Rot

By Michele Lee

So you’ve raised your loved ones from the dead, but had no idea how difficult it would be to care for them.
No problem! Silver Springs is a warm, peaceful facility equipped to handle all your zombie needs. Their friendly staff will ensure they have a safe environment with daily exercise and raw meat.

Rest easy knowing they’re in good hands... as they rot.

In Michele Lee’s Rot, you won’t find an apocalypse or Romero-style flesh-eaters. This is far more disturbing.

In a world where certain people can will others back from death, Silver Springs Specialty Care Community caters to the undead for those who aren’t quite ready to let go (zombie milk available by special arrangement at the home office).Dean, retired from the military and looking for an easier life, runs security at this zombie herding farm, but he learns that dark injustice is not unique to war. There’s a rotten core to Silver Springs. Now, Dean and a quickly-decaying corpse named Patrick are on the hunt for a woman they both love and lost to a lucrative business that specializes in greed, zombies and never having to say goodbye.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michele Lee
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311360793

Michele Lee

Once upon a time Michele defended a Borders bookstore from an infestation of flesh-eating book-look-a-like monsters. On stormy April day she once single-handedly wrestled a bear into a bathtub and even got him to sit still for a nail trim. Mostly though, she writes stories of heartbroken werewolves (Wolf Heart), zombie with souls (Rot) and rock star hyena-girls (you’ll see). Follow along at michelelee.net

Book preview

1

When I met Amy, she’d been back from the dead for four days. She’d been at the facility for three of those days. At that point, I’d only been there two. Not that anyone needed more than a few moments to get the gist of the place. She was more bitter about being at the facility than the being dead part, and honestly I didn’t blame her.

She had a scowl on her face as I walked into the office at the Silver Springs Care Community. She had pale skin graced with freckles, soft chin-length brown hair, and the brightest hazel eyes I had ever seen - they made the attractive, mildly chubby, early twentysomething-year-old woman into something extraordinary.

You’re dead. I couldn’t stop it once I’d thought it. The words fell out of my mouth like something rotten. Her scowl deepened and I felt bad immediately.

You know, I hadn’t noticed. Thanks for telling me.

I didn’t mean… Look, all of the zombies I’ve seen so far have been…

Like them? She pointed out the window to the grounds, where I could see a keeper leading a train of desiccated corpses on their daily walk.

The facility employed people with enough skill at raising the dead to keep the zombies’ urge to chew on people at bay. Me, I didn’t have a talent for commanding the dead. What I had was twenty-plus years of military and security experience, and the ability to look someone’s ninety-year-old grandmother in the eyes and shoot her.

The job called for all sorts of skills.

Some of us still retain our own thoughts and personalities. I’m Amy, by the way. She didn’t offer a hand. She held her arms across her stomach and leaned forward slightly, those eyes boring into me. She was at once defensive and furious. And absolutely lovely.

I nodded. I’m Dean.

Which would you prefer, Dean? Being one of those things out there, rotted to mindlessness, or being locked in a dead body, knowing that’s the future you’ll face? Knowing that someone loved you enough not to let go, but didn’t love you enough to care for you themselves? Instead, they locked you in here where they didn’t have to see or smell you, but could take comfort in the idea that you weren’t exactly dead anymore.

I thought both options sucked.

*****

It used to be that death, maybe even a long or violent one, would be the worst thing you’d ever have to face. In the few skirmishes I’d served in, other soldiers had taken some comfort in knowing that. But then, that was before they started raising people from the dead.

My nephew used to play a video game where the point was to wander around shooting zombies. There was only a little more to it than that: a bit of mystery; a touch of evil corporation or government conspiracy. The games said that zombies were the result of a disease.

When they started showing up in real life, people assumed the same thing. Government experimentation, biological terrorism, some sort of corporation poisoning the public - the fear and wrath from the living humans caused more damage in those days than the few confirmed zombies. I was privy to a few case reports of homegrown terrorist plots against global corporations who had nothing to do with the occasional walking dead. They were just good targets.

And there was Black Wednesday, too. Forty-five civilians dead. They never did confirm how many employees of that soda company burned, barricaded inside the building by an outraged mob.

Then the truth came out, and I still wonder how many people harbor the secret memories of doing violence that day in the name of protecting themselves or their families. Creating zombies, it turned out, was just a matter of will. The first few we caught in public had likely raised themselves - a few assholes too stubborn to die. The problem came when people started to make zombies for fun and profit. About two percent of the general public had the will to force people back from death. It was a very lucrative, unregulated business.

Places like Silver Springs came in at the end of the line. A loved one coming into our facility was a brutal lesson for those involved. Too many people fell into the category of potential customers, but not enough saw what happened once a zombie entered the gates. I don’t doubt that having a place to tuck away your loved one, who turned out to be too much for you to handle, was useful. But if more people saw the end result of never having to say goodbye, they’d damn well learn to say it.

Amy, yeah.

So, she said after I failed to answer her aloud, if you don’t mind my stench, I’m here to help out.

I declined to add fuel to her little fire. What can you help with?

"I’m good with computers, and organization.