All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse

by Various Authors

  Mallory watches his lips curl down as his eyes glaze over. She takes a deep breath, stomps across the room, rears back, and slams her open palm across his face. “Jesus, Mal!” Scott denounces. Unfazed, she grabs Howard by his collar and drags his heavy body across the floor until his back is perched on the refrigerator. “There, now you’re helping.” She mutters, tapping her palm on his cheek. Tears trickle down his face as he continues staring wearily into the middle distance.

  “That’s IT!” Scott bellows. “I’ve had it with that!”

  “Never hurt him before…” Mallory mutters.

  “Really?!” Scott utters, walking over to grasp Howard’s cheeks. “So he’s always been like this?”

  Javier silently buries his face in his hands as Scott growls, running his palm over his buzzed scalp while Mallory waits for him to continue.

  “Once we’re out of here, we’re through… I’m not goin’ anywhere with you again… I don’t care what happens to me.” The shuffling in the hall grows louder. “No wonder your kids can’t stand you…”

  “Excuse me?!” Mallory spits.

  “Don’t play coy…” Scott interrupts. “You’re in here by choice… it’s just the next thing in a long line of excuses to get out of being a parent.”

  “Don’t forget what we’re doing here.” Javier says softly. “This isn’t just about us.”

  “Thank you!” Mallory shouts. “They’re safe because I’m here… you call that a choice?! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running my ass off for that…”

  “If you loved them, you’d want to.” Scott admonishes.

  A moan rattles outside the door, accompanied by the din of staggering footsteps. Mallory shakes her head as she looks at the floor and Scott purses his lips, knowing he’s gone too far. “I don’t see a point in arguing about this… nothing’s gonna change… we’ll go through it again and again until we’re all dead. Then the only thing that changes… we’ll be on the other side.” A bang on the door rustles Howard to his feet. Whining in panic, he rushes past Scott and dives head first down the slide. The next thump rattles the door, pushing the fridge a few centimeters across the floor. Scott stares hard into Mallory while she looks at the floor, gritting her teeth. “Do we go after him?” Javier asks. Scott looks down as Mallory glances up at him. “We don’t have a choice.” She grumbles, running forward and diving head-first down the slide. The trip through darkness only lasts two seconds before she slams into Howard, who is apparently crawling his way back up. Mallory makes it a few feet past him, skidding herself to a stop before she’s within reach of the corpses clawing up the slide from the dimly lit basement.

  “Javi! Scott! Pull him up!” Pressing her cheap boots into the walls for traction, Mallory grabs hold of Howard’s leg as he kicks wildly. A terrified groan tears out of him as he shoves his other foot into Mallory’s shoulder hard enough for her to let go. She braces her arms against the wall, trying to push herself up as the decaying Larry crawls over another Zombie at the bottom of the slide, bringing his hands close enough to grab Mallory’s loose jeans. “Fuck! Howard!” She looks up to see his feet slowly digging into the sheen of the metallic incline as Javier pulls him up. “I can’t… stop it!” Mallory looks down, keeping her arms pressed into the wall as she kicks at her advancing assailant with one leg while the other smears into the slide. The wildly swinging arms finally latch on to her free ankle, and the next attempted kick pulls her other foot free, slamming her knee into the cold metal as her arms give out. “No, no-no! STOP! STOP! STOP!”

  Rancid teeth compress on her left thigh, freeing a juicy chunk of muscle as she grits her teeth, tears freeing themselves from her eyes in the same moment that a klaxon blasts forth from above and the entire structure is bathed in blue light. “LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN!” An impossibly loud voice bellows from a ubiquitous, unseen series of speakers. Hundreds of boots shuffle in every direction. As Mallory regains her footing, she watches as Larry is yanked down the slide while a dozen men in gas masks and body armor storm the basement, herding the feeble corpses with a phalanx of riot shields. Glancing back at the third floor, she sees Scott and Howard being pulled away as more anonymous, armored soldiers rush for the door.

  A panel opens in the wall just to Mallory’s left, revealing two more men who reach out and pull her in. One of them yanks a needle out of a pouch on his boot and jams it into her neck moments before she blacks out.

  “Mrs. Dearden… Mrs. Dearden, are you awake?” Mallory’s eyelids separate painfully, the black bags beneath highlighting the pale tone of her skin. She looks up at the white, scored ceiling panels and penetrating vacillations of the fluorescent ballast over her head. She’s in a hospital bed, hooked up to a cadre of whirring machines and dressed in plain white scrubs with a polka-dotted blanket covering her. “Do you know where you are?” A man asks, seated only a few feet away. She takes a half breath, cutting it off as she swallows and tastes her own sour breath.

  “You’re in isolation at US-AMRIID…”

  “I know where the fuck I am…” She mutters.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Mallory looks over to see the man who just spoke, his smile equal parts pain and affectation.

  “Yeah… Lon Miller…”

  “Are you aware you were bitten?”

