The rumble—a constant thrum thrum thrum of many feet pounding against flights of stairs—was not so distant now. The desperate and determined rhythm grew to an ear-splitting cacophony that threatened to overwhelm me.

I swallowed hard. Not long. Soon ten thousand Hellions would surge up the stairwell and trample me, if I couldn’t stop them. And then all Hell would break loose.

I considered my assets: one tool belt, two rolls of duct tape, and a bullhorn. Not much, all told. At least I had a plan, though it seemed pretty lame to me now.

One against an entire horde. Not good. I had never felt so alone, though that would change soon enough.

I could hear the voices of those below, some angry, some jubilant, others merely feral, howls and grunts that sounded as if they came from stampeding animals instead of rampaging humans.

This was not in my job description.

My nerves got the better of me, as the horde reached the landing immediately below. An index finger, slick with my own sweat, curled around the trigger of the bullhorn.

Maybe a bazooka would have been a better choice.

Today is the kind of spring day that used to make me feel like anything was possible. That it would all work out in the end. I used to love days like this. Of course, that was before I started avoiding spring altogether.

It isn’t easy to avoid an entire season, especially one this glorious. But for the past three years I’ve managed it. I close the blinds, stay out of the sunshine and keep to myself, so as not to dredge up memories of that first terrible spring.

But this year feels different. I can’t help but enjoy the breeze that promises summer is coming. It’s the kind of day that puts a spring in your step, where you believe hope does spring eternal.

I dreamt about Adrian last night. But it wasn’t the usual dream, the one that wakes me up in tears with that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. We were sitting on the porch steps of my parents’ cabin. Our legs were stretched out, feet resting on the ground. I was wiggling my toes. There was nothing else. Sure, the bees buzzed among the flowers and the trees whispered in the wind, but that was it. There was just quiet. And peace, the kind of peace that didn’t seem to follow Adrian as much as it was a product of him. When I woke up that feeling stayed with me, and I started thinking that maybe it could be mine again.

My friend Penny’s dark ponytail swings as we pass the brownstones and apartment buildings of our Brooklyn neighborhood on our way to work. I haven’t told her about this feeling, even though I tell her almost everything. I’m like a squirrel with a nut, wanting to hide it away for safekeeping, to turn it over and over and examine it.

Penny glances at my feet. “You wore your new shoes.”

I nod. It’s still too cool, but I wore the delicate straw sandals anyway. I thought they might make me feel feminine and strong. That maybe they would help me to embrace and welcome spring again. Relying on shoes to do all that is pretty dumb, but I need all the help I can get.

Penny raises her face to the sun and sighs with pleasure. She moved here from Puerto Rico when she was ten, after her father died. Even after all these years she still takes winter as a personal affront.

“My mom was called in last night, something to do with the LX virus,” Penny says, and pushes her vintage glasses back up where they belong. “She says there are a lot of cases in New York now.”

Bornavirus LX has spread across the world in the past few days. So far it’s only been found in the Midwest and West. I haven’t been paying much attention because in the spring I never do.

“Did she say how many?”

“No. But she’s pretty certain the quarantine of St. Louis means it’s going to get bad.”

“They quarantined St. Louis?” I’m shocked that it’s come to that.

“Yeah, late last night. Chicago, too. And air traffic is suspended from the West.” We stop at the front door of the Sunset Park Community Center, where we both work. “How do you not know all this? You’re usually the one telling me these things.”

“I’ve been distracted. I didn’t listen to the news this morning.”

I want to tell her more, but I’m not sure what there is to tell. It’s just a mental shift or something, and if it comes to nothing I don’t want to advertise the fact that I’ve failed. Penny glances around and twists her lips.

“James kissed me last night,” she says to the concrete.

“James what?” I yell. She shushes me and I lower my voice. “We just walked all the way to work and you tell me now? At—” I look at the time on my phone, “crap. There’s a meeting. I have to go.”

Penny smiles. She did this on purpose so I wouldn’t bother her about it the whole way to work.

“I knew it!” I say, and narrow my eyes even though I’m grinning. “We’re twenty-eight years old and you still won’t tell me when you like someone! Nelly and I have been waiting for this. You’re gonna tell me later, you know.”

“Gotta go,” she sings out, as I head upstairs.

Chapter Eight

 Toys “R” US

Miamisburg, Ohio (South of Dayton)

October 19, 2012 AD (Day Two)

2:35am EST

            Bam … bam … bam!

The sound had been repeating itself for four hours and Kyle was sure that he was on the verge of madness. He was thankful that the pounding was coming from the far end of the room outside of his makeshift prison. Not the restroom door itself. Beside him on the cold floor, Benny breathed raggedly in and out. The swelling on the side of his head was sickeningly purple.


