Zombie Apocalypse On Rotten Island

By Jep Jebed

Three survivors and a bunch of zombies try to make sense of the zombie apocalypse.

Failed student of Babylonian Ur-Legends and Languages, Dingo Janssen, appreciates how the apocalypse removes most opportunities for him to confront his greatest fear, human contact. Overly ambitious investment banker, Tanisha Chaudhary, resents how the apocalypse gets in the way of her career while Your Friendly Island Plumber, Dixon Johnson, is just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

But can Dixon actually find anything to cheer him up in the midst of the apocalypse, can Tanisha channel her destructive rage into a useful activity such as zombie-bashing, and is Dingo really as safe from human contact as he thinks he is?

A short story about the end of the end of the world and how things are not always as bad as they seem, but sometimes they’re much, much worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jep Jebed
• Release date: Oct 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370561872

Book preview

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

ON ROTTEN ISLAND

JEP JEBED

Three survivors and a bunch of zombies try to make sense of the zombie apocalypse.

Failed student of Babylonian Ur-Legends and Languages, Dingo Janssen, appreciates how the apocalypse removes most opportunities for him to confront his greatest fear, human contact. Overly ambitious investment banker, Tanisha Chaudhary, resents how the apocalypse gets in the way of her career while Your Friendly Island Plumber, Dixon Johnson, is just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

But can Dixon actually find anything to cheer him up in the midst of the apocalypse, can Tanisha channel her destructive rage into a useful activity such as zombie-bashing, and is Dingo really as safe from human contact as he thinks he is?

A short story about the end of the end of the world and how things are not always as bad as they seem, but sometimes they’re much, much worse.

Table of Contents

Dingo

Tanisha

Dixon

Tanisha

Dingo

Tanisha

Dingo

Dixon

Dingo

Dixon and Tanisha

Dingo

Dixon and Tanisha

Dingo

Dixon and Tanisha

Dingo, Dixon and Tanisha

Dingo

... the Peruvian Plague was first described by travelers to isolated mountain communities as sharing symptoms with leprosy and pregnancy, as the victims decompose and suffer irresistible cravings for unconventional foods… the pandemic is blossoming in major hospitals and around quarantined areas, some are questioning the competence of the authorities in handling the outbreak… on condition of anonymity one government official said that the best thing right now would be to go to that doomsday shelter your brother-in-law made so much fun of when you bought it, because this is the end…

Dingo Janssen turned the radio off. He had already heard that advice and was prepared to meet the end of the world without putting up a fight. He had only been looking to discover a new tune to go with it, perhaps about the pointlessness of life or the impossibility of escaping existential vacuum, but he’d had no luck. All the stations were obsessively reporting news and views on the situation instead of providing an appropriate soundtrack to it.

Dingo had hoped a melodic reminder of how little the world stood to lose by ending would have lifted his spirits. It was a vain hope because songs in that category had long since lost any power they once had (which wasn’t much to begin with) to cheer him up. It was his own fault, for having listened to far too many of them far too often. The most anguished cries of rhythmic misery had become elevator music to his ears. Just background, like everything else.

Sitting on his table in front of the single window in his studio apartment, Dingo watched cars and people go by on the street two floors down. People were mucking about as if the world was not ending. As if nothing out of the ordinary would ever happened on Rotten Island. Dingo didn’t hold their naivety against them. There was a kind of logic to it: The world might end elsewhere, but not where it had hardly begun in the first place.

Dingo looked through his own music catalogue and listened to a few sad songs he already knew too well, languidly mouthing along to the lead singers’ groans and lamentations.

He went online, looking for inspiration. End of the world playlists were trending, but none of them struck a chord. Dingo naturally skipped those focused on remembering good times or regretting all that stood to be lost, but even the most inconsolably depressed playlists failed to resonate with him. Perhaps because he had ambiguous feelings about the apocalypse: As bad as it was, it