Apoc Series (Vol. 1): Whispers of the Apoc [Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse] Read online

  Whispers

  of the

  Apoc

  Whispers of the Apoc

  Volume 1

  Copyright © 2017 by Tannhauser Press

  ISBN-13: 978-1945994104

  ISBN-10: 194599410X

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including rights to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover design by Heidi Sutherlin

  Edited by: Donna Royston and Martin Wilsey

  Published by Tannhauser Press

  The Markie Mark, Copyright © 2017 by Robert Aamoth

  All Dolled Up, Copyright © 2017 by Stephen Kozeniewski

  Rocking C, Copyright © 2017 by JL Curtis

  Them or Us, Copyright © 2017 by Alice J. Black

  Otis Island, Copyright © 2017 by Kelly Carr

  The Treehouse, Copyright © 2017 by Stanley B. Webb

  A Slow Leak, Copyright © 2017 by Cameron Smith

  From Dead to Dust, Copyright © 2017 by TS Alan

  Needs Must, Copyright © 2017 by John L. French

  Zombie Stress, Copyright © 2017 by David Duperre

  In the Valley of the Dead, Copyright © 2017 by Alexei Kalinchuk

  Stuck in the middle with you, Copyright © 2017 by Lou Antonelli

  A Walk in the Park, Copyright © 2017 by Chad Vincent

  Crave New World, Copyright © 2017 by Adrian Ludens

  Blood in the Water, Copyright © 2017 by Emmet O’Cuana

  The Bridge, Copyright © 2017 by Martin Wilsey

  Contents

  Dedication

  Foreword

  1 The Markie Mark by T R Dillon

  2 All Dolled Up by Stephen Kozeniewski

  3 Rocking C by JL Curtis

  4 Them or Us by Alice J. Black

  5 Otis Island by Kelly Carr

  6 The Treehouse by Stanley B. Webb

  7 A Slow Leak by Cameron Smith

  8 From Dead to Dust by T. S. Alan

  9 Needs Must by John L. French

  10 Zombie Stress by David Duperre

  11 In the Valley of the Dead by Alexei Kalinchuk

  12 Stuck in the Middle with You by Lou Antonelli

  13 A Walk in the Park by Chad Vincent

  14 Crave New World by Adrian Ludens

  15 Blood in the Water by Emmet O’Cuana

  16 The Bridge by Martin Wilsey

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  For Tom Richter, Ray Clark, Keith Plough,

  Eric Wilsey, Tom Bilodeau, Kevin Peck and

  Carl Wilsey.

  My favorite dead guys.

  Foreword

  Ever since I watched the original Night of the Living Dead I have loved stories about the Zombie Apocalypse. Dawn of the Dead ramped it up a notch soon after.

  The survival stories by using your brains before they got eaten was the key. Maybe that and the fact that is a guilt free way to shoot some assholes in the face that always deserved it.

  When I put the call out for submissions I was buried in them. I have already decided to do a second volume.

  SilencE

  of the

  Apoc

  I picked stories I liked to share with you. Some are from established authors, some are from people just beginning their work as published authors.

  All of them are fun.

  A few authors that I know had intended to submit a short story for this anthology and it got away from them. The stories grew and are now approaching novel length. Keep an eye out, because I think Tannhauser Press may be offering them in 2018.

  I may even use the seed of my short story for a novel set in that same world. The possibilities are endless. Each of these stories and authors have been great to work with.

  I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did assembling this anthology.

  Martin Wilsey

  Managing Editor

  Tannhauser Press

  www.tannhauserpress.com

  1 The Markie Mark by T R Dillon

  It’s not like I’d never been bitten before.

  Karolynn was ferocious. A minx. She was my second wife—that’s if you don’t count Mirabelle, who I never formally tied the knot with. Karolynn and I’d be tussling under the covers. A few moans, maybe a cry or two, and then she’d chomp down on my forearm like it was a leg of lamb. Sometimes I noticed, sometimes I didn’t. It depended on—how shall I put it?—what else I was busy with at that particular moment.

  I ignored the bite unless she’d drawn blood, in which case I smeared Neosporin on it. I mean, what was I going to tell the doctor? You could see Karolynn’s teeth marks clear as day. I never got infected, but I have scars on both arms.

  People asked me, Markie, why do you put up with that? I just shrugged. Anything for love, right?

  So when the precinct fired off the emergency text on March 31 about corpses biting people, I immediately thought of Karolynn. I hadn’t seen her in years. I wondered where she was. In my own self-absorbed way, I kind of missed her.

  I dismissed the text as some kind of April fool’s joke. I laughed and forgot about it. Until I arrested that punk with a gunshot wound to the gut. I suppose that’s what you get when you break into the home of the local NRA head. It was the middle of the night, and he died on the operating table at Presbyterian before I could get a statement. I know because I was there. I saw the flat-line on his monitor. The doc didn’t even sew him up.

  So there I was, writing notes against the hospital wall for the report I had to file, when I heard a noise behind me. I turned, and there he was, the punk, in his hospital gown with his guts hanging out. Blood dripping down his chin. He looked like he’d just eaten a hot pocket that really disagreed with him, and he had that weird smell. Camphor. I would come to detest that smell.

