The List

By Michele Lee

“Horrible death and apocalypse, individually packaged for your convenience. Now with 20% more mutilation!”

I ask myself not “how could this happen?” but “how did we not assume this was the natural outcome of life, and do something about it?” I mean, learn to shoot a gun or sharpen a machete or something, yanno?

But I’m not here to try to analyze why this is happening, or come up with magic cure to the undead. No doubt there are plenty of labs and government d-bags locked away with all the bottled water and frozen McDonald’s patties trying to figure all that out. Not me. I’m here to tell you about the list.

The list of people who absolutely must die in order for me, and any survivors to remain safe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michele Lee
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311857743

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

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The List

©2013 Michele Lee Freel

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction of all or part of the materials or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

Cover art also ©2013 Michele Lee Freel

Please visit my website at michelelee.net

The List

by Michele Lee

Reasons the world went to hell:

1. People stopped giving a damn about each other.

2. And they stopped believing in God and going to church.

3. The gays all got married and now we’re being punished.

4. And the zombies.

Of all the reasons the world went to hell the damn zombies were the most obvious. Hard to deny you’re in a shit ton of WTF when the dead rise to munch on the living. In a way, trashy or actually pretty good, the zombie books and movies have come to look like foreshadowing. Like that guy on the street corner with the End is Nigh sign. But they were so…common (that’s probably the nicer way to put it). The idea of the monster itself was weak, a cliché for boys who wanted to glimpse blood-soaked boobs and horror fiends that sucked up anything with zombie, dead or flesh in the title like Code Red and nutty bars on a double header RPG night.

Did you know there are zombies all over the natural world? Like Cordyceps, a fungus that burrows its way through the exoskeletons of ants, infects their muscle tissue and makes them die with their pincers clamped down on stems and leaves, in the perfect spot for their spores to thrive. Or Toxoplasma gondii which makes rats madly seek out their own death, so the little beasty inside can grow all nice and cozy in a cat’s guts. There’s a bacteria too that can reanimate dead plant cells so that it can continue to feed off the plant. And that’s before you get into all those rage virus theories. (Seriously, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Look it up.) Or all that Serpent and the Rainbow neurotoxin crap. We don’t need magic or germ warfare or political conspiracies to bring on the zombie apocalypse. Nature does it all for us.

Zombies are natural. As natural as apple pie, and high fructose corn syrup. A hell of a lot more natural than the chemicals that pass for convenient dinners in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Can’t you just see it? Coolers full of zombies all in a tidy row. Horrible death and apocalypse, individually packaged for your convenience. Now with 20% more mutilation!

I ask myself not how could this happen? like some hippie just before his mommy up and gnawed his face off, but how the hell did we not assume this was the natural outcome of life, and do some-fucking-thing about it? I mean, learn to shoot a gun or sharpen a machete or something, yanno?

But I’m not here to try to analyze why this is happening, or come up with magic cure to the un-fucking-dead. No doubt there are plenty of labs and government d-bags locked away with all the bottled water and frozen McDonald’s patties trying to figure all that out. Not me. I’m here to tell you about the list.

But before that, you gotta understand something. This isn’t necessarily a worse world. I mean, it probably is for the asshats trying to walk through my razor wire or the people who had to watch dear wifey-Sue or little Jessica go rotty and rabid on them. But in a lot of ways people are more honest today. I mean, you know looking at them whether they want to rape you, steal your supplies or eat your brains. Chicanery is often hard when your tongue’s already rotted out of your mouth or with a flock of deadies on your ass, when it’s not a matter of getting away, but running faster that the flesh bags around you.

It’s a simpler world, eat or be eaten. It’s an honest world. We know now that it’s about sex and eating and surviving. And it’s about the violence. The beautiful, breathless, cleansing wash of violence. The list is a little about violence too. But more so it’s about douche bags and the fact that not only is nobody watching what you’re doing anymore, but in this brave new world you’re morally obligated to beat or blow up or slice