Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse (Issue #1 | August 2015)

by Anthony, Michael

  Marko ran his hand down the girl's naked leg, and stopped just below her knee. He made a cutting motion, as if marking his target, with his finger and raised the bone saw high above his head and ready to strike it down into the girl's flesh. She screamed, and this made Marko smile widely. Her screams only continued, and grew even louder and more shrill as he swung the saw down onto the spot he had mentally marked and it cut right through her flesh and caught on her bone. The satisfaction of hearing her shrieks and wails of pain as he sawed back and forth through her bone made Marko throw his head back and laugh an evil cackle. Finally the girl passed out from pain and Marko finished cutting through her lower leg, watching the blood from the open and gaping wound flowing out onto the operating table and onto the floor. He was satisfied.

  Marko took the leg into his skinning workshop and hung it up on a meat hook before returning with an iron to the girl. Plugging it in near the operating table and enjoying the blood flow as the iron warmed, he finally rammed the hot iron into the wound, cauterizing the wound so that she would hopefully live to scream again. After checking to make sure the unconscious Suzy was still in fact alive, he elected to clean the blood puddles later. He wanted to strip the flesh from her severed calf immediately.

  Marko used a sharp scalpel to filet the flesh right off of the girl's leg bone. Ripping the muscle, tendons, and skin from the bone was easy for him as he was so experienced. He had had dozens, if not into the hundreds of victims by now. Mostly starting with vagrant travelers who would not be missed, moving on to tourists who could not be tracked down, and finally now on to abducting the youth of his own city. He was pleased with how this first local abduction seemed to be going smoothly for him.

  Chopping the foot from the calf, Marko now had Suzy's calf completely off of the bone, just how he liked it. After he strung it up to rid the meat of excess blood, he carried the flesh upstairs and into the kitchen.

  “Mother, we have a special treat for dinner tonight,” he called to the elderly woman.

  Putting the calf into a large broiling pan, he covered it in a rub of spices he enjoyed and set it in the oven and sat at the kitchen table to read the day's newspaper while his prize was cooking. His stomach began to growl and ache as the aroma of cooking human flesh spread throughout the house. His neighbors had often commented on his cooking skills, as they could smell his victims baking nearly every day. However, he said he was making chicken, pot roast, or any other normal dish these people would have enjoyed and never suspected that he was eating roasted human.

  Finally, after about an hour, the tempting smell grew too much for Marko and he could not wait for his meal any longer. He removed the roast calf from the oven and rubbed his hands together in delight. Perfectly cooked flesh of this young girl was a delicacy that he would fully enjoy. Although mother would try to refuse to eat, as she usually did knowing exactly the type of meat she was served, he knew she would enjoy the taste of Suzy just as much as he did. Marko served himself a large slice of the meat and sat down to eat it, making sounds of pleasure as he did so.

  When he finished, he cut up another slice into bite sized pieces and walked over to his mother.

  “Now don't fuss, Mother. You must eat,” he said, chuckling at the horror in her eyes.

  He sat on the bed and led the fork with a morsel of flesh to his mother's mouth. She tried to refuse, keeping her mouth shut tight, yet she could not refuse forever. She was hungry, starving and malnourished from how little of her son's cooking she allowed herself to eat. Sobbing silently, she took a bite of the poor girl's leg, chewed and swallowed with difficulty.

  “Good, Mother, good. Eat up,” Marko cooed to his poor crying mother who was forced to eat human meat since her husband had passed away.

  No more than twenty four hours later, Marko was preparing himself a meal of roasted potatoes and Suzy thigh. He had fortunately performed yet another separation of limb from her body without her dying from shock or blood loss, although he was positive she would die the next time he came for her meat. Into the freezer the rest of her body would go, with all the others who had died during amputations. He preferred fresh meat, so his freezer was full of frozen human meat in case of a shortage of future victims. If he ever had to stop his favorite pastime, he would have plenty of his most desired food.

  As he was plating his dinner of human and potatoes, Marko heard a shriek coming from outside. Thinking that Suzy had somehow escaped from the laboratory, he quickly threw open the kitchen curtains and what he saw absolutely astonished him. There was a young woman, probably in her early twenties, being eaten by another woman who appeared to be in her fifties or sixties. The older woman had thrown the younger to the ground, and was now taking large bites from her living body as the young woman shrieked and screamed. After staring for a few moments unsure of what to do, Marko shut the curtains quickly. The police would be there soon, and perhaps they would blame this insane psychopathic woman on the disappearance of Suzy. He would get away with another murder with no repercussions.

  Marko took his plate into the family room and flipped the television on. His eyes widened as he flipped through channels and noticed every single one showed images of what he had seen outside his window. People all over were eating one another. Marko got lost in deep thought. How had this happened? What was happening? Was this an elaborate ruse to make him confess for his sins against humanity?

