Read the first two chapters of Bigger Monsters

I accidentally wrote a (short) zombie apocalypse novel between Thanksgiving and the New Year! My Patreon subscribers have gotten to watch the whole thing evolve, 500 words at a time. I’m finally about ready to release the novel to everyone: Look for it at an Amazon near you on February 18, 2021.

“Zombie apocalypse novel??

Whaa — ?”

I know. It’s not my usual fare. Maybe it’s not YOUR usual fare, either. But I promise you, this is not your average zombie apocalypse tale. You can read the description here to get a sense of what I mean. Or read the first two chapters below…

Chapter 1: Family Drama

Of all the crappy days I’ve had since the start of the zombie apocalypse, I think today is shaping up to win the prize as the absolute worst.  For starters, if I’d known that I was going to have my wrists bound behind me before getting dumped unceremoniously in the middle of God-knows-where during a snowstorm, I wouldn’t have worn jeans.  Have you ever sat down in the snow, on purpose or by accident, while wearing jeans?  If you haven’t, let me tell you:  Once your ass gets cold and wet, it’s not getting dry again.

“Are you done yet?”

That’s my mother, impatient as always.

“No,” I say.  And I almost say more — something like, “Excuse me, but have you ever had to use a hunting knife to saw through ropes while your hands are tied behind your back and your fingers are numb-as-fuck from the cold?  No?  Then just give me a goddamn minute, okay?”  

But I don’t say that, because I’m not speaking to my mother right now.  In fact, I’m a little irritated with myself that I let her get under my skin enough that I even said “No” aloud to her.  

She has earned my lifelong silence at last.

Though lifelong isn’t going to be awfully short if I can’t cut through these ropes.  I’m not exactly sure where they dropped us, but I’m sure these woods are crawling with zombies.  Mainly because everywhere is crawling with zombies.

“Will?”  My fiancé — ex-fiancé — says my name with a tremulous quaver.

I’m not speaking to her, either, and this time I remember not to answer.

“Will?  I think you’d better hurry.”

Beth sounds like she’s on the verge of tears.  Then again, she’s sounded like she’s been on the verge of tears for the last twenty-four hours.

Actually, let me adjust that one more time.  Beth has been on the verge of tears for the last seven months, ever since Mom and I found her hiding in the truck stop outside Greensboro.  Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m kicking myself.  I could never resist a damsel in distress, and that’s a role Beth can play down to a tee.  She wanted a rescuer; I wanted someone to rescue.

Goddamn co-dependent lesbians.

A low groan-growl echoes through the forest, and the acoustics in this place make it sound like it’s coming from all directions all at once.  

“Willieeeee…”

Beth might be a drama queen, but she’s probably right about needing to hurry.  That groan we just heard is like a zombie dinner bell, calling the family over for a fresh meal.

“Her name is Willow,” my mom snaps.

That’s right.  Even tied up in a frozen forest with zombies closing in on us, what Mom is most worried about is the fact that Beth calls me Will instead of Willow, calls me by the name I’ve been going by since age fifteen instead of the name Mom gave me at birth.  My mom is one of those people who has two a grand total of two strategies to apply to every situation life throws at her.  Strategy One, which she is currently employing, is Control Everything.  When that doesn’t work, she falls back onto Strategy Two, Break Everything.  Break Everything is what she was doing yesterday afternoon when I caught her and Beth together before the wedding.  The Break Everything strategy is like a child who makes themselves sick by eating an entire cake rather than accepting that they will need to share whatever’s left with a sibling.

I’m not sure if it’s knowing that we’re about to be overrun with zombies or being pissed off beyond words at Beth and Mom as I think about what they have broken, but right after Mom barks out Willow, the knife slices through the last bit of rope.

I stagger to my feet, clenching and unclenching my hands a few times in an attempt to get the blood back into them.

“Will!” Beth shrieks.

I turn around in time to see the first three zombies closing in fast (well, as fast as shambling zombies close) on Beth and Mom, who’d been positioned with their backs to mine by our captors.