  And then the sonofabitch bit me in the left arm. Which occurred about a half-second before I shot him in the head.

  The docs and nurses came running. “Detective Marks, did he bite you?” one of them asked, keeping her distance.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right here in my left arm,” and I showed them. He did it over top of one of Karolynn’s, except his bite was smaller. Big surprise there.

  They all backed away like they thought I was dangerous.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “I’ve been bitten before.”

  You should have seen the looks on their faces then.

  ***

  At first everyone called it the HRV epidemic—short for Human Rabies Virus—and we all thought we had it under control. We were managing it. It wasn’t easy, especially in a city like the Big Apple, but we were getting it done. People were cooperating. People always do when they’re totally freaking scared.

  The only problem was they couldn’t isolate the damned virus. It had to be a virus, they kept telling us. Nothing else made sense. Just give us more time, and more people, and more money, and more facilities, and oh did we mention we need more money, and one of these damned days we’ll find the little bugger.

  They never did, of course.

  And in the meantime, people got sick. I mean, really sick. They had all the symptoms of a severe case of rabies. Fever, chills, headaches, saliva all over the place, aches and pains, massive liquid consumption, you name it. I told myself I should buy Gatorade stock. They didn’t get better, but they didn’t die either. They just suffered. No on
e could explain it.

  The economic cost was a blitzkrieg. More than thirty percent of the NYPD was out with it. At my precinct it was more like fifty percent. But everywhere got hit. The talking heads on TV estimated the total damage in trillions. Multiple trillions. A massive recession was the best-case scenario. The worst was a return to the Stone Age.

  Still, we thought we had things under control. Quarantines and curfews. Everyone went OCD on hygiene. Especially masks. I had a personal supply from after nine-eleven. Back then I read some article about preparing a survival kit, and they said buy masks in case someone releases a chemical agent. That always sounded so sinister. Releasing a chemical agent. Like it was a Kraken or something.

  So the New York subway became like bullet trains in Japan—everyone covering their faces. Some guy made a fortune selling little boxes of pure oxygen that people could keep in their pockets with little plastic tubes running up into their noses. Then they discovered it was just normal air in the boxes, but by then the guy was long gone.

  We told ourselves things weren’t that bad because people weren’t dying.

  But things really were that bad. Because what it was, was a dam about to burst. When that happened, there was nothing anyone could do.

  Like when you’re on the beach with your toes in the sand and you look up and notice a tsunami pounding toward you from a hundred yards offshore. Just enough time to say a prayer and look forward to a bath.

  ***

  The hospital people took my gun and locked me in a storage closet. All the other quarantine rooms were taken. I asked for some Neosporin for the bite wound, and they slid a tube under the door. Eight hours, they said, and we’ll look in on you.

  Four hours later I’d had enough. I felt fine, and there were no sounds coming under the door. It was too quiet, if you know what I mean. And I really needed to go to the bathroom. So after yelling and pounding, I took the .380 Colt Mustang I hid in my right sock and shot the door open.

  The hospital was empty. Of people, I mean. There were beds and carts and equipment overturned and thrown about. Like a giant baby had picked up the building and shaken it. But no people I could see. Not even any blood. The fluids everywhere were from IVs and bags and broken glass containers and a few cans of Coke.

  I took it as a good sign that there were no bodies lying about. I was wrong, of course. There were plenty of dead bodies—they were all out walking the streets!

  My phone didn’t work in the closet, but it did in the waiting area. I had three bars but couldn’t load any websites. I caught scraps of headlines, which told me an apocalypse was unfolding. The sick were finally dying, left and right it seemed, and everyone who died came back to life, if you could call it that. They couldn’t talk or think, but they had that look in their eye. Like they were desperately hunting something. And they walked the way my Uncle Carl did after his back surgery went bad. Stiff-legged and jerky. Like they’d lost some important muscle groups but couldn’t quite identify which ones. But they could run like the wind if they smelled a live person, and they were quick as a lizard’s tongue.

  And, oh yes, they reeked of camphor.

  So I smeared some more Neosporin on the punk’s bite wound, and then I did the only thing someone in my situation could do. I found the cafeteria. After all, a man’s got to eat.

  ***

  I sent texts to my captain and waited for a response. He was a beefy, red-faced man named Ronald Blodgett. His friends on the force called him R-dog, and his wife called him Dagwood. He could never get my name right. Always called me Mark, I think because I looked like someone named Mark he used to work with. Which was too bad for me because Blodgett didn’t like that guy very much.

  I’d last talked to Blodgett the day before, poking my head in his doorway.

  “Come in, Mark,” he’d bellowed.

  “It’s Marks, sir. Tommy Marks.”

  “Right, Mark, we need to talk.”

  “Marks, sir.”

  “I have a new assistant. There will be times when you’ll report to him. His name is Jon Jonny 16.”

