Tag: dark

Island Fever

Pavowski4 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: a Random phrase to be worked into the story. (Random phrase generated by this site — which is kinda interesting on its own.) The phrase I pulled, of all things, was “perfectionist raft.”  Believe it or not, I managed to take even a silly thing like that and turn it dark. Maybe something is wrong with me. Anyway, what resulted is below. I even managed to trim it to a lean 1000 words, down from 1400 or so in its first draft.

Image by Ronsaunders47 @ flickr.
Image by Ronsaunders47 @ flickr.

Island Fever

Day 3

I can’t believe I’m writing this. When our plane crashed, I thought for sure we’d be rescued within twenty-four hours. But here we are, day three, and we’re still not rescued. Why not keep a journal?
It’s funny: all I really want is a good shave. Nothing but mangoes to eat and collected rainwater to drink for three days, and all I can think about are these damn whiskers rasping every time I scratch my cheek. Air Transit is going to get a letter from me, you can believe that.

Day 5

I forgot to mention the other survivors, and by forgot, I mean I was hoping they’d die off. There’s Collin, an obsessive compulsive who will only bring mangoes back to camp in multiples of ten and who keeps trying to wash his hands in the rainwater. Then there’s Sasha, who I’m pretty sure is a Russian mail-order bride. Speaks not a word of English. Then there’s me. With my dropped-out-of-boy-scouts knowledge base to draw from, maybe I can whittle us some shelter out of a palm tree, except: did I mention we don’t have any blades or tools at all? It’s a wonder I even got a fire started, though Sasha was giving me impressed looks after I did. Maybe one day we’ll have to repopulate this island.

Day 8

There’s something weird about this island. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but I realized this morning there are no insects here. At all.
Collin walked the perimeter of the island yesterday, confirming that it’s entirely uninhabited except for a few birds. The birds might be a good sign — wouldn’t that mean there’s other land within, I dunno, flying distance? Anyway, he said it took him exactly 12,003 steps to get around the island and then he wouldn’t shut up about the extra three steps for hours.
Sasha gave me the eye again after Collin left, but I couldn’t even think about it. I haven’t had a solid shit since the first night. Goddamned mangoes.

Day 12

Collin got his trip around the island to an even twelve thousand for the last two days in a row and he says he’s going to do it every day, says it makes him feel productive. At least it’s something to do. It’s been almost two weeks. Starting to think we might not get rescued at all.

Day 14

A whole bunch of debris washed up on the east shore of the island today. Collin found it on his daily sojourn, and suggested we move camp over there so that we can go through it and see if there’s anything we can use. He thinks it’s wreckage from our airplane. Fine by me. Maybe my Norelco is in there.
I keep hearing this weird buzzing sound at night, but when I wake up, all I hear is waves.

Day 15

God has a sense of humor. I found my carry-on, and my Norelco. Of course, A) it’s waterlogged to hell and B) where would I even plug it in? I feel like I read in a Chemistry textbook once that you could make a battery out of a lemon and some electrodes. I wonder if that would work with a mango.

Day 16

Collin thinks he can build a raft out of what’s left over from the wreck. A raft. I’m helping him, but only to give myself something to do.
Sasha lost her mind and started drinking seawater at sundown. Now she’s vomiting her brains out and keeping me awake.

Day 19

This crazy electrical storm struck in the middle of the night last night. It woke me up, and I walked down to the water’s edge and watched the lightning lancing down into the ocean like the trident of … is it Poseidon that rules the ocean? Sasha was there, just staring off into the waves, saying nothing. For some reason, I thought of the raft. Something’s not right about it. It makes me nervous.

Day 20

Sasha’s gone.
Woke up this morning and she was nowhere to be found. There weren’t even any footprints leading from the place where she slept. Just a little indentation in the sand that still smells of her.

Day 28

The raft is a problem.
I think it’s seaworthy, but Collin insists it’s not right yet. Needs more this, needs more that, needs to be more even. I told him he was being silly and he told me I was acting like Sasha.
What that’s supposed to mean, I have no idea.

