Check out the commercial for Library of the Living Dead Press that was shot at Horror Realm last month. A lot of folks were involved with this and I had the privilege of being one of the zombies in the commercial. It was a blast! I’m the guy with the bloody face, by the way. Wait…everyone had a bloody face, heh. I’m the guy with the red shirt, if that helps. Well, it doesn’t matter if you can’t find me in the crowd, because we’re zombies-we’re sorta supposed to be hard to tell apart.
Enjoy watching the video. I know I enjoyed being a part of the making of it.
I just wanted to pass on my first update on the sequel to Comes The Dark. The original plan was to release it in January, but with sales for Comes The Dark going as well as the have been, the publisher wants to strike while the iron is hot and push up the release of the next book to somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was flattered by this, as it is a major vote of confidence in my trilogy. Given that the final edits are complete on the manuscript and I am about to send the book off to be formatted, once we have a cover, the book will be ready to go. So for now, it looks like we might have an early December release, just in time for Christmas! I feel all retail-y and stuff with having the book ready by then!
It is also about time that I revealed the name to the sequel to the second book in the trilogy, since I haven’t officially mentioned it before. Heck, I can reveal the title of the third book as well, while I am at it. Again, the entire trilogy is already written, so while I currently don’t have a firm date for the third book’s release (because we bumped up the second book’s release date), but my guess is that it will be in late spring of 2011, best estimate.
So here they are. The second book will be entitled: Into The Dark and the third book will be called Beyond The Dark. The artwork for all three covers is being done by the incredible Philip R. Rogers and the second and third cover will retain the same feel as the first one, though I am not exactly sure what either will look like. I think I will know pretty soon about the second cover-at least a rough sketch, and I am excited about checking that out. Philip’s work is awesome and if you ever need an artist, check out his work at philipr.deviantart.com/gallery/.
Okay, so here is the back cover description for Into The Dark:
Six weeks ago, the mysterious virus came out of nowhere and engulfed the world. Everyone infected seemed to die … then rise again.
Jeff Blaine did his best to hold his family together and to protect them from the horrors scratching at their door, but in the end, they were ripped away from him like everything else that ever mattered.
Lost and alone, Jeff decided his only option was to destroy as many of the monsters that stole his life away before they destroy him as well. But when he discovers Megan, George, and Jason, three other survivors not interested in giving up just yet, he reluctantly accepts that there might still be a reason to fight and live to see another day.
Traveling through the blasted landscape their world has become, the quartet discovers that the living dead aren’t the only danger with which they must cope. Even other survivors who promise safety and security from the hordes of ghouls roaming the wastelands will test loyalties and their faith in humankind.
Jeff and his small band of newfound friends must forge a semblance of life in the newly blighted world. And they will have only the light of their own humanity by which to navigate as everything around them descends into the dark.
Again, the book should be released sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am already getting excited about it!
It is great to have friends who are willing to let you tag along with them! I get the opportunity to be at the Halloween Express up in Dayton, Ohio this Saturday with my good friend Ben Rogers, thanks to Beth LaFond, his publicist, who always sees if I am available for anything they plan in the area. Many thanks to Beth and Ben for allowing me to take part in this event.
We will be selling and signing copies of our books. I have reviewed Ben’s Faith and the Undead here on my blog not so long ago, so check that out, and if you live in the Dayton/Cincinnati area and haven’t had the chance to pick up a copy of either Ben’s book or mine, stop by! Even if you have already and want to get us to sign your copy, we would love to do so. It should be a lot of fun, so check it out!
Here is the posting that Halloween Express made for this event on their Facebook page:
Halloween Express/Dayton/Columbus Benjamin Rogers, author of “Faith and the Undead” and Patrick D’Orazio author of “Comes the Dark” will be at our Beavercreek location on Saturday October 16th for book signings. 2750 suite B. N. Fairfield Rd. Beavercreek Ohio 45431
So definitely check it out! We will be there officially from 11-4, but ya never know, we might just stick around after that
I had written quite a long introduction to George and Jason in my original manuscript for Comes The Dark. It was for the best that it didn’t make the final cut, because it ended up being a story that would have taken away from the flow and tempo of the book. But much like the story that I had written for Megan, it gave the reader a more in depth understanding of what these characters had gone through before they were introduced in the book.
I am not sure how many parts George and Jason’s story will have, but as I edit them, I will post them here, on my blog. Forgive me for any editing errors-I tried to catch them before posting this, but I am sure some have slipped through.
So here it is:
George and Jason, Part 1
The sandy haired man took a swig from the bottle of lukewarm water. He glanced briefly at the image of ice capped mountains on the label and grimaced at the taste. At least it wasn’t hot, although he wouldn’t gripe if it was. But a visual of a mountain stream filled with pure, icy cold water was a stretch. His world was not filled with breath taking vistas and bracing winds. Instead, there were dark, confining walls and thick, muggy air.
“Ahhh.”
The sound was exaggerated and the marketers of Mountain Ice would have appreciated it … if they weren’t all dead. In fact, just about everyone they’d pitched their product to were dead too. So the sarcastic sound of satisfaction was pointless. George didn’t care, because just about everything was pointless these days.
He stood in the dark backroom and tried to push away the depressing thought. It was damned hard, but he had to believe it was still worth the effort. He was in one piece after everything he’d been through. Be grateful for the little things. It was his mantra these days.
George cut an impressive form. At six two and slightly over two hundred and forty pounds he was thickly built and muscular. The graying at the temples and creases in the skin around his eyes might convince some that he was past his competitive prime, but when they saw him move they would likely backtrack on such an assessment. George was naturally athletic, but as he’d hit middle age he discovered he had to work twice as hard to keep up with the kids half his age.
George wondered why he still bothered. Exercise seemed rather pointless anymore. Old habits die hard. He knew it was true enough, but that wasn’t all of it. So he went through the stomach crunches, push ups, sit ups, and anything else he could do in the silence of the dark and dusty rooms of the church he was stuck in knowing that as he tried so hard to exhaust his body, he was trying even harder to keep his mind occupied.
George surveyed the crowded back room. It was a storage closet in the place he’d called home for over a month now. Cardboard crates and cartons were stacked up against the far wall; corrugated sentinels guarding the abandoned building against the onslaught of dust bunnies and silverfish. Several boxes had been torn into and emptied of their content. George sighed as he did a count of what remained. He was sick and tired of the sticky sweet juice boxes and stale cheese and peanut butter crackers stored for the daycare and kindergarten programs the church ran. He relished the occasional water bottle, but soon the case of Mountain Ice that they’d been rationing at one bottle a day would be gone.
For what might have been the thousandth time, he sighed and shook his head. How did it come to this? He nudged one of the half filled boxes with his big toe and resisted the urge to kick it against the wall. This was all they had left.
George walked out into the gymnasium. The daylight shining down through the skylights was a Godsend. All the doors and windows on the first floor were blocked up or covered with plywood and cafeteria tables. The light felt good, but didn’t cheer him up. Whether George was in the gym or one of the few other areas he could roam freely in the building, he felt as if he were in perpetual darkness.
George mouthed a silent prayer for the strength to get through another day as he walked across the hardwood floor. It was one of dozens of little prayers he uttered these days. He hadn’t been a devout Christian before the plague-sure, he believed in God, but attending church was something he did on autopilot. It could salve a guilty conscience, demonstrate devotion, or set a good example for his daughters, but it had mostly been a façade, a convenient cover-up for someone who couldn’t be bothered to care anymore.
It shocked him when Helen decided to convert to his religion years ago. George was not gung ho about the idea, but she insisted. When Roxanne was born, religion all the sudden became that much more vital to Helen and she pressed George to become more active in the church. In his mind it felt as if he wife was steamrolling him, but he loved her too much not to cave to the pressure. He had to admit that without Helen’s religious zeal his children might have grown up clueless about God and faith in general. She made sure they were baptized, went to Sunday school, and took communion … the whole nine yards. George sat back and watched, content in knowing that his wife had taken on that mantle of responsibility and was doing a bang up job of it.
Now, in the aftermath of the hell the world had become, he’d been “reborn”. The pillars of the world had crumbled and that’s when the praying started. It came in a rush-there was no gradual transformation. George comprehended the error of his ways and that changed him irrevocably. He would recite prayers on an almost hourly basis, and they had an element of gratitude in them—he thanked God for tolerating a last second convert. Perhaps that was why he was still alive: he’d been given the chance to repent his sins and to rectify for his past mistakes.
George’s mind switched gears as he thought about the boy for a moment. They were trapped in this place together, but the pre-teen was so distant it felt as if he were somewhere else entirely. George had tried to get Jason to warm up to him, tried to get him to talk or even pray, but the kid cared little about God or anything else for that matter. That was no surprise, but was still frustrating. All they had was each other, but Jason acted as if even that was too much to deal with.
The boy had been that way ever since Jennifer had given up on him. That was when George had assumed the mantle of responsibility for Jason, but it was clear the damage caused by her decision had been profound. Those cannibal bastards roaming around outside couldn’t have ripped him apart any more thoroughly. Jason had been gutted, just not in a physical sense.
So George prayed alone.
George prayed for the boy, he prayed for both their souls, and he prayed for guidance. He prayed for strength and the ability to avoiding going insane. He also prayed for mercy and forgiveness. But mostly, he prayed for his wife and two daughters waiting for him back home.
George basked in the bright sunlight and tried to appreciate the warmth it gave off. His footsteps echoed as he walked across the gym. There was no rush to get to the door. These days there was little need to rush anywhere.
George resisted the urge to open the closet housing the basketballs so he could take a few shots with one. Working up a sweat would be great—it might even take his mind off of everything for a bit. Unfortunately, the dead were right outside. If they heard him, his struggles over the past month would be all for naught.
It was luck that had gotten him this far. All sorts of it: bad luck that the world had gone Looney Tunes, good luck that he had made it to the church with Jason alive and dumb luck that they had survived this long.
He would have run long ago. To hell with the walking corpses outside, he would have risked them and all the dangers they posed. They were frightening, those rotting mockeries of life, but more so, they were sad. When George looked into their eyes they seemed lost. They no longer knew who or what they once had been. They weren’t too sharp and he was certain he could slip past them if he was careful. The volume of abandoned vehicles on the road was staggering: he could have his pick of ones with the keys still in the ignition and enough gas to get him all the way home.
He would have done it already, had it not been for Jason.
***
There had been four of them originally: Jennifer, Al, George, and Jason. They had escaped the shelter together when things had gone bad. The high school was filled with refugees just like them, all crammed in the gym—a thousand or more at least. So many, in fact, the soldiers had to funnel newcomers over to the elementary school across the street. At first the refugees were mainly locals; residents of Gallatin and the surrounding area urged to head to the local shelter and wait out the chaos there.
Things had been easy for the early arrivals. There was plenty of room and a belief that the troubles outside would be resolved quickly. It was when people started pouring in from all over the region that the sense of optimism faltered. They brought with them stories of the city’s doom.
The Guardsmen did a good job of getting everyone settled and even squelching rumors of how things had gone from bad to unbelievably worse in the space of just a few days. Not just in Cincinnati but everywhere. But despite their best efforts, every new group brought with them horrific stories that spread like wildfire. Tales would spread from cot to cot, group to group. There was little else to do in the cramped gymnasium except to gossip and the only topic to gossip about was how bad things were out there.
George had been tossed unceremoniously into the shelter and knew no one there. With no family or neighbors to powwow with, he gathered what information he could by spying on other’s conversations. The city was burning; it was dying before their very eyes. The dead were coming back to life, attacking the living and transforming them into similar monstrosities.
The undead were everywhere. At first, reports were that they’d been contained. But outbreaks which started in some of the more blighted neighborhoods around the city spread rapidly. The National Guard would cordon off one area and an outbreak would be reported elsewhere. There appeared to be no way to pinpoint a source contaminant in the city at all. Someone would be bitten and then flee to another part of town. They would die, reanimate, and start the cycle all over again.
Nothing the military did seemed to make any headway and despite the best efforts to house refugees and protect them, everyone stuck in the Gallatin High School was getting the sense that there was nothing anyone, including the military, could do to stop this plague from engulfing everything.
The stories that came in were hard for George to swallow at first, but the volume of them wore him down as they did everyone else, until it was hard to deny what was happening. There were comparisons to Auschwitz and the battlefields of Vietnam. Dump trucks filled with corpses stacked like cordwood were driven through the city’s neighborhoods as soldiers in hazmat outfits dragged dead bodies out of houses and loaded them up. Crematoriums were set up around the city to euthanize or dispose of those who had been infected. ‘Emergency Virus Centers,’ were also set up—people could take those who were sick there to be treated. But treatment had a tendency to make a person disappear. Families and even churches had taken to hiding those who had been bitten, despite the government’s rather rapid enactment of laws calling for the execution of those offering safe harbor for the infected. Promises of a cure, or of genuine treatments, saturated the airwaves at first then tapered off as everyone stopped believing them.
Newer refugees arriving at the high school made it clear that shelters and the small areas surrounding their locations were the only places the government had control of anymore. Everywhere else, rioters and looters made it impossible for the military to differentiate between the undead and those who were just angry and desperate. There were still pockets of resistance against the inexorable march of the dead—citizen militias banding together and barricading themselves in apartment complexes, office buildings, and other makeshift fortresses. Others chose to lock their front doors and turn off their lights with the hope that death would pass them by. But even the most optimistic newcomers to the shelter admitted that most of those people had fared even worse than the National Guard troops committed to defending them.
