by Steve Wands
Dark: A Horror Anthology
Dark: A Horror Anthology
Midpoint
About the authors
DARK
A Horror Anthology
by
(In order of appearance)
Matt R. Jones
Bryan Wolford
Casey Criswell
J.P. Moore
Keith Latch
Sal Cipriano
Desmond Reddick
Sean Keller
Dezi Sienty
Cassandra Thomas
Blake M. Petit
Corey Graham
Derek M. Koch
Steve Wands
Compiled and edited by
Bryan Wolford and Steve Wands
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Published by:
Steve Wands on Smashwords
Dark: A Horror Anthology
Copyright © 2010 by Steve Wands
Book Design and Layout by Apparatus Revolution
Cover Art by Steve Wands
http://www.darkhorroranthology.blogspot.com
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
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Thanks and Dedications
Thank you for picking up Dark. Thank you to all the authors for whom this anthology would not be possible.
From Bryan:
Thanks to all the monsters under my bed that kept me up in my youth and thank you for letting me tell your stories. A big thanks to all the authors in this book. We couldn’t have done it without you. And to Amanda my greatest inspiration of all.
From Steve:
Thanks to you for picking this up, I hope you find something to fear. Thank you to all the authors, it was great reading your stories—some of you are just plain sick! Thanks to my family and friends, especially Carmela and my son, Jacob—soon kiddo, very soon your education in the macabre will begin.
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DARK
A Horror Anthology
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Egads! Zombies!
By Matt R. Jones
I was on my way to work on a bright and sunny spring morning, minding my own business. Then the cars ahead of me slowed down and then came to a complete stop, totally blocking up my side of the four-lane highway, thus putting an end to the good time I was making.
“Son of a bitch,” I growled, rolling my eyes. I have little to no patience when it comes to delays on the highway, because once I’m in motion, I like to stay that way. “There’d better be a damned good wreck ahead, or I’m gonna be really pissed.”
As it turned out, there was.
My annoyance was quickly swept aside when I stuck my head out the window of my battered station wagon and peered ahead, noting a jackknifed 18-wheeler sprawled across the grassy ditch that separated the four lanes.
From the deep furrows ripped into the ground, the sucker must’ve been moving awfully fricking fast when it finally spilled over, and it looked as though it had been attacked with an industrial-sized cheese grater. Cars in various states of mutilation were liberally strewn around the fallen semi, like a pack of velociraptors that had finally felled the dreaded T-Rex but had lost their own lives in the process.
Cops and EMTs were busily scurrying around this way and that, and I stuck my head farther out the window in hopes of seeing some bodies. After all, isn’t that what really rad wrecks are about?
The traffic in front of me started to very slowly creep forward as the skinny state trooper in the Smokey Bear hat self-importantly waved people on through. He was only letting a few cars at a time, since a tow truck and fire engine were screwing around on the road near the downed semi, apparently not quite sure what to do with themselves.
By this point, I’d pretty much forgotten about the delay, because I finally got to see a body.
After having been held up by countless wrecks along the Illinois highways over the years – people in Illinois are among the shittiest drivers in the union, bar none – I’d been witness to all manner of scenes of carnage. I’d seen huge fires, cars shredded to confetti, and even bumpers hanging from trees, but I’d never actually been able to spot a body at any of these accident sites.
Today was different.
My inner ghoul squealed in delight as I gawked at the body lying on the side of the road across the ditch from me. I lifted up my sunglasses in an attempt to discern more details, but my efforts were thwarted by the obnoxious pink tarp that was draped over the body.
Only a bloody hand sticking out from beneath the brightly-colored shroud was visible to let me know that somebody’s day had been thoroughly ruined a short while ago, and then insult was added to grievous injury by the presence of the bright pink tarp. The universe had a real douchebag sense of humor at times. Since the joke wasn’t on me this time, I chuckled.
“Sucks to be you, pal,” I said.
Then the body sat up.
My jaw dropped, not believing what I was seeing. But no matter how many times I blinked to clear my eyes, the bright, clear morning refused to alter the tableau it was presenting me. Whoever was under that tarp wasn’t dead at all.
“Aw geez, what a rip-off! It’s just a survivor!” I growled after the initial surprise had passed. Once again, the universe had shorted me the opportunity to observe the grisly human price of unsafe driving practices. “That’s bullshit!”
Across the wide ditch, the body – still covered in the pink tarp – looked just like the little pink ghost from Pac-Man, minus the vacant eyes.
The resemblance ended when the body jerkily got to its feet, the tarp sloughing off like a shed snakeskin as the accident victim resumed its former upright position. With the tarp no longer obscuring the body from view, I saw that it was a younger man, probably mid-20’s or thereabouts, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, artfully decorated with his own guts.
The reanimated street pizza nearly tripped over his own ragged intestines as he stumbled forward, unmindful of the excessive damage done to him. He looked as though some inconsiderate jackass had used him as an eraser on a sheet of paper made from asphalt, and there’d been a lot of mistakes on that paper.