Day 30

I strangled Collin with the cord to my Norelco. He was going on and on about his preparations, so last night I set that goddamned perfectionist raft on fire. (Thank you, boy scouts!) He got all bent out of shape and came at me with a shard of aluminum siding from an overhead compartment. I talked him down, then, when he was picking through the ashes, I snuck up on him from behind.
Can’t have him building another raft.

Day 31

No rain last night, just lots of lightning, which means no water today. Collin was in charge of storing the rainwater, and I forgot. Why can’t you drink salt water, anyway? The body can filter that stuff out, right? Isn’t that what your kidneys are for?

Day 32

Another storm coming tonight.
I can feel it in my blood.

Day 33

If I hold really still, I can hear the island speaking to me. That buzzing I heard? That’s its voice. I think the salt water makes it easier to hear.
I feel dizzy, but I’m afraid to sit down. The sand is moving like there are millions of snakes underneath it. But if I just stand right here and don’t move, it’ll be okay. The island told me so.

Grey Search

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Chuck’s challenge this week: Random Titles.

I found my title — Grey Search — and after banishing thoughts of Gandalf fan-fiction, the only thing left clanging around in my brain was Grey Goo. I ran a little long, but I’m cutting myself a break in favor of the interesting world this found me in.

So…

Photo by Ian Norman @ Flickr.
Photo by Ian Norman @ Flickr.

Grey Search

Another day, another foray into the Grey.

I scrub up and haul on the lime green bodysuit, stuff my feet into triple-poly thermal boots, strap on the insulated mitts so thick and stiff they’re like big yeti paws. I don’t bother to check myself in the mirror: I already know I look perfectly indistinguishable from the others on my team, suiting up in their own clean rooms.

The redundancy is tedious, but chances are not worth taking.

I double check my seams and tromp down the hallway to the airlock. I breathe the canned air deep into my lungs; it’s been recycled so many times, it’s hard not to smell the stale farts and garbage in it, though the utility squad assures me that’s just my imagination. Still, it’s better than the bland, window-cleaner smelling brew they outfit the enviro-suits with. It resists contamination longer, they say. But it turns my stomach something awful.

Satch and Virge are already in the airlock, masks in place and suits pressurized. They look like a pair of Stay-Puft marshmallow men. Manx waits by the terminal, her fingers flying over the keyboard, probably reconfiguring the daily power allowances for the core. We used to have three people handling that job around the clock, until Manx got her hands on a computer and showed the council she could do the same job in a third of the time, by herself. That kind of usefulness in a place like this means you stay busy. It’s a big deal, her running Control for us.

“Bout time, Deel.” She doesn’t look up from her code. “You’ve got the Grade 3 suits today for maximum time in the field. Eight hours of pure air and another four if your purifiers hold.” She finally looks at me, arching an eyebrow under her mousy brown bangs. “Try not to push it, though.” She cut her hair. Looks almost normal again. Hasn’t looked so — happy isn’t the word — all right since Danny got caught out a few months back. I tell her it suits her. She tells me to get my mask on, then presses the button at my wrist to pressurize my suit.

The ambient world disappears with a hiss and a click. My ears pop, and I breathe in the window-cleaner-scented air.

“Big day today,” Virge’s voice crackles in my ear.

“Just come back safe,” Manx says, pressing the last few buttons on the terminal. She retreats through the airlock hatch and the door whooshes closed behind her. Red flashing lights. Klaxons. Then the far wall opens up and the sunlight spills in. We throw up our gloved hands to block out the sun, then glance at each other and trudge out into the Grey.

#

The suits are heavy, but the air feels light today. Clear skies. Endless azure stretching off into the distance, meeting a solid line of grey at the horizon, grey which continues all the way back to our feet. Can’t even see Installation 17 behind us any more. Been a long time since anybody ventured this far out.

Since Danny, we all think, but nobody says.