The shelters were supposed to be beacons of hope. That’s essentially what the soldiers with the bullhorns said as they drove up and down the streets. It was what the government had claimed on television and radio. They were places citizens should go to insure their safety. George did not want to be here, separated from his family, but he did believe he was safe there, at first. Until he saw how some seeking sanctuary were treated. Those who had been bitten were forcefully separated from family members who naively believed all were welcome. Those who were docile or already in a state of shock would accept this, believing that the best possible treatments were being made available to those that had been bitten and they would be reunited with their family members once they had been vaccinated, or whatever it was the government doctors were doing to them. Others weren’t so understanding. In those cases, things tended to get ugly, fast. Fights would erupt in the hall where newcomers were processed and inspected for wounds and infections. Family members would scream and attack soldiers tasked with the responsibility of loading the infected onto the trucks to be sent away … to where, no one was ever told.
It was clear that most of the soldiers were losing the battle to stay impartial and focused on their duties. George knew that as National Guard troops, most of them were locals. They had grown up in the area and knew a lot of the people they were sending off for ‘treatment’. He could not imagine how hard these assigned duties were on them.
The shelter became something akin to a small city; people were jammed in shoulder to shoulder, attempting to live whatever lives they could under such horrid circumstances. George witnessed transactions for drugs and sex, theft, and acts far more foul. He felt helpless and that all hope for the human race was lost.
That was when George began to pray.
It wasn’t hard to surmise that it was like this the entire world over. The virus had first hit overseas, in several different areas of the globe, seemingly overnight. No one could figure out where it had started. It then hit North American with cases reported in Toronto, Canada and Monterrey, Mexico. Before the borders could be sealed, there were cases reported in Baltimore and Denver. The National Guard moved in quickly, imposing rules and taking over from the civil authorities. The army was next: men and women returning from war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and U.S. military bases all over the world. The President recalled all troops to the Homeland in one fell swoop. But by then, the country was already in the grasping fist of the plague. Martial Law or it equivalent had been enacted in every corner of the globe, but there was nothing but complete and utter anarchy to show for it.
It was not the fondest of memories, thinking back to those days in the shelter, but as George remained stuck inside the church he and Jason were hiding out in, his mind kept reliving everything that had led up to his arrival there.
The sad part, the truly saddest part of it all, was that it could have been avoided. He had been staying at a local hotel and knew he should have left the moment he realized that the plague that had been sweeping the globe had arrived in his little corner of Ohio. Even later, when the hotel manager had come knocking at his door telling him he had five minutes to pack his belongings and get out in front of the hotel where a squad of National Guard soldiers were waiting, he should have ran.
Wildwood, where George lived, was less than an hour away. Even the traffic clogging the highways wouldn’t have been an issue. He knew plenty of back roads. Sure, it would have been dangerous, but he would have been with his family instead of stuck here in this dusty old church.
***
George opened the door leading to the stairwell, being careful not to let the door slam behind him. He began the short climb that would take him to the second floor.
***
George remembered when Jennifer and Al came to the shelter. Befriending the newlyweds had been the only good thing that had happened to him since he had gotten there. They had moved to Ohio only weeks before and knew no one in the city except for a few new coworkers of Al’s.
They had tried to leave Cincinnati, but the airport had been closed to non-military transport. Buses and train lines were shut down as well. Highways and most main roads became and remained jammed or blockaded by the military. So Al and Jennifer decided to leave their modest apartment in Gallatin and made their way to the closest shelter.
George was a naturally friendly person and when he smiled at the young couple they latched onto him immediately. They took comfort in his assurances that this would all blow over and they would all be back to their homes leading normal lives in no time.
A day later Jason showed up. He was terrified and alone, a twelve year old boy that had lost his mother. He had been put in with the other orphans and there were a shockingly high number of them. George didn’t pay him any attention at first, but Jennifer befriended him. She’d spent time teaching daycare and volunteered to tend to the children in the shelter. Perhaps it was her gentle nature, or the fact that she was quite attractive-whatever it was, Jason took to her immediately. Within a single day she had “adopted” him, convincing the soldiers to allow his cot to be moved next to her and Al’s. Al didn’t mind at all and welcomed the boy into their little clique.
It wasn’t long after when George had his last phone conversation with Helen. She begged him to come home as soon as possible and he promised her over and over that he would. She talked about the attacks in Dayton, but how Wildwood was still safe, for the most part. She would hold up in their house with the girls until he managed to find a way to leave the shelter. He told her to put boards up over the windows and doors and that everything would be fine until he returned home. If they stayed out of sight, no one would bother them.
***
That had been six weeks ago.
After that, the cellular network broke down completely. That last call would be burned onto George’s mind forever and was part of the reason why he was obsessed with getting home, no matter how impossible that goal might be. But until he figured out what to do with the young boy he was responsible for, his journey would have to wait. George had made a promise to Jennifer and to God above, and he intended to keep it. Taking Jason out into the hell the world had become was not a part of that promise.
George dragged up the stairs and reached the second floor. He opened the door leading to the narrow hallway and the rooms he and Jason spent most of their time in these days. The first floor was less closed in and had all their food and water, but the second floor felt safer. There was a much smaller chance of being discovered up here, in this little hideaway. If the time came when they were forced to evacuate the building, the second floor was not the best place to be since there was only one set of stairs, but knowing that the ghouls outside couldn’t break through their meager barricades and be on top of them right away help them to fall asleep at night.
***
The shelter turned into a madhouse a week after George got there. He guessed that it was getting almost as bad inside as it was outside, with the tension increasing tenfold every day. At first, when there was plenty of room and assurances that everything would be okay, it felt almost festive in the gymnasium. There were jokes and laughter and even sing-alongs. But after a few days, everyone was realizing they were trapped and might be for a very long time. That was when many of the refugees came unglued.
Various factions and even several gangs cropped up. Younger men began banding together for the purpose of intimidating the other residents. Whether for money or cheap thrills, it served as a distraction for them. The soldiers clamped down at first, responding to complaints and separating the troublemakers. But life was wearing on them as much as the people they were protecting, and after a while they left the refugees to their own devices, for the most part. As long as there wasn’t any obvious violence or disturbances, the Guardsmen didn’t interfere.
George became the protector over his little clan. He used his size to intimidate predators, who typically chose to seek out less daunting prey. The key was looking them in the eye and not backing off. A few well placed and meaningful looks at the leaders of the gangs was enough to convince them to stay away from him and his “family.”
They were confined to the gym and cafeteria in the high school for the most part. The National Guard had taken over the classrooms in the building for their living quarters. Refugees had been given limited access to the library at first, but the privilege was revoked when more and more fights broke out there. George knew things had moved over to the realm of complete insanity when soldiers decided to lock everyone in the gym one night instead of trying to break up a battle between two newly formed rival gangs. He and Al followed the lead of several other people and flipped over their cots to create a makeshift barricade to hide behind. It worked fairly well and kept George and his small troop out of the way of the fists and knives being thrown around. Weapons had been confiscated as everyone had entered the shelter, but it was no surprise that smaller pocket knifes and even a few hunting knives had gotten through. Those without weapons improvised, with wooden posts broken off cots and even several shivs appearing. That made it clear to George that the shelter had become a prison in virtually every way possible.
Thirty minutes after the brawl broke out, tear gas was tossed into the gym and almost everyone lost their desire to fight. No official count was made after the soldiers moved in to deal with those who were still interested in fighting, but at least a handful of people died in the chaos and a much larger number were injured. The bodies were hauled out and the soldiers thrust first aid kits into the hands of anyone still standing, forcing them to tend to the injured.
Perceived trouble makers were rounded up and dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the shelter. George wasn’t sure what happened to them, but as he lay awake in the middle of that night, he heard muffled shots being fired from automatic weapons outside the high school. After that, previously loud complaints turned into whispered grumblings and most of the refugees steered clear of the soldiers patrolling the gym.
That was when George and his new found friends decided it was time to plan their escape.
Check out the new review for Comes The Dark over at BuyZombie.com. I always like reviews like this one, because they present what they feel is the bad along with the good, which in turn helps the writer to grow and improve. So I am very pleased with this review, which acknowledges that my book isn’t perfect, but is still a good read. That is all that I can ask for!
My interview with Sonar 4 tonight, for those who didn’t get the chance to check it out live.
Lori Titus and Tonia Brown did a great job and it was a lot of fun talking about Comes The Dark, some of my short stories, and the absolutely horrendous book I wrote back in high school that remains locked away forever.
Here is Part 2 of Megan’s story. This leads up to her initial meeting with Jeff in Comes The Dark.
There will be more in upcoming weeks as I continue to sift through my old manuscript and try to dig free bits and pieces that I think might be worthwhile and contribute to the overall story of my trilogy.
I hope you enjoy it.
Please note: I will be posting all of these stories in order on the page entitled “Dark Stories” on this blog, so they won’t be difficult to find for anyone who discovers them later on. As the second and third book are released, I will post more stories there and in regular posts as well.
Megan, Part 2
There was plenty of noise outside. Beyond the reinforced doors and boarded up windows, she heard them. The infected had come to the neighborhood in force. Megan could hear the moaning and every now and then a scream.
Sometimes they were close. So close that they seemed to be right outside the window. And when Megan heard them that close, it wasn’t the moaning that bothered her. It was something far worse. She tried hard to pretend she didn’t hear it, but it burrowed down beneath the thick layer of blankets and pillows she had shrouded herself with. It burrowed into her ears and down into her soul.
It was the sound of them eating.
That was when Megan realized there were far worse ways to go than suicide or being forced to starve to death as you waited in the darkness, alone.
The fear that those things might discover her hiding place opened up a black and shriveled up part of Megan. The idea of them breaking in and tearing through the house, which would force her to pull the trigger again, held her in thrall for days at a time.
But they never came for her.
One particular memory of those dark days stuck in Megan’s mind. It must have been a couple of weeks after everything had fallen apart. A giant crash echoed up and down the street as several gun shots were fired. Megan refused to look past the blinds and see what was transpiring outside.
She did sit up in bed and then froze, staring at her shuttered window, wanting to go to it, wanting to do something to help whoever was out there.
Megan was terrible at categorizing guns or the report that occurred when any were fired, but the shots sounded like they had come from a rifle. After the first few shots a different weapon discharged and sounded similar to the handgun sitting on her nightstand.
The gunfire had snapped Megan out of the paralysis for a moment, but even as her heart raced and she had to steady her breathing to avoid hyperventilating, she could feel lethargy creeping back in. She shivered inside the sweat drenched night shirt she’d been wearing for days as she pushed her feet over the edge of the bed and stood up, her legs aching in protest as she did.
Megan hovered near the window but refused to pull the shade to look out onto her sun drenched street. The monsters out there were not coming for her this time, so she could drown in her sheets and pillows once again.
As the gunshots played out and the screams began, Megan stared at the .357 Magnum. What amount of energy would it take to burst through the front door and rush to the aid of the people out there? Wouldn’t trying to help be better than burying herself alive once again?
But in the end, all Megan did was stand next to her bedroom window and listen to the cries of agony, the sounds of pleading, and ripping and tearing that always came at the end of the attacks. She listened and let her mind create images of what was going on outside, because she couldn’t bear bending the blinds to know for sure.
There were more crashing noises and the gunshots subsided. The moans and screams grew frantic, an opera of voices covering every octave. Megan wanted to close them off but couldn’t. She couldn’t react at all-to help or to hide. She knew this was her punishment for letting Dalton die … and for participating in his death.
That was when Megan started to scream.
It took her a few moments to realize what she was doing. She was screaming into a pillow she had managed to pull off the bed.
Even as she screamed, Megan had a moment of clarity. The only thing to hope for was that it would go fast for whoever was being attacked. For the next few minutes all she heard was an increase in moans as her muffled screams were drowned out. More and more of the infected joined their brethren to take down the survivors.
Later, Megan realized then that her screams had stopped and her throat was a ragged mess. She had ripped it raw. She remained standing, holding her pillow with quiet desperation, as the undead tended to their needs outside.
At that point, someone must have broken free of the house they’d been hiding in and got out to the yard, and perhaps even the street. He was shouting for someone, but Megan couldn’t make out a name over the cries of the reanimated. Several more shots rang out and the screaming began again. It was a deep wailing at first-definitely a man, but toward the end it grew shrill and high pitched.
Megan tried to pretend she couldn’t hear what happened next but there was little doubt the man was being torn limb from limb. It sounded so close that she imagined the man making it to her front yard before her rotting neighbors pulled him down, swarming over his warm body. As his clothes were ripped away, the moans turned to hisses and squeals of delight as the creatures tore into their prize. Long after she believed the victim had mercifully ceased feeling any pain, one last scream rose above the sounds of eating. It was the cry of someone who no longer cared to be saved, but were instead drowning in a pain that overwhelmed all else.
Then the scream cut off. A sound like a wet branch snapping and then a short gurgle marked the end of the man who died on Megan’s lawn.
That was all Megan could take. She felt her knees give out as she collapsed to the bedroom floor. Curling up in a ball, she began to hum. It was what she did as a child to drown out people she didn’t want to listen to. As she curled even tighter and smashed the pillow over her eyes, Megan remembered her favorite rhyme.
Ms. Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black with silver buttons, buttons, buttons…
Megan repeated the rhyme over and over in her head to blot out the feeding noises as she crawled underneath her bed. The chant continued as the monsters that had been riled up by the introduction of new flesh continued their aimless wandering long after their feast was over. Megan didn’t realize she was sucking her thumb until it grew sore a few hours later.
