Zombies Are People Too!

By Stacy Kingsley

The world ends because of a single cockroach.

The world had already changed. Countries had died, nations had gone to war, and innocent lives had been destroyed. Then the first zombie rose and the survivors don't know who to turn to or who to trust.

Valerie, a teenager on her way to a concert, wakes from a car accident to find her car empty and her best friend, Charlie, gone. Valerie must find her way to safety, find her best friend, and survive the rising zombie hoards.

Robert, a divorced father of two kids, finally has his kids and wants to enjoy a relaxing weekend with them. Instead Robert will struggle to figure out what he is willing to do to protect his kids, and what he is willing to sacrifice for them.

Marcus is a man who enjoys the look of blood on his knife. With a pile of bodies already under him, he realizes that zombies might just be the key to his dream. If he gets what he wants the zombies might not be the only thing that causes the destruction of humanity.

The zombies are coming and humanity must be prepared.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stacy Kingsley
• Release date: Apr 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301413195

Stacy Kingsley

Stacy grew up loving the horror genre. When she first saw the movie CUJO she learned that you have to wait because even in those last five minutes something will happen. Her love of zombies stems from her desire to find true monsters, not sparkling vampires, loving werewolves, or ghosts who help you solve cases. Zombies have one thing on their mind, eating people. She loves zombies so much she has done zombie makeup for an ice skating exhibition, played a zombie in a short independent film, done several zombie themed runs and is working on a zombie series. This is the first book in that series, her second book ZOMBIES BITE! will be out soon followed by ZOMBIE WASTELAND and the final book ZOMBIEMERICA. Stacy lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two crazy but entertaining cats.

Book preview

Prologue

When it happened it came scurrying in on the back of the cockroach. Who would have thought that human deconstruction would have come riding in on the creatures of the dark, the kings of refuse? The nighttime ear inhabitors didn’t create the problem, it wasn’t their fault they could survive death. The monsters of the underbelly just happened to be immune, mutated by an unknown infection. They couldn’t survive all forms of death, just this one. Most of humanity was surprised, since the invention of satellite radio, television, and the high-speed information superhighway, we all expected the apocalypse to be in the form of nuclear destruction, toxic accident, fast spreading and deadly disease, or as vengeance from an angry environment. Not to say that none of this happened, the world had been lost for a long time. We had been slowly killing ourselves for decades.

North Korea began the trend, twenty years before humanity as a whole was sent struggling for survival. In their speedy efforts to distinguish themselves as a nuclear superpower they had a major nuclear disturbance. Their accident created problems of astronomical proportions. Parts of Russia and China had increasing numbers of stillborn babies, and numerous incidents of radiation poisoning. Korea, as a whole, became a desolate island that could no longer support life. The land died. The remaining people strived to survive. However, those who did survive eventually became so sick they succumbed to death, or took their own lives to escape the horrendous pain that accompanied the levels of radiation they were stricken with. A year after the radioactive incident in Korea, the only thing left were dried pools of blood, really no more than stains on a dusty sidewalk, as well as mummified corpses in several different stages of unrest. Some died in their beds succumbing to self-induced overdoses. Others had tried to outlive the poisoning, dying at work or on the street, in incredible pain, spilling blood as if they had been disemboweled. There was no one left to clean up the dead so they were left where they fell, reminders to the human race what the need for power can do.

Kuwait and Iraq both had separate incidents of toxic oil spills. Kuwait’s problem was ten years and Iraq’s five years before the infection began its gargantuan spread. Water became poison, and their lands could no longer support vegetation or animals. The inhabitants showed several signs of cancerous growths in and on varying parts of their bodies, and all the cancers were both malignant and untreatable. Three generations died, either from cancer or starvation and dehydration. Many of those left behind became sterile. Another group extinct in genocide they themselves created.

