ZERO Read online

  ZERO

  Edited by TW Brown

  Cover Art and Design by Shawn Conn

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  ZERO

  ©2011 May December Publications LLC

  The split-tree logo is a registered trademark of May December Publications LLC.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ 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 authors or May December Publications LLC.

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  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to George A. Romero, the Patient Zero who infected us all.

  **--**--**

  Foreward

  How did it all begin for you? What was the instant you became a diehard zombophile? For me, it was my fourteenth birthday when a neighbor took me to see Dawn of the Dead. The funny thing is, I was actually there to see the other film playing in the double-feature (remember those days?).

  So…think back to the past dozen or so zombie books you’ve read. How many really delve into how it all begins? It has to start somewhere…right? In these pages, you will find out how it all began.

  Seven writers have given you a look at that first person to fall: Patient Zero. This anthology opens the door to the genesis of the zombie apocalypse in detail. Could it really be something as simple as a paper cut? The answer awaits you.

  As the editor for May December Publications, I welcome you to the anthology that provides the set up for any zombie story you will ever read after.

  Where is my good spoon?

  TW Brown

  August 2011

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  Contents

  The Morning Show Host by Patrick Shand

  The Zombie Curse by Bennie L Newsome

  Termination Papers by Suzanne Robb

  The Scientific Method by Nathan Phillips

  William by A.A. Garrison

  Escarg-0 by Chantal Boudreau

  Quietus by Christopher Beck

  **--**--**

  The Morning Show Host

  By Patrick Shand

  This doesn’t start like you’d expect. I mean, everyone has read a zombie book or at least seen a zombie flick, right? George Romero is pretty much an essential part of pop culture now, isn't he? The genre of horror is almost synonymous with the image of hordes of the undead lumbering around a town, which, inevitably, is cloaked in thick, thick fog. Turns out, that’s not only a staple of the horror genre, but also what I see when I look out the window.

  And I started it.

  Me. Minnie Brown. You’d think with a name like that I was either destined to become a cartoon mouse or a porn star, but instead I’m the chick that kick-started the end of mankind. To be honest, I’m broken up about it, but that’s the last time you’re going to read something like that in this journal. While this is, in essence, a long-form apology to mankind, it’s also the last thing I’ll ever write. So I don’t want to spend my time here bitching. I figure there must be someone alive out there, and if they find this…well, maybe they’ll think, “Hey, that bitch who started all of this zombie apocalypse nonsense? At least she was funny.”

  So here I go. Here’s how, in just one short month, the fictional disease that sold millions of books, B-movies, horror comics got real.

  It started out with a sale at the library. They were selling these old used books for ten cents each. Granted, they were the books the library was going to throw in the garbage if no one took them, but still. A book for a dime is unbeatable. Well, unless you go on Amazon.com—sometimes, they sell books for a penny there. A friggin’ penny.

  I digress.

  So I bought this book, a thick one called Richard Johnson’s Dirty Jokes. It was made up of all these terrible puns and awkward jokes from the sixties or seventies, so I figured it would be a hoot to bring it onto my radio show and read on air. Oh, yeah, I guess that’s important. Before all this apocalypse business, I was the host of a morning show on the local radio station. It didn’t pay much, but we have the top floor of the building, so while we’re up there goofing off, telling jokes, and making prank calls, we’ve got this beautiful view of the whole town.

  In fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in my old chair, looking out at that once breathtaking view. Now it’s horrifying. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of things that used to be people are down there, waiting for someone to come out of this building so they can feast. I wonder how many of them used to listen to my show. I wonder how many of them had laughed at my jokes while driving to work in the morning.

  Again with the digression. It’s hard to keep your mind focused when what you’re focusing on is so goddamn bleak.

  But I got the book. And that is really what started it all; a book full of sexual puns and dick jokes written by a man who called himself Richard Johnson. I leafed through the book while my boyfriend Isaac drove us back to the apartment and, of course, my clumsy ass got a paper cut, one of those painful ones that run right along the crease of your finger. When it sliced in, I instantly felt the sting of it, so I threw the book down.

  “The jokes are that bad?” Isaac asked. He’s important—kind of the crux of this whole thing. He had this long brown hair that nearly touched his shoulders. I always told him to cut it, that he looked like a metal band reject that had been transported into modern times by some kind of horrible mistake. But now, I want nothing more than to run my fingers through that knotty, way-too-long hair.

  “Paper cut,” I said, pouting.

  “Oh,” he said with a laugh. “I’m sure you’ll survive.”

  Heh.