Over the next day and a half the creatures drifted away and Megan faded in and out of a fitful sleep. Each time she woke up she would repeat the rhyme to avoid hearing them crashing around outside, searching for more food.
Megan was finally able to crawl out from underneath the bed, stiff and aching, two days after the attack.
She stared at the window for another day, teased by the idea of sneaking a peak outside. Nothing out there could be as bad as she had imagined, could it? She had to know if the cold creep of insanity tugging at her could be pushed back or if she should just embrace it, wrap it around her body like a warm winter coat and just drift into oblivion. Megan got close enough to touch the wispy material of her thin drapes. The fabric rippled gently in response to her touch, but she could go no further.
For the next few days, as Megan stared at the pattern the wallpaper border made around the room, she thought of Dalton a great deal. He was the only one of the dead who didn’t whisper to her, telling her to let go, to give up this charade of living. But the others would tell her that all she had to do was open the front door and step outside and all the lies would be over.
But Dalton never tried to speak to her like her dead neighbors did. The man who had died on the lawn, as well as the woman he had been with, came to her the most. The pain was fleeting, they said. It was just the body’s way of resisting its passage into the new existence they had all embraced. It was only a pain of transition, of shifting to a better existence.
She tried to ignore them, but as the hours ticked by and daylight faded into night, the strain of the words wore on her as her eyes drifted from the wallpaper to the gun on her nightstand.
Not yet. I made a promise to you Dalton. Not yet …
***
Dalton ran into the room and pulled her off the bed. “Come on hun, we have to leave!”
Megan was thrilled to see him again and knew he had come back to whisk her away.
“I have something to show you.”
Dalton pulled her out of the bedroom and down the steps. Megan nearly tripped her as she tried to keep up with her excited spouse. She managed to avoid a fall as they landed in the foyer.
Dalton smiled as he pulled his wife toward the front door. Megan resisted, but he smiled and gently shook his head. “I have something to show you.”
Megan looked at the door and saw that the makeshift boards Dalton had nailed over it were gone. Dalton put his hand on the knob and before Megan could protest, he pulled the door open.
Megan tried to scream and clawed at the hand wrapped around her wrist. She shook her head, pleading with Dalton.
Glancing outside, she saw the dark shapes of the dead. She stopped struggling and noticed that none of the stiff forms were moving forward, coming toward them.
Megan had never seen one of the walking corpses with her own eyes before. She had seen them on television, but had been hidden away in the house since the beginning, with curtains drawn and eyes firmly shut to what was going on outside.
The dead people on Megan’s lawn were not reacting like the crazed monsters she had been expecting. Instead, they stood silently, swaying back and forth, staring at her and Dalton in the doorway of their house, as if waiting for them to do something.
As they looked upon her, their eyes did not hide the emptiness behind them. There was no life there, no comprehension.
“I have something to show you,” Dalton repeated and put his hand on Megan’s shoulder as he pulled her out onto the porch. Megan looked in her husband’s eyes and her resistance faded.
The bright sun hit Megan’s face, nearly blinding her. Even with her limited vision, she could see the huge crowd that had gathered for them. As the two living people moved forward, the sea of rotting flesh stepped back to allow them to pass.
Megan smiled as she realized they were being allowed to leave! With that jubilant revelation she noticed something about the stiffened corpses all around her.
These diseased creatures were not moaning.
They were as silent as she was. Although they stared at Megan there was no hunger in their eyes. They didn’t reach out to touch or pull at her; they seemed to have no desire to violate her at all.
After a few minutes of trudging on blood soaked grass, Dalton spoke again. “Almost there,” he beamed at her as he looked back and grinned, his teeth dazzling in the sunlight.
Megan couldn’t remember how long they walked before the crowd ahead parted, revealing an opening. Not a large one, just a small circle of space free of the dead. Megan could see something on the ground, a bundle of some sort. But since Dalton was in front of her, leading the way, she couldn’t make out what it was.
Dalton turned away from Megan and dropped her hand. She stopped, watching as the man she loved knelt down and wrapped his arms around the bundle. He made quiet noises she could barely hear as he rose up.
When Dalton turned around Megan knew what he was holding. Dalton was smiling down upon the blanket wrapped shape in his arms, slowly bouncing it and cooing. It was their baby. Their little girl!
Megan tried to reach out to take the baby and cradle it in her arms, but they felt like there were lead weights at her side. She had always known they would have a girl-it had been her dream all along. She could feel tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched Dalton hold their infant in his arms.
Dalton looked over at Megan and smiled. “She wants her mommy. She’s hungry.”
At his words, Megan’s felt lighter and she was able to move forward. It was some cruel twist of fate that had kept the child from her for this long, but Megan knew, deep in her heart, that she would never be separated from her again.
As Megan moved closer, Dalton smiled encouragement at her. She saw a curl of black hair peeping out of the snug blanket and her heart quaked in anticipation.
Megan reached out for her child as she stepped up to her husband. She had forgotten the dark figures surrounding them, though the dead appeared to be leaning in to get a closer look at the child. Dalton gently handed the child over to his wife as she held out her arms.
A scream burst forth from Megan’s lips. She wanted to drop the bundle but Dalton’s arms were wrapped tightly around her and the baby. Megan’s scream continued, piercing the silence of the netherworld like a knife.
Her child, her baby girl, was one of them. Its grayish skin was stretched tight over its skull, its eyes pus filled even though the murky pupils fixated on its mother. Its mouth was filled with jagged little teeth that gnashed and clicked together with menace. As Megan’s screaming stopped, she heard an unearthly moan of the dead escape the baby’s lips.
“She needs to feed,” Dalton hissed and Megan looked at his face. He was one of them, too. Half of the skin on his face had rotted off and the stench was overpowering as he leaned in. “She needs to feed … and so do we.” A thick green line of drool trailed from the corner of his mouth where multiple jagged and broken teeth sat. The moans rose as Dalton lifted the baby up to Megan’s breast.
Megan was torn from her nightmare, clutching at her belly, sweat-drenched as she attempted to hold in the screams. The pain she felt in her gut was real-as real as anything else in this dark, dank place she inhabited. The once almost impossibly strong desire to bring new life into the world had shriveled and died as dreams such this one haunted Megan’s sleep, tormenting her endlessly.
As she sat trying to regain her composure, it dawned on Megan that it wasn’t some simple mercy that had woke her up before her dream could reach its evil conclusion, as it had done so many times before. Something else had disturbed her sleep.
Megan didn’t have to wait long to discover that it wasn’t the sound of moaning or some window shattering nearby that had jarred her sleep. It was an explosion.
When the next one hit, it sounded like a bomb had been dropped on the neighborhood. The bedroom walls rattled as several more bursts occurred. Megan tensed, unsure of where they were coming from and if they were getting closer to her house.
She gripped the covers close, knowing they would provide no protection, but having no idea what else to do as she stared at the windows. A rumble of another blast caused them to vibrate.
Megan remained stationary for several minutes, even after the thunderous explosions ceased. She listened, waiting for something, anything else to happen, but there was nothing. Not even the ever-present moaning of the dead.
What the hell just happened?
It was the only thought that raced through Megan’s mind as she slid off the bed and searched for her shoes. Her actions were automatic. She hadn’t slipped on her sneakers in weeks, but it seemed like the thing to do as she pondered the explosions and the meaning behind them.
It had to be the military. They had been working all this time to clear the city of infected and they’d finally reached the suburbs. It was the only explanation that made any sense.
Limping as her sluggish limbs woke up, Megan made it to her closet. She needed to get dressed. For the first time in the five weeks, the close caress of the nightgown she’d been wearing repulsed her. It stuck to her skin and smelled foul, almost ripe. And as she stripped it away, it was as if layers of fear and intimidation disappeared with it.
Two minutes later Megan was moving down the steps, weak but excited. She had snatched the revolver off the nightstand and held in front of her like some sort of shield as she stared at the front door.
Memories of her nightmare returned. Megan closed her eyes as a vision of the baby she had held in her arms jumped into her head unbidden. She sucked in a sharp breath and opened her eyes again, determined to push the nightmare aside so she could focus on the aftermath of the explosions she’d heard.
After staring at the front door for a couple of minutes, her heart racing, Megan shook her head to clear it of all the confused thoughts that had been swarming through her mind since she had been so abruptly awoken.
“Shit happens,” Megan mumbled as she stepped closer to the door. Her voice sounded odd. Scratched, deflated. It was not the voice she had lived with her entire life, but instead sounded weak, insecure … frightened.
Steeling herself, Megan took a deep breath before leaning toward the window next to the front door, putting her hands on the blinds. There were a few more moments of seconding guessing before she was able to get close enough to pull a slat down.
Megan had to line her eyes up with the area between the boards nailed in place. She blinked a few times and tried to adjust to the light of the mid-day sun after having spent weeks in shadow. When she was able to focus on her front yard and what lay beyond, it took her mind several more seconds to accept what she was seeing was real.
The neutral toned brick and vinyl siding houses and manicured lawns were gone. They had been replaced with a palate of blackened and burnt wooden and stone skeletons. Several houses were smoking and ruined, while others still stood. All the lawns were overgrown and bushes were beginning to run wild. Fires had destroyed some structures while leaving others intact. Cars out on the street were covered with layers of dust, ash, and garish splashes of blood.
The burnt houses with timbers jutting into the sky mirrored the corpses littering the street. While it was mostly bones and splashes of blood, a few unidentifiable chunks of human residue were scattered about. Several younger saplings that had been planted in the grassy patch between the sidewalk and the street had been bent and broken, and Megan blinked as she spotted what looked like an arm dangling from one of the snapped limbs.
She took little comfort from the fact that she saw only a scattering of bodies. There were bones strewn about her yard and what appeared to be a torso stripped free of its flesh sitting on the Miller’s porch across the street.
Megan stifled a whimper as she saw the remains. A wide trail of blood led away from the torso to the front door of the Miller’s house, which had been ripped from its hinges. Several of the other houses Megan could see from her vantage point looked broken into as well.
Rubbing her eyes, Megan took a short break from looking outside while she tried to keep her breathing even and controlled. She’d seen nothing lurking in the shadows outside and the silence from earlier remained intact. There had been no noise since the explosions. No tanks rolling in, no gunfire, and no more moans. She took a small amount of solace from the possibility that the dead had migrated away from the neighborhood, but was disappointed that the cavalry had not appeared.
Megan was still rubbing her eyes when she heard another noise off in the distance. It startled her even though it was no where near as loud or abrupt as the explosions had been.
Letting go of the blinds, Megan stepped back and felt her legs give way as she collapsed onto the floor. Raising the revolver with a quivering hand, she pressed it against her temple.
It was those things. She could hear them moaning. They were coming back.
“Where’s my goddamn rescue?” Megan whimpered as she tried to fight back the tears.
Shaking her head, she refused to believe that the explosions had been some sort of freak occurrence. No! It had to be something else-something more than just another fractured, hopeless misery in a world already filled with them.
Megan continued sitting next to the door, hearing the moans getting closer while her arms rested on her knees and her head slumped over between them. She held the gun up and began tapping the butt gently against the back of her skull. This went on for another minute or so until she heard a new sound and raised her head to stare up at the window.
At first Megan couldn’t place what it was. She’d been subjected to the muffled wailing of flesh eating predators for far too long and her ears needed time to adjust to the subtleties of this new noise. When they did, Megan jumped up so quickly she almost fell on her side as a grin split her dry, cracked lips. She rushed to the window and clawed at the blinds. Flattening her face to the board again, Megan scanned her street and the one that crossed it nearby.
Megan’s street was at the bottom of a hill, the road feeding into her section of the subdivision on a downward slant. With the thin slit between the two boards showing only a little of the outside world, Megan couldn’t see that far, but as she waited, her patience was rewarded a few seconds later.
“Oh my God…”
It was a van! It was racing down the hill toward her street. Megan could hardly register what her eyes were trying to tell her brain. It’s a goddamned minivan! She nearly fell on her butt as her legs threatened to give out on her again. The dark blue van sped toward Nelson Street, where Megan lived, getting closer by the second.
Giggling hysterically, Megan wondered why the army was using minivans instead of Jeeps or Humvees. The vehicle continued to get closer, but appeared to be slowing down. A twisted part of Megan’s mind whispered to her that it was illegal for someone to be driving that fast anyway. The giggling ramped up and she wondered if she should call the police on the driver. Megan’s felt dizzy from all the laughter, but she was determined to get the attention of the person driving the van. Otherwise they would drive past her house, hit the dead end at the end of Nelson, turn around and speed out of the neighborhood without a single backward glance.
The laughter cut off as Megan realized she had a choice to make. It was either time to leave this house which was not only Dalton’s tomb, but fast becoming hers as well, or to give up and end it all.
That was when Megan realized there was still a spark of life left inside of her. This was her one chance for redemption; her one chance for freedom. The hell residing outside the house was beginning to look no worse than the hell that had been living inside of her mind for the past few weeks. Megan heard herself whimper as she reached for the first board that covered the front door.
Tears replaced the anxious laughter as she tugged at the lumber hammered into the top of the solid oak door. As she did, Megan wiped at the small beads of moisture coming from her forehead and her eyes.
The boards didn’t budge with her feeble efforts. Megan was already out of breath after a few tugs and her arms felt like dead weights. Need to get to the gym more often. She rubbed her forearm and glanced over at the window. Dalton had spaced the boards across it so they could still look outside. That would give her a place to slip her fingers as she gripped the boards when she pulled at them. Setting the gun down on a small table next to the front door, she moved to the window.