There were places on the left side of his body where the clothes and skin had been scraped away, revealing abraded bone and shredded muscle. That side of his face was gone as well, resembling little more than a plate of chewed, gristly hamburger.
This guy was ALL fucked-up.
But that didn’t seem to bother him as he stumbled towards the nearest cop, who was leaning into his car and talking into his radio, unaware of w
hat was approaching from behind at something slightly slower and more awkward than a trot.
I watched the guy draw nearer and nearer to the oblivious cop, my disbelief returning at a steady canter. “No way,” I muttered. “No fucking way.”
When the guy had reached the cop, he grabbed hold of the officer and chomped down on his neck, yanking away a large chunk of flesh as jets of blood arced through the clear morning air.
The cop’s muffled scream was lot amidst the racket of the tow-truck and fire engine jockeying for position by the dead semi. Vrooms and backup beeps filled the air as they attempted to … do something. I don’t think they knew what they were doing, and the cops trying to direct them didn’t seem to know either.
But both sides would be damned if they were going to be the first to admit they were clueless, so they carried on acting like assholes while the former corpse made a snack out of the hapless cop.
Having had a few moments to process my disbelief, my eyes widened as my brain adapted to this surprise by altering a few of the rules of reality it had previously taken for granted.
“Zombie!” I murmured, shaking my head.
Well, actually it didn’t HAVE to be a zombie, I supposed. It could’ve just been a cannibal with a really high pain threshold for motor vehicle injuries. Sure, that could’ve been it.
I’m from a small town in the Midwest. I know cannibalism – among other unsavory habits – is alive and well among the more… interesting locals. The reason The Texas Chainsaw Massacre always succeeded in creeping me out was because I knew firsthand that there were people just like the Sawyer clan running around the countryside not too far from where I lived
Maybe this guy was one of ‘em. He could just be really hungry following his horrific wreck, and was grabbing a quick bite before letting himself onto the ambulance for treatment.
Another cop finally noticed what was going on, well after the first cop had been killed, and he rushed at the road kill cannibal, swinging his club around. He got a couple of bonks in before he got grabbed and chomped, too.
By this point, I was pretty sure that I was looking at a zombie and not one of our colorful local flesh-eating rednecks. Oh shit. This was NOT good. If you wanted one of the rednecks to go back from whence they came, usually all you had to do was wave any small electronic device – preferably with blinking lights and beeping sounds – in their direction, and they’d run off back to the woods, thinking you were using witchcraft on them.
Zombies weren’t nearly as easy.
Fortunately, I’d pissed away a decent chunk of my life watching and re-watching zombie films and reading zombie books, so I knew a few things about the living-impaired. Hell, I’d even read The Zombie Survival Guide, and had taken an online quiz that told me I was 94% likely to survive an all-out zombie attack – I was smarter than the average bear when it came to the walking dead.
Cranking up Slayer on my car stereo to set the mood, I pulled out of the line of cars that was still oblivious to the mayhem across the ditch, revved my respectable little V6 engine, and stomped the pedal, sending my station wagon roaring across the grassy divide between myself and the zombie.
The car bogged down slightly in the soft ground, but the wagon was front-wheel drive and the most sure-footed vehicle I’d ever driven, so it pulled through after a few seconds. The wheels were spinning so fast when I reached the pavement on the other side that I launched forward like a rusty, paint-flaked cruise missile adorned with all sorts of cool heavy metal stickers.
White-knuckling the steering wheel, I aimed right at the zombie, putting the pedal to the metal just as Tom Araya loudly and fiercely declared that God hated us all. “Yeah, he probably does,” I muttered; the mere existence of Gary Glitter was adequate proof of that.
I held my breath as I careened toward the zombie, who was so busy chewing up the police officer that he didn’t notice me zooming towards him at a rather alarming speed.
THUD!
Instead of going under my wheels, as I’d hoped, the zombie flipped over my hood, grazed my windshield, and rolled over and off the roof of my car, landing behind me somewhere. There was a smear of congealed blood and other substances I didn’t want to think about on my windshield, as though a gigantic bug had splattered against it.
“Dammit!” I snarled as I whipped the wheel, making my tires squeal in protest as I pulled a tight turn that saw me drive back into and out of the ditch. As I turned, I flipped on my wipers to get that nasty-ass smear off the glass before it had a chance to dry there – once that kind of shit set up solidly, it was always a pain to get off.
Ahead of me once again, the zombie was already getting back to his feet in the slow, retardedly-methodical way of the living dead. “You’re getting it this time, fuckface!”
Flooring it, I hit the zombie like a freight train, sending him flying once more. I whipped another U-turn, nearly hitting a parked police car in the process, as I got the zombie in my sights for another go at it. The bastard was nearly back on his feet again, and I let out a growl of frustration. Zombies never knew when to quit.