My feet are so cold and wet that I’m stumbling like a zombie or a drunk myself as I move between the undead and Beth.  I trip over a root hidden by the snow and almost eat it, but the hand that doesn’t have the hunting knife in it flails out and braces against a tree trunk before I can fall.  I push myself upright again and slam the hunting knife into Zombie #1’s temple, try to ignore the nasty squelching sound the knife makes as I pull it out again, and shove Zombie #2 hard and to the right just as Zombie #3 comes up on my left.

Zombie #3 might have been hot once, probably a suburban mom who owned an SUV and did yoga and Pilates on the weekends.  But her blonde hair is stringy and matted with leaves now, and some of her manicured pink nails are gone.  I won’t even tell you what her face looks like.  Turns out that plastic surgery she got was a waste of money.

I put the knife right through her forehead, which you would think would be hard to do — you know, bone and all.  But all the zombies are so rotten at this point that the resistance her skull offers to the hunting knife is minimal.

Once Zombie Mom falls, I go back and finish off Zombie #2, who’s just figured out how to stand up again.

I wipe the zombie gore off the knife on the back of my cold, wet jeans.  Then I cut Mom and Beth free.

Mom rubs her wrists.  “About time,” she mutters at me.

I want to yell at her but remember just in time that I’m giving her the silent treatment.  And besides, yelling would just bring more zombies.  We’ve all gotten better at controlling our impulses, thanks to the apocalypse.  You either learn to control your impulses or you end up zombie food.

So I don’t say a word to either one of them.  I just shove my hands in my jacket pockets and start trudging through the snow in the direction I think the road’s in.  I hear Mom and Beth following behind me, but I don’t look over my shoulder to see what they’re doing or if they’re okay.  Instead, I keep my mind focused on the simple steps we need to follow to stay alive.

Step One:  Get to the road.

Step Two:  Follow the road until we get someplace safe.

Or “safe-ish.”  There are no truly safe places in the zombie apocalypse, as we were so rudely reminded earlier yesterday.

Chapter 2: Yesterday / All my troubles seemed so far away

So here’s a run-down on what happened yesterday.  I’ll keep it brief.

The day started out pretty good.  I woke up beside Beth like I usually did inside what used to be a manager’s office on our queen bed.

She woke up once I started shifting around — no alarm clocks in the apocalypse, so that’s nice — and I planted little kisses on her cheeks and neck until her eyes opened and she smiled at me.

Who needs to be woken up by the sun when you can wake up to your fiancé’s smile in a windowless office in the bowels of a Walmart Supercenter?

I propped myself up on one elbow.  “Today’s the day,” I said.  “Are you ready?”

She stretched like a cat and groaned like a zombie.  “I can’t believe we’re getting married,” she said.  “During the apocalypse,” she added, frowning.

I kissed her brow and got out of bed.  We barely got the mattress to fit inside the office, which means it’s flush against one wall on one side and only offers about a foot of clearance on the other side.  Beth is skinny enough to turn sideways and get off the bed on that side, but even with apocalyptic weight loss, I’m not.  I crawl off the bed’s foot before pulling on a pair of jeans and shoving my feet into my Doc Martens.  I liberated the Docs from a Journeys storage room in an abandoned mall about a year ago.  That’s one of the things I love about the apocalypse — the collapse of the economy pretty much means that you can have whatever you can take.  Kill the zombified Journeys employees hiding in the storage room and everything’s all yours.

“I’m going to go see how things are coming along out there,” I told Beth.  “Don’t sleep too late.”

Beth stretched again but made no move to get out of bed.  “I won’t.”

I felt my way down the lightless hallway, wincing when I pushed open the door that led out to Customer Service and sunlight assaulted my retinas.  I saw movement outside the vestibule leading to the parking lot, so I headed outside.