  “Wound to the brain or severing the spine from the brain...” the news reporter said on the television, snapping Marko out of his ponderance with the thought that if anything his crimes would now be completely unnoticed. He would not be caught or punished for what he had done after this new situation of cannibalism in the streets was sorted out. The missing girl would be news no longer, forgotten in the frenzy happening all around.

  “Yes, it has been confirmed that the recently deceased appear to be rising and becoming...” continued the news story. Marko turned the television off. He walked throughout the house turning out all of the lights and locking every window and door he could think a cannibal might break in through. Then through the darkness, he smirked evilly, and whispered, “Good night mother.”

  The screaming outside continued all through the night, getting fainter and further away until the pleas of a terrified woman came down the street. Marko awoke with a start hearing the woman's shrieks of “Help me, please!”

  He got out of bed and put on his dressing robe before peering through the curtains of his upstairs bedroom window. He could see a young woman, probably almost thirty, running down the street with an injured leg. She was bleeding and stumbling, with what looked like several dead people shambling after her. Ahhh, fresh meat! Marko though to himself and raced to the front door.

  He called to the woman, “Here, over here! I can help you!”, and she shuffled right over and up the steps and into the front door.

  “Shut it! Shut the door,” she croaked, panic-stricken. She was dirty and looked exhausted. She had probably been running and screaming for a while if the hoarseness of her voice and the exhaustion shadowing her face was any indication.

  “What happened to you, dear?” Marko asked her sweetly, looking her over for signs of disease that might make him not want to have her for supper. Other than the gaping wound on her leg, he could find no sign of ill health at all, and he smiled an overly saccharine grin at her.

  “They're... they're everywhere...eating each other..,” the young woman gasped out between large inhales, trying to catch her breath. As if she realized she was now safe, she looked around her and suddenly collapsed into the fetal position and let out a long wail of sobs and “why”s and “oh God”s.

  “There, there, miss. What is your name?” Marko said as he patted the young woman's head as she bawled.

  She cleared her throat and choked out “Courtney” between sobs.

  “Let us get you cleaned up, Courtney,” Marko replied, and took her hand, helping her to her feet and beginning to lead her toward the door to the bas
ement steps. Sudden thumping noises from his mother's chamber came through the walls, and the poor startled Courtney jumped and looked around for the source of the noise. Marko hid his annoyance at his mother's carelessness and again smiled a large fake smile at Courtney.

  “Just the cat,” he mumbled between gritted teeth, trying to sound as calm and normal as he possibly could while trying to lead this unwitting girl down to her chamber of doom. He unlocked the door and began to lead her downstairs slowly through the darkness. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, another set of thumps was heard from upstairs. Frustrated, Marko neglected to think of what the girl might find down in the dark laboratory, and he rushed back up the stairs to see what his mother could possibly be doing to create such a racket, but not until after he ordered the young woman to stay put.

  Once he was upstairs, Courtney couldn't help her curiosity at this dark basement room and she wondered where the shower was that she was to use to clean up. Her leg was still gushing with blood, and she had left a crimson trail all the way down the steps. Feeling dizzy and as though she might be sick, Courtney stumbled through the dark feeling around for a place to sit. As she felt through the darkness, she found the cold, dead body of Suzy and would have screamed had she not been seconds away from passing out. As Courtney slumped to the floor feeling her life force leave her body, she noticed the corpse on the operating table begin to move. For some strange reason, this gave her a sense of comfort, and she drifted off into the darkness and into the light.

  As he rushed angrily into his mother's chamber, Marko flung the curtains from the doorway and began to yell. He saw that his mother had been throwing her belongings into the wall, trying to either get his attention or the attention of the young woman he had just led into their ominous home. His mother's face was contorted with anger and her face was flooded with tears. Her fists clenched and as Marko neared her closet, which is where he kept the straps he'd often strapped her down with when she was “misbehaving”, she began flailing around her bed and attempting to get up.

  Suddenly another ruckus was heard, this time from down in the basement. There was the clanging of metal as though someone had run into the wall of cutlery, and Marko suddenly forgot about his mother's fit. He rushed out of her chamber and toward the door to the basement, which stood ajar. He could not remember if he had closed it when he exited the basement to see what his mother was doing. He neared it cautiously, just in case Courtney had discovered his sinister secrets and decided to grab a weapon and fight her way out. As he peered through the slightly open door, he could see nobody and began to descend the staircase.

  “Courtney?” he called out, hearing not a voice in reply but the sounds of chains rattling as though Suzy was attempting to escape her binds. This struck Marko as odd; the girl should not have had the strength or endurance by now to be making such a commotion. Marko wondered if Courtney was trying to free his captive. He rushed toward the operating table and flipped the lights on. What he was greeted with was startling. Pale and cloudy-eyed, Suzy was gnashing her jaw and fighting hard to rid herself of the barrier that kept her on the table away from Marko. Courtney was nowhere to be seen, but obviously this girl had become one of the eating dead. Marko grabbed a long, sharp blade from his wall of instruments and shoved it deep through one of Suzy's eye sockets. Her eye popped and oozed as blood and pus gushed down her face. He pulled out the blade and wiped the blood and bits of stuck-on brains away before turning to head back upstairs. He had to find Courtney before she escaped.

