Terrifying Lies

By Craig Nybo

In this collection of nineteen short stories, Craig Nybo invites you to visit the lives of mostly unfortunate souls as they face the most terrifying moments of their existences. With everything from vampire hunting to zombie bashing, from steampunk death devices to shifty soul brokers, Nybo brings his own sense of perspective and, of course, his se

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nybo Media LLC.
• Release date: Mar 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780615580609

Craig Nybo

Craig Nybo lives with his beautiful wife and kids in Kaysville, UT. He works as a creative director for mediaRif.com, a digital agency. Craig writes novels, short fiction, and screenplays. As a musician, he has released several records with friends under the band names, Rustmonster and The Big Sky Country Boys. Craig also records solo work. He has released three records under his own name, Zombie Sing-a-long, and a sequel album, Zombie Sing-a-long: Whistler and the Children (Part 1). As a filmmaker, Craig has written and directed many short films. He also writes and directs many commercials and industrial videos as part of his profession. Aside from writing, Craig enjoys playing in the Rocky Mountains, rock climbing and canyoneering.

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Craig Nybo lives with his lovely wife and five children in Kaysville, Utah. He works as a creative director for mediaRif.com, a digital creative agency.

Craig became a writer at a young age when the results of a 5th grade aptitude test stated that he should consider becoming a career humorist. He first looked up the definition of the word humorist, then became one.

Craig enjoys writing novels, screenplays, short stories, comedy sketches, essays, and articles. Aside from his writing, Craig enjoys composing, recording, and performing music.

For more information about Craig Nybo, visit these sites:

www.craignybo.com

www.facebook.com/CraigNybo

Friend Craig Nybo on Facebook and get to know him personally.

Other Books by Craig Nybo

Fiction

Allied Zombies for Peace

Small Town Monsters

Bieber’s Finger

Funk Toast and the Pan-Galactic Prom Show

Non Fiction:

TotalHuman: The Complete Strength Training System

Musical Albums

With Rustmonster

Last Voyage of the Black Betty

Flight of the Filthy Vicar

With The Big Sky Country Boys

Beer

As a Solo Artist

Zombie Sing-a-long

Zombie Sing-a-long: Whistler and the Children (Part 1)

Zombie Sing-a-long: Whistler and the Children (Part 2)

Terrifying Lies

•

Craig Nybo

Nybo Media LLC. Books Edition, December, 2015

©2015 by Craig Nybo

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nybo Media LLC. Books, Utah.

ISBN: 978-0-9884064-9-0

www.craignybo.com

Dedicated to my mother, Jean Nybo.

You gave me all of my greatest attributes.

Author’s Note

I love short fiction. Sadly, short stories currently are not in demand. They belong to a bygone world where people subscribed to pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories . There are still periodicals and anthologies around, but they just don’t sell well. It seems now that we short story writers have lost our readers to smart phone aps and social networking. Oh well, times change. Call me a relic, but I still enjoy a good yarn written in 1,500 to 7,500 words.

Short story writing is a craft in and of itself. I have read too many short stories that are nothing more than a snatch of time during a character’s every-day life, or a description of a rogue walking down a dark street. Characters that make life-changing decisions and suffer the consequences drive the best short stories. I hope you enjoy this collection. Consider them peeks into the lives of mostly unfortunate souls as they face their penultimate hours of elation or dread.

The problem of presentation order beset me as I put this compilation together. In the end, I decided to put them in order from longest to shortest. I think it might give you the sense of reading downhill. It’s always more fun to run down than to trod up.

---clnyb

The Bloody Journal of Lance King

1. 1 - May 3, Year 1

I just wiped the bloodstains from my guitar. Somehow a pair of those undead monsters got in through the service door on the back of the building. I didn’t hear them coming until it was too late to get a proper weapon. They pushed through my recording studio door and caught me with my pants down.

I went at them with my ax. I’m not talking about a rail splitting ax; I’m talking about my Ibanez acoustic. It isn’t even a great guitar. It has a laminate top rather than spruce. It has nickel strings that give it an annoying high-end buzz. But it’s the only guitar I have. I’m hoping to make a pilgrimage to a music store if I can make it through the wreckage and zombies. But that will have to wait until I can muster up more courage and bullets.