  “Yeah…”

  “I’m sorry… we did what we could…”

  “…what?” Mallory interrupts. “You waited to the last fucking second to call it off… don’t tell me you did what you could.”

  Dr. Miller takes a deep breath, rubbing his hand over his matted gray hair.

  “That was our mistake.” He continues. “We didn’t anticipate they’d traverse the slide so easily. Or that Mr. Schecter would suffer a breakdown.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel better…”

  “Mrs. Dearden…”

  “…what a comfort to take your culpability to the grave.” Mallory continues. “You put us in a maze full of Zombies so you could study them and you didn’t anticipate someone’d get bitten…?”

  “Remember…” Dr. Miller interrupts, affecting an assertive tone. “When this started two months ago, you were outside the CDC begging on behalf of your family. You volunteered for maze testing and signed the waiver indicating you understood the risks. We never intentionally put you in harm’s way…”

  “Javi said part of the maze changed…” Mallory retorts. “The doorway, on the third floor. You added it?”

  “We don’t change the conditions during a testing session…”

  “How’d Larry end up inside?”

  “…changing the conditions would create an unreliable dataset.” Dr. Miller continues, undaunted. “It’s not something we’d corrupt…”

  “Howard’s been a liability for… at least the past week. I’m not the expert here… but doesn’t putting someone like that in the maze ‘corrupt your dataset’?”

  “Well…”

  “You finished your report… so what are you studying?”

  “It’s incomplete… Mal, I’m sorry. Truly, I am… you’re going to get the best medical treatment we can provide.”

  “You can’t save me…” Mallory spits. “…so kill me now and get it over with.”

  Dr. Miller’s eyes drill the floor.

  “There’s another… dimension… to this. There’s more to the Undeath Syndrome Surveillance and Diagnosis report than maze testing. We’re studying how affected individuals respond to medical treatment…”

  “They die.” Mallory interjects.

  “…it’s imperative that we understand what effect we can have on that. Organ behavior, infection treatment, pain management… we don’t get many patients about whom we can guarantee the time, manner, and severity of injury… particularly ones with a medical history on file.”

  Mallory stares at him.

  “You’re inhuman.”

  “…what we’re talking about…”

  “You’re gonna let me turn into one of t
hem?”

  Mallory swallows following a catch in her voice. Dr. Miller closes his eyes, shakes his head, and takes another breath before continuing.

  “What we’re talking about… is asset protection. We have an obligation to you for the services you’ve provided, and your data has been invaluable. But you have an obligation to us… we protect your family…”

  “You’re saying…” Mallory starts, her voice deadening the air. “You’re gonna put my family in the maze if I don’t do this?”

  “What I’m saying… is that… you’ll provide us with data… on decomposition, longevity, behavior… and that arrangement… clearly delineated in your waiver, if you wish to consult it… will guarantee your family’s safety. If you choose to breach contract… I can’t make that guarantee.”

  Mallory nods gently, a tear slipping out of her left eye as she furiously purses her lips.

  “At least I know why you put Larry back out there.”

  “Now…” Dr. Miller continues, sighing. “We can bring in your family…”

  “I don’t want to see them.” Mallory states flatly.

  “…but… your children…”

  “I realized something… in there… I’m used to living with consequences. Doesn’t mean I have to die with ‘em.”

  Dr. Miller doesn’t speak, his response limited to wagging his head. “Do what you gotta do. Drug me up.” Mallory finishes. Dr. Miller stands up and a pneumatic door slides open behind him to reveal two lab technicians. “I’m sorry, Mal.” Mallory waits until he makes eye contact to respond. “It’s okay. People like you always use people like me.” The technicians move past him and one of them slips a needle into Mallory’s IV, pumping her full of a drug that can only prolong the inevitable.

  Bryan Way

  Though I grew up in the Philadelphia outskirts, I never really grew up.

  My life has been spent indulging in various creative endeavors, and though I was always put writing first, I was the last one to realize that I was a writer. As a result, I refused to call myself one until I had something published, and in 2013, that moment came.

  Life After: The Arising was my first novel, blending my love of pulpy zombie films and survival horror with strong characterizations in a coming-of-age tale. I continue to work at growing the series with additional novels and short stories, one of which appears here in ATZ’s Chronology of the Apocalypse.

  I still live in the Philadelphia outskirts, and I never intend to grow up.

  Boys

  By Chris Philbrook

  The warmth the summer sun brought to the day faded like the moment a child departed their mother's hug. Both mother and child were the lesser for their decision.

  Olek Kosh knew the darkness that came with the cold night would be dangerous, and he hurried his steps over the rubble in the streets. The broken and bombed streets of his family's adopted hometown Slavutych; the bastard son of the Chernobyl disaster.

  Olek adjusted the hang of his AK-74 rifle on his shoulder and peered out at the long shadows cast by the setting sun. He smothered the thoughts of the past as they bubbled up, but he failed. The tides of memory served to drown out the present, and he let the thoughts wash over him. If anything he felt cleansed of the smells of the rotting dead bodies that lay all about. The distant cracks of rifle fire rang out and echoed between the valleys created by the buildings of the city. Death came for someone. A stranger he hoped.

