With so few humans left, wondered Skiff, why hadn’t the zombies simply starved to death? He poured the last of the kerosene on to the floor of the barn and dropped the empty can onto the hay.

Of course he knew the answer; they didn’t need to eat to survive, they ate to feed the ceaseless hunger for human flesh. Their own flesh was no longer human, it couldn’t be. When one considered the way the sickly gobs of the stuff fell from their bodies at the slightest provocation, it was obviously something dead and rotting. (more…)

Trevor pushes a button on the cassette recorder. The tape begins turning. Grunts and growls, like some wild beast rooting in the forest, crawl out of the tiny speaker. What follows is a meaty tearing noise, with chewing and slurping. Then a voice comes from the past. (more…)

*click*

My name’s Lucas Gallagher, and if you’re listening to this, you’ve probably done a whole lot better than I did. It probably means that I failed myself and everyone I love miserably. But I want you to know that I tried. God, I tried. (more…)

1.

Once I had the dough kneaded out into a circle, Isaac strolled over and draped a cheese stick onto the bottom half. This created a mouth for our head. There I promptly applied two pepperonis for the eyes and even gave it some brows by carefully placing two banana peppers over those slices. We looked at our Frankenstein and then at each other before bursting out laughing. Big Barry came back from the register. For the last several minutes he’d been kissing the ass of some old woman who had complained about something alien to fine food being embedded in her ham and cheese. He had had to cough up a refund and, if this didn’t put him in a sour enough mood as it were, now he heard us snickering. (more…)

“Viruses mutate. They branch off through natural selection and evolve continuously. Microscopically, each new strand might look almost identical to the original, but the effects on the host can be radically different. Look at the Human Herpes Virus: HH1 is genital herpes, HH3 is chickenpox.”

I remember the lessons of my senior year biology seminar often nowadays. I wonder where Professor Schneiderman is now, if he’s still alive, still explaining virus behavior to a bunch of starving survivors. Probably not; most likely he’s dead and feeding on those starving survivors. I load my make-shift crossbow, take aim, and shoot–another undead falls and three push to take its place. (more…)

The two thoughts that usually come to mind: I need to remember to be truly grateful that I’m still here. And I really miss coffee. That’s not entirely fair; I do get coffee occasionally, but the luxury of a hot pot of the black nectar every morning was something I took for granted. That’s a mistake I won’t repeat. (more…)