“Any sign yet?” Virge asks, her voice not particularly hopeful.

Not that he needs to, but Satch checks the scanner. “Not for a few miles yet.”

We plod on in silence.

#

It’s impossible to tell in the suit, but it almost looks like there’s a little breeze out here, blowing little wisps of grey dust around in swirling eddies.

“You guys see that?” I point as a fine, pale mist washes across our feet.

“Is that … wind?”

It’s too much to hope for, but there it is. There hasn’t been wind or weather since the world went Grey.

“If that’s wind…” Satch takes his time. He knows the danger of hope. “Then Danny might have been right.”

Virge knows better. “Right or not, he still died out here. Like we will if we get caught up chasing wind.”

“We should get a sample of that dust,” I say. Because if there’s still wind, then maybe the island is real, too. I’m an idiot for thinking it. The island is a myth, a fairy tale. Some land out there in the wastes, untouched by the Grey, unclaimed by it. Something in the air that keeps it pure. A place we could live like humans again.

“Stick to the mission,” Virge barks.

Satch stops walking. “Virge. You know what it could mean.”

“What I know,” Virge stops as well, pulling up right in Satch’s face, “is that Deel’s already picked up some bugs.”

She points. We look. There’s a faint steam rising from the toe of my boot.

“Shit. How long?”

“Just the last twenty minutes or so. Nothing to stress about.” She fixes Satch with a steely look. “But let’s not forget that time is a factor. Besides. Any sample would just be goo by the time we got it back.”

She’s right, of course.

#

The sonar pings are getting closer and closer. Danny’s tracker. The tiny transmitter encased in a shell of ultra-dense, non-reactive alloy. If we’re lucky, it’ll be all that’s left. I’ve seen my share of humans consumed by the Grey. Flesh goes quick, but the bones can resist for a while. They look like skeletons made of ash.

#

Danny’s just a bump in the goo. Wouldn’t even know he was there if not for the pinging of the sonar on Satch’s tracker. But here he is, at our feet. My boot is smoldering steadily now, up to the ankle. It’s lucky we found him — I’ve only got a few more hours to get back before the bugs got through.

Usually we’d draw straws before digging into the goo, but I’m already contaminated, so before anybody can argue, I plunge my mitts into the muck. It’s weird, the goo — solid as a rock underfoot, but dig into it or stand still for too long, it’s like riverbank mud. Goopy and sticky and awful, and I try not to think about whether I’m rooting around in Danny’s chest cavity or his skull. Then I feel it: a solid little walnut buried in the sludge. I pull it out, hold it aloft, grin through the fog in my mask.

“Let’s head back,” Virge says.

#

Our gear goes into the incinerator, and I get an extra-long hose-down. Two layers of my boot and most of the glove-arm of my suit was chewed up and crumbling away by the time we got back. Still, I get the all clear.

Manx sits in Control, staring off at something invisible about five feet in front of her. Her eyes are kissed with red and puffy. She looks like a marionette somebody threw into a chair. I sit down by the door and make a big deal of not looking at her.

Finally she speaks.

“You found him.”

“We found him.”

“He recorded a message in his tracker. If he was telling the truth, his feet had already gone Grey and he knew he wasn’t going to make it.”

Knowing Danny, he was probably a lot worse off than that, but there’s no sense saying that to Manx. “Did he find it? The island?”

Tears well in her eyes again, and I know I shouldn’t have asked. The island is too much to hope for.

“He found it.” And Manx looks at me with the wrong emotion in her eyes. There should be joy. We should be celebrating, calling the council, hell, sounding the all-call. But she looks dead inside. “He found it, but he was already contaminated, and he brought the Grey with him.” She bites back a sob. “We destroyed it, just like we destroyed everything else.”

I pat her shoulder a little aimlessly, but there’s nothing to say. I wonder if the council will spread the word that Danny found the island.  Probably not. We’re all dead anyway, but at least we can pretend we have something to live for.

Dead Inside

Pavowski6 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: Random Song Title.