Megan could feel the itch of panic as she heard the minivan’s engine continued to creep closer to her house. It was taking way too long to get here. Hadn’t the driver been flying down the road? Now what were they doing? They’d been slowing down, but how slow could he possibly be going now? The speed limit is 25 MPH and every good citizen should observe that limit, even during the apocalypse. A new wave of giggles threatened to return with that crazed thought, but Megan was able to force them down as she struggled with the boards over the window.
She moved to the other window on the opposite side of the door and wrapped her arms around one of the boards over it. The fact that the driver was slowing down was some sort of cosmic nudge, urging her to try harder so she could let them know she was here. Megan yanked at the board and it bent slightly toward her but had no further give in it. She shook it, but it remained securely affixed to the window frame.
Megan screamed in rage. “Let. Me. Out!” Each word was punctuated by a futile jerk at the board. She kicked angrily at the wall as she pounded on the wood. Exhausted, she almost slumped to the floor again, knowing she wouldn’t make it in time. The van would pass by and never even know she was inside, desperate to be free.
Megan’s head snapped up as it dawned on her. The garage! She stumbled as she ran through the kitchen. She almost slipped on the linoleum but made it the garage door and pawed at the knob. She was nearly hyperventilating and couldn’t hear if the van was still outside. She slid between Dalton’s Jeep and her little econobox in a rush to get to the big aluminum garage door. With no electricity, the door would just pull up.
Megan snatched at the handle on the door and nearly wrenched her arm out of its socket as she yanked on it. It didn’t budge. A wave of pain shot through her arm as she recoiled from the handle like it was a venomous snake. The door was jammed.
Megan stared at the garage door, exasperated. The house didn’t want to let her go. Slowly her eyes grew wide and she cursed her stupidity. Glancing up past the handle, she saw a rectangular shaped protrusion half way up the door. It was connected to two metal rods that spanned the door horizontally. Of course! Dalton had manually locked the garage door on his return from the failed supply run.
Megan wrapped her hands around the cold, dry metal and twisted it to the left and it did not budge. Turning it the other way met with success as she heard the satisfying sound of the lock opening. She leaned down and tugged on the handle, receiving the result she was hoping for as the door began to rise. She let it go up about halfway and glanced outside, free of barriers between her and the rest of the world for the first time in ages.
Megan had been prepared to run screaming to flag down the driver, but as she looked out on the scene past her lawn, she realized that perhaps her grand vision of escape had been a mistake.
Things could be worse.
That was what Dalton had said to Megan when this whole mess started. He had been trying to raise her spirits and kept on trying to until the end. He wanted her to survive, wanted her to keep on fighting and find a way out of the hell they were in. Now, despite her efforts to entomb herself in the bedroom they had slept in, made love in, and lived in, she had finally woken up. She was somehow still willing to fight after all this time; not just for herself, but for her husband’s sake … because once she was gone, who would be left to remember him?
So when she saw the scraggly looking man standing on top of the blue minivan, looking away from her as he stared at the top of the hill, she realized that despite how terrible he looked and how dire her circumstances were, things could be worse.
Swallowing hard, Megan stepped out into the sunlight.
As promised, I am providing additional story lines to complement the main story in Comes The Dark and its two sequels. The stories I will be posting here on my blog were originally written with the intention of being included in the book. But for numerous reasons, they did not make the final cut. My hope is that by posting them on my blog it will give those of you who have read my book a chance to get to know some of the characters in the story beside Jeff a little better.
There will be a few of these stories for Comes The Dark, and a few more that I will post after the second book is released in the new year for characters that are introduced in that novel.
For now, here is the first part of my introduction to Megan. This story, along with Part 2, relates what she was doing before her meeting with Jeff early on in Comes The Dark.
I hope you enjoy it.
Megan, Part 1
Megan rolled over and stared at the wall. The bedroom, with its closed drapes and lack of light was the only place that gave her any comfort or peace anymore, if there was such a thing. At least sleep still came with relative ease. When she drifted off, it was the only time she could sever the tenuous link to reality she hated so much.
Certainly, there were nightmares, but they were tame compared to her waking reality. All Megan did was drift along like some raft on a meandering river, floating through one horrific experience to the next, never sure if she was awake or asleep as she did.
Despite whatever demons her mind dredged up when her eyes were closed, Megan still craved the sweet release of sleep. Nightmares felt real, but so did the occasional pleasant dream. Those rare moments when she was able to get lost in a dream were the only times she could forget.
That little bit of joy was her drug, so when she woke from them, Megan would bury herself in blankets and pillows and grasp at those fleeting images of happiness. But it never worked; once they were gone, they were gone for good.
No matter how bad or good her dreams became, Megan never made a sound in her sleep, or when she woke up. There was just too much of a chance that her voice would carry beyond the walls of her house. That could not be tolerated.
Megan kept staring at her bedroom wall. She’d been working on memorizing the pattern of the wallpaper border over the past few days. It was a floral print Dalton hated and it consisted of an assortment of red hued flowers repeating on the six inch border all the way around the room. Memorizing the pattern wasn’t much of a challenge, since there were only about ten different flowers on the paper, but doing so passed the time until she was able to drift off to sleep.
The rich color of the flowers matched the comforter and drapes, as well as the pillow cases and bed ruffle. Dalton faked nausea the first time he saw the entire set, but as a husband, he had learned how to pick his battles and bowed to his wife’s evil glare rather quickly when it came to such minor things.
Megan was proud of the decorative choices she’d made in the bedroom. It was the first room they’d finished in the house. The rest of the place was a work in progress, and had been since they’d moved in a little over a year ago.
This was their second place together, and purchasing the house had been the start of their “serious” stage. They bought a house that cost too much, picked out furnishings that maxed out their credit cards, and made plans to have a baby.
Megan and Dalton had been together for five years, married for three, and Megan had been feeling the itch to start a family for at least a year. This house out in the suburbs was going to be the place. The place where they really got going as a couple … and having the bedroom finished and tastefully decorated was the first step in that process.
Now the bedroom was going to be her mausoleum.
It wasn’t as if the food had run out. Megan had never been a big eater and she lost what little appetite she had when the world fell apart.
She could feel her muscles being devoured by her desperate body as she ate less and less. It was fighting her, resisting her desire to fade away. For some reason, Megan’s body wasn’t ready to give up on her just yet.
Before everything started Megan had barely topped “a buck five” as Dalton would say. She was sure if she checked her current weight, it would be a miracle if it was above ninety pounds.
“A strong wind’s going to blow you away if you’re not careful, honey.”
Megan grinned at the memory of her husband’s words. If she lost any more weight she might test that theory. Floating away might not be a bad idea.
Megan spent the rare occasion when she wasn’t lying in bed trying to read old magazines and books, but having never been a big reader, that didn’t last long. So instead, she dug up an old cookbook and flipped through it for hours on end, staring at pictures of recipes that would never be made again.
Ghosts of her old life were in everything that surrounded her. Not just in the cookbook, but in all the little things in the rooms she floated through like some sort of ghost; things they had bought together, made together. There had been so much to live for, but in the blink of an eye that was all gone.
Megan also spent a lot of time thinking about her sister in Pittsburgh. Sandy had three little boys Megan adored. They were all under six; each cuter than the next. “Aunty Mega” probably would never get to see any of them again. Sandy told her she and Phil were taking the boys down to the cabin in West Virginia just as this mess began and pleaded for Megan and Dalton to join them.
Unfortunately, things had turned bad so quickly that the National Guard clamped down on travel and Dalton nixed the idea of trying to make the six hour trip in their Jeep.
With all the reports of log-jammed highways and roadside attacks Dalton doubted they could even make it out of town, let alone to the mountains of West Virginia. Nope, they would stay in the house, stock up on necessities, and pray this wasn’t the end of times, like so many of those damn televangelists were shouting about over the airwaves.
But those bastards had been right.
Early on, Dalton planned on going out one last time to collect supplies-food, water, batteries … anything he could get his hands on. Megan remembered CNN blaring in the background that day, saying that it was Day Six of the crisis.
Dalton was going to take the Grand Cherokee, all their cash, and the revolver. His plan was to head to the closest grocery store and pick up whatever would fit in the SUV and return home as fast as he could.
Megan recalled the conversation before he left, when she was in a white hot panic and pleading with her husband to let her come with him or better yet, for him to not leave at all.
Dalton had gripped her shoulders as he tried to reassure her. “Honey, it’ll be alright. You can’t come with me. You have to stay and—”
“But I don’t even want you to go! Don’t you get it? It’s not safe out there Dalton. God only knows if the virus is here already. Please! If you have to go, let me go with you.”
Megan had gone on like that for over a minute as Dalton shushed her while shaking his head. He never broke eye contact with her the whole time.
Dalton’s level of calm began to overpower Megan’s determination and her hysterics lessened. In a normal situation, if her husband had shushed her she would have punched him in the chest. Not that her slight frame could pack much of a wallop, but he would definitely have known she wasn’t going to tolerate such a condescending attitude. But this time it was having the effect he’d hoped for.
“You know as well I do,” Dalton said as she started to wind down, “there isn’t much you can do for me out there.”
The volume of Dalton’s voice increased as Megan grew agitated again. He glared at his wife. “I’m not taking a chance on something happening to you. And let’s not play bullshit games about who is capable of handling themselves better out there if things get crazy.”
Dalton LeValley stood a smidge over six feet tall and weighed in at a fit one hundred and ninety pounds. He was ex-military, though he’d not seen combat in his two years of active duty. Still, he’d been trained to deal with dangerous situations while Megan had taken a two week self-defense course offered down at the Y. She knew Dalton could deal with trouble and move faster without her tagging along, but the idea of being separated from him, even for an hour, terrified her.
Megan shuddered as she took in a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she tried to shut out all the logic her husband had thrust upon her. The world had gone mad and she didn’t care that what Dalton said made sense. She also didn’t care if she was being selfish. He didn’t have to go out at all. They had enough food and water for a couple of days, and this whole thing would blow over by then, wouldn’t it?
All that day there had been pictures on the TV showing riots. Sure, they were going on in places like New York and L.A., just like you would expect, but they were happening in smaller cities and just about everywhere else.
One story on the television had stuck with Megan. A convenience store clerk in Iowa had been hung from a light pole in front of his store because he tried to stop a crowd of looters from ransacking his place of business. Megan remembered the images of shattered plate glass windows, shelves stripped bare and the store looking like a tornado had hit it. But what resonated in her mind were the images of the poor man after he’d been lynched. He’d not just been hung; he’d been stoned as well. His face and body were a mass of bloody bruises and welts. The censors had stopped bothering to cover up such brutality by then, so she got to see it in all its glory.
Megan found it hard to believe that it would ever get that bad in their anonymous little suburb. Certainly, their subdivision was in an uproar, with neighbors panicking and wondering what to do, but the madness of the outside world hadn’t touched down in Milfield yet. Lots of people were leaving the area and a few teens were trying their hand at vandalism, but the overall perception was that this viral crisis was happening elsewhere and would never reach the local area.
It wasn’t until a camouflaged Humvee drove down their street with a loudspeaker announcing where the nearest Red Cross and National Guard shelters were set up that Megan realized the worldwide panic being wailed about on television had come to their little corner of the world.
The National Guard wasn’t requiring anyone to leave their homes. Dalton told Megan the military didn’t have the resources to waste on homeowners unwilling to evacuate. They were urging everyone to do so, but were too busy cordoning off areas of the city, battling rioters, and trying to maintain the peace to bother with house to house searches.
Some of the families in the neighborhood took the Guardsmen up on their offer, piling into their cars and heading to the shelters. Others like Dalton and Megan decided to hunker down and wait it out.
Dalton had dismissed the idea of heading to a shelter rather quickly. “Why should we spend the next month crammed into some shitty tin can like sardines eating lousy food when we can be comfortable here in our own house?”
Megan didn’t argue at the time. But now Dalton was heading out into that mess to do a little grocery shopping, where the possibility of facing looters wasn’t the worst thing he might have to deal with.
Dalton shook Megan. It wasn’t violent, but she snapped out of her reverie just the same as if he had slapped her.
“Megan! Please, let me go. We both know I have to do this.” He wasn’t pleading with her. It was the last gasp of rational arguing he would do before he got angry. It was easy to read him after five years together, although things had never been even remotely this intense before. Megan knew she didn’t want him angry. Because if something happened and she never saw him again …
Things didn’t seem normal outside their house but it wasn’t as bad as the horror stories the news had cooked up. If Dalton went out there, then everything would be real. Megan was beginning to understand that for her husband it already was already real, and had been from the moment he heard the first hints of trouble in other places on the news. Dalton had accepted this new reality immediately and had boarded up the house and rationed their food and water. He’d even packed the Jeep in case they needed to leave in a hurry.
As Dalton pleaded with Megan to let him leave, it dawned on her that the only reason he hadn’t proposed this trip a couple of days earlier was because he knew how she would react. He had waited as long as he could before broaching the subject, until he had no other choice but to make this trip if they were going to survive inside their barricaded house.
So Megan knew it had probably surprised Dalton when she pulled him close, hugging him, and nodded her approval, rather than choosing to continue arguing. The tension between them remained for a moment, but when Dalton’s stiff shoulders relaxed Megan knew things were okay between them.
Wrapping her hand around the back of Dalton’s neck, she pulled him close to whisper in his ear.
