The Segmented Zombie

By W.F. Gigliotti

During the zombie apocalypse of November 2051, it was found that a handful of zombies retained much of their intelligence. Bradley Caerleon was one of the first, and the last.

Repeatedly tortured, segmented, and studied by a secret scientific community cut off from the rest of the world, Bradley Caerleon had but one mission: to find freedom from the cruelty of his captors, and to make them pay for what they did to him. This is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.F. Gigliotti
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463053652

Book preview

Chapter 1 – THE DEAD-END LIFE

When I woke up, I saw a vapor selling some rocks down by the corner.

And this was to be the day that I’d die.

The sun was blinding and threatened to break into my skull and perhaps fry my brain to dust. My back and neck protested as I stretched out the last remaining vestiges of sleep. My brain pounded within my skull as if it was a prisoner begging to be released.

I was experiencing a hangover unlike any that I’d experienced before.

This is just one of many ways to feel dead, before dying.

It all started six months before this moment. The six months that led up to my death had been the hardest. Hardest still, was what happened after I died, but I’ll get to that.

What about the dog? I’d asked Debra on many occasions. It was the beginning of the same old random conversation that I often ran through my mind, things that I wanted to say over and over again.

Just leave it, Debra had told me. It’ll find its way back home.

Rex never did find his way home on his own, until Debra had left me. Until then, I’d later go find him, put him in my car and drive him home, always after Debra had gone to sleep for the night. I’m talking about Debra, my wife. Or rather, someone whom I thought of as a wife. She had my ring on her finger, so officially she was my wife. But as soon as the factory closed she started to pack up and wanted to leave town, as if the town was about to blow up, like in some old action flick that adhered to no logic, like when a car in such a movie would fall down into a ditch and inexplicably blow sky high to smithereens in a massive ball of flame, despite there being no reason for the explosion.

Wholesale Metal Stamping closed its doors. And when it did, it closed the door on my marriage. The house payments were late and the bank was in the process of foreclosing. My job was gone. I was penniless because, like a dumbass, I spent everything I got. Debra wanted to move to Alaska and be free as she called it. I called that idea horrible. I would have relented and gone with her, but at the slightest hint that I’d say No, she told me that she’d been seeing someone else. She hadn’t even waited for my answer.

Debra told me that she’d send me the divorce papers as soon as she and Charlie were settled. She then kissed me on the cheek, told me that she did, in fact, love me, but that she needed a man with a plan, and money.

Then, she left and that was it.

This was the easy part of all of this. The hard part would come six months later, on the day that I saw the vapor on the street corner, but I’ll get to that right as quick as I can. You just hang on, because this’ll be a ride unlike any that you’ve ever seen before.

Six months from the time that Debra left me, I died.

I’m still dead, right now. My name is Bradley Caerleon, if you should need to know. I’m one of the intelligent few, the few who were able to retain their wits, low and few as they might be. I am far from what I would call intelligent, as far as IQ tests and SAT tests are concerned, but somehow, I was able to retain something of who I was when I turned. I’ve seen people far more intelligent than me lose all of their marbles when the zombie plague broke free from the safety of its containment.

After Debra parted from me and moved up to Alaska with her Charlie, she sent me a postcard that showed the two of them naked in a hot tub in some sleazy no-name hotel there-a-bouts, just to put an exclamation point on the whole ordeal. A part of me wanted to think that her cruelty was accidental. Common sense told me that I was better off with her up in Alaska’s ass where the polar bears could catch her and rip her to shreds in some hungry effort to find some tasty morsel somewhere in that gamey and pasty flesh of hers, though I think they would be unlikely to find anything worth eating from a girl like her.

I had no idea what I did to make her so mad. Losing my job was the only reason I could think of. Maybe that was the only reason she’d stayed with me as long as she did. Debra was as cold as a cold woman could be to me. We never had any kids together. She’d always insisted that she stay on birth control pills and that I use condoms each and every time we’d have sex. It was like that throughout our whole marriage.

Sex with Debra was lifeless. She was as ambivalent a girl as you can imagine. It was always the same time of the week, and she’d just lay there like a dead fish, smoking a cigarette. She’d even insist that I finish before she’d finish her cigarette or I’d have to wait to finish the following week.

I had a dead-end job and a dead-end marriage, with some dead-end sex to make it only slightly less than hellish. Now, looking back, I’d say she did me a favor by leaving me.

I started to imagine random polar bears in Alaska, ravaging my sweet, sweet Debra as her Charlie ditched her for some younger lass with an actual ass worth yearning for.

Looking back. You always want to change things that didn’t go right. Such a natural thing, futile at best.

As for being undead, that’s another thing. Sometimes, life is easier when you can’t feel anything. It is somewhat easier, undead as a zombie, some of the time at least. Everyone else eventually found that out as well.

Being a zombie sometimes had its perks. You can’t feel hardly anything at all, or so it seems most of the time. When in such a state, all emotions are like sound trying to find its way to your ears through water and stone.

I was the first one, the first to have turned.

And I was the last best hope for a cure.

I wasn’t the cure at all.

The problem was the situation. If I had been free to shamble about and wander around, as most zombies did, the zombie life would have been much better than the fate that waited for me. Instead, I was a tortured prisoner.

This small town that I was in suited me just fine, but there were only three real ways to be employed here. Wholesale Metal Stamping had been the major one. With just that one factory open near town, the economy of the area flourished. Then there were the retail stores and the bar in the center of town where almost everyone else worked at and spent their free time at. Behind the town by about a mile and a half was something called The Whitley and Stine Corporation, but everyone in town that didn’t belong there always called it Our friendly neighborhood secret military facility.