My song was off of Muse’s latest album, titled “Dead Inside”. The story is not particularly based on the song, just the title.

Anyway…

Picture by zarrion101 @ flickr.com
Picture by zarrion101 @ flickr.com

Dead Inside

The sound of a million shuffling feet and untold thousands of voices clanged back and forth between the skyscrapers like the streets themselves were coming to life. Hundreds of strangers jockeying for position, shoulders nudging her this way and that, shoes coming down on her cold feet, soundless shouting in her ear.

It was enough to make Lara wish she were dead for real. Soon enough, she thought, and immediately pushed the thought out of her head. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion. She could survive today. She wasn’t even sure she was actually dead. The disease was still young in Lara: she had none of the usual symptoms, she even still had a heartbeat. The disease affected everybody differently, and — and this was the important part — it mutated quickly. There were over four hundred categorized variations of ZuF2 already, and another hundred projected already for the next week. It had sprung up so quickly, they didn’t even have a proper name for it. Who’s to say one of those variations might not be non-lethal? Who’s to say you couldn’t learn to live with it?

Spurred by the crowd, Lara inched forward, trying not to imagine the taste of the big, beefy shoulder in front of her. Shoving her appetite down into her feet was not easy; the man wore a tank-top, and in the ninety-degree sun a thin sheen of sweat glistened just there, so inviting she could practically feel her teeth sinking into it… but no, take a bite out of a human and she’d be dead within seconds, and probably kick off a riot besides. She could master the hunger. She might pass by the scanners undetected. She might be all right, as long as she could keep from eating anybody. And if they didn’t look too closely at her skin. The long-sleeved, high-necked shirt she’d put on was a gamble: it hid the shapes but it  would draw attention. Only the dead could walk around fully covered up in this heat and not sweat like sweltering hogs.

“Next.”

The beefy-shouldered man stepped to the side for his scan and the man in full tactical gear beckoned to Lara, reaching his hand out for hers with all the care and concern of a bus driver holding the door open for you at the end of a thirteen hour shift.

“Next. Come on, sister. Let’s go.” The crowd at Lara’s back began jeering too; ordinary, living and breathing folks, who wanted to get their negative scans and go back to their televisions and air conditioning. She felt hands shoving her forward, into the grasp of the guard. She did her best to stand up straight. As he was inspecting her left hand for signs of rot, she noticed a dark shape flit across the back of her right, a bubble dancing up through ice cubes in a cool glass of tea. She shook her hand briefly and then clapped it to the back of her neck.

“Hot, isn’t it?” Lara smiled at the man, who just glared at her through his visor filmed with sweat and condensation.

“Hands are clean. Eyes wide.” He held up the scanner, a forked device attached to a tiny touchscreen which he thrust toward her face.

Lara bit back a mouthful of vomit. A subconscious part of her had, just for an instant, meant to douse the man and everybody around her in bile, and had nearly succeeded. She told herself she had just felt repulsed by the scanner, and forced herself to keep her face neutral. It wasn’t difficult, actually. The bile hadn’t tasted of bile, but rather like a mouthful of sand: tasteless and irritating, but harmless. She wondered if that was a good sign or not.

Beep beep. The iridescent green flash from the console lit up the man’s visor, and he was already motioning for the next person in the throng. “Next.”

Lara was clean. She laughed out loud and threw her hands in the air, suddenly thankful for the sun on her skin, even if she couldn’t feel its warmth.

“What the hell is that?” A panicked, female voice cried from behind her.

Lara whirled to see the man who’d just scanned her advancing toward her, shouldering his rifle.

“What did you see?” He barked.

The girl was just a kid, fifteen or so, sweating through a loose purple-striped halter top, but she was pointing at Lara with unmitigated revulsion and terror in her eyes. “I don’t know, it was her arm… something moved!”

Lara’s heart stopped. She actually felt it beat its last beat. So she was dead, after all. The sleeves of her shirt had fallen to her elbows when she raised her arms toward the sun, and there, squirming like a mass of leeches, was a bundle of shadowy shapes beneath her skin.

