What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Zombier

What Doesn’t Kill You
Makes You
Zombier

by

Allison Wade

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 Allison Wade

http://alliewader.blogspot.it/

Twitter:
@AllieWadeR

Hello there, gentle reader.

I’m Allison Wade and I’m kind of crazy. No, I mean, really insane. But don’t worry, I’m not dangerous. Yet.

Anyway, the fact is that I like stories, especially horror stories, and sometimes I like to make them up myself. So it happened to me to collect a certain number of said stories and I thought to gather them in this little eBook.

Maybe you should know that English is not my native language, so it may happen to find some sentences that will sound a bit funny or terribly wrong. I apologize for that. But just let me know and I’ll fix everything.

You can visit my blog or tweet me anytime (see links in the previous page), but please be polite, I’m a very sensitive lady. Plus I have a chainsaw. Just saying.

So here are my stories, in case you want to be sure that I am actually insane.

Enjoy yourself. Not in a dirty way, I mean. You know.

See you around.

Allie

After having traveled a long road, and crossed the forest of brambles, and pierced the heart of the dragon, and reached the most faraway room of the highest tower, the prince found an empty bed.

He removed his helm and threw it to the ground in frustration. Was he too late?

“Finally,” hissed a voice behind him, answering to his thoughts.

Something clung to his back, before he could notice and react. Cold breath and stench of putrefaction.

“I was so hungry,” said the princess, sinking her teeth in his neck.

I loved my gerberas.

I had the most luxuriant garden of the entire neighborhood. Before the world ended.

Before they came.

I peek from a slit of the barred window and try to look outside. I tighten my sweaty hands on the rifle.

They’re a herd of stupid dead creatures. They emit guttural sounds; they move difficultly in their torn clothes, covered with clotted blood, the shredded flesh, and the white empty eyes. Dead, but not dead.

They’ve smashed the white fence that encloses my land and they’ve come into the garden, they’ve violated the flowerbeds that I grew with such a care through the years. They wander dull, looking for flesh to chew, tear, eat. They trample on everything, dragging their feet; they destroy the lawn; they kill my precious flowers. All my life.

Just a little flowerbed remains untouched, in a protected corner. A little tender flowerbed of red and yellow gerberas with soft petals that swing gently in the wind.

I look at them ravished, while a tear wets my cheek.

I take a deep breath, chambering a bullet. I am ready to go out.

I will protect until the last flower, even if I had to exterminate every undead, one by one.

I open the door and shout my scream of war.

I’ll come and get you, motherfuckers.

Honestly, I don’t know how to start writing down this story, but I’ll give it a try.

My name is Michael. I’m twenty-three and I study political science at college. I live with my grandmother in a provincial town, in one of those old country houses with the court and the vegetable garden and the chickens... A lot like Old McDonald, except there’s only me and grandma. No, not the usual tear-jerker story about parents lost at sea – simply, grandma’s town is near the campus, so I moved in with her just for convenience. There – that’s the situation, mostly, but maybe I should talk in the past tense. I’m messing up already. Sorry. It’s just that lately I’ve been feeling a little confused...

So, let’s start from the beginning. It was May 22
^nd
.

No, actually the night before. Yes, it was May 21
^st
, 2011, the famous day of the prophecies. A day that, according to some pretend expert interpreters of the Bible, should have signaled the beginning of the Apocalypse: the dead rising from their graves, the coming of the Antichrist, the beast from the sea, the beast from the earth, and all their merry friends.

Of course, like all the mentally healthy people thought, nothing happened that day. The world went on like always. Mostly.

The fact is that it was Saturday night and I should have gone out because Sarah, the wonderful and gorgeous Sarah with hair like fire and sparkling eyes – and epic tits – finally accepted to go on a date with me. OK, the deal was that I gave her the notes of Professor Klein and helped her to prepare for the test, but what the hell? At least it would be a crazy Saturday night... or so I thought.

Raging fever, dry throat, abnormal palpitations, nausea and a range of other symptoms that even science could not identify struck suddenly. All I could do was go to bed and agonize in silence.

And at eight p.m. I fell into a profound coma-like sleep, from which I awoke at eleven a.m. the next morning.

When I woke up I felt incredibly rested, fresh like a rose, almost reborn. Mostly.

