“Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth.”  It was one of Pop’s sayings.  It was how he referred to dealing with everything in life.  “It’s how you respond that makes you who you are.”  It was also one of the last things Pop said before…

I can only shake my head and close my eyes and pray there is a better place on the other side of this mess. (more…)

Sequel to UNTITLED PART 4

I liked the neighborhood because you could hear crickets.  Some people, it bugs them, but I liked following their rhythms.  When they came out it was time to go quiet, to calm down and let them do the talking.

The lamp stayed pretty close to me when I read.  I liked the heat from the bulb.  Me smirking with the thought of being part moth, her weight resting silently on my lap.  She looked up.  “Hey why don’t I feed her and put her down, you can keep reading,” she said, lamp glow reflecting from her eyes. (more…)

Max Brooks (author of World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide) has just published a new short story online at The Daily Beast. Read The Extinction Parade.

There is a point on the horizon.  Take that point and split it in two.  Split it again, and again, and again until you reach a space, one that cannot be split.  Within that space you’ll find the most immense horror you can imagine.  Oceans of pain, not just the type of pain that your flesh so poorly translates, but the actual essence of it.

A thing. (more…)

Sequel to SALVATION

Jeff Robinson sat in the chair and waited for his inevitable death. In fact he wasn’t as much sat in the chair, as strapped in. Think leather fastenings were secured tightly round his ankles, thighs, wrists, arms and waist. He looked around the empty room, moving only his eyes as his head was held firmly in place by the metal cap tightly fixed to it. It reminded him of a room where prisoners on TV shows were taken just before receiving several thousand volts in the electric chair. The irony wasn’t lost on him. (more…)

Sequel to DEADLY COMMUTE

Daniel lay dead to the world. It felt like the best rest he had had in ages as he slowly opened his eyes and thought it about time he rose. The fact that his head was lying on a tiled surface did not alert him, nor what seemed like the distant screams of people locked in hand to hand fighting, it was the sight of a middle aged business woman, on her knees, trying to pull the heels from her stilettos out of some huge guys ears as he lay on the ground. At this he awoke with a jump and everything came flooding back to him; the fighting outside the train, the driver getting bit and then her head being cut off as she tried to attack them and then him leading a group of commuters against a bunch of zombies so they could escape the platform. (more…)