The winter morning was cold, crisp, and bright, with the smell of barbecue permeating the air.  I grinned to myself.  I was getting married.  I never thought it was going to happen, but now, as we held on to the last shreds of civilization inside our cozy Walmart, it was finally happening.  Today was going to be a good day.

“Will — hey, hey,” said Tyler, who stood bundled up in a parka beside the grill, spatula in hand.  “How are you feeling after that wild bachelor’s party last night?”

He was being sarcastic, of course.  There were almost twenty of us at the party, which we held on lawn furniture near the center of the store, and we had only one half of a bottle of JB between us.  Alcohol was one of the first things to go during the apocalypse.  I suppose somewhere, someone industrious is already making home-brew moonshine, but those of us at the King, North Carolina, Walmart were not that industrious.  So we had about one swallow each of the Jim Beam and then drank water the rest of the night.  A wild time, for sure.

“Dude,” I said to Tyler, “could you believe that stripper?”  (There was obviously no stripper at my bachelor’s party.)  “I’ve seen some talented women in my day, but what that woman could do with her thighs…  And then Gary falling asleep on top of the pool table?”  (Gary did fall asleep on the pool table, but that’s where he usually sleeps; he claims the air mattress on top of it, along with the pillows he’s collected, makes it as good as a bed.)

Tyler chuckled and turned a burger over on the grill.  Tyler’s a good guy, despite having a kind of privileged frat boy aura to him.  

Was, I mean.  Tyler was a good guy.

“Burgers smell good,” I said as he flipped one.  “Anything going on this morning?”

He shook his head.  “Nope.  All quiet on the Western front.”  Tyler gestured at Gary with his spatula.  “Guard change happened fifteen minutes ago.  Gary’s grumpy as fuck about covering for you, but I suppose he’s always grumpy about something.”

“He’ll get over it.”  

I tracked Gary with my eyes.  The perimeter of the Walmart parking lot was bounded with twelve-foot high fencing all the way around — something Walmart did, not us, when everything fell apart.  We added a ring of cars to the outside and the inside of the fence, because the chain link fence itself wouldn’t have lasted long against a herd of zombies.  The cars prop the fence up and manage to keep both zombies and unwanted humans away.

Speaking of which.

“Any sightings of those Days Inn assholes?” I asked Tyler.

“Not a one.”  He flipped another burger, and it sizzled on the old-style grill.

“Good,” I said.  “Maybe they’ll give us a break today.”

“They might be pissed you didn’t invite them,” joked Tyler.  He glanced up.  “So like, what do we call you?  The groom?  The bride?  The second bride?”

I shrugged.  “Keep it simple and just call me Will.”

“Cool.”

“Hey, have you seen my mom?  She was supposed to be altering that tuxedo Yolanda found.”

“Yeah, she came out with Gary when he started his shift,” Tyler said.  His brow scrunched up.  “Are they like… a thing now?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Mom’s one of those who can never stay single for long.  And apparently not even the end of the world can stop her from finding a new boy toy.  Although — Gary?  Sleeps on a pool table and claims brushing your teeth gives you cavities Gary?  Her standards had gotten pretty low.  Even for her.

I sighed.  “Guess I should go find her and start getting dressed.  Did Yolanda decide where we should hold the ceremony?”

“Didn’t you see when you came out here?” Tyler asked.  “She’s been decorating the registers all night.  Even roped me into it for a while before I came out here.  She was kind of disappointed that she could only find happy birthday stuff and happy retirement stuff.”

“Huh,” I said, looking over my shoulder.  “She definitely wasn’t out there when I came out.  Maybe she’s back in the warehouse, looking for more stuff.”

“Bet that’s where your mom is, too.  You know she can’t resist a scavenger hunt.”

“You’re probably right,” I agreed.  “I’ll start there.”