I came across my grandma in the hallway and she looked at me like she saw a ghost: “Michael, you’re so pale. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, grandma. Never felt better.”

“I’m going to feed the chicken then. Now it’s late for breakfast; wait for lunch at least.”

What a lovely woman, and still so alert at eighty. “Sure, grandma, I’ll wait for lunch.” But actually I had some pangs.

I went to the bathroom and I looked into the mirror. Crap, grandma was right. As white as a sheet and with dark shadows under my eyes. Maybe I wasn’t so well.

I touched my forehead: cold. Palpitations: nothing.

Nothing?

Yes, nothing. No more pulse. I put my fingers on my wrist, on my neck, a hand on my chest. My heart wasn’t pounding anymore.

It was then that I recalled all the prophecies and the story of the dead rising from the grave... that meant I was dead the night before. And now?

What had I become?

I could see myself in the mirror. The daylight didn’t bother me, I had no protruding canines... Ok, I wasn’t a vampire. But what was that hunger that grew inside of me?

I tried to make some experiments: I pricked my finger with a pin and I didn’t feel any pain, I cut myself with a Swiss knife and still nothing; the blood poured from the wound, but it was dark and dense like it was already starting to coagulate. I welcomed the news with a mix of concern and anguish, but also with some kind of detachment, almost like a peace of the senses... Still the hunger remained.

At some point, the scent of browning onions reached my nostrils. My sense of smell seemed to have become more sensitive.

“Michael, would you like some carbonara?” grandma called for me.

Smell of raw bacon. Hunger. “Yes grandma, I’m coming!”

I went downstairs. Grandma was at the stove, cooking the cubes of bacon. Meat. Smell of meat. Cooked meats. A smell even more inviting – flesh, living flesh. I approached. Tender flesh, throbbing blood.

Grandma’s neck completely exposed. She was so alert, my grandma. And lively.

I came behind without her even noticing. The hunger was too much – the urge, uncontrollable. With a snap, my teeth closed on her neck. The jugular: bitten, torn out, warm, juicy, dense blood, splatters. Flesh. Living flesh. Tasty bites. More.

Before I could realize what I was doing, I already had picked clean the side of her neck and part of her shoulder. Poor grandma wasn’t even able to scream.

I dropped her and she fell to the floor, motionless.

Holy crap. I killed grandma.

I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. The kitchen was a slaughterhouse, literally. Splatters of blood laid everywhere and the bacon was already burned.

I had to clean up everything. I had to fix that mess.

And grandma? Where would I put grandma?

While I was wandering around in panic and looking for the sponges, I realized. I was a fucking zombie. But shouldn’t the zombies be... zombies indeed? Unconscious idiots with limited mental faculties only able to drag their feet and eat and nothing else? No pain, no guilt.

But no, I was fucking awake!

I grabbed grandma’s feet and dragged her to the living room, leaving her on the floor, between the sofa and the tea table. Then I came back to the kitchen and started to clean up.

You have no idea how stinky it is to wipe out the stains of blood from the furniture...

And in the meantime the hunger was back, and growing, and growling. I swallowed all the roll of bacon, but it didn’t satisfy me – stupid dead meat. My stomach was craving for fresher meat – alive, throbbing blood.

But where would I find something alive here around? I couldn’t start to assault the neighbors, of course! And then the idea came to me: chickens.

Ok, it was a humble meal, but better than nothing.

With haste I entered the hen house. The poor beasts, hearing me coming, freaked out with fear, starting to run and jump around in a flit of feathers and cackles.

I grabbed one of them and bit right into its breast – good juicy breast. I spat white and red feathers.

When I was about to take a second bite on the bare flesh, a buzz reached my ears. The doorbell? I was able to hear it even from that distance. Not just my smell, but also my hearing seemed to be more developed than before.

I would have ignored it if I hadn’t heard that voice. “Michael, are you there?”

Sarah. The red-haired beautiful epic-tits Sarah. My forbidden dream.

I was a wide-awake zombie, but maybe not as awake as I thought, because I immediately went to open the door. Right after cleaning my mouth from the blood and the feathers and leaving the stunned chicken in the garden.

My new status forced me to follow the more basic orders – door bell rings: open the door.

“Michael! Jeez, what a face. Are you all right?”

Sarah’s smell stunned me for a moment. I felt the hunger coming back to roar – only an effort of will kept me from jumping onto her.