Zomblog II

  Zomblog II

  Written by: TW Brown

  Introduction by: Tony Monchinski

  Cover art by

  Cover design by Byron Rempel

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  May December Publications LLC

  Zomblog II

  ©2010 maydecemberpublications

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author or May December Publications.

  * * * * *

  Dedication

  To Ronni Gregg,

  my daughter, my first-born, and my princess

  * * * * *

  An Introduction by Tony Monchinski

  Author of Eden and Eden 2: Crusade

  If we can safely claim that there’s never a good moment for a zombie apocalypse, we can equally safely say that, in so many ways, Zomblog II couldn’t have come at a better time. An explosion of interest in zombies in popular culture, changes in the publishing industry, and a seemingly unquenchable thirst for horror and good stories sets our stage. Let’s face it: vampires have been growing soft and effete for the last two decades. Their undead cousin, the zombie, has waited patiently in the back-ground, rotting slowly and biding its time, the great untapped natural horror resource of a troubled psyche.

  Defying expectations, the popularity of the can-nibalistic corpse continues to rise, much like the ghouls themselves. Zombies won’t go away and their expressions are multiplying exponentially. In literature (J.L. Bourne’s Day by Day Armageddon books; Kim Paffenroth’s Down the Road series) and film (Romero’s Survival of the Dead; France’s The Horde or The Dead, set in Africa); on television (AMC’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead; the British series Dead Set) and on gaming consoles (Capcom’s Dead Rising and Resident Evil franchises); the subject of lampoon (Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with an assist from Seth Grahame-Smith; Lewis Carroll’s collaboration with Nickolas Cook, Alice in Zombieland) and philosophy (Kenemore’s The Zen of Zombie; Greene and Moham-mad’s Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless); from guides offering advice to dealing with and dispatching the undead (Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide; Zombies for Zombies, whose author, David Murphy, promises—in its subtitle—Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead) to poetry in general (A.P. Fuchs’ Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes) to haiku in particular (Mecum’s Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your…Brains) …whew! You get the idea. A veritable smorgasbord of zombies exists for those of us who can’t get enough of our favorite undead foils.

  The market for zombie literature in the early twenty-first century reminds me of what I imagine the pulp fiction market in the middle of the last century must have been like. A lot of “zombie books” are coming out. Some of them are good but, let’s face it, some of them are not. Zomblog II is one of the better ones. There are characters you will care about. The novel begins with Jenifer, a teen protagonist and continues with a pregnant young lady, Meredith—not your typical heroine. The novel’s characters do not lose their sense of humor amidst the horror and cruelty surrounding them. Zomblog II posits what, for my money, makes novels featuring zombies interesting, and that has nothing to do with the undead. “If the living people worked against the dead people,” one character remarks, “I bet we’d be doing lots better.” Indeed. Todd Brown takes a well-defined genre and puts his own spin on things: there are zombie-bite victims who don’t turn; zombies, like dogs, can sense an earthquake before it hits. Speaking of dogs, we learn that man’s best friend hates the undead as much as we do.

  All writers have limitations. I, for one, often wonder how writers I enjoy manage to pull off the first-person point of view. The problem with this perspective, from my perspective, is it lends itself to exposition and information dumps, to excessive telling and not enough showing, ever threatening to derail a storyline. I’m further wary of journal or diary-type tales, which are necessarily written looking backwards on a day’s events, recounting what has happened. And yet, so many authors I enjoy pull it off and pull it off well, from Andrew Vachss’ Burke books to Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, from Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels to J.L. Bourne’s anonymous naval officer in his two Day by Day tomes. Add Todd Brown and the first two installments of his Zomblog series to this short list.

  But Zomblog II represents more than a solid, entertaining novel that will please zombie fanatics. Zomblog II is an imprint of MayDecember Publications, Todd Brown’s own independent press. The landscape in which the publishing industry does its thing is changing as I write and you read. The traditional publishing houses are hemorrhaging and contracting. As I write, Barnes & Noble is looking for a buyer and Borders appears to be on the ropes. I read that fifty thousand is the new one hundred thousand when it comes to advances (err, okay; I know nothing of this first hand). As if it isn’t hard enough writing a book, the difficulty of getting your book published with an established house can drive you batty and leave you questioning your worth as an artist. Book publishing is not and has never been a meritocracy, though those of us who get published like to kid ourselves otherwise. The stories are legion: Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time got the thumbs down from twenty-six publishers before it saw the light of day and over seventy printings; when David Lassman submitted selections from Jane Austin’s classic corpus to eighteen major players in the publishing industry, he received rejection letters and only one nod to what he was up to. And these are the “classics” we’re talking about here—not the red-headed step children of the publishing industry that our beloved zombie novels have been relegated to. Today, it’s still not enough to have talent; nor is it enough to write a good book that people are going to want to read.