I took aim and hit the zombie squarely one more time, slamming on the brakes as I did so, sending him splatting back to the pavement with a wet squishing sound that I heard over the squeal of my tires. Yuck!
Throwing my car into park, I grabbed the big, heavy Mag-Lite flashlight I always kept by my seat and hopped out of the wagon, determined to finish the zombie the right way.
As I strode towards the zombie, my heart started to pound faster and I broke out in a nervous sweat. Ten minutes ago I was driving towards work on a normal day, and now I was going after a zombie with my big-ass flashlight; it was just a bit of a mindfuck. Luckily for me, I have a rather large and overactive imagination, so when given a few moments and the proper motivation, I can adapt to the bizarre rather admirably. That was a very good thing, because I couldn’t afford to hesitate.
Hesitation is one of the things that always gets people killed when they’re dealing with zombies. Zombies, at least those not of the fast-moving, scary-as-all-hell Dawn of the Dead remake or 28 Days Later persuasion, are slow-moving, unintelligent creatures guided solely by the instinctive drive to eat the flesh of the living. While one would think that they’d be rather ineffective with such an MO, they’re actually pretty formidable against most people. You know why?
Because most people are stupid, scaredy bitches. They see a zombie and get all freaked out instead of taking matters into their own hands. In close quarters, all a zombie needs to get a lethal strike in is a few seconds. If you hesitate, the zombie will have no qualms taking advantage of your idiocy and making a meal, and possibly a fellow zombie, out of you.
So I gritted my teeth as I approached the zombie, who was doggedly getting back to his feet, though he was definitely worse for the wear after getting hit by my station wagon a few times.
Broken bones crackled as he moved, and rather repugnant fluids were oozing out of his broken skin, mixing with his thick blood to create a hateful-smelling ichor that dripped to the warm pavement with every staggered step. Judging from the smell and lack of decay on his body, I’d say this guy was a very recently created zombie, and may have actually sprung to his initial reanimation right there on the side of the road under the pink tarp.
Regardless of his origins, I was taking this peckerhead down.
As I closed in, my heart rate increased and the urge to run grew, but I continued towards the zombie, determined to put a stop to this before it had a chance to get REALLY ugly. The zombie began to move faster as it drew near, sensing prey, and its one remaining bloodshot eye was fixed on me like a laser beam, while its jaws gnashed in the perpetual hunger of its kind.
A low moan escaped the zombie’s maw – the sound sent a chill down my spine and formed shards of ice in my bloodstream. I remembered reading that the moan of a zombie has a certain quality to it that creates despair and fear in the living, and though intellectually I knew that was going on, it didn�
�t make things any easier on the emotional end of it.
I came within striking distance of the zombie, and I studied him with fearful eyes, hefting the reassuringly solid flashlight in my hand as I psyched myself up to brain the bastard. At the same time I was arguing with my feet, which wanted to turn around and run away as fast as they could. After all, I was just some doofus on the way to work … why not just head back that way and let the cops deal with this?
I was hesitating as the zombie drew uncomfortably close, his freshly-dead stink filling my nostrils, and if I kept fucking around, I was gonna either gonna become a snack or a zombie myself, neither one a fate that I wanted. But I was rooted to the spot. I couldn’t move. I stared dumbly at the zombie, the flashlight half-raised in my hand, apparently never to strike. I was fucked.
But just as the zombie lunged forward, I caught sight of his t-shirt, and a sudden raging fury energized me. With a snarl, I kicked the zombie backwards and brought the flashlight down directly in the middle of his skull with a heavy, sickening thud. I did it again, and this time the wet crack of the zombie’s skull shattering filled my ears, which redoubled my assault.
“Fucker! Die!” I screamed as I laid into the zombie’s head with a ferocious attack that sent brains, blood, and skull-chips spraying in all directions.
I pulverized the zombie’s head, reducing his features to the creepy liquid lines of a classic Graham Ingels drawing. I kept right on going until I’d knocked every last one of the prick’s teeth out and had launched his lower jaw out into the ditch somewhere. I then swept the zombie’s feet out from underneath him and proceeded to put the boots to him, kicking and stomping until the zombie was starting to lose all resemblance to his original humanoid form.
I kicked the shit out of him … among other things.
Finally, panting and with sweat streaming off me, I stopped and spat onto the visceral rubble that was once a zombie. “That’ll teach you to wear a Radiohead shirt, you cocksucker!” I hissed, giving him a final kick. “‘Only band that matters’ my ass! Tell that to Motley Crue, asshole!”
“Yeah? YOU can tell it to the judge, asshole!” barked a voice from behind me as strong hands grabbed my wrists, forced them behind my back, and slapped a pair of handcuffs on me. The flashlight fell from my hand and dropped onto the pavement with a loud clatter as I was spun around to face a furious-looking cop. “Though I oughtta just kick your ass right now! What the fuck’s your problem?!”