I’m happy to be alive I suppose. But I broke the head of my ax off in the fight. I’ll have to find some glue to fix it. I can’t live without music. I miss standing on stage in the limelight playing for real, living, breathing people. But there aren’t any people around anymore.

I’m not much of a journal keeper. But this incident in the studio has prompted me to put down some kind of record, both in word and in song, of my story. I suppose it might help someone who comes along later if this epidemic—or whatever it is—runs its course and kills us all.

For now, suffice it to say: greetings, my name is Lance King. I live in an abandoned school. I’m surrounded by zombies. I’m a musician with no audience. And I’m running out of bullets.

2 - May 10, Year 1

I can’t stop thinking about Suzanne White. A strong link connects childhood sweethearts. I’ve had many girlfriends since the 4th grade when I pushed her in the swings, all shy and blushing. She asked why I was treating her so nice. I know she’s had many boyfriends since too. I know because I can list them. There was Marshall Dunn in Jr. High who played on the basketball team and treated everybody like his welcome mat. There was Billy Iverson with his pencil neck and mathlete letter. There was Jack—although everyone called him Jewell. There was Pierce who I swear practiced moving his eyebrows in the mirror every morning. The list goes on.

Last time I saw Suzanne, she was well on her way to turning undead. There was dirt in her usually beautiful hair. Her smell went beyond body odor. I was lucky to get away alive. I wonder where she is now. I wonder if the mercenaries got her or if she’s still just wandering around out there, all lonely and terrifying. I wonder if, in some strange way, she’s still beautiful.

3 - May 13, Year 1

I went to junior high school here at Warden. I’ve even taken to using my old locker from the 9th grade to store what weapons I have. It’s cold most of the time; but the season is on the change. I’m sure I’ll be roasting within a few weeks.

Living in an abandoned school feels a bit murky. There are a lot of rooms, some of which I have locked undead insurgents into and left them to their own devices. They pound on the doors. They moan. Sometimes they even gut out a semblance of words, although I don’t understand their rasps and snatches at language. They do everything in those rooms but die.

Yesterday I decided to go out to the grounds to shoot a few hoops. It seemed quiet and zombies tend to lurch along slowly so I wasn’t worried about an attack. The basketball courts are surrounded by a 12-foot chain-link fence so there’s plenty of time to run if visitors decide to drop in.

As I shot hoops, I spotted Mr. Barry standing in a copse of sycamores off the east side of the basketball court. He just stood there looking at me. I almost thought I caught hint of forlornness in his expression.

Mr. Barry taught gym class back when I was at Warden. I think he was still here when the outbreak happened. Back in the 8th grade, Mr. Barry broke up a fight between me and Lem Shipley out at the bike racks. Lem broke my nose and I was glad Mr. Barry came along. Both I and Mr. Barry knew Lem was a bad seed so it didn’t surprise me when he gave me a pass on our brawl and saw to it that Lem was suspended.

As I looked across the grounds at Mr. Barry, I felt like I should jog over and say hi, but it was clear that he’d turned. He had the telltale hollowness in the cheeks and half of his shirt lay torn down from his pale body.

Seeing him out there just standing and staring—maybe salivating a little bit at the possibility of sinking his teeth into my flesh—caused me to lose my game. I went back into the school a bit depressed. Maybe it will be a better day tomorrow.

4 - May 16th, Year 1

So many flies. I had to force my way into a janitorial supply closet upstairs in the school with a crowbar to find a can of spray insecticide. I’ve been spraying it around the doorjambs. I think it has helped. I can’t escape the sense that the putrid insects are standing by waiting for me to die so they can do the ugly thing that flies do on my carrion. I have news for them. I’m going to survive. I have plenty of canned food. I have my glued together guitar. I have books. I have everything I need to keep it together.