  Yet the audience for our dear undead is there, as seemingly insatiable as the rotting antagonists of their preferred subject matter. Cue the independent presses, like Permuted, Library of the Living Dead, and May December Publications, which are providing us undead junkies our fix. Don’t think Manhattan hasn’t noticed. In 2008, Simon & Schuster entered a deal with Permuted to jointly re-issue select Permuted titles as mass market paperbacks. But the original, bold and innovative voices in our genre are rising up through the independent presses and print-on-demand publishing and will continue to do so for some time. May December Publications gives voice to these previously voiceless, in works such as the anthology Eye Witness and the novels Dead: The Ugly Beginning and Zomblog II.

  We like to be scared. We like to be frightened when we know we are ultimately safe. Hence our love of roller coasters and Halloween haunted houses. Horror movies and books, when done right, fulfill this same desire. The zombie is uniquely sit-uated to scare us. Zombies are not charming; they’re not sexy. Zombies are not potential romantic interests, unless necrophilia is your thing. They rarely glitter (unless radioactive) and they’re never vegans. The undead are rotting, ever-hungry, and usually not too swift. A side of beef in your supermarkets’ butcher case has more smarts than the typical zombie.

  When Todd Brown emailed for the first time a couple of years ago, complimenting me on a zombie-themed action-horror novel I’d written, I didn’t know him from Adam. When he asked me to write a blurb for the first Zomblog, I was honored. When he asked me to contribute a short story to Eye Witness: Zombie, I was honored again. When I read Eye Witness: Zombie and some of the stories in it—like
Ron Harris’ Baby Killer, which is exactly what it sounds like—I thought to myself, what kind of a deranged son of a bitch could be dedicating himself to this form of fiction? I figured MayDecember Publications referred to an age disparity between Todd and his wife; later I found out those are the months three of his kids were born. Todd Brown is a good man and a solid writer; MayDecember Publications is an upstart new house delivering the proverbial goods; and Zomblog II, rest assured, will not disappoint!

  Tony Monchinski

  Peekskill, NY

  Halloween, 2010

  * * * * *

  Thursday, October 30

  My name is Jenifer and now I have this stupid journal. It has been almost two weeks since Meredith shoved this in my hands and told Dominique and I to run. We haven’t gotten very far.

  We are in a bar called Buxom. I’m not old enough to have actually been in a bar before the zombie thing happened… but I’m pretty sure this was a nudie place. There are no windows, but there were two skylight thingies. We had to scrape black paint off ‘em, but I’ll get to that later.

  I finally read all the stuff that guy Sam wrote. It was kinda sad, but I guess it’s that way for everybody. I sure didn’t know about all that bad stuff that happened to Meredith either. The part I think is totally stupid is that they had that place, Irony. Why would they just leave? And that place Sam was at…it sounded okay, too. The closest I’ve had to anything like that was the movie theater; and now this place.

  It is early in the morning and Dom is still asleep. When she gets up, we’ll do what we’ve done every day since the day we left Snoe and Meredith behind. We’ll sneak up onto the roof and keep watch. We have gone through half of the pack of food, and I’m not moving until we have to. Those creepy zombies are all over. So far, we haven’t seen a single living person…but sometimes we hear guns.

  Dom’s up!

  Another day wasted up on the roof. In fact, today, we didn’t hear a single gunshot. Now there’s something I never thought I would say. It’s not that I’m used to how things are, it’s just that since everything is so far away from normal, there are crazy things that now fit into everyday life.

  While my folks would have never admitted it, I bet they wouldn’t be too surprised I ended up in a nudie bar. Only, not quite how anybody could’ve expected.

  Dom and I found this place on the run. As it turns out, it was a good choice. There is only the main entrance to worry about, and the lock on the door was easy. Snoe showed me how to pick a lock a few weeks ago, which I still think is totally cool.

  I miss her. Meredith, too. And I hate that now I have to take care of Dominique. Not that I think she needs taking care of. She lived fine all by herself for a long time. Only, well, I feel responsible. If this is how Meredith and the others felt about me, I feel kinda bad for some of the stuff I’ve done.

  Anywho, that first day here, we actually ran for this building because it was just this ugly stone square. There were no obvious windows, and only the one door we could see, which was metal. It looked safe. We got in easy enough, and Dom held the door open while I checked for any zombies in the entry. Nothing came at us, and it only smelled funky. None of that stinky zombie smell.

  There were lots of those things coming for us by now. I held a flashlight, and Dom came in and grabbed a nearby table. The entry was small and two tables slid in side-by-side worked perfect as a wedge between the door and the wall of the entry hall. The door didn’t open even a smidge as they pounded on it.

  It took us a while to search the place. It was empty, which was good. There wasn’t one single thing we could use though, and that was bad. After double and quadruple checking the place, we turned off the flashlights. Then…we fell asleep. When we woke up, Dom noticed the pinpricks in the ceiling. That is how we discovered the skylights.