  I’ll never know what was on that yellowed page that made my finger blow up to the size of a kielbasa. I just know how incredibly lame it is that a paper cut started the zombie apocalypse. I warned you, right? This story doesn’t start like you’d expect. Hell, if I thought the world was going to end because of the undead, I’d think something like a lab experiment gone wrong or some disease that gets started by a necrophiliac fucking the wrong corpse or something. I don’t know. Just not a paper cut from a book full of terrible jokes.

  But shit happens.

  I’m going to take a break. My hand is getting crampy.

  ***

  So I went to the hospital. Isaac took me there, and he was feeling bad for making fun of me for pouting over the little cut, considering how my entire arm had gone red and my veins were clearly visible through my skin. They had darkened so much that they looked like thick, black webs shooting through my body. Looking in the mirror made me want to throw up.

  When the doctors started to check me out, it was clear from their hushed discussion that they had no idea what the hell was going on with me. My lips were bloated to the point where I couldn’t even formulate words, so Isaac told them about the paper cut. The doctors said that they hardly thought that was the cause of what was going on with me, but that they’d look into it. As they flashed lights in my eyes and examined my finger, my vision blinked out and, whether my eyes were closed or open, all I saw was red. The hushed voices became distant as I faded into what I thought must’ve been sleep.

  When I woke up, I knew something was wrong. I sat up straight in bed, surrounded by this intense chatter, and there were more doctors and nurses in the room than I’d ever even seen on Grey’s
Anatomy. It was packed in there, and they were all looking at me as if waiting for me to say something. I tried my mouth out, and found that I could move my lips again. In fact, everything felt normal. I said the first thing that came to mind.

  “What’s up, guys?”

  And then, more chatter. I tried to catch a word here or there, but I was still woozy from being asleep. Finally, one of the doctors started to usher everyone out of the room, and I was left alone with the one that I remembered from before. The guy who said that he didn’t think it had been a paper cut.

  “My name is Doctor Franks. How are you feeling, Minnie?” he asked.

  “Like I took a whole bunch of drugs,” I said. “Which, I’m pretty sure I did, right? I feel like I slept for a week.”

  “Not a week,” he said. “Three days.”

  “Three days?” I said. “What the hell did you guys give me, an elephant tranq?”

  “And…” he took in a deep breath and looked from side to side. If I wasn’t mistaken, he looked embarrassed of what he was about to say. “You weren’t quite…asleep.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Wow. So I was…I was in a coma?”

  The doctor looked at me over his bifocals. “Minnie, you died forty times in the past three days.”

  I think if I saw something like this on TV (probably a soap opera), I would expect the girl to either faint or laugh it off or get this “OH MY GOD” look in her eyes before they cut to commercial. But I just…it’s hard to really know what to say to something like that. So I reverted to what I usually do when my brain can’t process something.

  “I died forty times from a paper cut?” I said. “Wow, I’m a bit of a pussy.”

  Dirty jokes.

  The doctor didn’t laugh, though. He bowed his head and said, “Minnie, I wish we had more to tell you. Something was introduced into your system, likely because of the…ahem…paper cut, but we…we’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s at once destructive and regenerative, which might be what…erm, killed you and brought you back to…I’m sorry, am I sounding ridiculous? I feel ridiculous. I’ve just never seen anything like this before.”

  “No worries, doc,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that my heart was pumping twice the normal speed in my chest, and that I was beginning to get very, very scared. Keep on joking. Keep on joking. I had to just keep cracking the jokes, because my next reaction is to hole up and go catatonic (Note: that happens later—a lot). I said, “The extent of my medical knowledge is what I know from Doctors McDreamy and McSteamy, so you sound fine to me.”

  This time, the doctor allowed himself a brief smile. He told me that, despite my multiple deaths (how often do you hear that?), there seemed to be nothing wrong with me. I’d spent the last day just sleeping, seemingly one hundred percent healthy. He wanted to hold me there for tests for the rest of the week, which, of course, I agreed to. A girl dies, she figures it’s best to do what the doctor says.

  I was mad about missing work, because I loved goofing off, drinking coffee, and hanging out with my co-hosts. That kind of job keeps you sane, you know? But I stayed at the hospital for the week, even though I felt healthier than ever. Isaac visited me and, of course, he was a nervous wreck…so, of course, I made fun of him the whole time. But while I made joke after joke at his expense, he kissed me on the forehead and, even though I was in a hospital bed, wearing the least sexy gown-thing of all time, he made me feel beautiful.

  Goddamn. I have to stop writing this before I get myself upset again.

