Valenti / Quail / Leergaard Vampires, Zombies and Ghosts, Volume 1 (Read on the Run)

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944289-14-0
Verlag: Smoking Pen Press, LLC
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 132 Seiten

Reihe: Read on the Run

This charming collection of short stories about vampires, zombies, ghosts, a muse, and a witch, is the first volume in this two-volume anthology in the Read on the Run series. You will find stories that scare you, stories that make you laugh, and stories that make you shed a tear or two.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Valenti, Catherine

Quail, Jennifer

Leergaard, R. S.

Pencavage, Michael

Wechselblatt, Stephen

Tomilson, T. M.

Long, Laird

Fiorini, Lucy Ann

Meldrum, R. J.

Hinkle, Larry

Cook, Jenni

Gienapp, Laurie

Poole, Jeff

Howell, R. J.

Briscoe, Sherry

Leseproben

THE QUANTUM DEAD
  Larry Hinkle   “To the layperson, quantum physics is just a fancy word for magic.” John used to say that all the time. Before the dead magically started coming back to life. We were college roommates then. He was a physics major. I was in the journalism program, although the closest I ever got to interviewing someone was asking if they wanted fries with their meal. “One thing existing in two places at the same time, you’d think that’d be impossible, right? But you’d be wrong,” he told me, staring at the embers of a dying fire in our backyard fire pit. Really, it was just a hole in the ground ringed by cinder blocks and empty beer cans, but we were too cash-strapped to buy an actual fire pit. Not too cash-strapped to give up drinking, of course; it was college after all. But in our defense, we were drinking the cheap stuff. I told him I didn’t follow. How could something be in two places at the same time? Sure sounded like magic to me. “I wish I could explain it better,” he said. “Hell, it’s my major, and I still have trouble wrapping my head around it sometimes. But it’s nothing another beer can’t solve.” I tossed him a can from our cooler. “That’s our last one,” I said. “Looks like I’m not getting drunk enough to understand it tonight.” “That’s okay. Looks like I’m not getting drunk enough to explain it, either.” We both stared at the fire for a few more minutes, before John broke the silence. “You like sci-fi, right?” He knew I did. I’d tried writing a couple stories during my sophomore year when I was an English major. I had the rejection letters to prove it. “Then you have to know Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws of Prediction. What I’m talking about is really just Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” He tilted his head back and drained his beer before letting out a huge belch. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to perform a little magic trick of my own and turn this beer into urine.” “And you wonder why we can’t get any girls to come over,” I said, laughing as John’s piss turned the embers into steam.   ???   “Hey, you okay?” A woman’s voice brought me back to reality. “You were really off in la-la land. Need to talk about something?” Lisa asked, taking a seat next to me at the remains of a dying fire. “I was just thinking about a friend of mine,” I told her. “My roommate, actually. We used to sit around the fire like this, late at night, solving the world’s problems through the power of inebriated philosophication.” “What?” “We used to get drunk and talk shit.” “So what happened to him? Is he…?” “Yeah, he is,” I said. “Happened not long after the world went to hell.” “Sorry.” “Doesn’t matter. He was here, then he wasn’t, then he was again. And now he’s not.” She knew what I meant. Life after death was just a fact of life now. Death was no longer the end. These days, in fact, it was just the beginning.   ???   John and I were watching civilization eat itself. Literally. Television coverage was full of stories of the dead returning to life. And they were hungry. The cities were the worst. The authorities lost control fast. In their defense, it’s not like they’d ever drawn up plans to handle a zombie plague. But it was still surprising how quickly the dead took over. Impossible as it sounds, it was almost as if they were communicating somehow, coordinating their attacks. But since they couldn’t breathe, they obviously couldn’t talk to one another, right? John thought it was probably some sort of herd mentality, a quasi-groupthink we just didn’t understand yet. “Actually, quantum physics might be able to explain what’s happening now,” he said. “The dead coming back to life? Reanimated corpses roaming the countryside? That sure sounds like magic, right?” “Dark magic, maybe.” “Sure, but it’s happening the same way all over the world, which means whatever’s causing it has to be obeying some universal law.” He could tell I was lost, but he kept on. “Don’t you get it? If it’s happening like this everywhere, that means there has to be some sort of scientific