  I found a small step-ladder in a closet full of gross, moldy mops and we put it on a table. While we took turns scraping off the black paint, we sang songs. Dom knows the words to like every Beyoncé song.

  I decided to break out one of the sections so we could go out on the roof. This place had a bunch of dark curtains in a back room with a long counter that had the biggest mirror I’ve ever seen. Dom had a great idea. There is a bunch of bleach in the cleaning closet, so we poured it in the pattern of the signal that Meredith told us to use. The first night, we climbed up to the roof and hung the curtains over the sides of the building.

  It’s not like zombies can read.

  Friday, October 31

  Spent an absolutely boring day on the roof. It took us until after lunch to realize just how totally quiet it was. I know there are groups of people around. It was a pretty big group that screwed this whole trip up in the first place. I can see the top floors of the hospital that Meredith thought they were using, or at least claiming, as their own property.

  I wish somebody could tell me why everybody is so stupid! If the living people worked against the dead people…I bet we’d be doing lots better.

  Dom and I just watched zombies wander around all day. Our favorite was this super fat lady pushing a grocery store cart down the middle of the road. Dom whisperd in this sorta weird voice that sounded drunk more than dead—although who am I to tell her that zombies don’t talk like in some of the really dumb movies—“I want two sides of thighs with my manburger…and a Diet Coke.” We started giggling so much, I was sure those things would hear us…but they didn’t.

  One good thing. I found a big jar of those cherries on a shelf in the back. You know the kind, the fake ones they put in drinks. They didn’t smell bad or nothing. When we went down for our dinner, I asked Dom what she would have been for Halloween. She said anything but a zombie. We laughed some more; which is something I have realized that the so-called adults didn’t do very often. I made Dom say “Trick or Treat!” then I pulled out the jar. After sniffing a bunch of the bottles, we decided to try this stuff called Amaretto.

  Saturday, November 1

  I’m never gonna drink again.

  Sunday, November 2

  I still feel terrible. And even after using a half a tube of toothpaste, I still taste that icky, nasty, fake-cherry and amaretto-vomit taste. I brush and brush but, like ten minutes later, it’s back. It reminds me of when my family and I would go to the beach. Two weeks later I’d still be finding sand in strange places.

  Gunshots! Close!

  Monday, November 3

  Snoe didn’t make it. But it is nice to see that the girls have fared well. Mostly. It’s been a rough couple of weeks since I sent Jenifer and Dominique out that back door. I didn’t think I’d ever see them again.

  So, here’s what happened:

  The lobby filled with those things, and they didn’t take long to stack up outside the door to our theater. I tried several times to move Snoe, but she couldn’t walk at all, and I just wasn’t strong enough to carry her. It is one of the few times I cursed being a woman.

  The doors started giving, and I remember crying and begging Snoe to please get up. Finally, she waved me close and whispered, “Run!” I told her I wouldn’t leave her. She managed to open her eyes just a bit, and I could see that fire that made her so strong still burning bright. She placed her hand on my stomach and said, “Name the baby after me. Now give me a gun and get your skinny ass outta here!”

  I’ve never cried so much. I don’t know what happened. It felt like every single sad thing that has ever occured to me just poured out at once. I handed her a pistol, made sure it had one in the chamber, and that the safety was off. (I still can’t remember ever hearing it fire.)

  By now, the smell was overpowering. I looked up and saw that the door was opening. Heads and hands were poking through. I kissed her on the forehead and then…God, forgive me…I left.

  The girls had only been gone a few hours, so I hoped I would be able to catch them. Only, it seemed that they had drawn some attention. When you are alone and those things are everywhere, it is a bit hairy. Some I could shove away, others
I had no choice but to spear. I don’t think Snoe realized that I gave her the only other gun. Had she known, I’m sure she would’ve asked me to shoot her, and I know I would not have been able to do that. Shooting a zombie is one thing. Shooting a living person who you care for…totally not the same; I don’t care what the situation is.

  Anyways, I was out in the open with a makeshift spear and nothing but a knapsack with very meager supplies to rely on. Eventually, I had to stop trying to guess which way the girls went. The only thing I could do was run.

  The good news was that residential areas were close. I knew that a house was not a long term situation, but I had to get off the street. I had to climb or vault over a lot of fences. I’m sure glad I’m not much further along in this whole pregnancy thing. Still, after about twenty or thirty minutes of running, jabbing, climbing, jabbing, vaulting, and more jabbing, I managed to break clear. This allowed me to scout out a place to hole up in.

  I chose an older two-story with a front porch that sat a good four feet off the ground. There was only one set of steps, and they were wood. Seeing how I was by myself, and not a single zombie was in sight, I had an idea and enough time to implement it.

  Fortunately, the stairs were already in bad shape. On the side of the house was a decent supply of firewood. I grabbed a sturdy piece and, with surprising ease, knocked out the side supports. Very pleased with myself, I demolished the little five step access and tossed the pieces into the grassy side yard.