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    Zombie Town
    Zombie Town
    Zombie Town
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Zombie Town

    By Griffin Carmichael

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    From city to suburbia, zombies are all the rage as they rampage on their quest for sustenance, taking down strangers, friends and neighbors alike, without pity or remorse.

    Here are nine short stories about the times when the dead walk and the living fear.

    MY BIG FAT ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE:  What better place to be when the dead rise than the local fitness center.

    THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT CAROL:  Suburban life can be deadly dull. Or maybe just deadly.

    FIGGY PUDDING:  Holidays are known for feasting and jubilation, but one restaurant manager comes to regret keeping the doors open one Christmas eve.

    NEITHER RAIN NOR:  Public servants are said to be a dedicated lot, but carrying on with business as usual after the zombie apocalypse is taking it a bit too far.

    SILENT:  Little children look forward to a visit from Santa with great anticipation, but there’s nothing good coming down the chimney this year.

    DARKNESS FALLS:  Even a sturdy fallout shelter isn’t any protection when the super flu everybody’s been predicting lays waste to the world.

    FLASHLIGHT:  All she wanted was a flashlight so she could see what all the ruckus outside was about. Sometimes it’s better to remain in the dark.

    IN THE MEADOW:  Winter has come to a small Nebraskan town, bringing huge snowfalls. But nobody is in the mood to build a snowman.

    RITUALS FOR THE LIVING:  Long after the dead have risen, the survivors learn to cope with new ways of living and dying.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Guthrie Press
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781501408090
    Zombie Town

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    • 3/5
      Readable. They aren’t bad just not terrific stand out stories.

    Book preview

    Zombie Town - Griffin Carmichael

    DEDICATION

    Many thanks as always to my children for their continued love and support of this craziness I call a writing career.

    And to my cohorts at the Writer’s Cafe. You guys know what it’s like in the trenches.

    MY BIG FAT ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

    ––––––––

    Ideas come in the weirdest ways, and at the oddest times. I never know what will trigger something to meld in just the right way. This story came to me while I was reading posts at my usual Internet hangout, the Writer’s Cafe. The discussion was about an anthology some members were working on getting off the ground, and my brain as usual was stuck in zombie mode. I had an image of an overweight woman at one of those fancy gyms I never go to, struggling to lift weights while not making a fool of herself in front of the hot personal trainer.

    What a place to be when the apocalypse starts, right?

    ––––––––

    ––––––––

    It’s one of life’s little ironies that when the end of the world came, I’d be at the last place I ever wanted to be:  the gym.

    My mother had given me the membership on my birthday six months ago, and it had been a non-stop nag-fest ever since. She’d finally shamed me into going, even bought me a nifty outfit to wear. The fact that it was a fugitive from the eighties was just another level of shame to ratchet onto my already bottomless pit of low self esteem.

    But yeah, I went. She’s my mother, okay? She doesn’t have to know that I ditched the leotard and leg warmers at the Sally Mae on the way, and wore an over-sized man’s tee and yoga pants.

    The first sign that something was wrong came about five minutes into the session with a gorgeous physical trainer that took pity on me and was patiently showing me how to put five pounds on the bench press. Not for the first time, I wished for a black hole in the middle of my gut to suck in the flab. It’s not that I was huge, exactly, but two hundred pounds doesn’t look that great on a short girl.

    But Jon was being very sweet—and mildly flirtatious—and I’d just about gotten my first lift done when people on the stair step machines by the front windows started raising a racket. Jon had been watching my quivering arms straining to keep the bar from dropping and crushing my boobs—which aren’t bad at all, by the way. In fact they’re rather awesome.

    When a wave of gym members began a mass exodus to the showers, Jon stopped watching me be awesome and started watching something at the front of the building. I nearly had the bar fully extended when he took it out of my hands and put it back in the brackets with a clunk. He grabbed the front of my tee and pulled me up, while at the same time bending down close to me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a prelude to a hot, sexy kiss.

    I was right. It wasn’t.

    Run, he growled.

    Run? What in the world was he thinking? Hadn’t he seen me struggle with the weight bench? No way was I going to get anywhere near running. Maybe a nice stroll on the treadmill. Next month or so, but run?

    A crash from the front of the room interrupted me before I could ask Jon if he had seen my thighs. Several screams and some groaning issued from the reception desk. I leaned past Jon and tried to see what was happening. Maybe somebody was pissed about membership costs. I know I’d been shocked when I saw the prices people were paying to be tortured here. There could be an altercation, maybe a good hair-pulling, underway and I didn’t want to miss it.

    The noise had made Jon straighten up. He took a long look at the source of the screaming, and began trembling. Gosh, the guy was kind of weak, for all those toned, tanned muscles on display.

    He looked down at me, and whispered this time. Run, Carly. For God’s sake. Run!

    He turned away, still holding onto the loose fabric of my shirt. I rose and put a hand on his, trying to loosen his grip before he pulled me off my feet.

    Look, I know I’m really out of shape, but this whole running thing is a bit premature, don’t you think? I mean, you’re the professional and all, but I’ve got bad knees. I’m going to have to work my way up to jogging.

    Shhhhhhsh!

    A smoking hot bod and a face to die for wasn’t an excuse for rudeness. I wondered if it was too late to get a refund on the membership. I could tell Mom that the staff was impossible, that I’d tried to...

    Seriously, what was up with those folks at the front of the gym? The situation up there was getting out of hand, because I could hear more people screaming now. I turned around to check out what had interrupted my session, but couldn’t really see anything past all the machines. I finally got Jon to let go of my shirt, and stepped up onto the weight bench. From that vantage point, I had a clear line of sight right to the area just before the huge windows that took up almost the entire front of the gym.

    When I’d come in an hour ago, the windows had been intact, with posters for vitamins and supplements sold by the gym taped up strategically so as not to block the view of happy customers and the smart people who watched them sweating from the right side of the windows. Now the glass was in shards, bloody and ragged, with strips of the posters flapping over the people who were pushing through. They weren’t paying any attention to the cuts they were getting from the broken glass, or how badly their clothes were being ripped to shreds, just moaning and groaning with their hands reaching for the gluttons for punishment who were still working the machines.

    Two of these—what were they? My mind couldn’t put a name to them, or not one I considered with any semblance of reality. Two of these people had the receptionist down in front of her counter, bobbing their heads down toward her still body and coming up with chunks of size zero flesh. There was blood spurting in a weakening stream from what was left of her throat.

    I felt a little guilty about wishing the skinny thing would break in half for sneering at me when I’d shown up. She hadn’t tried to hide what she thought of my plus-size Venus body. But the look on her face now had been one of sheer terror, and I turned away from her blankly staring

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