Starers

by Nathan Robinson

  A wiper snapped off as they hit an obese obstacle that rolled over the car roof, causing them to flinch and duck. The engine strained, bearings squealed. Dylan screamed.

  Then they broke through. No light, just a sense of freedom as the sounds of death left their ears.

  The remaining wiper smeared the blood enough so Dylan could see the dark road ahead. He dropped his speed a little as they turned a corner uncontested and left behind the horde that had gathered on Westfield Road. He squinted ahead, the way was clear. They’d made it out. He smiled maniacally and beat the steering wheel with his fist. He cheered at his family. They said nothing.

  The black-eyed crowd shifted and turned in unison. They started to walk, slowly, as patience was their only virtue. They started to follow.

  Nathan Robinson lives in Scunthorpe, England with his wife and twin boys. He writes best at night or at 77mph. In his spare time he runs through the woods, enjoys world beers and reviews for www.snakebitehorror.co.uk

  His first short story collection ‘Devil Let Me Go’ is available on Amazon Kindle and paperback.

  He’s been published in many anthologies, for the full list check him out at www.facebook.com/NathanRobinsonWrites or follow him on twitter where you’ll find him as natthewriter.

  Ask him anything, he’ll like that.

  Acknowledgements- These are the folk that shaped this story, they all mean something somehow;

  I’d like to thank Mark Goddard for the Snakebite gig, Paul Johnson Jovanovic for his thoughts and opinions, everyone working and chatting on www.spinetinglers.co.uk for getting me started and liking my silly little stories (if you’re a new writer, check them out), also hugs to Princess Dreamer and Kayleigh Marie Edwards for being my number one fan.

  One day I’ll buy a few beers for the Harlequin boys for driving whilst I wrote and for putting up with Radio 2, not forgetting Daz for stealing his dream.

  A big cheer to anybody who bought a book off of the back of one of my reviews (if you’ve ever read a book by an indie author REVIEW IT! People read reviews before they buy a book and word of mouth is the best advertising an author can get! You thinking writing a book is hard, try getting reviews for one . . .)

  Nanalaine for reading my stuff at work and not working (shhh, I won’t tell anyone), the kind folks at www.pseudopod.org, Eric S Brown, Nate Burleigh and anyone who read/listened to any of my stories and enjoyed them, this is for you.

  Mega thanks to folks at Severed Press for taking a chance on me and for Sutton (whoever you are) for the fierce edit and for catching all them comma’s. And further thanks to Marcus Blakestone for his read through and spotting all the things that I (and everyone else) missed.

  Extra special thanks to my wife Moj for finally finishing reading this with seconds to spare; you deserve a medal, my Ma ‘n Pa for staying in that night and my little big men for being the funniest creatures in the universe.

  Oh, and the Old Man at the Bus Stop in the Rain, all this came from you. I hope you got where you were going.

  Sample chapter of

  I, Zombie

  by Hugh Howey

  • Jennifer Shaw •

  A grist of bees. A bevy of deer. A mob of—

  What was a mob again? Yaks?

  Emus. It was emus, Jennifer decided. But what animal made up a gang? Or a boil? Wasn’t there some creature that combined to form a bloat? Bloat was taken, she was pretty sure.

  Jennifer drifted back to the games her father played. This was but one of many. She remembered hanging from his arm, her sister on the other side, as he swung them through Central Park Zoo. He called them monkeys—

  “A band!” she and her sister would squeal.

  “You little gorillas.”

  “A troop!”

  “You smelly baboons.”

  “A flange!”

  “I’m not smelly,” her sister would add, pouting.

  Up and down the tree of life they would climb, learning useless facts that made their peers roll their eyes and their teachers clap with delight. Their father never taught them state capitols or anything normal. Nothing other people might already know. He filled their heads with reptiles and minerals and trivia. Jennifer never saw a garter snake slither through the grass without thinking: There goes Massachusetts.

  “Families are more than just its members,” their father had said. “Together, we become something different.”

  He said this a lot after their mother left. Swinging them through the zoo, he had shown his girls all the animals that hate to be alone, that prefer to go in groups. Each group had its own name, he taught them. In company they were something more than they could be in solitude.

  So what was this, Jennifer wondered? What had she become? What was she a part of?

  It couldn’t be a plague, those were locusts. Couldn’t be an intrusion because of the roach. And wasn’t a group of midges called a bite? She was pretty sure that was right. Shame, that one. And mosquitoes were a scourge. All the good ones were taken.

  Herd. Herd was overdone, as was pack. Too many animals shared those. Too obvious.

  And then it came to her.

  It came to her as the skull Jennifer had become trapped inside lolled down, as the nose that used to be hers twitched at the smell of meat.

  An arm lay on the pavement, a torn sleeve wrapping it like a cloak, a cloud of flies drawn to the rotting meat. Its owner was long gone.

  Jennifer had no appetite for it. She lumbered onward, no longer in control, forced to see whatever her head saw as it followed some scent, some impulse, some new reflex.

  And for a moment—because of the dismembered arm, perhaps—the direction of her gaze allowed Jennifer to study the feet, her feet, and the feet of those around her. The bare feet and the feet in ragged slippers; the work boots and the worn trainers; the feet sliding and dragging; the feet of the people bumping into her, all of them moving in one direction, upwind, toward the smell of living meat.

  She was one of them, and Jennifer knew what she was, what the group would be called.

  She filed this trivia away. She took it with her as she disappeared into the recesses of her recollections, back to the times before she joined this trembling mass, this vile and grotesque thing her flesh had become. She skipped into the past, swinging on her father’s strong arms, beating her sister to calling this one out:

  “A shuffle,” she cried. “A shuffle of zombies!”

  And the animals of Central Park Zoo paced inside their cages, watching her and her dead family stagger by.

  And they were all afraid.

  I, Zombie is available now at Amazon and all good book stores