Kyle looked up from the corner he was sitting in and glanced at the laptop resting on the cracked and dingy pink tile floor off to his right. The mail icon was still reading zero and his instant messenger window was devoid of friends. It’d been almost two hours since he’d heard from anyone else online, and that person had been that asshat Martin. Martin was an old high school friend that Kyle and Benny had lost touch with more and more since graduation. He raved that they were pounding on the front and back doors of his house, and he wasn’t sure how long the doors would hold. He told Kyle he would brb, Be Right Back in computer speak. But he never returned.


He’d never liked Martin as much as Benny did, with his repository of endless blond jokes and the three day old smell of Cheetos and root beer that never seemed to leave him. Kyle hoped that they hadn’t got him, but they probably had.


He reached over and picked up the plastic Coca Cola bottle now filled with water from the restroom sink. He liked that the Coca Cola Company had gone back to the simple red and white label. He thought the metallic bubbles and lines looked like complete shit ever since they appeared on the bottles. He held the bottle to Benny’s lips and tilted it up carefully.


 “Benny, man, you need to wake up, please.” He said as he attempted to hydrate his friend. He jumped a second later.

            Bam … bam … bam!


He wanted to scream at Jackie. Scream that she needed to drag her fat ass over to the other side of the room where the emergency exit door was located, and push on the fucking bar on the door in order for it to open. But the last time he’d succumbed to that impulse she’d slouched her way back to the restrooms moaning and clawing at the walls and doors for over half an hour before she had returned to pounding on the door to the sales floor. The door you needed to pull not push open, of course since he’d locked it after Mel fled that didn’t matter. The moaning and the sound of her fingers scraping on steel and cinder block were worse than the constant banging in its own charming way. The irony was that Kyle found her less irritating and clingy than during the six months that they had dated.


When he admitted to himself that Benny still wasn’t going to drink he tipped back the tepid bottle of tap water himself. Drinking more out of reflex than any real thirst. The water stopped having that faint cola taste after three refills. The problem wasn’t water, the problem was food, and Kyle Jefferson Carson was soon going to be one hungry boy.


Having skipped breakfast following the results of his night’s binge drinking, he figured it’d been almost 30 hours since he’d had anything substantial to eat. He finished the Snickers bar in his backpack in the first hour and there had been nothing to eat since. The really maddening part was the knowledge that right outside the steel door was the Toys “R” Us break-room and the myriad of vending machines and the refrigerator with all of its plastic containers and bags of food. Sure it was food that belonged to other people, but Kyle figured that those poor bastards were either dead or never coming back. And hadn’t he heard Carlos say that he had a slab of lasagne for lunch? It wasn’t like he was going to miss it. The thought made him snort like a five year old. Then his stomach cramped with hunger and the potential humour of his thought bled away. Jackie was still out there, possibly guarding the lasagne because she knew that Kyle was craving it worse than anything he’d ever desired in his life.


Why the fuck hadn’t he eaten before he came to work?

The hell of it was that he was still not sure he would be able to handle her if he grew some balls and went for it. He’d barely been able to handle her when she’d been alive. Like the night that he told her that he was breaking up with her and she started crying. Kyle tried to comfort her but that was a huge mistake. As soon as he put his arm on her shoulder, she whirled around and started screaming at him. He was an asshole, he was a moron, he was a skinny fucking four eyed kid, his dick was small, he was a lousy fuck, and the kicker … she only let him touch her because she felt sorry for him.

Every one of her shrill declarations was punctuated with a jab of her sausage like finger into his sternum. Those jabs were painful and they forced Kyle against the nearest wall. Like every other confrontation he’d had in his life, Kyle just stood there and took it for almost an hour before he’d been able to escape.

“Fuck,” he said as he hoisted himself up to refill the bottle. He looked in the mirror and was dismayed to see how much he’d deteriorated since this nightmare had started. His eyes were heavily shadowed and his sockets looked hollowed out. He also smelled pretty ripe but perhaps he could be forgiven for that.

He pointedly did not look at the drying spot on the front of his pants.

The swelling on his face where he’d been thrown into the wall when Carlos used him as a human shield was beginning to recede. But the bruise was an ugly purple and yellow thing and he was convinced that the cheek bone was busted in at least three spots.

He wanted to cry, but he refused to give into that emotion.

Dead Trees Excerpt:

We were barely ten feet from the porch when I heard the scratching. Kara was burying her face in my shoulder. Megan was screaming in Jason’s arms.

I knew I was moving fast, but the turning of my head felt like someone had hit the slow motion button. Too many of them. Oh. My. God. There were too many.

Their pale, malformed faces were pressed against the window glass, the large table removed so they could see out. The dim light bothered their eyes. They squinted at us; but even without clear vision, they knew we were there. They could smell our scents lingering in the hotel. They could smell the musk of my daughters’ unwashed, campfire-scented hair.