I headed back inside, passing the registers — which, now that I got a closer look, did indeed look as if an inebriated retirement party had barfed all over them — and I weaved my way towards the back of the store.  Aisles that had once been filled with cheap, sweatshop clothes had become makeshift bedrooms, with shelving units shoved together to form walls.  Jewelry displays, smashed to bits long before we arrived, now contained vital supplies, the ones we wanted closest to the front in case the rednecks at the Days Inn tried a sudden assault.  I passed these by, moving through what used to be Electronics (shelves that used to hold earbuds and cell phone accessories were now home to our modest collection of canned food and dry goods), and finally pushed through the red Employees Only double doors at the rear of the store into the warehouse.

I heard rummaging, then voices, and followed these through rows of floor-to-ceiling metal shelves filled with mostly empty boxes.  We’d been holed up here for roughly a year now, which meant that we’d either used, repurposed, or relocated almost anything valuable long ago.  Nevertheless, when you have five acres under one roof, there are always a few hidden gems waiting to be discovered.

I slowed as I drew nearer to the voices.  One of them was definitely Mom, but the other one, soft and indistinct, didn’t sound like Yolanda.  Mom’s tone was soothing and — unusual for her — maternal.  Her maternal act always put me on high alert, because it usually meant some form of manipulation would follow shortly.

The other voice was high-pitched, distressed.  It sounded like… Beth?

“But that’s not it, Joyce,” the Beth-voice said.  “I do love her.  I love her so much.  But our situation — the zombies and… and what’s been happening with the motel people — ”

“You’re disgusted,” Mom said.  “That’s understandable.”

“No!  No, it’s not that I’m disgusted.  It’s that I worry…”  Whatever Beth said next was too quiet to understand.  She started crying, Mom made another maternal noise — a shushing this time — and then both of them fell silent.

I frowned.  What in the world…?

I stepped around the corner, putting on a bright smile as if I hadn’t just been eavesdropping on their conversation.  “Hey girls,” I said.  “What’s been — ”

But the scene before me took the words right out of my mouth.  Mom’s lips were locked onto Beth’s, and one hand was halfway up her shirt.

They broke apart immediately, Beth calling my name even as I spun on my heel and strode away.

“Will?  Wait — it’s not — I didn’t —!” she called at my back.  

I kept walking.  Her feet pitter-pattered against the concrete as she chased after me and grabbed my arm.  She tried to turn me around, but I shook her off angrily.

“Wedding’s obviously off,” I snapped.

“Don’t say that.”

I whirled on her, raging.  “I find you making out with my mother two hours before we’re supposed to get married and you don’t expect me to call it off?”

“I wasn’t ‘making out’ with her,” Beth huffed.  “She…”  Beth glanced over her shoulder.  Mom hadn’t moved from her spot next to the cardboard box sitting on the floor with dresses spilling out of it.  Her arms were crossed against her chest, lips pursed in a you’re clearly overreacting expression.  “Can we go back to our room?” asked Beth.  “Talk about this in private?  Please?”

I turned my back on her, shoved my way through the double doors again.  “Not interested,” I called over my shoulder.

“Will — come on, don’t walk away,” Beth said to my back.  “Will!”

But I kept walking away.  The unwelcome sting of tears pricked at my eyes, and I wiped furiously at my face.  I don’t cry.  Not even when Mom and I went to get Gran at the nursing home and found her dead and half-eaten by zombies.  Not even when Atlanta was carpet-bombed by the military and we watched the plumes of smoke clouding the sky for weeks.  Not even when the rednecks at the Days Inn killed our friends Frank and LaRonne and tossed their heads over the fence like they were nothing but particularly bloody playground balls.

I didn’t cry then; I wasn’t going to cry now.

Beth chased after me, catching up with me on the other side of Electronics.  

“Stop being so stubborn and just listen to me,” she said.  “It’s not like what it looked like.  I swear.”

“Oh, it wasn’t what it looked like?” I asked, coating my words in as much sarcasm as possible even as I struggled to stop my voice from cracking.  “That’s good, because what it looked like to me was that you had your tongue down my mother’s throat.”