“Please Dal, be careful. God, just be safe … I can’t imagine what I would do—”
Megan’s words were cut off as her husband swept her into a big bear hug. Dalton kissed her on the forehead and then pushed her back so they could look each other in the eyes. She had to bend her neck back quite a bit, as she always did, to accommodate their difference in height.
“You know I’ll be as careful as possible. No screwing around, just getting what we need and then I’ll head straight home.”
He dropped his arms to his sides, still a bit tense, fearful that Megan was some sort of firecracker whose wick had burned all the way down, but hadn’t exploded. Megan gave Dalton one of her sleepy little smiles she reserved for those times when she had essentially lost an argument. Not that she would admit defeat, but it served to let her husband know that this firecracker was a dud. Megan’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, but it was good enough for Dalton. He pulled her close again and kissed her firmly on the lips before heading to the garage.
“Be back soon,” was all he said before getting into the Jeep and driving away.
Dalton did make it back. He had been through hell and the Jeep had suffered some serious dents but it returned, just like Dalton, in one piece. There was a small gash on his forehead, but no other visible wounds when he stepped out of the SUV.
He described people dying on the streets-some sick, but others looking more insane than anything as they roamed the area.
“People were trying to take the truck, grabbing at the doors. A bunch threw rocks at the police and the National Guard … hell, they were attacking them! Everyone out there is insane, I swear to God. But …” He paused, his face turning pale at the memory as he told Megan his story. “But it was those sick people, the ones who were infected. They were attacking everyone, ripping and biting them. Christ, there was so much blood. It was a fucking nightmare.”
Dalton hadn’t made it to a store. Two miles down the road past their neighborhood was as far as he got and that was more than enough. He tried to turn around but people were running everywhere, blocking his path. After a few minutes of negotiating traffic to a place where he could turn the jeep around, a bunch of teenagers began throwing rocks and surrounded the vehicle.
When Megan asked for more details, Dalton shook his head, only saying that he had gotten away and was fine. He wouldn’t let Megan touch him as he rattled off his story, spying through the slats he’d nailed over the front door and windows. It was as if he was worried someone had followed him home. When she tried to hug him, he darted away. He was too strung out to stand still for even a moment.
It was when he went to the sink a few minutes later and rolled up his shirt sleeve that Megan saw the bite mark. The wound on his arm looked superficial, but Dalton’s hooded sweatshirt was torn in a couple of places. There were blood spatters on his clothes and Megan wondered if there were any other wounds he was hiding from her.
Dalton pulled off his sweatshirt and tossed it into the trash can. Still agitated after cleaning up at the kitchen sink, he locked himself in the bathroom. Megan tried to leave him alone for a while, certain her husband just needed time alone to calm down. But when he didn’t come out for ten minutes, she couldn’t wait any longer and banged on the door, demanding Dalton talk to her.
When he came out, Dalton still didn’t want to be touched. The thrill of seeing him again had been replaced by a dread that grew inside Megan. Dalton was alive, but what he’d seen out there had rattled him to the core. He was supposed to be the cool and rational one-the one who remained calm no matter what. Instead, he looked like some scared kid who’d been frightened nearly to death.
The next few hours were almost as bad for Megan as it had been waiting on Dalton to return from his trip outside. She prided herself on knowing her husband fairly well, but even a complete stranger could tell that something was terribly wrong with Dalton LeValley. After any stressful event Dalton was always the first to make light of it, smile and joke, washing away the stress and forcing himself to forget. That was not the Dalton Megan was seeing here. It was then that she realized he was dealing with something more traumatic than a violent run in with some teenagers.
Megan had seen the broadcasts and watched the scientists debate over what was causing the virus to be transmitted so easily from victim to victim. There were countless theories, but the one that stood out from all the others was that it was transmitted through the blood-through bites and scratches.
She didn’t want to accept it, but there it was. Megan wept as she tried to deny the truth of the matter. Dalton had been bitten and he was infected.
Dalton was lying on their bed, and perhaps it was her crying that allowed him to see past his own pain for the first time since his return. He held out a shaky hand to his wife and Megan fought against the urge to recoil as she looked at the wound on his arm, which he wouldn’t let her see before. The bite mark had turned black, with red, puffy skin surrounding it. The infection was definitely in his blood, and she could see that the skin on Dalton’s entire arm looked discolored and in bad shape.
Megan wanted so desperately to touch Dalton, but what if the infection didn’t just spread through the blood, but from touch as well? As she stood above him, near the edge of the bed, her heart racing, Megan looked into the pleading eyes of her husband and realized she didn’t care.
She took Dalton’s hand in hers and climbed in next to him, feeling the heat radiating off of his body. He felt like a blast furnace as she touched his forehead. It was as if his brain was boiling beneath his skull. Megan immediately sprung up from the bed, mumbling something about getting him a cold washcloth, and ran to the bathroom.
As Megan doused the cloth in cold water her hands were shaking. As she glanced at the mirror a ghost stared back at her. There was no blood in her normally olive toned skin.
“Get a grip, Megan. Keep it together. You have to for Dalton’s sake.” The whispered words were drowned out by the running water, but had the desired effect. Megan was able to resist the urge to break down crying again. Instead, she turned off the water and rubbed away the tears that had already fallen.
Returning to the bedroom, Megan could feel the washcloth cold and wet in her hands. She leaned over the stationary form of her husband and gently put the cloth on his forehead, wondering if even though it was wet, it might burst into flames from the overpowering heat coming off of Dalton. When he grabbed her wrist Megan jumped, startled. She yelped before she could cover her mouth with her free hand as she stared into his eyes. The hazel color she had always loved was beginning to cloud over with a milky film.
“Promise me … promise me you won’t let me change …”
It was only a whisper. Megan stared into his dull and weeping eyes, fighting to break free of their hypnotic effect. She wanted to shake her head and turn away, to avoid seeing the ravages of the virus as it changed Dalton, twisting and warping him into some kind of monster. Although it was still her beloved husband lying before her, he was already changing as his body was consumed with poison.
Megan touched his face gently. “Everything is going to be okay, baby,” she said in a surprisingly steady voice. She forced herself to look deeper into Dalton’s eyes. His fetid breath smelled of rot and it was all she could do to not gag. Instead, Megan smiled weakly at him. She wanted to run to the toilet and throw up, but stood her ground. This was her husband, no matter what was happening and she had to make sure he knew she was there for him, would stay by his side no matter what.
Dalton attempted to smile. Although he was wheezing and showing all the signs of a terminally ill patient, he seemed to be winning the battle with his fear.
He retained his grip on Megan’s wrist as he spoke again. “I’m going to head down to the basement. Please help me get down there. We have some giant sized trash bags I can lay on. If you wrap a towel around the revolver it will muffle the blast and not drawn any attention to the house.”
Megan only heard the first sentence, and then the blood pounding in her ears was just too loud. She’d felt faint before, but nothing like this.
A couple of minutes later … or maybe it was much later, Dalton was still holding her tight and all she could remember was screaming “No! No! No!” over and over again while she battered his shoulders with her small fists. Dalton was weak, but still had enough strength to get control of Megan and hold her until she stopped. He waited patiently for her to regain some sense of comprehension before he spoke again.
“God I know this is hard honey. There is nothing easy about it. I love you. More than you’ll ever know. But I CAN’T change what’s happening to me. Don’t you see? Either I have to do this myself or you have to …” at that Dalton broke down crying, taking his arms away from Megan as his broad shoulders shook and heaved.
The world was ending right that second. Megan could feel it. There was nothing left. She would pull the trigger and murder her husband, then stick the barrel in her mouth to put the final touch on this nightmare. She sure as hell couldn’t stay here without him. That wasn’t going to happen.
At that moment Megan was angry. Angry at herself for letting Dalton leave the house and angry for not letting him go a few days earlier when it might have been safe outside. She was angry with Dalton for coming back infected. She was angry at God, who seemed to be turning his back on them. The world was coming to an end and God didn’t give a shit.
Dalton’s crying slowed as Megan’s rage grew. He tried to take a deep breath to steady himself, but a coughing jag took him and lasted several minutes. Megan sprung up and ran to get him a towel as Dalton spat up blood, bile, and whatever else his body was liquefying as the virus tore through his system. He gestured for her to stay back, but to toss him the towel.
As the coughing died down Dalton was able to speak again. “You have to live Megan. No matter how bad you feel, you need to make it through this.”
The look in Dalton’s eyes told Megan that her husband knew what she’d been thinking about. More tears flowed from her eyes as Megan shook her head violently. None of this should be happening. It wasn’t fair.
“I’ll be dead in a few hours, Megan. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s true. But you won’t be. You’re alive and I want you to stay that way. You can make it through this crap, I know you can! The house is fortified and by yourself there is enough food and water to last a long time.”
Megan could only stare at her husband. The idea of putting a bullet in Dalton’s head was abhorrent, but she knew that he would pull the trigger if she didn’t. That was as much a part of who Dalton was as anything else: once he made up his mind, he followed through to the bitter end. No chance things would be different this time.
Dalton took the towel and wiped away the spittle and sweat from his face, though his lips remained crimson from the blood he’d coughed up. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and Megan resisted the urge to rush to his side to help him. If he wanted to go down to the basement to commit suicide, he could do it by himself.
Megan wondered if the man she had loved since their third date would do more than say goodbye as he left their bedroom, or would realize he couldn’t go through with this and instead profess his endless love to her. It was a selfish thought, and she knew it. All she could think about was how this impacted her and her existence. She wanted Dalton to fight this thing, resist it, so she didn’t have to accept that this was truly the end of their lives together.
Megan watched as Dalton got out of bed and moved toward the door. He looked at her but said nothing. He could see the parade of emotions on her face and likely knew how impossible all of this was for his wife. And that was when it hit her.
Even as Dalton was dying, he was thinking of his wife, which was exactly what she was doing. In the last few hours of his life he was more concerned with her well being than his impending demise.
That was when Megan ran to Dalton and slid under his shoulder to help him make it down the stairs without stumbling or falling. She was too short for him lean on her effectively, but the pained smile on Dalton’s face told her how grateful he was.
Dalton’s last few hours were better than Megan could have hoped for. They talked about everything, cried, and even laughed a few times.
Toward the end, Dalton touched Megan’s cheek with shaking hands as he started to fade. She watched as her husband fought to stay coherent, her face stunned and fearful.
Dalton had avoided telling Megan what to do up to that point, instead sharing the memories they both cherished in an attempt to forget his impending doom, if only for a little while. But as he felt his body shutting down and the pain gripping him so tightly he could barely resist crying out in agony, Dalton knew he had to explain what needed to be done.
“Do it before I turn. Don’t wait long; it probably won’t take more than a minute or so after my heart stops.” Dalton’s eyes were closed as he spoke and his skin was a gray, almost translucent as the virus’s victory over his body was nearing completion.
Megan heard the words and despite the fact that Dalton’s eyelids remained closed, she nodded down at him, knowing that if she said anything her voice would crack and she would lose control.
She was still considering pulling the trigger on the .357 Magnum not once, but twice. It would be so easy: they would escape this lunacy together. ‘Til death do us part-that was the vow, wasn’t it? But what if she didn’t want death to part them?
Megan remained lost in her thoughts, only half listening to the rattle of Dalton’s breathing, when she realized that the basement was silent. She glanced down at her husband and tried to hold back the flood of tears as she realized he was gone. His chest had stopped rising and the loud and ragged breathing had cut off. Dalton was laying there, his head resting on a garbage bag she had placed beneath him at his request, his eyes closed for the last time.
So when he sprung back up a moment later Megan felt her heart stop and her bladder let loose. Dalton grabbed his wife’s arms, looking at her with eyes that were dead and unseeing.
Megan didn’t time to ponder the fact that she had waited too long to do what he had asked. All she knew was she was going to die on the basement floor as her husband attacked her. As he pulled her close, she prayed the pain would be fleeting.
Before she could scream out or squirm loose he spoke.
“… make it! … to keep fighting!”
It was all Dalton could spit out. He fell back so fast his skull thumped against the concrete floor, his grip loosening (later there would be welts where he had grabbed her).
This time there was no doubt Dalton was truly dead. He was gone and taken with him everything Megan loved in the world. His last words echoed in her head: he wanted her to keep fighting.
The terror of his death grip on her receded and her heart rate dropped back to normal. Megan’s head was pounding, but she felt more alert than she had been in a long time. The jolt to her system had cleared her head.
Megan stared at the body of her husband as she stood. She lifted the dead weight of the pistol as she hovered over Dalton’s corpse. She was the only mourner he would ever have.
It was up to her to say good bye.
Megan reached for the towel and wrapped it around the muzzle as Dalton had instructed her.
What if I wait? The though slithered through Megan’s head like a serpent, its forked tongue tickling and teasing her. What if I wait to see if he gets back up? I’ll be able to look in his eyes and know for sure.
The thought that Dalton was somehow still in there, inside his ruined body, splashed Megan with irrational hope. She looked at him with love in her heart, wanting to touch him again and wanting him to touch her as well. He’ll look at me and know who I am. He’ll understand what happened and still know he’s my husband.
“No…”
Megan shook her head. She raised the gun and rubbed the towel against her wet forehead.
“I love you so much Dalton. I would give anything to have you back with me. But I …”
The pain in Megan’s stomach made her double over. A huge knot had formed inside her gut. She moaned and almost fell to her knees, but somehow retained her balance.
“You’re the best man I’ve ever known. I will always love you Dalton.”
As she pulled the trigger, Megan swore she saw her husband’s eyes opening. The gun kicked and the towel covering the barrel shredded away as the bullet traveled at a tremendous velocity and blasted a hole the size of a dime in Dalton’s forehead. Megan blinked as she fired and when her eyes opened again she saw that Dalton’s eyes were still closed.