Three years before the infection spread, areas of Africa saw the deadliest outbreak of the Ebola virus to date and the continent never recovered. Every bloody nose, every cut, every drop of blood was regarded as a curse. Innocent people were murdered in an effort to stop an unstoppable plague. It spread so quickly that a quarantine of the affected areas was useless. It took on new forms and found ways to become airborne, spreading the virus so fast that it could never be tracked. Whole towns were burnt to the ground in an effort to stop the disease, yet all the fire did was spread it faster. Ashes were all that remained of many of the towns and villages, and the ashes themselves were carried by the winds, transporting the disease into new territories, decimating almost the entire continent.

The environment decided to wreak havoc in ways not many saw coming. Snowstorms in San Diego, California resulted in freezing crops, cattle, and land. New England had devastating earthquakes, wiping Rhode Island off the map and shrinking Delaware’s available property. Immigration reached cataclysmic heights when most of Mexico became flooded due to heavy rain and flooding. The cost of gas sky-rocketed and milk reached a maximum of $15 a gallon in the lower forty-eight states.

Even with all these disasters the newborn American government in their never-ending search for better weapons and faster cures, did not acknowledge the problem until it was too late. No one pays attention to the feral, fruit smelling alley cat unless it attacked. No one listens to the ranting of an insane homeless woman, especially if she is covered in open sores and smells of urine and death. No one pays attention to the cockroach creeping under the kitchen sink. No one looks. No one realizes that same cockroach has been living there for five years, even though the lifespan of a common household cockroach is approximately two years.

No one noticed until a baby crawled out from the open womb of its dead mother.

The stars of heaven and their constellations

will not show the light.

The rising sun will be darkened

and the moon will not give its light.

I will punish the world for its evil,

the wicked for their sins.

I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty

and will humble the pride of the ruthless.

Isaiah 13:10-11

Chapter One

Valerie woke up feeling as if someone had hit her in the head with a croquet mallet. Reaching up with trembling fingers she felt slick blood in her blue hair. She was having trouble remembering where she was, then it came to her, quickly, another hard whack with the croquet mallet. Looking over towards the passenger seat where Charlie was supposed to be sitting, she was surprised to find it empty. Only a single blue Nike shoe remained where Charlie was supposed to be. A chuckle wheezed into her throat and escaped in a crackling whisper. Charlie had been thrown out of his shoe. She knew that this wasn’t supposed to be funny, but the horror of the accident helped make reality a bit hilarious. I guess people can be thrown out of their clothing she thought.

She pushed herself away from the steering wheel, arms aching with the effort. She knew she should try to get out of the car and look for Charlie. Thinking for a moment, she unhooked her tan seatbelt, and began searching for her purse. The first thing she wanted to do was find her cell phone and call for emergency services. Of course, with her luck, she would end up being in a dead zone with no cell service. Yup, she was a horror movie waiting to happen. A lone girl, a broken car, the evil forest lurking around her, she was certain she had seen this movie before. She hoped her purse hadn’t been thrown out with Charlie. She felt another chuckle rising and swallowed to suppress it. It really wasn’t that funny, and shouldn’t be. Charlie could be seriously hurt, or dead.

Again she looked over to where Charlie should have been sitting, and hoped that he had just gotten out and went looking for help. The passenger door was open; maybe he had been too dazed to realize that he was missing a shoe. Hopefully he had his other shoe on, she didn’t think that walking around in a forest would be very good on his gray sock covered feet.

Valerie pushed the driver’s side door open, wondering why the airbags didn’t deploy. There was going to be one heck of a steering wheel shaped bruise on her chest later. She slid her jean-covered legs out and promptly vomited between them. She didn’t see that coming. Man, did her shoulders hurt. Suddenly Valerie felt very alone, and wondered where the heck she had ended up. She knew that it was important for her to get out of the car and try to find the road, but she wasn’t sure how far or from which direction they had come from. Maybe she would be able to follow the tire tracks the car had made as it headed toward that unsuspecting tree.