“That’s ridiculous.  I didn’t have — ”

But she was interrupted by the sound of a car alarm.  That’s what it sounded like, anyway.  All the way back here in Electronics, it was hard to say for certain.  

I cocked my head, listening hard.  “Is that…?”

Shouting from the front of the store.  Then a quick pop-pop-pop, like fireworks going off.  Except there are very few fireworks in the zombie apocalypse.  Which meant…

I locked eyes with Beth.  “Gunshots.”

Mom chose that moment to march out of the warehouse.  “Willow, before you say anything, I want you to know that I — ”

Beth and I had already fallen into a crouch behind an end cap lined with canned corn, a bottle of ketchup, and black olives.  Mom stopped short when she saw us.

“Shut up and get down,” I hissed at Mom.  “Something’s happening.”  

I grabbed the can of olives and handed the canned corn to Mom, who dropped to one knee behind me.  Canned food didn’t work very well as a weapon — I knew that from experience — but sometimes you could turn it into a good distraction.

More gunshots came from the front of the store.  This time it was more than the pop-pop of a handgun; after some more shouting and the crash of what was probably an overturned shelf of supplies, we also heard the distinctive chik-chik-BLAM! of a shotgun blast.  

I hoped to God it wasn’t my shotgun.  I was sure I’d hidden it too well for it to be easily discovered.  But if it was my shotgun, I hoped it was at least our people using it and not the Days Inn people.

After a few minutes of tumult, everything went silent.  Dead silent (no pun intended).  I waited for Tyler or Gary or Yolanda to yell out the all clear, but nothing came.

Like rabbits cornered by a fox, we stayed absolutely motionless in our hiding place in Electronics.  Beth began to tremble.

Mom tugged on my sleeve, motioned towards the Employees Only double doors.

I shook my head.  Not yet, I mouthed.  Let’s wait a minute.

Mom’s face said she thought waiting was a bad idea.  I ignored her.  Not only had she been kissing my fiancé about six minutes earlier, she tended to be pushy with her opinions in general.  And this was not a situation where I was going to let her pushiness dictate my actions.

But when a silent minute passed with no all clear, and then another silent minute passed, I had to concede the point:  Mom was right.  Fiancé stealer or not, it was time to get out of here.  I met Mom’s eyes, then Beth’s, then put a finger to my lips before pointing at the double doors.  Before I could lose my nerve, I stood halfway up and crept towards the doors.  Mom and Beth followed.

As quietly as I could, I pushed one side of the Employees Only door open, wincing at the way it scraped against the concrete.  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Mom and Beth were still following me, then slipped into the warehouse.

Only to find a shotgun barrel three inches away from my face.

A bearded man in combat fatigues stood on the other end of the barrel, a faded Make America Great Again hat barely containing greasy curls in need of a trim.  Next to him, a burly companion in oversized overalls over a stained t-shirt and rubber boots held Tyler’s head casually at his side.  A pool of blood gathered at his feet.  Maybe that was why he had the rubber boots on.

“Well, well, well.  If it ain’t the ringleader and the old lady themselves,” drawled the MAGA man around a toothpick.  His eyes shifted to Beth.  “An’ who’s the pretty girl?  Don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance before.”

“Don’t even look at her,” I snarled.

“I don’t think you’re really in the position to be makin’ demands of me,” MAGA man said.  He glanced at rubber boot man.  “D’you think they should really be making demands of a man with a gun in their face, Scotty?”

Scotty held up Tyler’s head.  He looked from Tyler’s glazed over eyes to me.  “No.  I don’t.”

“Me, neither,” said MAGA man.

“What is it with you people and decapitations?” I asked, because apparently I can’t fucking stop myself from goading these assholes, even in a dangerous situation like this one.  “That’s some Al-Qaeda shit, right there.  Is that what’s happening over at the Days Inn?  Finally putting Shariah Law into place like you always dreamed of?”