“Infected.” The man whispered it to himself, then he shouted it. “Infected!”

Like the tide going out before a tsunami, the crowd withdrew from her: she was standing all alone as eyes of all shapes and colors and guns of all sizes trained themselves on her. “Wait. He just scanned me, I’m not –” But the first bullet came quickly, tearing through her upheld hand and entering her head just below the eye. Others, which she did not feel, riddled her body in the space of a heartbeat.

But she didn’t die. Rather, it was like her consciousness passed through a prism. She suddenly felt like she had split into thousands, and each facet of herself rushed toward an onlooker with all the haste of a hawk in a prey-dive.

The body of Lara exploded like a bag of beef stew, and out of the gristle and gore leapt thousands of tiny dark blobs, wingless, legless roaches on the wind. They splattered into the crowd, squirming into noses and eyes and mouths as gunfire erupted throughout the throng and previously civil people began trampling each other in a panic.

Lara was the last mutation of ZuF2. Or at least, the last one that mattered.

The Unholy Sands

Pavowski6 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: the Random Title Challenge. Always fun when it rolls around.

This challenge finds me just back from vacation at the beach, and it was a little hard to shake that from my mind, so rather than fight it, I used the image that stuck in my mind when I drew my title as the central gag in the story. Maybe it works.

The Unholy Sands

“I’m just not sure I see the need.”

Larry didn’t even hesitate, but launched into the next tier of his pitch. “See, that’s the thing. You don’t see the need, nobody sees the need. Your average vampire can overmatch a human without breaking a sweat, let alone a fine specimen such as yourself. Which is why this is the perfect weapon.” He pushed the bullet-sized glass vial into the vampire’s hand.

The vampire stared at the vial as if it were full of elk piss. “What does it do, exactly?”

“Good question. Fair question. So. The humans, right? Sure, some of them are accepting of your kind, some of them will even offer you a little of their blood if they’re really friendly. I know a few people like that, and I’m sure you do, too. I’ve even shared a bit of my own from time to time.” It was a lie, but not the biggest one he had in his bag.

Despite himself, the vampire found himself nodding along with Larry.

“But those are the good ones. Now, I don’t need to tell you that there are more than a handful of humans out there who would just as soon stake somebody like you as look at you, am I right? And these people,” he let his mouth curl around the word for disdain, and inwardly ticked a box on his mental list as he saw the vampire’s lips curl up likewise, “they have basements full of every tool they can possibly use in the fight against your kind. Closets full of wooden stakes. An armoire full of crosses. Boxes and boxes of silver bullets. I heard about a guy who became ordained on the internet so that he could bless all the water that came into the house, right there at the water main. Can you imagine? Invited a vampire over, had his wife spill some barbecue sauce on the guy’s face, offered to let him wash up, and blammo. Undead soup all over the bathroom floor.” It was a story spruced up from the truth through a hundred retellings, and it had the desired effect.

The vampire couldn’t help himself. “Ugh.”

“You’re damned right, ugh. Now, I could show you an arsenal of anti-human weaponry, and trust me, I’ve got some things in here that would make your cold heart skip a few beats.” Larry patted his sharkskin wheeled travel bag for emphasis, disguising the subtle click from within. “But there’s no need, because that right there, in your hand, is the crown jewel. May I?” He held out his hand to the vampire, watching for the sign of hesitation that would tell him the vampire was interested. It was tough to spot with vampires, but there it was, a flicker of doubt as he pressed the vial back into Larry’s hand. “Notice how it refracts the light from even the most meager of sources.” Larry held the vial aloft against the backdrop of the vampire’s moth-dingy porch light, and stepped back for full effect.

The shadow that Larry cast onto the front lawn stretched and expanded as you might expect from a solitary light source, but swirling around his shadow’s hand — the hand holding the vial — was an aura of swirling, contorting, faintly whispering blackness, blacker than the night or Larry’s shadow or the insides of the vampire’s eyelids. A hushed storm raging in the air about his hand.