The only problem is the quiet. I try to get outside in the yard to workout and stay in shape. But it’s all me. There are no trucks droning by, no fans, no voices chatting through the halls, no sirens, not even the distant sound of a jackhammer wielding road crew. It’s eerie—I hate to use that word, but it’s the only one that fits. The quiet gets to me. Eventually, to break the monotony, I think I might have to make a pilgrimage outside the school. I’ve been watching the zombies shuffle around. They move slow. I think I could sidestep them. But I don’t have the guts to leave my compound.

For now, it’s the music that keeps me together. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep biding my time.

5 - May 18th, Year 1

Call me crazy, but I’m thinking about leaving the school, not on a permanent basis by any means, but I have a hankering for fresh air and fruit pies. Funny, the little things I crave.

One of the first items of business upon setting myself up in this big cold school was getting food. I checked through the refrigerators and pantries in the lunch room and found enough staples to keep me into the bad tasting flour paste and beans I’ve been eating for the past month.

I beat the crap out of a vending machine on the second floor until I got inside. I’ve pretty much demolished my stash of chips and candy bars. The worst part of it is, I’m out of fruit pies. Man, I love those. I crave them. If for no other reason, I think I might leave the compound just to find a bag of them to bring back with me.

If I do leave, I need to find weapons. I’m sure I can dig up an aluminum baseball bad. But what I really need is a gun. I’m going to start prying lockers open; maybe some wayward student kept a firearm in his book bag. Who knows, it’s a sick world. I don’t really have the stomach for killing, even one of those zombies out there, but I’ll kill if I have to; I have it in me.

6 - May 23rd, Year 1

I spent the past three days moving from locker to locker, prying them open one by one. As I worked, I made a pile of anything I found useful, sanitary supplies, deodorant, although I don’t know who I’m trying to impress.

I found books, mainly the classics on the literary booklists. There were a few pop novels, some Stephen King, some Dean Koontz. Funny how, while fighting to survive in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, I’m drawn to stories about monsters. Chock it up to maintaining my sanity, or perhaps losing it.

I found several MP3 players with varying levels of charge on them. One of them, an off-brand unit I found in a kid’s locker plastered with Metallica posters, has a play-list that I can accept: Pink Floyd, The Ramones, Rush. Any MP3 players I found with flowers on them or jacketed in pink covers have been stored in a dark corner of the school in case of an emergency. I’m not much of a Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber fan.

In one locker I found what I was looking for. Tucked into the pocket of a student body officer’s sweater was a Glock .9mm. That wasn’t all, I also found three boxes of Girl Scout Samoa cookies and 2 cartons of bullets. The sweater hanging from the hook has Bill Spillman embroidered on its chest. Some girl pressed her lips against the inside of the locker door and left her signature in red lipstick. Seems Mr. Spillman had everything including the perfect girlfriend and plenty of ammunition. Thanks, Bill, my next zombie kill is dedicated to you.

7 - May 26th, Year 1

I’m not a killer. I’ve done a lot of things in my life, some of which I regret; but I’m not a killer.

I remember going hunting with my cousin back when I was about 13 years old. His uncles sat around the fire at night, swearing, farting, telling stories. I don’t think the hunting trip was much about hunting. My cousin and I spent the better part of the trip riding motorcycles around the trails. One day we took .22s with us.

As we rode, we saw lots of squirrels. At one point we stopped for a little sport shooting. I aimed at a squirrel. I remember swallowing hard, not wanting to shoot. But I couldn’t ignore my cousin’s peer pressure. I pulled the trigger and dropped the little creature out of a tree. It fell on its head and broke its neck. It lay on the ground, twitching and making horrible noises. Out of sympathy, I put ten more rounds into it before it finally stopped writhing. I told myself that day that I would never shoot another living thing.

What I shot just outside the school grounds today wasn’t a living thing. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

I decided to leave the school. I didn’t make it a quarter of a mile before I met Mr. Barry, my old gym teacher. He still wore that same gray sweat suit I remember, only it was sauced with grime and gore. He came at me, slow, lurching, reaching. I raised my Glock and told him to stop, but he didn’t listen. He just kept coming, his mouth open, his eyes sunken and distant.