Megan avoided looking at the mess splattered across the garbage bags underneath Dalton’s head. Instead, she grabbed a couple of extra trash bags they’d brought down and laid them on top of him. She unwound the towel from the gun and dropped it beside the body. She was trying to be as clinical and removed from the situation as possible.
It isn’t Dalton, it’s just his corpse. She repeated that over and over in her head in a vain attempt to drown out the part of her mind that wanted to believe if Dalton had come back he would recognized and love her still.
Megan’s thoughts bounced against one another, tormenting her until she raised an arm to her mouth and bit down, hard. The torment inside of her head disappeared with a muffled scream as the coppery taste of blood filled Megan’s mouth. She kept screaming as she stumbled up the steps.
Somehow, Megan managed to hold on to the gun all the way to the bedroom. Later, she would contemplate using it on herself again, but always at the back of her mind was her husband’s dying wish. She held on to the weapon, keeping it close, telling herself it was there, just in case.
Another review for Comes The Dark and another one I am pretty pleased with. I am particularly fond of this quote from the review:
“Comes the Dark is non-stop action. It feels as if you are watching a movie that you can’t get up to go to the bathroom because you might miss something. D’Orazio, portrays the undead in the best light, hungry, vicious creatures with a destructive appetite.”
A lot of things have been happening lately in my writing and personal life, and it feels like I am finally able to take a breather for a moment before I dive back into the chaos. Most of what has been going on has been good, though there have been a few trials as well. I am going to just talk about the good things here, and try to keep it brief.
First off, the Kindle version of Comes The Dark has been ‘fixed’. By this, I mean that a few formatting errors that occurred in the transfer to the kindle have been rectified and the new and improved version looks terrific. For anyone who bought the original version, they can re-upload it and will get the new, clean version. I was told by the folks over at Kindle that anyone who has any problems with that process can reach out to them by via the contact button at www.amazon.com/kindlesupport. Hopefully, that won’t be necessary and it will just be a click of a button on your Kindle. Of course, that also means for anyone who hasn’t bought it already, the Kindle version of my book is back up and running. At $2.99, its a terrific price, so check it out!
Second, I wanted to announce that I will be posting a few stories here under the category “Dark Stories” that I had originally written with the intention of including in Comes The Dark or in one of its sequels. There were several reasons why that did not happen, including space limitations. As I have mentioned in more than one interview, I originally wrote about a half a million words for what would become this trilogy. The final word count of the trilogy is around 170,000, give or take a couple thousand. That doesn’t mean the 330,000 words that were sliced in the editing process was pure gold…or even tin for that matter, but some of it was decent back story on characters, including flashbacks as well as parallel stories happening at the same time as events in the novels. With a little more editing, I am hoping to present a few choice bits here on my blog that will give readers of my trilogy a bit extra about characters like Megan, George, and others that are introduced in the sequels to Comes The Dark. I hope to post the first story within the next week or so. After that, there won’t be a set schedule, but I will try to post some more after Horror Realm, which is two weeks from now.
Third, I have been working on Chapter 12 in the Collaboration of the Dead novel that nineteen writers agreed to take part in several months back. Each writer gets to write two chapters, one in the first half of the book, and one in the second half. Since 11 chapters have already been written, my responsibility leans more toward character development rather than introducing new characters-at least that is how I see things. I realize that others have been adding new characters all along and will probably continue to do so, but I am focused on stirring the pot with what is already there. All I can say about this process is that it is tougher than I had expected. I was nervous about it from the get go, given that so many other talented writers would be counting on me to avoid screwing things up at the very least and maybe even doing something a bit better than that. Now that I am actually writing this, I find that I am putting more pressure on myself than I would have for something I was doing for myself. With that said, it is still a blast, and a learning experience to boot. Here’s hoping that I don’t get stoned when I submit my chapter, or worse yet, asked not to write the second chapter I’m supposed to write down the line!
Yep, you heard that right. Comes The Dark has been reviewed by Another Pissed Off Geek. But not just any pissed off geek, but the ones over at http://www.pissedoffgeek.com. Yep, my book got the geek treatment! I happy to have another review out there of my book, and am happy of what they thought of my book. So check it out!
I was recently interviewed by Mike Gardner over at Living Dead Corner about Comes The Dark as well as some of the short stories I’ve been working on. We also chatted about the upcoming sequel and the third installment in my trilogy, along with some other interesting topics. Take a look see over at: http://livingdeadcorner.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-with-author-patrick-dorazio.html
I want to thank Mike for taking the time to interview me and asking some great questions. It was fun doing the interview with another up and coming horror writer.
Check out this latest review of my novel, Comes The Dark. This one comes from Tony Schaab over at The G.O.R.E. Score. I’m pretty thrilled to have another positive review of my book and hope you check it out.
Reviews keep coming in and thus far, they have all been positive. Tony gave me an honest, constructive review, which I love, because it will help me continue to become a better author and story teller with my future stories.
So if you haven’t checked out Comes The Dark yet, after you check out some of the reviews I’ve posted, give it a shot. 🙂
I haven’t really posted something that was just my thoughts on writing since this whole process of the book actually being publish began a few weeks ago. At this stage in the game, it seems to be all about promoting my work more than anything else, so I really haven’t talked about what is going on with my writing efforts nowadays (except for short stories that are being released now, or very soon). So I thought I would take a few moments and actually contemplate where things are at the present moment.
I have given some thought to posting some of the extra “stuff” that I wrote for the three novels that start with Comes The Dark here on my blog. Stuff that helped me develop the story and give it some background-stories about the characters that didn’t make the final cut. Since there was so much of that, it might make sense to provide a few blog entries on the story of George and Jason, or Megan, as well as some of the other things that took place ‘behind the scenes’ as it were. In time, when the book has been out there for a while, I may start doing that, although not on any specific schedule. I will have to see what comes of things. What really makes me think that it may be worthwhile to do this is the fact that one of these ‘stories’ has been accepted as a stand alone short story for an anthology called Eye Witness Zombie, being published by May December Publishers, and are tales of the zombocalypse told from a first person perspective. I had to do some modifications to make it first person, but after that was done, the story worked well as a stand alone. It has ties with the second novel in my trilogy, which will be released early next year, but not enough that it actually reveals any (or much) of the plot of my novel. I remembered originally writing this story in one fevered pitch-I pumped out about 16,000 words in one night, most of which was unintelligible garbage at the time. It was a total tangent-loosely related to the novel, but off on its own, with a character who appears nowhere else as the central focus. He had a very vague connection to two characters in the books though and that led me to write it that night. The unintelligible garbage got reworked and inserted into the novel, then I realized it was a massive amount of words that took the reader on a journey that was off the primary path of the story, even if i felt it was a good story to tell. So finding it a home after I cut it from the final novel made me extremely happy. I really believe it is a story worth telling. Now if only the other ones I have in mind are as well. They will be more closely related to the novels with main characters at the heart of them, so it will be much more difficult to promote them as stand alone short stories, but giving them a home here on the blog may be the idea place for them.
In other news, as I have been doing since I started this blog, I have been writing a lot of short stories. I am probably not the most prolific writer, but I do try to hit as many submission calls that my publisher has, as well as some others out there from other houses that look interesting. I wish I had specific release dates on some of the ones that have been accepted, but whether they are coming out this year or next, I am pretty excited about all of them (as most writers would be about their babies). I am currently trying my hand at a bit of erotic horror, which is much like bizarro for me in that I have never written anything in this particular genre before, and doubt it will ever become my forte. Then again, my bizarro story made the cut in an anthology, so if my erotica tale does as well, who knows? I don’t know much, but what I have learned so far is not to pigeon hole myself as a writer. I am keeping all doors open, especially as I help my son write his YA zombie/vampire/werewolf story. The boy has no boundaries when it comes to ideas, so it is always a trip to hear him talk about it.
As I continue promoting my novel and work on getting the second one ready to go for my publisher (the first round of edits are already complete and I have turned in my revisions, so that process is going great), I also need to start working on my next book, which I have been saying to myself as well as anyone else who will listen, that I have already started on it. Given that it is outlined and I like the outline a great deal, the time is probably ripe for me to start pounding it out on the keyboard. Outlines for me are guides that can be adjusted and modified as needed for as many sudden changes that need to take place in a book or story. Many writers I know find outlines to be restricting and binding to the point that they hate them. I guess I am not that type of writer, because while I love to have as many sudden inspirations that change everything as much as the next person, I need a skeleton, even a weirdly shaped one, to start pinning stuff to, which is why I outline so much. So I build a blue print, which for others may be the equivalent of actually starting to write the story, since my outlines often take on a rather deep complexity, with minute details in them that sort of defies the idea of it being only an ‘outline’. But since I don’t consider it writing until I start putting it into the actual MS word document, the term outline will have to due for whatever it is I have already done for novel number 4.
I guess that is enough rambling for now. Tomorrow is another day for me to keep attacking this new erotic story and to beat myself up a bit more about the next novel, and to think about all the formatting stuff I need to do for the second novel…and some of the other submission calls and what their due dates are, because I don’t want to miss them.
Did you know that you can order various books from Library of the Living Dead Press in pdf format that you can read on your computer or upload to your e-reader, like the Kindle, Nook, and others?
Just another way to access Comes The Dark along with a ton of other great books with ease.
I just wanted to shout from the rooftops after seeing this new review for Comes The Dark over at Dollar Bin Horror. Head on over there and check it out!
It is currently selling for $10.76, which is the same sale price over at Amazon. So if you are so inclined, feel free to head over to B&N and make a purchase there. Also, feel free to drop a review on that site after you read my book, since it is currently barren of reviews, while there are four at Amazon.
I am very excited to announce that Comes The Dark is now on the Kindle device, and can be bought for the low low price of $2.99! We are talking less than the price of a Happy Meal, and dang near less than a gallon of gas!
So if you have this device, do yourself a favor and check out my book.
My original plan was to post the first three chapters of my book before it was released here on my blog, but my publisher did such a great job of getting the book out and available so quickly that I didn’t get the chance to post chapter 3 before this whirlwind of events started happening. So I thought I would post all three chapters here, back to back, to save you the trouble of searching for the previous chapters further back in the blog. My hope is that if you like the first few chapters, you will give my book a shot and buy it over on Amazon. It can be found there at http://www.amazon.com/Comes-Dark-Zombie-Patrick-DOrazio/dp/1453701281/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280498. It will also be available on the Kindle within the next week to ten days and there are rumblings that it may be available on http://www.barnesandnobles.com as well as the Nook down the road. In addition to this, you can order the book through any brick and mortar bookstore by requesting it through the Ingrams catalog and referencing the ISBN number, which is:
ISBN-10: 1453701281
ISBN-13: 978-1453701287
Sorry, I am not sure how ISBN numbers work, so I figured I would post both of them.
Anyway, without further ado, here are the first three chapters of Comes The Dark.
Chapter 1
Jeff bit his lip as he tried to maintain a grip on the aluminum baseball bat in his sweaty hands. He splashed through a slick puddle of blood as he continued running down the sidewalk.
The backpack jounced up and down and he slipped his hand around the strap to make sure it stayed in place. The tin cans and boxes of crackers thumped in time to his footsteps. Increasing his speed, he tried to suck in another lungful of air.
The howls of rage had grown distant but slowing down wasn’t an option. Not until he was safely back inside. As he crested the hill a smile tugged at Jeff’s lips—there were only a few more houses to pass and he would be home free.
Pulling tighter on the frayed strap hanging over his shoulder, he moved onto the grass to avoid hearing his own footsteps. Eyes darting back and forth, he spied no movement as his house came into view. It was hard to believe it had only been an hour since he had crept out to go on a hunt for food. He spotted the dark brown side door, which stood in stark contrast to the light beige siding that surrounded it.
Skidding to a halt in front of the door, Jeff’s eyes narrowed. There was a smudge near the knob. A rusty red finger-shaped outline caused his heart to skip a beat.
Feeling a rush of white hot terror flooding his system, Jeff looked around, eyes shifting to the bushes at the back of his neighbor’s house. He could feel his heart racing and pulse accelerate as he tried to keep his breathing normal. Turning quickly, he looked across the street at the other houses, scanning for movement among the shadows. Ignoring the moans and howls off in the distance, he tried to reassure himself no one was watching or waiting to pounce. Taking a deep breath, he tried to tell himself that everything was going to be okay.
The smudge had not been there before. He recalled staring at the door after shutting it earlier and wondering if leaving, even if for a little while, was such a good idea. There had been no scratches and certainly no blood on the door when he left. That was not something the detail oriented man would have missed.
Jeff dug into his pocket and curled his fingers around the house key. Regardless of whoever…or whatever…had left the mark on the door all that mattered now was getting back inside before he was discovered out here.
As the key touched the knob and the door moved slightly, Jeff’s eyes widened and his hand began to quiver. The door was already unlocked. Worse, it wasn’t even shut. He began to shake his head and whisper “no” over and over. It couldn’t be.
Jeff knew he had locked the door when he left. He had hugged Ellen, told Frankie and Mary to behave for mommy, and then…
A cold, stark fear for his family’s safety overrode the slow itch of terror in Jeff’s gut as he slammed his fist into the door and burst into the garage. Staring into the darkened space, he nearly stumbled but somehow his watery legs managed to hold him up.
