The Dead & Dying: A Zombie Novel (22 page)

None of the zombies are close enough yet to even think about taking a bite, but I feel someone lightly touch my arm. The hand is warm and for a moment my heart forgets to beat.

“You do whatever you think is right, baby. I'll always love you no matter what.”

I love you too, Josie. I think I loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough to make up for everything else.

I take the barrel out of my mouth and aim into the darkness. When the next flash of lightning bathes the inside of the shack, Jason is leaning forward, his mouth opened wide, teeth ready to tear and rip.

I pull the trigger as I should have so long ago and the bullet tears through his tiny skull as his body falls.

Go, now. Be with your mother.

I let the useless gun drop to the floor and squeeze my eyes shut as the first hands begin tugging at my clothes.

It should only hurt for a little while. I don't reckon I can have all that much life left in me.

Still, at least I fulfilled the promise I made to the only woman I'd ever truly loved. At least I kept my word.

I found what I was looking for. And –maybe – what had been looking for me as well.

I close my eyes and await the end.

# # #

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Named by the Google+ Insider's Guide as one of their top 32 authors to follow, William Todd Rose writes dark, speculative fiction which often lends itself to the bizarre and macabre.  With short stories appearing in various magazines and anthologies, his body of work also includes the novels 
Cry Havoc, Shut The Fuck Up and Die!, The Dead and Dying, 
and 
The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People
, as well as the short story collection 
Sex in the Time of Zombies
.  For more information on the author, including links to free fiction, please visit him online at  
www.williamtoddrose.com 

If you enjoyed
The Dead & Dying
, you might also enjoy these other books by William Todd Rose:

SEX IN THE TIME OF ZOMBIES

Even in a world filled with the living dead, sex exists.
A stripper hell-bent on survival faces off against the living dead in a no-holds barred dance of death.
A lone soldier, separated from his unit, finds that the ghosts of his past may very well be more dangerous than a hotel overrun with zombified furries.
A boy faces his inner demons, ready to do anything to be accepted by his peers.
A woman, captured by slavers, finds out there are worse horrors than the walking dead.
From the first day of the undead apocalypse to points far in the future, this book explores the roles sex and sexuality play in determining survival.
Sex . . . zombies. . .love.

Let the infection begin.

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY INFECTIVE PEOPLE

Bosley Coughlin can travel through time. And the future 
does not
 look good.

Through a heady cocktail of drugs and the occult, Bosley slips through time and space and glimpses 
The End
. Cities lay in ruins, and those who still cling to life hide in the rubble like frightened animals. Walking carcasses shamble through the debris exacting a horrible fate upon any living they find.

This horrific future is the only world fourteen year old Ocean has ever known. Starving and alone, she struggles for even the most basic of necessities: food, water, shelter, love…

In the present, Bosley stumbles across Clarice Hudson and soon realizes that she is much more than a simple shop girl. One by one, she displays the seven symptoms of the contagion that will bring Bosley’s world to an end and create the nightmare Ocean calls home. Clarice may hold the key to stopping the coming apocalypse and sparing Ocean from the atrocities of mankind’s imminent future… but only if Coughlin is willing to push beyond every notion he’s ever held about right and wrong.

“Compelling, interesting, and will keep you intrigued from start to finish… a very unique and wild ride.”--Patrick D’Orazio, author of
COMES THE DARK

“There is a very TERMINATOR-esque feeling to the narrative… deserves a spot on your shelf.”—T.W. Brown, author of
ZOMBLOG

“I kept imagining The Dude (from THE BIG LEBOWSKI) telling a drugged out version of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE… This is a book that is really worth reading…”--BuyZombie.com