I had to shoot him like the squirrel. I missed with my first 2 shots—I felt panicked. But I got my head around what I was doing, took the time to aim carefully, and put a bullet in his forehead. He dropped like a bag of cannonballs. Then he writhed there, arching and gutting out groans and hisses. I shot him three more times. Then I threw up.

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, killing them I mean. Mr. Barry wasn’t a living thing, but he was a moving thing. I’m going to have to find the guts somehow to do what I know I am eventually going to have to do.

8 – June 24, Year 1

I think the zombies are getting smarter. The school is huge, quiet, damp, and gloomy. I’ve found a cool corner of the cafeteria where I’ve taken to sitting and doing nothing but staring at the opposite wall, sometimes for better than an hour. The world is shot to oblivion out there. I don’t know if there is anyone left alive. I’ve got to get out of here before they come in after me.

I found a motorcycle in the parking lot. I don’t know how much gas is in the tank. Cars jam the streets, stacked up along the lanes like a train of coffins. At least on a bike, I think I can weave around them and find a way through.

I’m going to leave the school tomorrow. Next time I check in, it should be from outside. Wish me luck.

9 – June 27, Year 1

I’ve never experienced fear so potent as when I mounted my motorcycle and ground away from Warden. I felt naked and vulnerable. As I hit the streets, not being an experienced cyclist, constantly maneuvering around stopped traffic has been a challenge. But I’m getting used to it.

The streets are jammed up with cars and trucks. Its like people just turned off their vehicles, got out, and walked away. I’ve seen a few morbid sites, human remains behind the wheel, eyes gouged out, throats bitten into, parts of bodies torn away for easy protein. I’m glad I wasn’t commuting home from work when the outbreak hit.

It still astounds me how quickly it all happened. The news, always fishing for new disasters to put on the waves, jumped all over the outbreak. They called it a disease. But I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that. I can’t help but feel a sense of justice in the whole affair. I don’t know what we humans could possibly have done to reap such retaliation. But I sense that a higher, or lower, power has a hand in our circumstances. I watched a news man who looked like a retired Chip and Dale dancer report a strange new outbreak, then flipped the channel to watch an episode of Man vs. Food. I didn’t believe any of it. I don’t think anyone did initially.

But within 24 hours people around me changed. They started shooting at each other, chewing on each other, setting each other’s homes and businesses on fire. It seems impossible that such a condition can spread so rapidly. But here I am, weaving through traffic like a fly, cutting my way towards town for supplies. I suspect the zombies will get me eventually, but I’m good at running. I learned that by being the scrawniest kid in school—braces, headgear, and glasses didn’t help much either in my standing against the house bullies. I’m more likely to turn tail and run than to fight it out. That’s probably why I’m alive.

I’ve encountered a few of them along the way. They turn and stagger toward me when they sense me, but I’m too fast, especially on my bike. I’m getting close to town. I suspect I’ll be there within a couple of hours. With all the looting that went on after the outbreak, I’m hoping I can glean enough to keep me alive at least for a little while longer.

10 - July 4, Year 1

It’s Independence day, for the undead that is. There are no fireworks nor parades for the living. The streets crawl with monsters, lurching all white eyed and gray skinned, stains of gore washed down their faces and clothing. I’ve had to camp in the outskirts for the past few nights. Sleep is a commodity that seems out of reach. I’ve stuck to wide-open areas, fields, forests.

One would think that buildings might grant the best protection; that assessment is wrong. I broke into an abandoned house only to find its rooms thronged with undead. They tend to stay out of the sun like most animals, sticking to shade and well-ventilated buildings. Walking into an uncleared house most likely means walking into a fight.

Last night I heard them close by. I sleep lightly these days. They seem to have acute senses of smell. No matter what precautions I take before bedding down—setting camp in seclusion, foregoing a campfire—they seem to home in on me.

They have this kind of guttural rasp that chills me when I hear it. That rasp acted as my alarm clock this morning at about 2 am. I picked up my Glock, which I keep under a rumpled up jacket I use for a pillow, and rolled up onto my haunches. I must have blinked 20 times before the sleep left my eyes. I spotted four of the gangly things in the shadows. I was lucky; they tend to be communal, walking in packs of 8 to 12. They don’t display much in the way of stealth. It’s their hunger that drives them. They simply smell fresh meat and lean in that direction until their feet start moving.