Mark, his next door neighbor, was bent over Ellen, teeth buried in her neck. A wide pool of bright red fluid gushed from where he gnawed at her torn flesh.
Jeff froze in the doorway as he desperately tried to comprehend what he was seeing. The guy he had shared a few beers with over discussions about politics, baseball, and the Horton’s Rottweiler crapping in their yards was tearing into his wife’s throat. Jeff couldn’t quite see Ellen’s face because Mark’s blood-drenched hand was clasped over her eyes and nose, but it was definitely her. There was a faint scent of jasmine in the air mixed in with the rich coppery scent of blood. It was that perfume she always wore. The tenth anniversary diamond ring he had given her a year before sparkled in a splash of sunlight as her arm flopped to the side. Jeff’s eyes gravitated to the ring but it was hard to catch more than a brief glimpse of it as his wife’s fingers twitched violently in response to the tearing motion of Mark’s teeth.
The door, already forgotten, banged against the wall. Jeff did not hear the sound over the pounding of his heart but Mark did. The grayish figure lifted his head and hissed at Jeff, his teeth caked with bits of Ellen’s flesh. Ragged runners of gruel bubbled from his mouth as the lunatic huddled protectively over his prize.
All Jeff could think was that this was madness. In a few seconds Mark would wink at him and Ellen would sit up and say something like “gotcha.” Then they would all laugh at how gullible Jeff had been to even believe for a second that any of this was real.
But as waves of horror washed over him, Jeff tried and failed to deny the reality of what he was seeing. Mark’s milky white eyes peered up at him; dark pinpricks that had been his pupils the only color remaining in them. Forcing himself to look away from the crumpled form of his wife, Jeff stared at his neighbor once again. Mark’s shirt was torn open and hung slack on his oddly colored flesh. There were various sores and open wounds displayed on his neck, arms, and chest. Greenish-black ooze stained the infected man’s clothing and as he began to lever his body up, the stench slammed into Jeff like a sledgehammer.
Jeff wanted to run. He wanted to run screaming from this place and never look back. But as he shifted his gaze back to the only woman he had ever loved, a hundred different memories flooded into his mind, blotting out the image of the gore-stained lump of flesh that remained behind: kissing her for the first time at midnight on New Year’s Eve…burning the dinner he had cooked for her on the night he proposed…watching her and Mary drench the kitchen in flour when they tried to bake cookies together. There was an echoing scream rattling inside Jeff’s head but he couldn’t get it past his lips. All those memories, along with his wife, had been obliterated in the blink of an eye.
Jeff tried to take a step back but discovered his shoulder was pressed against the doorjamb, blocking his escape. His legs had moved of their own volition, dragging the stunned survivor backwards until there was nowhere left to go. As Mark finally rose up and moved slowly toward him, Jeff realized he couldn’t breathe anymore.
Mark’s eyes fixed on Jeff and he felt his legs and arms stiffen in terror. The lunatic’s pupils were almost hypnotic as they burrowed into him. There was great pain and rage in those eyes, but more than anything, there was hunger…a profound hunger that could devour the world if given the chance.
As the ghoul dragged its ruined body over Ellen’s corpse it tripped and staggered. Jeff blinked as he watched the bogeyman right himself awkwardly. In that moment, it was as if the world suddenly snapped back into place. Mark had turned into some kind of monster to be feared, that much was true, but he was also the bastard that had murdered his wife. Watching carefully as Mark pulled his back foot over Ellen’s prone form, Jeff gripped the baseball bat tightly as he got into a wobbly batter’s stance.
The swing was not his best but it still connected with Mark’s arm, sending him sideways. There was a muffled thump as the bat connected with the infected man’s spoiled flesh. Jeff’s eyes widened when Mark did not react to the painful blow, his milky-white eyes never losing sight of their target. Adjusting, Mark got his feet back underneath him and kept coming.
The second swing was stronger, aimed at Mark’s face. It connected with the ghoul’s neck instead and there was an audible crack as bones broke. Mark’s head twisted, wrapping around the bat as his skin stretched and tore. His knees buckled but he did not fall over immediately. Instead, one of his arms shot out in an effort to grab a hold of Jeff’s shirt.
Letting go of the bat, Jeff pushed back against the wall even harder, doing his best to burrow through the drywall. The bat clattered to the floor and Mark took a single wavering step forward before collapsing. His head slammed into the concrete with an audible thud.
Jeff stood stiffly next to the slumped over body for what seemed an eternity. He stared into his neighbor’s eyes as a torrent of emotions poured over him. Irrationally, he feared the repercussions of murdering his neighbor though Mark would probably argue that he wasn’t dead if he could still speak. Instead, the ghastly creature stared balefully up at Jeff as small noises burbled from his shattered throat. Unable to move his body, Mark continued to grind his teeth and hiss, unchecked rage carved on his face.
When Jeff’s heart rate settled and he started to breathe normally he unglued his eyes from the man at his feet and looked at his wife, whose appendages were no longer twitching. Crumpled, with legs bunched up underneath her, Jeff could see the rubber burn marks on the floor beneath her beat up sneakers. It was clear she had struggled fiercely, even as Mark sunk his teeth into her throat. She was always a fighter, he thought. Now that Ellen’s face was no longer covered Jeff could see that her eyes weren’t shut, a look of terror still on her face. There was agony in those green eyes…an agony that must have been the last thing she had felt.
Jeff’s knees gave way and he crumpled to the ground. Slamming his eyes shut he willed the horrible images of Ellen’s death that were burned into his retinas to go away. He felt dizzy and nauseous but since he had not eaten in nearly a day there would probably be nothing but dry heaves when the sickness finally overpowered him.
That was when he heard a blood curdling scream from down the street.
It had taken every last bit of his willpower to not curl up in a ball when he heard the noises coming from less than a block away. They had tracked him down. By the time he levered himself up from the floor and moved past Mark to slam and lock the door, he could hear them getting closer. His neighbors were closing in on the house. Jeff didn’t have the strength to look outside and see how many there were. Instead, he leaned against the door, panting and exhausted as the moans grew louder.
Raising his head, his eyes suddenly darted around and his body tensed. He tried to blot out the noises outside so he could capture another sound just hitting his ears. He looked at the door leading into the house.
Adrenaline flooded Jeff’s system again as reality came crashing down. The sound coming through the door was clearer than the muffled roars of anger and hunger bellowing from outside and yet…it sounded very familiar.
He began to hyperventilate, shaking his head in disbelief. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have blanked out and forgotten?
But the blood splatters in the laundry room confirmed what the cold, calculating part of Jeff’s brain already understood but the rest of him refused to believe.
Mark wasn’t the only one that had gotten into the house.
Jeff flew through the door. Everything inside him screamed that he had to move quickly, get inside, and stop these marauders. But as he heard the moans coming from upstairs he feared he was already too late.
Jeff steeled himself as he rushed inside; hoping against hope that he was wrong, and that somehow these monsters that had once been human had not found his children’s hiding place upstairs.
A short time later Jeff returned to the garage, his eyes dull, his arms splattered with blood. The aluminum bat was slung over his shoulder, dripping a thick, tar-like substance.
He ignored the pounding and screams of rage outside the garage door. They had found him, after all this time. The insanity outside had finally broken into his home and annihilated everything he knew.
As he slumped to the wooden steps, the small window on the side door shattered and was quickly followed by the sound of fists thumping on the thick slab of wood nailed behind it. Jeff idly wondered how long his jury-rigged barricade would hold up and if it really mattered anymore. He set the bat down and put his chin in his hands, propping his elbows on his knees.
As he sat listening to the scratching and clawing, interspersed with ragged fists splattering against the wood, he glanced down at the two bodies in the garage. He took a deep breath into his lungs, doing his best to ignore the thick taste of death that came with it. Mark was facing away so at least the man wasn’t staring at him.
His eyes slid from Mark to the pile of gas cans in the corner. Several propane tanks sat next to the smaller canisters, along with some other odds and ends Jeff had picked up a few weeks back when things had started getting dicey. He shook his head in disbelief. Back then their worst concern was potential power outages and being forced to use the barbeque grill for all their cooking.
His eyes left the pile of supplies and moved back toward his wife. Jeff wondered when he was going to cry. His eyes were still dry, even as he looked at the ragged blood filled hole Mark had left where her throat had been. He hadn’t cried inside the house, even as he cradled his dead daughter and whispered her name over and over again.
The pounding outside was getting louder. It sounded like there was an army of them out there. They hadn’t moved to the front yard yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Then it was only a matter of time before they tore through the hastily nailed up boards and plywood covering the windows and found their way inside.
Twisting his neck around to loosen up the stiffness, Jeff stood up. Gazing down on his wife, he recalled how her eyes used to sparkle like a thousand tiny emeralds. That green was gone now, replaced with the telltale cloudiness that warned of infection.
When her hand twitched Jeff backpedaled, slipping on the stairs and falling hard on his ass. Slowly, he felt his body grow cold as it became clear what was happening. Head slumping in defeat, he rubbed his eyes and knew what he had to do.
Her hand twitched again. Ellen was waking up.
Grabbing for his bat, Jeff cradled it to his chest. His hands felt weak and useless, but he held on to the aluminum cylinder like a security blanket.
Suddenly, a sound like someone ramming their head against the side door made him jump. Looking over, he saw that the wood was starting to splinter.
Spying Mark out of the corner of his eye, Jeff saw that despite a broken neck, his neighbor had managed to shift his head enough so he could stare at Jeff again. The hunger in those eyes was undeniable and Jeff knew he couldn’t bare it if he had to see that same look in Ellen’s eyes.
Taking another deep breath, he stood and lifted the baseball bat. The fear was gone, replaced with a depthless despair. His wife’s legs were starting to move. Her eyes were still vacant and empty, but wouldn’t be for long.
“I love you honey,” Jeff choked out as he felt the strength return to his hands. He gripped the bat tighter and raised it above his head.
The first swing took every ounce of courage he had.
The ones after that came a lot easier.
Chapter 2
Ten minutes later Jeff was in the kitchen, stuffing the remnants of his dwindling food supply into his son’s backpack. There wasn’t much left, just some half-eaten boxes of cereal and dry noodles to gnaw on. That was what it had come to. It was why he had left the house to search for supplies. Jeff blinked as he suddenly realized his family had died for a few cans of beans and some crackers.
He angrily jammed the last of his meager rations into the bag and ran toward the steps leading to the second floor. From the back of the house came the sound of more glass shattering. He had covered the big picture window with plywood and it was holding for the moment. The wood vibrated under a barrage of hammering fists but stayed in place. He rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Glad to get away from the stench of infection filtering through the windows and doors, he took a right into his office, trying his best to ignore the shattered door on the left side of the hallway and the carnage that lay beyond it.
Rummaging through one of his bookshelves he found a souvenir mug and dumped its contents on the desk. Sifting through the coins, bits of paper, and other faint memories, Jeff spotted a tiny key. Grabbing it, he went to the top of the bookshelf and pulled down a lock box. Unlocking it quickly he spotted the gun. The tiny pewter weapon with the black grip was still in its original box. Jeff looked at the etched wording on the barrel: MODEL RAVEN CAL-.25 AUTO. He picked up the small clip sitting next to it and slid it into the gun. He nearly laughed. It was a pea-shooter that carried a meager six bullets in the clip. Shoving it in his pocket, he promptly forgot about it.
Moving to the other side of the desk he began to rifle through it. After grabbing a pocket knife and the Mag-Lite, Jeff looked around his office. That was it. He sighed and shook his head. He was no survivalist but a baseball bat, a purse gun, and heavy flashlight probably weren’t going to get him very far.
As he turned to leave he spied something else on one of the book shelves and stared at it for a moment. It was the photo of Ellen and the kids on their last vacation at the lake. Jeff remembered taking the picture. It had been early, maybe about six a.m. Ellen had been trying to drag the kids out of bed for ten minutes. They didn’t want to go out on the boat and didn’t want to swim. They just wanted to sleep. She started tickling them and after a couple of minutes the three were wrestling in a tangle of sheets, screaming and giggling. Taking the picture had been spontaneous; Jeff had grabbed the camera out of his bag without thinking. They were smiling, laughing, their eyes lost in a moment of pure bliss. When he showed Ellen the picture she hated it. Her hair was a mess and she had no makeup on. When he put it on display in his office she was angry until he explained. “Everything that matters to me is in that picture. It’s you and the kids, happy. That’s all I care about.” She never said another word about it.
Jeff’s fingers quivered as he traced the outline of their faces. Another angry scream filtered from below and he tore his eyes away from the picture. Cramming it into his pocket, he headed back downstairs.
It’s time to go.
The urgent thought beat out a staccato rhythm inside his head as he made it back to the main floor. Rushing into the garage he could hear the roar outside. They were actually starting to throw their bodies against the side door now. The sound of them crashing against the house was nearly overwhelming but Jeff ignored it and tossed his small amount of supplies into the minivan. Snatching up the baseball bat he ran back inside.
He was out of breath as he got to the front door. Bending at the knees, he tried sucking in as much air as possible and tried to settle down. The noise at the front of the house wasn’t nearly as bad. The mob had not spread to the front door yet, which worked well with his hastily cobbled together plan. Bending over, he snatched up the hammer dropped there a few minutes before and started prying at the two by four nailed across the door.
It took some effort but within a couple of minutes the board was down and the only thing that stood between Jeff and the outside world was a deadbolt.