“Run… Run!”

“I am running!” Jason’s voice was strained, bordering on hoarse.

“Run faster, damn it!” But we couldn’t go any faster and they were too fast. I made the mistake of glancing behind us again.

Undergrounders were pouring out of the hotel door. One after another on all fours, they came barreling towards us.

Since they weren’t feeding on human beings, I could only guess the undergrounder collective had decided on complete human genocide. Why else target two adults and two children minding their own damn business and only taking food that the undergrounders wouldn’t eat anyway?

It was freaking unfair.

The humanoids’ legs pushed backwards in unison like lions sprinting across the African plain. I could pinpoint the more evolved beasties- their joints were less feline, their appendages slightly more human and bipedal, less humanoid. The change did not affect their speed.

They were a mere hundred yards behind us and closing that distance rapidly. This herd didn’t seem to have crude weapons, just claw and teeth and speed.

I focused on running, trying not to keep looking back at the horror. The joint-popping sound was a blessing. At least I could measure the coming of my death by the proximity of the pop, pop, pop.

It was a little blessing in a hot hell.

Jason and I were side by side now. Each of us had one hand supporting a child and the other hand wielding a gun.

We sent bullet after bullet flying over our shoulders towards the approaching undergrounders. They came closer with every moment.

The less evolved ones were able to launch in predatory jumps.

I watched two of the smaller beasties push towards the ground and heave upwards. They sailed towards us, surpassing their brethren with ease, but their bodies flew too far. The jumping-jack humanoids whirled in unison to face us. 

Great. Beasties from all sides now.

We kept shooting, using our precious ammo. By the time they were upon us, their numbers had significantly dwindled.

The woods were even darker now. The van was so close, but seemed unreachable. The screeching of the undergrounders filled the night air. My girls screamed in terror- adding to the wild soundtrack of the chase. I was pushing as hard as I could, but my attention couldn’t be everywhere.

I didn’t see the rock flying towards me until it was too late.

It slammed into my right shoulder, so close to Kara’s little head, and sent me sprawling to the ground. All I could think was do not let go of Kara; but she flew out of my arms anyway and landed several feet away. She seemed unhurt, her eyes focused on me in shock. I could only spare her a falling glance.

© Eli Constant | 2012

EXCERPT FROM FORGET THE ALAMO:

I don’t know why I was laughing, but I was.  For all intents and purposes, our situation was lost and we were most likely going to die, but for some implausible reason at that very moment, I found the whole situation completely absurd.

                Who wouldn’t?

We were at the Alamo, surrounded by, roughly, a thousand flesh eating zombies who wanted nothing more than to devour us whole.  Despite all this, our diligent tour guide couldn’t help but draw parallels between our perilous situation and that of the two hundred or so militiamen who died here nearly two centuries ago.

“Well, I just said at least the zombies don’t have canons like Santa Anna’s men,” said Randell, our effete and only living tour guide left alive.  “I don’t see what’s so funny about that.”  He still wore his official tour guide vest, but it was torn in several places.

None of the others in our dwindling group seemed to share my amusement so I tried my best to shut it down.  It only took two fizzled attempts to stifle my giggles.  

“They don’t need canons,” I said, still with a sense of mirth in my tone.  “They have teeth.” I let that hang there for a moment then added, “And endless patience.”

BLURB FROM FORGET THE ALAMO

When Grant was forced to land in San Antonio with his protectee, Sam Jenkins, he didn’t expect to be there for more than a day or two. That was until a strange viral outbreak started bringing the dead back to life and those reanimated dead started attacking the living. 

After a few harrowing days, Grant and a handful of other survivors find themselves trapped inside the Alamo, surrounded by a horde of the undead with their options narrowing. If the zombies don’t get them, starvation, or a military strike will. 

With their backs against the wall, they must learn to use their ingenuity to find a way to escape and then to survive.

In this debut collection of short fiction from Kurt Fawver, one of the horror world’s rising stars, you will find a melange of lost souls, cosmic terrors, wondrous abysses, and even some good old-fashioned murder.

You will be taken to the end of humanity, to dystopian futures and personal hells. You’ll meet conquering gods and unholy messiahs, invisible babies and talking chairs, interdimensional monsters and the monsters we sometimes see all too clearly in the mirrors before our own faces.

The stories in Forever, in Pieces will immerse you in loneliness and loss, life and death, love and obsession, and, above all, the shadowed—and often terrible—veil of eternity.

Blurb:

The Beautiful Dead is about a young undead woman in a post-post apocalyptic world who desperately wants to be alive again. After finally accepting her “eternal sentence” and settling in Trenton, a quaint city of other happily living-dead, everything is turned upside-down when a rugged man appears in her house begging for help … a man with a heartbeat.