the mud room and threw it on as he scooped up his bat. Then he hit the door and hurried toward the massive rust colored edifice that was the farms central barn.
“Hello!” he yelled. “Are you hurt?” He closed the distance, his feet sucking into the muddy ground, as quickly as he could. In his mind it was one of the neighbors, they had hiked over because the water had washed out the roads and they were here to take care of him. He came to a squelching stop in front of the open door to the barn and his jaw hit his chest.