The vampire blinked in shock, glancing from Larry’s hand, which grasped a seemingly harmless glass vial, to Larry’s shadow, which seemed to hold a pulsating orb of living darkness. “What is it?”

“Humans have their holy water,” Larry said. “Vamps have the Unholy Sands of Kelep’Met.” Larry held his breath for a moment. His last sale had been thwarted when his target had turned out to be something of an enthusiast in Egyptian lore, pointing out that Larry had mispronounced the word. He’d been lucky to escape with his life. This vampire, however, possessed no such knowledge, and simply gaped in accepting wonder.

Larry pressed on, edging closer to the vampire, though every instinct in him told him to keep his distance. Vamps might have been in the open, and most thought (rightly) that they had nothing to fear from humans, so they didn’t bother hurting people. But that didn’t mean you could trust them, and the illusion wouldn’t last long. “Far back, before recorded histories, before the dawn of the undead, great and terrible gods roamed the earth. One of them, Kelep’Met, drew the ire of his brothers for his devotion to the dark side of mankind, his demands for human sacrifice, his depraved games in which he would slaughter men in droves just to sate his evil lust for blood. His brothers met him in the darkest recesses of the earth and slew him, and there his blood seeped into the earth and mingled with it. This sand,” and here Larry held the vial out once more for the vampire to take, “is imbued with the darkest forces of evil that the world has ever known.”

The vampire’s eyes were locked on the little glittering capsule, icy orbs in an expressionless face. When he accepted the vial this time, he cradled it in his fingers, as if it might explode if turned the wrong way. Without warning, those cold globes snapped to Larry and he felt the frozen daggers of the vampire’s stare slice into his mind. “Tell me what it does.” The voice echoed in Larry’s head as if the night had parted and God himself had whispered in his ear.

Every pore opened, every hair stood on end, and he even felt a little tingle between his legs. Larry’s blood had been replaced with lava. The vampire’s spell would draw from him the truth, and the gig would be up. Already he could feel his mind spilling his secrets like an uncorked whiskey barrel, the thoughts cascading over one another in their rush toward his lips.

Worst it will do is annoy them, like sand at the beach. Get it down their shorts if you really want to give them a hard time. Or throw it in their eyes.

Kelep’Met is just some name I made up ‘cause I thought it sounded crazy and ominous.

Don’t look in my briefcase, it’s empty except for some silver bullets, some stakes, and the projector that makes the crazy shadows that fool saps like you into thinking this bullshit is legit.

But just as the damning truth began to rattle the air in his throat, the heart rate monitor in his ear registered the effects of the glamour and fired an eardrum-piercing shriek in his head, shattering the effect of the spell. He wanted to scream from the sound but kept his face slack, empty, a good little hypnotized monkey.

“Just let a few grains touch them, and it’ll feel like acid is burning away their skin, then their muscles, then their skeleton, like a bad acid trip they can’t wake up from. I’ve seen people tear their own flesh to ribbons trying to rid themselves of the curse. The ones that survive suffer in pain for the rest of their lives.”

Those seeking eyes flashed across his face once more, and then the vampire smiled, a horrible mask of fangs and handsome death. “How much?”

Larry licked his lips. “Twenty grand.”

The vampire smirked and then flickered — that damn moving-faster-than-the-eye-can-see thing they do — appearing now with a fat wad of bills in his hand. “I assume one such as yourself would prefer to deal in cash.”

It was Larry’s turn to grin. “Cash is great.”

Larry tucked his newly-acquired stacks of hundreds into his sport coat, then reached out for the vampire’s hand. The lifeless, chilling grasp — like shaking hands with a statue — never failed to turn his stomach, but he swallowed back the bile and smiled his winningest smile. It was easy enough, imagining the vampire’s shock and subsequent rage when he tried to inflict untold suffering on a human only to discover that Larry had taken him for a ride and vanished in the wind. He almost laughed. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” the vampire grinned, his dazzling eyes flashing in the night.