Digging into another pocket he pulled out the key to the car sitting in the driveway. Palming the dark plastic key fob, he pressed the red alarm button. Suddenly, an urgent honking cut through the tumult of screams and howls that had nearly driven Jeff’s family mad over the past few weeks. For a moment it seemed as if this new noise, so shocking and ordinary, would overpower all others. But it was not to be. A tide of rage carried the volume of his neighbors above that of the horn as they began attacking the car.
“Stupid mother-fuckers,” he snorted with disdain. After listening for a few more seconds he pressed the red button again and the alarm cut off, replaced with the sound of wet slaps on the hood of the Impala. Glass shattered and Jeff could imagine a thick press of bodies trying to get at whoever had been honking the horn.
He strained to hear as much as possible. There was frustration and rage, but more importantly, he heard no one on the porch ready to punch a hole through the front door. Taking a deep breath, he slowly let it out as he scooped up the baseball bat and put his hand on the deadbolt. Turning his head, Jeff took one last look around the house. He wanted to remember it as it had once been and not what it was about to become. Nodding to assure himself, he tried to keep his breathing steady as he turned to face the door.
Flipping the dead bolt, he tensed as his hand slipped down to the knob.
“Well, here goes nothing.”
Jeff opened his front door.
Chapter 3
A wall of sound washed over Jeff. The depth of the noise was profound and he felt as if he was on a stage, the world around him vibrating with excitement. His skin contracted around every hair on his body all at once. It was almost painful as the goose bumps puckered his flesh and the sound jarred his bones.
There was the smell as well. It had been out there before, when he had slithered through the neighborhood, but nothing like this. The stench, the miasma from a hundred infected and befouled bodies, had no discretion as it poured over him, baptizing him in its corruption.
Opening the door hadn’t drawn any attention but as he let go of the knob it slammed against the wall, making a loud thumping noise as the door slowly began moving back toward Jeff. He jumped slightly and swung his head toward the mass of stiffened bodies milling around his car.
The mob turned as one to stare at him. The sounds, the hissing and moaning, suddenly stopped as the corrupt shifted their gazes from the car they had been demolishing to face the man standing in the open doorway.
None were on the porch. They were busy climbing all over the car, trying to capture the little gremlin inside terrorizing them with its bleating horn. Some were closer, shambling on the front lawn, but were still a few feet away. Jeff’s heart raced but it felt like time had begun to slow. His vision dimmed and the dread that had been pouring over him like warm molasses began to evaporate.
Move.
He caught something out of the corner of his eye beyond the crowded front yard. When his eyes tried to follow it, seeking out the blur of motion, it was no longer there. But it had been; he was sure. It was something that could move much faster than his neighbors. They were slow and sluggish, but whatever he had seen moved with a fluid grace.
Move!
There it was again, at the back of the crowd but getting closer. He could see glimmers of light flicker between the gaps in the mass of bodies. Whatever was making the shadows dance cut smoothly through the sluggish creatures on Jeff’s lawn as it slid closer. He heard a blood curdling scream.
“MOVE!”
He barely recognized his own voice. The fury of the word was jolting; setting him in motion as the mob surged forward, closing the distance to the front door. Stepping back into the house he spent a split second trying to rediscover what had caused the blur of motion at the periphery of his vision, but it was already gone.
The first group of neighbors was almost at the door, close enough that two in front were leaning in to take ragged swipes at Jeff. They missed as he quickly stepped back inside the house. Their groans merged with the others but Jeff could have sworn he heard a different tenor to their gurgling cries. They were excited to be this close to someone still warm and breathing. He continued to move backwards into the foyer.
Turning, he ran to the stairs and jumped onto the couch he had hastily set in front of them, stepping on an arm rest and vaulting over it. He stood watching as more bodies poured in through the front door, scratching and clawing at each other as they tried to force their way through the narrow opening. They were a crazed mob, frothing at the mouth and howling at him. The first few were already at the couch, trying to get over, around, or through it. They smashed, clawed, and tore at it, angry that something stood between them and their prey.
“That’s it, you bastards! Come and get me!”
He had to yell to be heard over the pounding fists and squeals of anticipation. The moans were louder inside. But when Jeff spoke they seemed to go still and the noise died down for a moment. He had their complete attention.
He continued to back up the stairs as more bodies crammed into the foyer and spread into the dining and living rooms. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were enough of them to fill the entire first floor. One knocked over the vase on the end table near the door and it instantly turned to powered shards underfoot. A few of the ghoulish apparitions appeared to be distracted, wandering toward the dining room table and grabbing at things like they were at a rummage sale. The rest, however, continued to crowd around the base of the staircase, staring balefully up at him. They raised their hands, reaching toward Jeff with unimaginable need.
The weaker ones were crushed underneath the churning mass of bodies as they poured over the couch. It looked like some sort of blender, where whatever was dropped into the spinning vortex was sucked to the bottom to be pulverized, but in this case it was only the smaller forms, children and the mutilated, being sucked beneath the trampling feet.
The first stiff form able to make it past the couch got a shot in the mouth from Jeff’s baseball bat. It was a world class upper cut that shattered the woman’s jawbone and knocked her back into the crowd. She knocked another person flat and Jeff lost sight of her as she was swallowed in the mass of pulsating bodies. The others ignored her demise as they pressed against the couch. As three more bodies flopped over it Jeff rushed to the second floor landing.
Ignoring his shaking hands and ragged breathing, he pushed the massive bookshelf that stood next to the stairs toward the top step. He had dragged it there a few weeks back as a precautionary measure in case the infected managed to break in the house. In hindsight, it had been foolish to hope that mere furniture could hold back the horde, but he was still glad he had moved it into position.
Jeff felt a white hot flash of fear at the sound of a loud grunt nearby. The infected were almost to the top of the steps. He responded with his own desperate grunt as the bookshelf teetered over and started falling sideways down the steps.
The loud crash he had expected was muffled by the wall of flesh the heavy cherry bookshelf landed on. It smashed into the two leaders of the pack, driving them back into the convulsing crowd. As he watched, Jeff eyes widened in surprise. The six foot tall piece of furniture did not fall to the ground but hovered as the monsters behind it struggled to free themselves of its bulk.
The bodies were piling up behind the bookshelf and he could see it slowly turning like a heavy door being pushed toward the wall. It had smashed a few of them pretty good but was no deterrent to the rest. They were still coming.
As Jeff turned and began running toward the master bedroom he heard a thud as the bookshelf finally hit the floor. They had pushed it out of the way and were on the move again.
He screamed a few expletives as encouragement, though none were needed, before slamming the hollow door to his bedroom shut and clicking the button-lock on the knob. As Jeff moved toward his closet he could hear his neighbors screaming in frustration from down the hall.
Moving past the heavy chair he had put in the closet, he pushed on it, forcing the door shut with its bulk. The large walk in closet went pitch black and he nearly yelped when the first fist slam into the bedroom door.
The darkness felt overwhelming but Jeff knew how little time he had. He felt his way past a minefield of shoes and piles of clothing strewn on the floor.
Finding the back wall, Jeff dropped quickly to his knees, setting the baseball bat down as he began sliding his hands over the carpeted floor. Where is it?
He jumped again as the master bedroom door splintered and quickly broke. The mob was already forcing their way past the shattered remains of the feeble barrier and clambering into the bedroom. They would be at the closet door in less than a minute but that was all the time Jeff thought he needed, if he could ever find what he was looking for.
Cursing under his breath, he began tossing shoes out of the way. He knew the spot on the floor was not covered up but could feel panic setting in as he continued his furious search.
Boom!
Jeff let out an involuntary yelp of surprise as the closet door vibrated in its frame. There were excited moans beyond the door, as if his neighbors knew he was caught like a rat in a trap. It would be mere seconds before he was in their grasp.
“How in the world did you know I was in here, you stupid bastards!?” Jeff screamed as he frantically continued his search. His words echoed in the small, confined space and filtered out into the bedroom, where squeals of delight at hearing his voice cascaded back in on him.
He heard the chair move slightly across the carpet, inching backwards as the press of bodies crammed against the door began forcing their way in.
“I mean, Jesus! You fuckers can’t even turn a goddamn doorknob anymore but you can sniff me out in a matter of seconds? What the hell?” Jeff’s voice cracked as he spoke, his frayed nerves nearly past the point of no return as he clawed blindly at the carpet.
The chair slid another few inches inward and with it came a splinter of light from the bedroom. Immediately, Jeff saw what he had been searching for, a few inches to his right. He whimpered in relief as he pulled the hinged door in the floor open.
The clothes shoot was something he had built shortly after they had moved in, when Ellen realized the laundry room was directly below their closet. It made the transfer of dirty clothes a breeze.
He stared down at the washer and dryer. Breathing a quick sigh of relief when he saw that no one had wandered into the small room off the garage, he quickly swung his legs over and down through the hole.
Twisting around as he lowered himself through the narrow opening, Jeff saw the chair get pushed completely out of the way of the closet door. The first shadowy figure stumbled into the room, falling inward, pushed by another four stiffs behind it. Jeff snatched up his baseball bat as he contorted his hips in an effort to get his mid-section through the tight gap in the floor.
His neighbors turned as one toward him, their eyes going wide with excitement as they saw the man trapped in the corner. Their potent smell blasted him, curdling his stomach. It was like a landfill, stockyard, and a mass grave all wrapped up in one. As they reached for him, Jeff screamed and felt something give. The sides of the laundry chute scraped his sides but as he landed on top of the washing machine he heard the spring loaded door on the shoot slam shut above his head.
He slid off the washer. There were cries of outrage from above. They were already scraping at the small door, desperate to open it.
The sounds on the first floor were overwhelming as he stared at the kitchen door. Beyond were those inhuman things…probably more than a hundred. Jeff hoped silently that they were still climbing the steps and cramming themselves into the various bedrooms on the top floor in a futile effort to find him.
He grabbed the gas can he had left in the room and opened it. The smell of the fuel was pure and intoxicating compared to the noxiously rich smell of death now permeating the house. He splashed the flammable liquid on the walls, watching as it ate at the traces of blood the first set of intruders had left behind. He drained the can, splashing the last bit of it on the ceiling, specifically the hinged door above the washer.
The shoot door opened slightly and then slapped back shut. A dark smile crossed Jeff’s lips. He had put a set of really tight springs on the sucker to discourage his kids from playing with it. The clumsy bastards upstairs were having a hell of a time trying to get a grip on it because of that.
Setting the gas can down, he picked up the road flare he had also tossed in the room. Cracking the door leading to the garage, he relaxed slightly as he saw that the side door had not been breached. In fact, it appeared as if no one was pounding on it anymore. Wedging his foot in the door to keep it open, he turned to face the kitchen.
There was only one thing left to do.
Pulling the cap off the road flare, it burst to life and startled Jeff with its ferocity. Quickly, he touched it to a rag he had soaked in gasoline that sat on top of the washer and watched it burst into flames. Reaching for the knob on the kitchen door, he opened it just wide enough to slip the flare through. He heard it drop on the floor and quickly shut the door.
Snatching up his baseball bat, he used it to slide the flaming rag off the washer and directly into a puddle of gas on the floor.
“The house is all yours, guys. Enjoy it,” he said as he scrambled into the garage. He made sure the metal door was shut tight, knowing it would hold back the flames for a while. As he slid into the minivan he thought about the rest of the gasoline he had drenched the house with, including the kitchen. Along with the propane tanks he had opened in the bedrooms upstairs, it should create one hell of a bang.
My first novel has hit amazon.com. So if you’ve been waiting for it to arrive there, now is the time to get your copy. Don’t wait, buy one today! And once you’ve read it, please feel free to write a review on Amazon as well.
I would like to that Beth, PR Guru Extraordinaire for setting up both the interview and the book signing, which will be a lot of fun. I would like to also thank Frank Hall from That Book Place for inviting us to sign books at his store.
Here is my attempt at a video trailer for Comes The Dark. Many thanks go to Ben Rogers for making my mediocre effort into something presentable. He did a great job of adding effects and turning this into something compelling. Enjoy!
Copies of Comes The Dark arrived in the mail today, which may seem like not a big deal, but given that this is my first published novel, it is HUGE for me. That this thing is real and not just something that I created in my imagination, but is something that is tangible and can be shared with everyone else out there feels pretty dang remarkable.
It has finally happened. My book is live on Createspace. The publisher has approved the proof and this book is now available to the world! This is the first step. It will be available on Amazon and other online sources within a week to ten days, and then will be available on the Kindle (no release date on that as of yet). You will be able to pick it up in PDF format via The Library of the Living Dead website for a very aggressive price as well.
More to come on all of that, but here is the link which will allow you to purchase my book from Createspace. Again, it should be available from Amazon very soon for those of you who want to wait for it’s release there. But don’t wait, buy a copy…buy 2! Buy several for your friends, family, your dog, your cat, and anyone else you can think of!
My original plan was to post the first three chapters of my book before it was released here on my blog, but my publisher did such a great job of getting the book out and available so quickly that I didn’t get the chance to post chapter 3 before this whirlwind of events started happening. So I thought I would post all three chapters here, back to back, to save you the trouble of searching for the previous chapters further back in the blog. My hope is that if you like the first few chapters, you will give my book a shot and buy it over on Amazon. It can be found there at http://www.amazon.com/Comes-Dark-Zombie-Patrick-DOrazio/dp/1453701281/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280498. It will also be available on the Kindle within the next week to ten days and there are rumblings that it may be available on http://www.barnesandnobles.com as well as the Nook down the road. In addition to this, you can order the book through any brick and mortar bookstore by requesting it through the Ingrams catalog and referencing the ISBN number, which is:
Patrick D'Orazio's Blog 