  Marko leapt back up the staircase, skipping steps in order to make haste. He stumbled and fell on the top step, crashing into the door as he fell to the floor, making a loud banging sound as he hit his face on the door and his tooth sunk into his lip. He fumbled around before sitting up, pulling his lip off of his tooth as it began to stream blood down his face. He imagined he looked like some sort of vampire and chuckled to himself before looking up to see his mother standing at the doorway to the dining room just across from where he sat at the basement door.

  “Mother! What are you doing out of bed? How are you even walking...” he began to scold, but trailed off at the end when he realized what was happening.

  “M-mother! You... you're dead...” he stammered, as he rushed to his feet and started toward her. He grabbed on to her in an attempt to hold her one last time. Of course he had an affinity for his mother, who had raised him and who he'd spent his entire life with, with one caring for the other. As he reached out to her, she grabbed his arm and sank her teeth deep into it. Howling screams escaped Marko's mouth as his mother continued to eat his arm. After minutes of wrestling his mother off of his now wrecked arm, which had not only blood gushing from it, but the flesh was hanging off with tendons and veins dangling down as well, he finally unclenched himself from her vice-like grip and her teeth. He turned swiftly on his feet to see Courtney's dead eyes staring back at his. He had not noticed her closing in on him as he tried to fight off his mother.

  Courtney knocked Marko to the floor awkwardly, falling on top of him. She bent down close to his face and began to rip his cheek off with her teeth. His screams filled the house, and he was sure if he still had neighbors they could definitely hear him now. Courtney's corpse continued to chew on the sadistic man's face as he screamed, and his mother found her new spot to feast from on his body. She ripped through his side as though it was tissue paper and began to pull at his organs and intestines as blood and other viscera gushed from his wounds.

  The last thing Marko saw before passing away and being dragged down into Hell's depths for his psychopathic sins was his mother's face. Her white eyes looked unseeingly through his own as she reached down to grab another handful of his intestines. The irony of the situation was not lost on Marko, and as the hormones of death began to kick in, he laughed maniacally as Courtney and his mother continued to feast on his human flesh.

  “The Estimation of Death and the Undying”

  Story #9

  By

  Jackson Hewlett

  Part 1: How Fast Can You Run?

  There was a house ablaze at the end of the street. He knew because he could see it from the warehouse window where he was hiding. There was also screaming, the most unimaginable screaming, back behind him, further out in the darkness of the warehouse.

  "Please just let me make it through tonight," he whispered to himself, clutching the tire iron in his hand a little tighter. He was nearly out of breath from running.

  "Ethan, what are we going to do?" she hissed into his ear, almost hysterical even as she muffled her voice.

  He turned back to the window: someone was running down the street, flames licking the sky behind them, a dark shadow stumbling, but running as fast as they could.

  Ethan was being hunted, along with his wife Charlotte and one other man. Who was hunting them, he wasn't exactly sure, but in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, in less than 24 hours, the world had changed. His little city had descended into complete chaos, and now here he was, being pursued through the old warehouse at the edge of town.

  "Follow me," he whispered and advanced forward slowly, keeping his head down. As they moved together in a line, turning a corner and advancing down a long hallway, they tried to keep their steps as quiet as possible.

  The screaming stopped. As they came to a crossing hallway, Ethan peered around the corner and saw a zombie at the far end, shuffling forward. He could make out no distinguishing features in the dark, but the walk was the tell-tale sign. So far, it hadn't seen him.

  "We'll have to--" but he was cut off mid-sentence by a deafening sound. As a figure emerged from a doorway to his right, they unloaded a handful of rounds into the leg of the man at the back of the group. Blood and bone broke apart, splattering the wall behind, and the man crumbled to the ground. Ethan couldn't even hear the screaming this time, as he ran as fast as he could, only a ringing in his ears from the shots.

  But as he ran through a set of swinging doors, Charlotte tri
pped and fell through the doors behind him. She cried out, and when Ethan grabbed her to haul her back to her feet, he saw: the bone at her ankle was jabbing out from the flesh.

  The dark figure looked up and even from the distance, Ethan could see the glare in his eyes as they locked stares. Two more men emerged to collect the shot man, who couldn't even struggle against them, let alone run.

  "Now, Charlotte. Get up," Ethan shouted in her ear. But even though she also heard nothing, she struggled to get to her feet, collapsing onto the tile floor.

  The dark figure moved quickly. At the intersection of the two hallways, he lifted his gun and fired off one shot as the zombie entered the intersection and reached him. Aimed right at the forehead, the bullet split apart the creature's skull, and Ethan saw a jet of black fluid and brain matter exit the back of its head in the near-blackness of the hall.