explanation. It can’t just be something as simple as ‘when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth’.” I didn’t say anything. “Look, at the triple point of water, it can actually be three things at once: a liquid, a solid and a gas. And mercury is a liquid metal. That’s not magic; it’s just science. So why can’t these creatures be two things at once? Both living and dead?” John paused to let what he’d said sink in. “We just need time to study them, that’s all. We need to learn what makes them tick…” “It’s pretty obvious what makes them tick,” I said. “They’re hungry. And we taste good. If you and your scientist friends are going to stop this, you’d better hurry. Because from where I’m sitting, they’re winning. And it’s not even close.”   ???   I told Lisa about John’s studies in quantum physics. About how one thing could exist in two places at one time, or be two things at the same time. And how, even to someone as smart as John, sometimes it all still felt like magic. “Maybe John should have majored in wizardry,” I said, shaking my head, “instead of wasting his time on string theory. Maybe he’d still be alive.” I tilted my head back and screamed at the darkness. “Shut up!” Lisa hissed. “You want them to hear us?” “I’m not worried. We took care of all the stragglers this afternoon. This place is safe for now.” “You’re probably right,” she said. “We can handle one or two if they come by. But you know how dangerous they can be in a group.” “Sorry.” I lied. I wasn’t sorry. I don’t know what I was, but I know it wasn’t sorry. Those things out there in the darkness had killed my best friend, and right now I wanted a piece of them. Lisa was right, though. I was just being stupid. And these days, being stupid got you killed. My rage would have to wait.   ???   After spending our first two years living in the dorms, John and I moved outside of town, about ten miles from the college. It was close enough that we still made it to class on time (usually), but far enough away to keep us out of too much trouble. It also made it harder for people to drop by unannounced. If anyone wanted to see us, they had to make an effort. We didn’t party nearly as much as we did our first year, but when we did it was a lot more fun. More than anything else, our location probably helped us survive a lot longer. It certainly wasn’t our preparation, unless you count sitting around drinking and watching TV as preparation. We made one early run into town for supplies, but in typical fashion all we bought was beer and toilet paper. Why waste money we didn’t have on things we didn’t need? The guy on the TV said you just had to destroy the brain to kill ‘em, and if any of them were stupid enough to come our way, our redneck neighbors would take care of things. If not, we had plenty of garden implements out in the shed, a toolbox in the living room, and a couple of big knives in the kitchen. As long as we could stay hydrated and wipe our asses, we were golden. Or so we thought. The first zombie I saw up close was our neighbor Ted. He came shuffling up our walk, dragging his left leg behind him. At first I didn’t think anything of it; Ted was a bit of a klutz, and we were always having to help bandage him up. (Ted didn’t have a phone, so we were the closest thing he had to 911.) John got up, opened the door and yelled at Ted to come on in, barely taking his eyes off the television. I stopped watching just long enough to ask Ted if he wanted a beer. It wasn’t Ted that looked back at me. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like any of the things we’d seen on that twenty-four hour hi-def Technicolor swirl of bone and claws and teeth we’d been watching for the past several days. This was real. The entire left half of Not-Ted’s face had sloughed off, the skin and meat and muscles gone. The remaining eye looked around the room, unfocused and unblinking, always moving. Until it locked onto John. Not-Ted had met the enemy, and he was us. Before I could say anything, Not-Ted sunk his teeth into John’s neck, pulling back and stretching John’s flesh until it snapped like a piece of taffy. John’s shredded jugular painted Not-Ted’s face in a crimson mask. I grabbed a hammer from the toolbox and sprang toward Not-Ted, swinging as I jumped, and lodged the claw-end into his skull. He slumped to the ground, dead. Again. John, on the other hand, was still alive. But just barely. I grabbed a towel off the counter and pressed it to his neck. Almost immediately, it was soaked through. I looked around for something else to staunch the bleeding, but there was nothing in reach. I was afraid to move, knowing if I let up pressure on his neck, he’d bleed out. So instead, I just sat there, holding his head in my lap, rocking back and forth, the blood slowly pooling around my jeans. I don’t know how long I sat like that. Eventually, an argument on the television made its way through my grief. “We must think logically. We must...