The 50 Minute Hour

By Hope Sullivan McMickle

Greg Farrier was a psychologist.

Now he's carrying a shotgun, lining up headshots, and deciphering the psychology of the undead with his two sons, survivors of an infection that decimated the population and transformed the dead into a horde of insatiable reanimates with a blind hunger for human flesh.

Together they will learn what it takes to live in a world of the unliving.

A 15,000 word short story for fans of cerebral zombie fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hope Sullivan McMickle
• Release date: Dec 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301650477

Hope Sullivan McMickle

Hope Sullivan McMickle is a horror fiction writer and a musician with a penchant for the things that lurk in the darkness, and of course, for the shambling, insatiable undead. She resides in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Book preview

The 50 Minute Hour

By Hope Sullivan McMickle

Copyright 2011 Hope Sullivan McMickle

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The Hollow Men

Greg Farrier swung from his heels; the Ping graphite and steel driver he was gripping connected solidly with the side of the thing’s head. It exploded in a macabre confetti of brackish blood, brain matter, decaying skin, and thin fragments of skull. The thing collapsed at his feet. He had only seconds to survey his handiwork before another one shambled around the corner of the Walgreens they’d taken refuge in the day before. Greg allowed it to approach, listening to it hiss and moan as it stumbled forward, and dispatched it with a single swing of the golf club.

Until now, the closest to golf he’d ever come was playing putt-putt with his twin sons. All that had changed six months ago. Greg was still trying to figure out how to manage the mess his world had become. He was a therapist, a clinical psychologist, not a killer and certainly not a gun-toting survivalist. His sons had been students at Franklin College, Aiden with a dual major in sociology and theater, Andy in political science.

Purgatory, he thought, this is a trip through purgatory, and we’ve all been invited along for the ride. He wondered if his ex-wife, Lisa, was still alive. Things could only be more hellish if she was, he decided, and swung the club at a corpse that had clawed its way across the parking lot, missing its legs, intestines trailing behind it in filthy grey streamers.

Dad! Up here! his son Aiden called. Greg looked up to see Aiden and Andy on the roof of the Shell service station across the street. The walking dead milled about below them, circling the fuel pumps ceaselessly. Andy carried a Mossberg pump-action shotgun. Andy held a muddy aluminum softball bat in his left hand and a scoped rifle in his right. Both wore identical expressions of exhaustion and concern. The time for fear had passed; now Greg and his sons were concerned only with the most pragmatic aspects of survival. They had left the drug store in search of a more defensible location, but had not gotten far before the undead had converged on the gas station across the street, forcing them to take shelter on the roof. As far as Greg could tell, the dead had only gross motor skills and basic locomotion. They staggered around with an insatiable determination, but it appeared that more complex physical tasks such as climbing ladders or trees was beyond their ability.

There’s a ladder around back. Follow the alley. We’ll cover you Dad, Andy shouted. Greg watched Aiden cross the roof and reconnoiter the area behind the store.

Clear, Aiden shouted. Greg didn’t hesitate. He sprinted across the parking lot toward the gas station on a diagonal, dodging a pair of dead women sitting in the middle of Jefferson Street who were consuming, with a ferocious intensity, the remains of an older man in a Vietnam-era army jacket, hair tied back in a graying ponytail with a piece of leather. Greg tried not to look too closely; he knew the man. He knew most of the dead who now walked the town, and he knew many of the corpses who littered the streets, bones stripped clean of flesh, unable to rise, unable to walk, unable to join the army of the living dead that now populated the city.

Attracted to his movement, a large group of dead detached themselves from the mass stalking the fuel area and stumbled toward him. Greg ran harder, heart pounding in his chest. His backpack shifted awkwardly on his shoulders with every stride, throwing him off balance, slowing him down. He considered ditching it, but it held a bounty of supplies and antibiotics from the drug store, and he was reluctant to give it up so easily. Rounding the corner, he lunged down the alley