Larry turned and shuffled off. The morning would dawn in a few hours, and there were a hot handful of vampires in this neighborhood. Just a few more sales and he’d have the scratch to buy his way to Borra Borra, where the less politically correct natives still did the proper thing and staked any filthy bloodsucker on sight.

Dead Obvious

Pavowski11 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: the Subgenre Mash-up. My mixed up genre? Zombie Whodunit.

I can remember, once in my youth, reading an Agatha Christie book, and I am sure it was nothing like this.

Dead Obvious

It’s all anybody can hope for in this world, to leave it without knowing whence the end comes. A surprise, like breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day or something. Surprise! You’re dead. And in that way, I was fortunate, because I didn’t see it coming. Middle of a dinner party. Excused myself for two minutes, and then it was lights out.

But here I am. Dead. And Alive. Which means two things.

One, somebody I know is a zombie. And two, that somebody didn’t exactly do an outstanding job covering his tracks. Just a nibble, I’m sure he thought (or she, I guess, the virus doesn’t discriminate, but it just feels like a guy’s lack of consideration), and then a total failure to kill me properly. You know, to ensure I didn’t come back.

I can feel it now, the bite on my shoulder, burning like a brand, spreading out like a fiery web. My head could be splitting open for the pain I feel; somebody must’ve clubbed me but good, to try to kill me before I came back. Nice job, that. My heartbeat sounds like the thumping bass at a rave right inside my ears. The burn is spreading. Whole body on fire. On fire with hunger.

I find myself wondering: Why the shoulder? Seems like too much sinew and bone up there to really get a good bite. Somehow, I feel like an expert in anatomy. The thigh is what I’d target, lots of muscle and fat and blood, inches of it before you tangle up in bones. Nice and soft, too, chewy and moist and…

They’re staring at me. I know this because I can feel their heat, smell their blood, hear their hushed whispers and slightly panicked breathing. All of them shocked. How could this happen? At our dinner party, no less? Right before the dessert course? Well, guess what, idiots? I may be dead, but there’s another zombie out there waiting to get you, too. It could strike at any moment.

I open an eyelid with a tiny squishing sound and they all jump. Not astute enough to catch wise to the zombie in your midst, but you don’t miss me sneaking an eye open, do you? Bunch of short-sighted jerks.

Okay. Everybody’s here. The biter is hiding in plain sight.

Could it be James? The snot-nosed trust-fund baby who’s here in a suit that costs twice the average monthly salary for a blue collar worker? He’s clinging onto the waist of his date, Barbara, like he’s more scared than she is. And she, the daughter of a hotel empire, wearing more furs than a snowbound wolf, screaming vacuously into his ear, like I’m about to get up and eat her face. Actually, that sounds rather tempting. I try not to think about how her skin would disintegrate between my gnashing teeth, how her blood would cloy in my throat, how…

Man, the bug works fast. All of them look delicious, in fact, especially tubby Vera, who’s crammed herself into a dress three sizes too small to accentuate her curves for her date, a man she hopes to ensnare in order to rescue her from the one-bedroom flat she shares with her sisters. Too bad he’s gay. Tobias there, lending her his elbow in order to keep up the charade even though he keeps sneaking glances at Francis, stands to inherit millions if he’d only marry a nice girl like Vera and give his mother some grandchildren. Poor woman knows she’s got a better chance of being eaten by zombies now than of seeing her son breed — there’s not much hiding his condition with the spangly tie, the perfectly coordinated pocket square, and swooshing sashay of his walk — but it’s nice to hope. Much like I hope to suck the meat from his fingers, slurp slurp slurp like chicken wings, and…

I slam my eye closed again to shut out the visions of devouring my ex-friend, and collectively they sigh in relief. Dead after all, they say, and shuffle from the room. Francis, the one Tobias has been eyeing, comes over to check my pulse — I know it’s him because he reeks of his cologne, smelling like cut grass and musk and cognac and spinal fluid and… maybe I’m just daydreaming a little, but he smells intoxicating — and determines that I am, in fact, dead. He announces it to the rest of the guests and they sigh in relief and move the party to the parlor. No sense hanging around in here while I lie in a pool of my own blood, going bad like the hors de’ouvres, ruining the evening the way my murderer has ruined my three-piece suit and my skull.