Valerie stood, gripping the drivers’ side door with purple knuckles. Her black Rolling Stones T-shirt caught in the seatbelt and tore. She felt dizzy and wanted to sit back down and wait for help to come to her. Of course, she didn’t know if help would be coming for her at all. She didn’t know where she was, how far they had fallen, and damn, where in hell was Charlie? She could search for him, but she hurt so much she wasn’t sure she could go very far.

Charlie, she attempted to scream, her voice dripping out in a wet whisper. Clearing her throat she tried her call again.

Charlie, can you hear me? This time her voice traveled through the forest, bouncing off of the trees, going nowhere. She listened to the silence as her echo softened. Nothing.

She stumbled from the car, searching the area for her pink Cheshire Cat purse. She needed to find her cell phone. If it was lost her mother would be furious with her. Since Valerie left home seven months ago to live the life of a free-spirit, her mother had made sure that Valerie had a phone available so that either she or her mother could call anytime. Valerie was sure it was just her mother’s way of keeping a long leash on her; wanting to know where she was at all times. Where her mother was uptight, Valerie was, well, she was more organic. Her mother couldn’t understand how she and Charlie could just give up everything to go out to see the world, experience things as Valerie put it.

Valerie continued searching for Charlie, for her cell phone, for her sanity, every step sent searing pain through her bright pink Converse and up her legs. She didn’t know if the road they careened off was busy enough for her to just sit and wait for someone to come by, which made her want cell phone even more so she could call someone, anyone that could help. Right now all she cared about was getting help, but maybe that was what Charlie was doing at this very moment, getting help. She drug her sore body up the steep embankment the car had driven down, following the deep tracks the tires had left in the damp forest floor.

The road was not all that far from where the car had come to a stop. She reached it fifteen minutes after leaving her battered Honda Civic behind. She was glad to have reached a main road and sat down, hoping she would be able to see or hear a car approaching. Looking up and down the road, she once again searched for any sign that Charlie had been here and had maybe moved on. She was worried about him; she had seen no other sign of him than his lone shoe in the car. Thinking about the concert they were now missing, she wished she could remember whatever the hell had caused the accident, or caused her to swerve off the road. She couldn’t even remember if she had been trying to avoid some small creature, or if she had simply gotten distracted and veered off the road. She was so angry with herself. Her parents would be even angrier since they would have to pay for the repairs. Even though Valerie was trying to live a less monetary based lifestyle than her parents, she did still depend on them for some financial support. Maybe if she had been paying more attention she wouldn’t be here, sitting by the side of a lonely road, waiting for help and searching for her best friend.

Listening to the silence of the forest, it all seemed so complete. No sounds vibrated toward her, and she thought it was a little odd, since she expected to hear the whistle of a bird at the very least. She wasn’t an outdoorsy type of girl, preferring to stay in cities and well-lit areas, but she did know that things weren’t supposed to be so deathly silent. From what seemed like a short distance she heard what sounded like tires turning on the crumbling pavement. She stood; looking, waiting and anticipating the first view of the person she hoped would be her rescuer.

Chapter Two

Marcus was not a nice guy. He liked to hurt people, enjoyed hurting people. When Marcus was five he pushed his little sister down a flight of stairs. He just wanted to watch what happened as she tumbled down those sixteen stairs, and was disappointed that when she hit the bottom she was silent. She died a week later at the hospital. His parents had to remove her from life support. As the machines stopped and her chest stopped moving, Marcus smiled. He tried to make sure no one saw his smile, and was a little self-conscious about letting himself feel happiness. Marcus wasn’t sad when she died, more interested in what was going on around him than sad. He pretended to be sad, but he didn’t feel it. He pretended a lot when he heard his mother weeping in his sisters’ empty bedroom. He would walk in and slip his small arms around her shoulders, trying to comfort her, although he felt no real empathy.