  ***

  Soon after that, I was back at work, joking around at the top of the building with my co-hosts Ray and Spinners. Ray, for those of you who don’t listen to What Up? It’s the Morning, is the funniest guy you’ll ever meet. He’s physically pretty frightening, with arms the size of my body and a stomach that could fit an entire classroom of first graders, but he is the archetypal friendly giant. Spinners, who started calling himself that when he bought a car with those rims that keep spinning after the car stops (yeah, I know, that’s so 2002), is…well, if you’re familiar with talk radio, you know that most comedy shows have a sleaze bag. Z100 has Skerry Jones, Hot97 has…well, everyone—you get the point. Spinners is our bag of sleaze, the guy who always says the wrong thing at the right time. On air, we love to hate him. Off air…well, kind of the same, but in a slightly more loving way.

  I’m not ashamed to say that I fit another archetype in the show. I’m the hot girl. Every morning show has one. There is only one skill needed to be the hot girl: having “hot girl” voice. Truth is, the girl behind the voice could be the ugliest creature you’ve ever seen, but that’s the charm of radio. You’ll never get to see. Unless you search our names on the Internet (don’t), but the way things seem to be going, I think the Internet might be gone by the time anyone reads this.

  Anyway, the topic of the show when I returned? Obviously it was how much of a pussy I am because of my paper cut injury. I didn’t tell Ray or Spinners that I’d died even once, much less forty times, because I had a hard enough time processing it myself. The only people that knew were the doctors, me, and Isaac, the last of whom had the distinct pleasure of mourning forty different times on each occasion the doctor told him that I was gone.

  “So, I gotta say,” Ray said, his deep oh-so-radio voice spilling out like honey. “I’ve never heard of someone going to the hospital for a paper cut.”

  “I’m never gonna hear the end of this, am I?” I asked.

  “This begs the question,” Spinners said, pausing for dramatic effect, before he added, “Where on your body did you get the cut?”

  The both of us booed him, but Ray took it a step further and pressed the button that made a farting sound.

  “What? I think that’s a valid question!” Spinners said.

  “You’re not a valid person,” I said.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “I just know that there are certain parts of the body that are more sensitive to—”

  “Once Spinners starts talking about body parts, it’s time to cut to break,” Ray said. “We’ll be back after these messages from…” He shuffled through a deck of cue cards, but came up with nothing. “…From those guys whose product you should buy. Those guys are the best.”

  “Oh, I love those guys,” Spinners said.

  “Who doesn’t?” I added.

  And then, Ray cut to break. Letting out a big rumble of a laugh, he patted me on the back and said, “Sorry for giving you hell. We’re glad to have you back, really.”

  “Yeah, there’s nothing worse than a room full of dudes,” Spinners said.

  “Thanks for your concern. How did you guys manage to do so many shows without killing each other?”

  “Special guests,” Ray said. “My brother came on.”

  “Wait, your brother?” I asked. “Your brother as in…”

  Spinners nodded, twirling his finger next to his head.

  “He isn’t crazy,” Ray said, smacking Spinners’s hand away. “He’s…eccentric. And eccentric makes for good radio.”

  “Exploiting your family,” Spinners said. “I like it.”

  “Hey, if you have to exploit someone, it might as well be someone you love, right?” I said.

  “He’s doing better, anyway,” Ray said.

  “Every day, he told a different war story,” Spinners said, snickering. “Dude has barely seen past his backyard, much less the Middle East.”

  “Be that as it may,” Ray said, “he’s also brilliant. He tells amazing stories, and you bet your ass he would be awesome in a war. He can make a bomb out of a freakin’ bar of soap. What do you think happened to our in-ground pool? Shit went kaboom.”

  I was glad to be back at work with those guys. I missed them both. (Yes, even Spinners.) Unfortunately, that was the last time the three of us would ever host a show together. If it means anything, I think that our final show was pretty funny. If you listened, I hope you liked it. I hope it made your morning a bit better. That’s all we ever
wanted.

  ***

  And then, I had another last time I ever… I went home to our cramped apartment and saw Isaac sitting at the computer, probably trying to sell some of his stuff on eBay. He’s big on that. I wish I could say that the last night we spent together was the most romantic thing ever, that we somehow knew everything was about to change…but I just took a shower and he made me a sandwich and talked to me about this jet ski he wanted to buy. And then we watched a movie and went to bed and had nice sex and I slept a dreamless sleep.

  When I write it all down now, it sounds like the most wonderful day of my life.

  But then I woke up, and I knew something was wrong. My chin was covered in this black gunk, and I felt like hell. Isaac was already up, walking over to me with a wet towel.

  “You were coughing all night,” he said, pressing it into my chin, wiping the stuff away. I was terrified by how thick it looked on the towel.

  “I was hacking up this shit all night and you’re just now cleaning me?” I said, starting to freak out.

  “No, that…that just happened. I already called the ambulance.”

  “You think I need it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I want you to be safe. If you died another time, it would just be overkill.”

  “I see what you did there,” I said, trying to calm myself down. “You should be a radio personality.”