  He’d pointed to a small standing robot, an AI, about three feet high. They’d built a boatload of them three months earlier to look like the gold Star Wars robot with the snooty British accent. All the captains got one, and they had a newspaper contest to name them. A little boy his mom called Jon Jonny had been killed by a stray gang bullet on the Lower East Side, and so the AIs all became Jon Jonnies.

  Blodgett had handcuffed his AI to his desk. Digital cuffs. “I don’t trust the little bastard not to run,” he’d said, eyeing it warily.

  “Hello, Detective Marks,” the AI had said, in a crisp English accent. “My name is Jon Jonny 16.”

  Blodgett ran what we called the Lam group. We looked for people who lived off the grid in downtown NYC. Enough of them were fugitives that the Chief launched a systematic effort to find them. I guess they downgraded chasing street vendors selling loose cigarettes.

  With the AI’s help, Blodgett had come up with a list of suspects for me to track down. All were believed to live and work in midtown. Which led me to the punk who’d just tried robbing a swanky penthouse and taken a bullet in the gut for his efforts. If only all my cases resolved that easily.

  So I had the list, and Captain Blodgett had other work to do.

  “Good-bye, Detective Marks,” Jon Jonny 16 had said cheerfully as I left. Blodgett didn’t say a word.

  ***

  After the cafeteria, I hid by Presbyterian’s front door. West 51st was filled with these walking corpses. Zombies, they were calling them. No one knew why, but the Z’s wanted to eat the living. Still, they never got very far. Because once their victims died, they became Z’s, too. The whole thing seemed like a classic circle jerk to me.

  I devised a plan. I wasn’t safe in the hospital. The Z’s would come looking once they got hungry enough. The 17th precinct was just down the street. My objective was to get there without being bitten, and all I had was the gun from my sock with one round spent. I spied a police cruiser about a hundred yards across and down the street. I would sprint to the car, hotwire it if I had to, then make a beeline for the 17th. I’d move so fast and low the Z’s wouldn’t even know I’d been there. I told myself the 17th was probably a fortress by then, so I’d have to figure out a way in.

  I checked my phone. Still nothing from Captain Blodgett. All texts were being queued, and I didn’t know whether any of mine had been delivered. The captain probably figured I was dead. Which meant I was on my own.

  I kept feeling my forehead for fever. Checking my pulse. That punk drew blood when he bit me, and that had been hours earlier. According to the internet, I should already be sick, maybe even dead. But I’d never felt better in my life. Something wasn’t right. Well, I didn’t have time then to figure it out.

  I crouched low, took a deep breath, and then launched myself from the entryway onto West 51St towards the cruiser. Not ten yards out I crashed into a Z who stepped out stupidly from behind a trash can. My .380 skittered behind the right front tire of a black Crossover and, losing my balance, I plunged facedown into a puddle of slick dirty water.

  I quickly raised myself up on my elbows, closed my eyes, and pretended to be invisible. I even held my breath, as if that would help. There’s no way the Z’s didn’t hear me and see me. Probably smelled me, too. I hadn’t showered in a while. My chin dripped noisily into the puddle. I heard each droplet like the second hand of a clock.

  I opened one eye, then the other. I could see the legs of the Z’s as they walked in front of me on 51st. Suddenly a Z came zooming towards me. She threw herself onto both knees, and her hand reached out for my face. I ducked and winced. But the hand kept going—into the trash can, now overturned and spilling out, where the Z pulled out a huge, squealing rat. The Z’s face distorted in a kind of twisted delight, and then she shoved the rat into her mouth and began chomping.

  Then the Z stood up and left. She hadn’t touched me.

&nbs
p; I raised myself onto my knees. The Z’s were everywhere. On the street. The sidewalk. In front of me. Behind. But not one Z paid me a bit of attention. I was invisible. I did not exist.

  I was immune.

  “Boo!” I screamed at a passing Z. No reaction.

  I thought of Karolynn again. Did I have her to thank for this? Did something happen to me all those years ago when she bit me every time we had sex?

  Or was I that ping-pong ball just drawn from a lottery barrel? The one chance in a million. In ten million. That one lucky guy who gets to live unmolested in a world where the Z’s are trying to eat everyone else, including rats.

  And then a bullet zipped past my left ear.

  ***

  I dove for cover behind the Crossover and picked up the .380. Several more shots rang out, and I sensed ricochets off the hood.

  I risked a quick glance into the street. There stood a middle-aged man wearing pajamas, a dirty blue robe with the cloth belt dragging on the street, and slippers. He puffed on a cigar and carried a rifle under his right armpit.

  I set down my .380 and raised my hands high, careful not to show my head.

  “I’m not a zombie!” I yelled.

  “I know,” he yelled back. “You’re an immune, like me. That’s why I have to kill you.”

  I ducked before three more blasts caromed above my head.

  “I don’t understand,” I shouted.

  “You’re destroying my dream,” he said. I could tell by his voice he was getting closer.

  “What dream?”

  “I thought I was the only immune. I’ve always wanted to be the king of New York. This was my chance. And then you stumbled onto the scene.”

  “I’m sure we can work something out,” I said, picking up my gun.