For the first seven years of his life Marcus hated his father. Then he became indifferent to the beatings, finding other ways to release his vacuum-sealed rage. However, he loved his mother. She was always kind to him, and tried to protect him from the beatings. In turn he tried to protect his mother when he got older and grew big enough to fight back. He killed his father too, but that was self-defense, not exactly fun. Marcus was fifteen when he killed his father and was sent to a juvenile detention center. The State Attorney (replacements for outdated District Attorneys) knew Marcus killed his father in self-defense, so he wasn’t tried as an adult, even though the S.A. might have wanted to. To the S.A. and the psychologist he had been assigned, it appeared as if Marcus was missing something, some part of him that made him a human. Classically he would be named a Sociopath, yet those names no longer existed. His psychologist and the S.A. were frightened, but what could they do, he was still a child. At the age of 18 he was sent to a mental rehabilitation facility for further evaluation. His psychologist wanted to make sure that killing at such an experimental and young age had not damaged him for the rest of his adult life.

Killing his father seemed to be a turning point for Marcus. He knew before that he enjoyed killing, but when he pushed his sister he hadn’t fully understood what he was doing, he just knew he liked it. Hurting other kids in the neighborhood was fun too. After breaking the leg of a little boy he played with, he came to be known as a bully. Yet, his cruelty was ignored because everyone knew his father beat him. Parents just began keeping their children away from him, and kept their eyes on him when he was around. In turn he made sure to play the part of a good boy as often as he could. He didn’t mind. There were always some unfortunate creatures out there for him to play with.

Marcus’s mother visited him every chance she got while he was in the detention facility, which wasn’t very often. No more than once a month, but Marcus understood she was not well off and had to work two jobs just to support herself. She was often at one job or the other from five in the morning until close to midnight. It was difficult for her to make it during visiting hours and she had to take time off of work to see him. He really didn’t mind that his mom could only come once a month as he didn’t care for all the crying she did when she visited him. She told him that she blamed herself for him being there, but he knew he would have ended up in jail sooner or later, killing was in his blood. At least this would not be a permanent stain on his record since juvenile acts were often expunged or sealed.

After serving four years in juvi and five years in the mental rehabilitation facility, at age twenty-two, he was finally released back into society. He had a lot of time to think about the best way to kill in those nine years. He had thought every day and dreamt every night about killing until it became an uncontrollable obsession. In fact he committed his first planned homicide the day after his release. Marcus found he had a fondness for girls, young or old, it didn’t matter as long as they were female. Though he wasn’t discriminating about who he killed, he would kill a guy just as fast as he would kill a girl, he found that he liked making it last longer with a girl. It was more fun to hear her scream. It was a turn on to hear her plead, exciting to rip the knife through her flesh and hear her begging him to stop. He got off on it. He knew this wasn’t the way normals acted, but he had stopped caring if he was normal long ago.

Right now, at the age of thirty-five, he was standing over the shivering body of a delectable co-ed, watching her tremble and waiting for her next plea. She was blond (but not really) with big brown eyes. Her lips were bloody, and looked full under the bright red of her blood lipstick. He had been beating on her for about three hours and now the fun was really going to begin.

The nice thing about his life was that he didn’t have to work as hard as his mother to maintain happiness. He stole, and he inherited. His mother had left him her house which (when he arrived at the age of twenty-two) was a ramshackle shack crumbling like the walls of Jericho. He worked hard, painting, fixing cracks, leaks and holes making it into the house he wanted, completing it with a sound proof room in the basement. Although to be honest, he didn’t touch most of his mother’s furniture or decorations. He didn’t want to completely erase his mother. He did remodel a bedroom and bathroom to fit his tastes, but left almost everything else the same. Though he didn’t do all of his killing in the house, Marcus had a nice van he would take out into the woods and play in as well. The woods were freeing because he could let his toy out to run away. He would hunt them down, but of course, he didn’t have a preferred method of killing, just whatever seemed right for the moment.

The girl went silent and he looked down at her. She had passed out. Well, he thought, maybe I will let her rest a bit before I finish her off. He had time, and he had the money. He was never in a hurry to end the lives of his victims. Dragging it out pleased him more, and provided a more intense pleasure than he ever achieved with a sexual encounter.