But wait. Francis. He’s the internet dynamo who founded a dozen different companies before he was thirty, and has been married almost as many times. Could he be my killer? It’s almost too much to imagine: as much as he’s been in the tabloids for dating this or that supermodel, that he might be the country’s highest-profile zombie to boot. How salacious. Everybody knows you can’t tell if somebody’s a zombie by checking their pulse, after all. Well, everybody except the people at this party, apparently.

Or maybe it’s Carol, who, after everybody else leaves, stands in the door frame hugging herself tightly, like all the heat’s been sucked out of the room. That’s not the room, dearie, that’s me, going cold over here on the Spanish tile. She thinks she loves me — or rather, loved me — but everybody here knows she could have done better than a third-rate investments agent. I could have bought her the mansion and the yacht, sure, but not the vacation home on the coast that she really has her heart set on. But I don’t think she could have killed me. She’s too innocent, and sweet, and delectable, and her face just looks like it would melt in my mouth, and… And there she goes.

All of them gone. Maybe now I can sneak to my feet and…

Arnulfo. The butler, of course. Pretending not to speak English so that he can simply nod and serve our drinks without a word. That ever-so-subtle limp that we all assumed was a scar from his troubled life in the third-world country of… wherever he claimed to be from. He lingers by the door, his smarmy, faintly clouded eyes lingering on me, and wipes a drop of my blood from his lip. His lip falls off, and he quickly replaces it, tamping it into place with clumsy fingers. That sneaky son of a bitch. His face contorts like he’s trying to giggle at me, or maybe he’s just moaning with the eternal torment of the living dead; it’s hard to tell which. He slips out the door toward the others.

I have to stop him before he kills again.

Shit. Did my blood congeal into glue or something? My face is stuck to the floor with sticky crimson, my limbs feel like they’re strapped with lead sleeves. I haul myself to my feet, but I feel shaky, unstable, like my body is made of jenga blocks balanced on a rope bridge. I splay my legs unnaturally to better hold my balance, throw my arms out in front to counterbalance my ungainly torso. That works. I hobble to the next room, throw the door open —

They all gasp at the sight of me, even Arnulfo, that treacherous swine. In a flash, Carol collapses in the corner with Francis, Vera starts screaming at a high C with Barbara in perfect harmony, Tobias grabs a chair and brandishes it like a medieval greatsword and James draws a little pistol from his coat pocket quick as a cobra. But that’s okay, I’ve figured it out, and I can explain it all to them in an instant, and we can kill that prick Arnulfo together.

I hold up my arms, take a shaky step toward them, and state my case: “Grrraaaaaaaaaarrrgh. Uuuuuuuuhhhhh… HmmmMMMMMMMMaaaammmmfffff.”

That’s odd. I try again: “Rrrrroooooooooooorrrrrrzzz. Nnnaaaarrrrssssshhhhhhhhhhh. Ffflllllllleeeeeeeeeeeccchhhhhhh…”

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Out of the corner of one eye, I see Arnulfo’s hand fall off. I scream at them all to look (“Blaaarrrr, BLLAAAAAAARRRRRR”), but he grabs it and shuffles out of the room, unnoticed, while they’re all staring at me like I’m some kind of monster or something.

Everybody’s shouting at me now. The girls are crying, the guys are advancing on me with their weapons, and it’s all a big mess. Still, all I can think about is eating their brains to save them from their own stupidity. I figure it’s worth a shot, so I lunge at Francis, he of the sweet cologne and flesh smell, and that’s when I hear the meat of James’s finger tighten on the trigger.

I hope he hits my brain this time.