I only have a pistol and I’m no marksman so I waited until I could just about make out their expressions, cold, blank, lifeless. It’s one thing to drop one from a hundred yards when you can’t see into its eyes. It’s another to fire at them when you can recognize their features as human. I dropped the four of them with 10 bullets, cursing my waste of slugs. I guess I’ll have to add a gun shop to my list of stops. I’d like a hunting rifle and maybe a few security cameras and motion sensors to take back to Warden.

My goal tomorrow is to hit the grocery store and supply up. I’ll try to find a phonebook and look up the location of the closest place that sells guns, maybe an outdoor supplier or a pawnshop. I’ll check in again if I’m still alive.

11 – July 5, Year 1

When I was a kid, we only had one theater in our town. The theater is still around. When everything folded up, they were still playing second and third release films for two-bucks a head. Back in the day, they used to offer a charity night. Any kid who showed up with canned or dry goods got in for only twenty-five cents. I and my little brother, Rule, regularly went to charity night at the movies. We’d raid my mom’s pantry and take the scrapings. I remember turning in more than one can of tomato paste or leftover Chinese noodles to get by butt into a cheap seat. I imagine the food bank gets a lot of the leftover garbage that people don’t want to eat.

When I finally reached the grocery store today, most everything had been looted. I was hoping for Hostess fruit pies at best and Shredded Wheat at worst. But all I could find were a few cans of stewed tomatoes and a case of kippered snacks. It was almost like karma had swung back around on me. You get what you give, as they say. But, all things considered, I have never smelled anything so wonderful as that fishy scent wafting from the can as I turned the key on those Kippered snacks. Crackers and Tabasco Sauce (why all the Tabasco Sauce had been looted from aisle four, I will never know) would have made my little meal into a delicacy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I discovered in the grocery store that the undead not only feed on human flesh, but they had helped themselves to the meat department. Some of them had even expired on the glut, perhaps not willing to leave such a supply of food. As I explored the store, aisle to aisle, I heard them coming into the building. They are always just a couple of steps behind me. If I stop for very long, and I’m talking an hour, maybe two, they peel out of the background, hungry for a bite.

I haven’t been able to sleep much at all since leaving Warden Jr. High. I have managed to snatch catnaps here and there, but my nerves don’t allow me to sink into any kind of restful slumber.

I can’t go on the way I am going. I need sleep or I am going to collapse. And if I collapse, they will get me.

I have an idea. I mentioned the undead’s theoretical sense of smell. I am going to test this theory. I think this grocery store is the perfect place to do it. It’s getting close to evening and I am wiped out. I am going to find the smelliest dumpster in the place and bury myself in the stench of the garbage and go to sleep. In theory, if I close the lid and keep my handgun close by, I have a good chance of surviving the night. I don’t believe the undead have the faculties to open a dumpster lid. And if they do, the clatter will undoubtedly wake me. At that point, I’ll just open fire.

12 – July 6, Year 1

Back in the 9th grade, I took English from Mr. Rumor. He attempted to fill our young, sponge-like minds with plenty of anti-religious dogma with a good helping of atheism on top. He taught his agenda under the guise of separation of religion from state. I grew up in a staunch, Christian home. My parents took me to church every week and regularly informed me that with all of the Bible reading, Sunday school lessons, and sermons—taught by Pastor Kentwilly, our ever-so-enthusiastic spiritual leader—they were vesting me with the armor of the Lord against a terrible world full of temptation and debauchery.

As a young adult, I strayed, thinking my parents and Pastor Kentwilly were full of paper-thin ideals and fanaticism that was more harmful than anything. But after three years of partying at college and ultimately waking up in the basement of an abandoned building with no recollection of what had happened the night before, I began to see the light. I was reminded of Sid Vicious, the bass player for the Sex Pistols who used to cut himself and bleed on stage during performances, his arm marked with tracks and fresh bandages where he had injected heroine. One day, Sid woke up in the bathroom of his hotel room with his girlfriend dead, stabbed to death to be exact. Sid had no recollection of what had happened. Ultimately, unable to conquer his drug habit, Sid died of a heroin overdose, supplied by his own mother.