MAGA man narrowed his eyes and bit down hard on his toothpick.  “Y’know what?” he said, and before I could get out a sarcastic, What?, he slammed the butt of the shotgun into the side of my head.  The concrete floor of the warehouse rose to greet me as I fell towards it in slow-motion.  The last thing I heard before everything went black was Beth’s scream.

#

I don’t know how much time passed between his knocking me unconscious and my coming to in the back of a van with a sack over my head and my hands tied behind my back.  I thought I was alone at first, until I heard Mom speaking in a low whisper.  I laid on my side, ear against the belly of the van and head throbbing, and these two conditions made it impossible to make out what Mom was saying.

I struggled to pull myself up into a sitting position.

“Will?”  That was Beth’s voice.

“Yeah.”  Sitting up hadn’t done anything good for the throbbing in my head, so I closed my eyes until the nausea and pulsing subsided.  When I opened them again, I tried to squint through whatever fabric covered my head, but I couldn’t make anything out.  “Mom?  Beth?  Is there anyone else with us?”

“No.  We think everyone else is dead,” Mom said matter-of-factly.  “Except for Yolanda and Carla, probably.”  She scoffed and added derisively, “Apparently they have some sort of ‘creed’ of not killing women or children.”

“But Yolanda and Carla aren’t here?” I asked.

“It’s just the three of us,” Beth said, a touch of sadness in her voice.

“Where are they taking us?”

“Away from King,” Mom replied.  “That’s all we know.”

“You both have bags over your heads?”

“Reusable grocery bags,” said Mom.  “Mine smells like onions.  And maybe tomatoes.”

I used my heels to push against the floor of the van, scooting backwards until I found a side panel.

“The way you reacted in the warehouse, Willow, it was oversized,” Mom said.  “And unnecessary.”

At first, I thought she was talking about what I said to MAGA man and rubber boot man when I said that’s some Al-Qaeda shit, but then I realized she was referring to how I reacted to finding her kissing and groping Beth.

I snorted but didn’t say anything.  This bitch. 

Mom, of course, interpreted the snort as an invitation to keep going, so she said, “As usual, you took everything out of context and responded like a melodramatic fifteen-year — ”

“Don’t start, Mom.”

“ — old, whereas if you just would have given me five seconds to explain the — ”

“Didn’t I just say, ‘don’t start’?”

“ — situation, then you would have known that the only thing happening was that — ”

“Goddammit, woman, shut up!” I yelled.  “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been kidnapped, we have our hands tied behind our backs, fucking grocery bags over our heads, and they’re taking us God-knows-where.  I want some peace so I can think, okay?  I’m not having this conversation with you right now.”

“Will — ” Beth began.

“I don’t want to hear it from you, either,” I snapped.

And that’s what happened yesterday.  They drove us around for hours — waste of gas, if you ask me — stopped for at least a half a day, drove a little more, then dragged us out of the van, pushed us along ahead of them for a few minutes, and then sat us down before pulling the bags off our heads.

MAGA man looked down at me contemptuously.  “Welcome to the middle of fucking nowhere.  Enjoy your stay.”

“And if you come back to King,” said rubber boot man next to him, “you’re dead.”

“I thought you didn’t kill women or children?” I said.

Rubber boot man looked at MAGA man uncertainly.

“We don’t,” said MAGA man.

“But you’re going to leave us in the woods in the middle of winter with our hands tied behind our backs?” I asked.  “That’s as good as a death sentence and you know it, you hypocritical bastards.”

MAGA man sneered at me like he was about to say something derogatory, but he didn’t.  Instead, he reached behind him.  I flinched, convinced I’d finally gone too far.  But he didn’t produce the gun I was expecting; he produced a knife.  And tossed it at my feet.

“Good luck,” he said, and turned away without another word.  MAGA man and rubber boot man both trudged away from us, snow crunching beneath their feet.

“Inbred pencil dick cocksuckers!” Mom shouted at them.  

But they didn’t acknowledge her.  I scooted forward on my already cold butt to get the knife.