While turning to walk away he felt something hit the back of his head. It was the girl’s shoe. She hadn’t passed out; she was just faking so she could try to escape. Not very original on her part. In one swift movement he grabbed her, pulling her up, and slit her throat. Not the way he was planning to end her life, but sometimes there was no choice. She crumpled to the ground, landing in a single mass of hair, skin and blood. The blood pooled out around his feet, the warmth making his bare toes tingle in the damp coolness of the basement. He knew he should clean up and dump the girl’s body, but he decided it could stay here for a while, he was in no hurry. In fact, as he walked upstairs he didn’t even close the door.

Brandy, he said to himself, she said her name was Brandy.

Chapter Three

Robert wondered if he would be able to see his kids today. His wife, no, his ex-wife, was being something of a bitch and he didn’t know what he could do about it. She hated him, he knew that. She was punishing him by being late and trying to keep his kids away from him. He was worried that in the end she would run away, hiding the kids from him so he could never see them again.

It was sad how things had turned out. When Robert first met Ashley she was a wonderful person, a free spirit who cared nothing for the material things of this world. They shared the desire to have two children, and had Darius and Maxine. She had wanted to be a writer and tested her toes in several different genres before settling on poetry. Now she was an accomplished poet, and he had been left behind in the dust, just another government pariah. Ashley changed when the money began to roll in and popular talk shows started asking her to come be their special guest. Her poetry was amazing. It could make even the hardest of hearts feel something; even now he gave her that. Sadly she had let it all go to her head and began buying more and more things, blaming him for their lack of what modern royalty should have. He, in turn, was happy being a cop. Sure the pay wasn’t going to buy them diamonds, but when they had met Ashley didn’t want diamonds. She had said that to her diamonds represented the deaths of kidnapped men, women and children in Africa. Bloody war diamonds, and she could live without them. Now, she had one of the largest diamonds he had ever seen gripping tightly to her portly finger.

Three years after Ashley had her first affair the money began rolling in, she said that she needed more fulfillment and began taking art classes. She was learning how to turn everyday objects into things of beauty, as well as learning how to hide the fact that she was sleeping with her art teacher from her husband. He forgave her that first affair, because she told him that they had never used their marital bed for their simple fornication. Nor had she ever done anything when the children were in her care. She wasn’t in love with the art teacher, she was just bored, and Robert had been too busy to please her or take care of her needs.

Robert suggested they enter counseling and they did. He had thought it was working, but what he didn’t know was that Ashley was sleeping with practically every man she could get into her bed. She stopped caring where or when, even having the men over when the children were in the house, introducing some of the men to the kids as Uncle Tom or Uncle Dick. The children didn’t know what to say so they left it at nothing. By the time the marriage was in crisis, Ashley had gotten pregnant by her tennis instructor and decided to leave Robert for a more successful man. By more successful, she meant one who made money by doing nothing more than telling rich women how to handle their balls. The kids, now 10 and 13, were the ones suffering.

Darius, the 13-year-old, was angry with both of his parents. He didn’t show it, but it simmered and sometimes boiled over into his drawings. Often Darius wondered why his father had been so blind and his mother had been so callous. He loved both his parents, but he wanted nothing to do with either of them. After school was over, which it would be in one more dreadful month, he would ask his parents if he could spend the summer with his grandparents. They had always been kind to him, and even though they were his father’s parents they had no unkind words about his mother, unlike his mother’s parents. His mother’s parents bad-mouthed his father every chance they got, saying he was a lazy slob who didn’t know how to keep his wife happy. He didn’t understand how they could say that since it was hard being a cop, to have a full time job, raise two kids, all while going to school to try to better yourself and get a higher pay grade at your job. Darius tried not to take sides, but sometimes he felt pity for his father, though he was not sure he should. No son should pity his father; they should look up to and respect them. It made Darius sad to think about