Nobody asks questions about secret military facilities unless something odd causes such a stir of curiosity. It was hidden beyond a non-descript road that was always closed and a forest so thick that even the light of day could penetrate it not. I never thought twice about the place until it mattered. When you grow up in a small town and such an odd place has always existed on its outskirts, it all seems … normal.

My encounter with the Whitley and Stine Corporation began with Lucy. She was a part time bar maid at the local pub – the same one that I told you about earlier - just up the street from where I lived. Lucy was supposedly a pure blonde, except for the darker red roots. She wore it all so well. She was a spunky sort of a lady, though with virtues that one would not expect from a barmaid. Everyone underestimated her, me just as much. It was a good cover for her real job and how she really looked. She worked for the government, and - more accurately - for that hidden military facility deep in those dark, sun-forsaken woods.

Now, back to the day that I died.

The man standing at the corner, who was selling rocks, was looking at me. I realized that I’d been staring at him since I’d woken and while I had been reflecting on the past. He took another puff of his electronic cigarette, blew out the white vapor, and walked away.

Back when I was married, Debra never liked Rex. Rex was my dog’s name. She never referred to him as ours, just mine. She said that it was because I’d been the one that picked him from amongst the other dogs at the pound. She drove the point home every time she refused to walk him, feed him, or give him water. She even chained him up outside a lot of the time, even when it was raining out, but only while I was at work. I never caught her actually being mean to him, but it would not have surprised me in the slightest.

I’d gotten into the habit of visiting the pub just to avoid her.

I was more interested in seeing Lucy. She was always the life of the party at the pub, but she was always prim and proper with herself, never slutful and loose, just presentable and ever watchful for that one guy who would be her true prince charming.

There is more than one way to be dead.

After Wholesale Metal Stamping closed up shop, everything around it became a ghost town. Soon after, the pub was no longer as lively as it had been. Many nights, I ended up sitting at the same stool every night talking with sweet Lucy.

One night, I asked her, What if I was your prince charming all this time, right under your nose, and you never even knew about it?

Well, it wouldn’t matter if I loved you or not, she told me. What matters is being able to live a good life, raise happy well-fed and cared for children, and living in a nice home with money to be happy with.

I have a house, I told her.

A house ready to be foreclosed, she added.

So, you’d turn me down because I’m hard on my luck, I said.

She blinked a few times. Well, there is an opening for a custodian at my day job, she told me. It pays well, and you’ll see me more often. Might make some money quick enough to make that house payment of yours. Then, who knows?

The following day, my house was foreclosed and I was forced to live in my rusted old car with my dog Rex as my only true companion.

I looked through the windshield again. The vapor stood at the corner again. This time, a car was in front of him full of young punks wanting to buy his rocks. This place is a shithole, I said. I looked at the time on my watch. It was time for work.

I’d gotten that job at the Whitley and Stine company. This death day, as I call it, was six months later. I was still residing in my car as my humble mobile home. Lucy still waitressed part time at the pub. And she was only slightly closer to being my lady.

The vapor and his cronies were the least of my troubles. Because this was to be the day that I’d die.

The car shimmied a bit when I started her up. I felt the off-kilter pistons churn and whine against the sides of their enclosures as the engine came to life. It protested just as much as my mind did when I’d woken up.

Rex whined as I sped off and past the man at the corner who still stood with his electric cigarette and his bag of rocks. His eyes were on me. I had no idea if the man thought me a threat or not, or if he thought it be prudent to eliminate me as a possible threat. He probably thought I was a cop, filming his business practices for future incarceration. But what did I know, right?

I drove through town and to the intersection in its center. I drove past the pub and took a left. The street changed from being pothole riddled and rough to newly paved as I passed out of the town’s border and into the property of the Whitley and Stine Corporation. After a mile the road dove downward slightly and into the deep dark forest, as I liked to call it. The trees were abundant in number and completely blocked the view of the sky. Everything twenty feet and lower was just bare tree trunks and dead debris from the trees. Squirrels were just about as numerous as the trees down here. Never once did I travel down this road without having to hit the breaks to avoid the little guys.

Rex had grown so accustomed to seeing the squirrels that he no longer barked at them. He resigned himself to merely watching them scurry about with mild curiosity and perhaps some small amount of affection or joy at the sight of them. He was a good dog. I appreciated him. Debra had no patience for him, which was a tragedy, really. He didn’t deserve to have her as one of his owners.

I’ll make it up to you, Rex, I told him. He looked at me and cocked his head sideways. Momma didn’t like you, but I do.

The entire back seat was covered with a thick plaid woolen blanket. The blanket was covered with another blanket created by the accumulation Rex’s shed hair. He seemed content with it as hairy as it was so I resigned myself to only clean it when he got sick or had a bowel or urine related accident on it. The back seat was his home. My home was the front.

Perhaps I only needed a house because I needed Lucy.

I had been saving my money to get a new place, just letting it accumulate while I could still tolerate living in my car. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand living in that death trap, but the weather was temperate and at an acceptable level so I didn’t need to keep the car running all night and waste gas. I never had to drive very far either, so that saved on wear and tear. I had a battery charger, a spare tire, and a tire inflator in the trunk for emergencies.

The town might’ve be a shit hole, but the crime element had been limited to just the one man at the street corner at the edge of town selling rocks and looking as