I thought about Sid when I woke up in that abandoned basement back in my college days. I also thought about my parents and Pastor Kentwilly. It was at that moment that I decided Mr. Rumor and Sid Vicious could suck it. I was God’s boy. I have been God’s boy ever since.

Something Mr. Rumor taught me back in the 9th grade came to mind as I woke up this morning. As part of his atheistic agenda, he had assigned us Dante’s Inferno as a reading assignment. His hope was to reveal the absurdity Dante’s interpretation of hell. As I lie here in a dumpster behind the grocery store, my motorcycle parked well away, Canto 11 from Inferno comes to mind.

In this section of Dante’s work, he and Virgil walk through the City of Dis to another pope’s tomb. Something awful accosts Dante, a scent that he compares to opening the bathroom door at his work and smelling the abominations of the people who occupied the space before him. He is describing one of the lower rings of hell.

As I lay in waste—a crate of broken eggs, meat crawling with flies, rotten lettuce and fetid grease—I feel like I am visiting Dante’s lower ring of hell. It’s morning. Here I am lying in a dumpster that should have been emptied a month ago. But last night my theory held true. In the midst of the stench, I have remained unmolested by the undead. It’s a funny thing. When I first dove into the dumpster last night, I though there would be no way to sleep in the midst of all that garbage. But one rises to the bar in desperate times. After only a few minutes, I became used to the stench. And, after jockeying around amongst the trash, I found comfort and warmth.

Within an hour, I drifted off. And not into the light, useless catnap snatches of sleep to which I have become accustomed. I have slept for over nine hours. I feel great.

I don’t know if it’s because the stench of the dumpster has acted as a repellent to the undead or if the foulness of the garbage has merely hidden my human scent, but I remain unharmed. I haven’t so much as heard one of them shuffle by. I’m hoping that the now deeply seated fragrance will cloy. Maybe I can pass among them without drawing their attention, at least by their senses of smell. I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m not going out on any dates any time soon. For all I know, I’m the last living human on the face of the planet. So I plan to go out into the world smelling like rotting cabbage and fish guts. Hello world.

I’m headed for the guitar store today. I’ve never owned an ax any nicer than my mid-level Ibanez, which I left back at Warden. It would be nice to move up to a high-end Martin or a Paul Reed Smith. So its out of the dumpster with me and back onto my ride. I’m hoping I’ll be rocking out by dinnertime tonight. If only I had a few friends to jam with. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to be content as a solo act.

Late Afternoon

I have to admit, I felt a little guilty as I threw a brick through the window at Wanesgard Music. All I have seen as I have ridden my motorcycle down the streets, sidewalks, alleys, and across vacant lots, is broken windows, smashed windshields, shattered department store entrance ways, shards of glass all over the place, winking the sun back into my eyes as I ride. I have been careful to roll around the glass in order to avoid punctured tires. But as I stood there in front of the music store with a red brick cocked back, ready to let fly, I took pause for a moment. Breaking and entering even in these circumstances goes against the nature of what I am.

In a way, this gives me hope. Maybe there is a part of us, even after we have every excuse to debase ourselves to our most animalistic instincts, to be civil.

I threw the brick.

The window shattered.

I kicked away a few shards of the stuff and stepped inside. The familiar smell of every guitar store—polished and oiled wood, upholstery and leather, a hint of cigarette butt leftovers—hit me. I stood for a moment, eyes closed, just taking it in. Along my ride I enter and leave patches of spoiled earth. In my mind, I call them dead zones. In dead zones, I smell bloated flesh, crawling with maggots. There’s nothing to do in dead zones but close off my nose, lean into my handlebars, and push through.

Wanesgard Music felt like the opposite of a dead zone. The place welcomed me with its scent alone. It was almost like I forgot about the world’s