  He moved. Olek had been born after a short and bloodless labor several years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, no more than a handful of kilometers from where he ducked down behind a piece of upended pavement to hide from the vacant, hunting eyes of an infected dead man. When he had been born nearby his mother took him into her arms and blessed him, kissing him on his fresh pink forehead, giving him his first experience of what love felt like. He could still feel the touch of her soft lips from that day, and the feel of her rough hands from a much later period of life.

  His mother was dead. I wish I had my mother still. She would know how to cook the foods I keep bringing home.

  They left the hospital, traveled home on foot to their small apartment and began their lives in post-Soviet Slavutych Ukraine. Unlike the plague ravaged, bombed and sickened landscape it now was, the modern city offered Olek, his mother and father, and his much later to arrive brother Aleksi great opportunities. His father worked years and years managing a small restaurant that served the world's best potato dumplings. Olek watched his father toil early mornings in the hot kitchen through hot afternoons every single day to provide for his family. He watched his father trudge one step at a time through the spring rains, the autumn chill, and the winter snows to earn a living to provide for his sons and wife. Olek understood early that there was no substitute for hard work and no task too difficult to achieve to provide for those he loved.

  His father was dead. I wish I had my father still. He would know how to keep both Aleksi and I safe. He would make decisions for us.

  The unrest that led to civil war in early 2014 spurred Olek. His little brother had just turned nine, his father had retired from the restaurant leaving it in Olek's hands and his mother had cut back on her sewing business because arthritis had made her fingers less nimble, and the harder jobs were no longer possible. Olek watched as Russian troops slipped across the border and joined the separatists, pretending to be Ukrainian to force their way to Crimea, which Russia quickly annexed. Stole.

  The theft of Ukrainian land felt like a stab straight to Olek's heart. Worse still it triggered a heart attack in his father that nearly stole him from this life. The young man dipped into a shattered store front to avoid a small pack of feral dogs that searched for something to eat. The mangy curs loped along, their tongues hanging out like pink whips of muscle, waiting to slap hungrily against something weaker than they. They were larger dogs, shepherds and hounds that had no masters, but large teeth and appetites to match. He pulled his long knife from the sheath on his left hip and crouched behind store shelving that was as empty of groceries as the skeletons behind the register were empty of flesh.

  "A hungry wolf is stronger than a satisfied dog," Olek's father had said to him. At the time his father had been elbow deep in the kitchen, and was referring to the family work ethic, but the expression was no less appropriate. These things on four legs in the devastated street were dogs not wolves, but they were hungry, and their strength frightened him.

  Olek waited for the sun to boil lower to the edge of the earth, for the sky to darken, and for the dogs to pass far away. He breathed in relief under the white rag across his face. They had not smelled him. Once again his habit of rubbing motor oil on his body proved bountiful. He moved again on the tips of his shoe-clad toes, letting the memories of his family guide his turbulent mind to a calmer place.

  If not calmer, perhaps less disturbing.

  Olek watched his father's wrinkled face every night as they watched the news on the small television in their cramped kitchen. He observed each and every moment where the moisture welled in his dad's eyes and he listened to every whispered curse uttered at the Russians. Olek listened to every threat his patriarch sent at the anonymous soldiers. Every second of his father wishing he could be there to defend his home and heritage.

  Olek and Aleksi's father couldn't fight against the Russian invaders, but Olek could. So the oldest Kosh son left the apartment with two crying parents (one proud and hiding it, the other horrified and displaying it) and one crying little brother (proud and scared at the same time.) Olek headed south and east to the war's front in the backseat of his neighbor's Fiat.

  Olek received quick training, a rifle, a bandolier to hold the banana shaped magazines the rifle took, and some dark green uniforms to wear. He took his first shot at a separatist fifteen days after that night and kept on shooting when the call came. He shot a fair amount. Eventually the ceasefire was announced and for a moment, peace reigned. Guarded celebrations happened, though a skeptical Olek drank only the smalle
st sips of vodka.

  Soon after the sickness arrived.

  Fighting in the ruins of Donetsk and Luhansk had kept Olek and the Ukrainian fighters distant from the real world. To wage war one must leave the real world behind. To think of sweets, warm beds, politics, sports and family too much when killing must be done softened a man. Olek avoided the internet, looked away from all televisions, and used what few newspapers came into his presence to light fires. When the first sick people began appearing nearby the illness was too far gone to stop, and the war against the people changed to a war against the dead.

  Because the sickness killed, and the killed, killed again.

  Olek had watched the bad American horror movies. He knew all about the dead and the infected. He knew what happened to his unit friends as they started to cough sporadically, then spasmodically. He knew as the phlegm turned to blood, and as their skin paled from Slavic to vampiric that the illness was more than just that- something that made you ill. The dark bruises at the neck, armpit and groin were signs of doom, not of a need for hot soup and bed rest.