This is the latest from the ongoing Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse series.

Eyes tearing up from the wall of stench pouring from the rear of the van, Cade contorted his body to escape the bloated, living corpse tumbling through the open door. Beginning to fall backwards, he regarded the male Z through what amounted to slits for eyes. Bodily fluids leached from numerous lesions crisscrossing its bare chest. At the front of its neck was a near-perfect fist-sized rectangle where skin and flesh and trachea had been excised with some kind of surgical blade. Giving in to gravity’s pull, a torrent of writhing maggots spilled from the opening, their cold smoothness pelting Cade’s chest and neck and face. Adding to the olfactory overload and growing toxic soup, putrefied tissue and unidentifiable internal organs sluiced from a pair of gaping bullet wounds to the monster’s lower abdomen.

Willing his eyes open, Cade let go of the M249 mid-fall and ripped the claw-like hands away from his face. In the next beat, he impacted the road and experienced a breath-robbing stab of pain as the slung shotgun bit into his back.

Before he could collect his thoughts, the weight of the dead thing hammered his shoulder and pinned it to the ground. With his left arm immobilized, he went for the Gerber strapped to his thigh. As he thumbed the snap, releasing the black blade from the scabbard, he saw the Humvee’s headlights rise up and the beams cut across the road.

As the clatter of the diesel engine reached his ears, he came to realize that there was a complete absence of sound where the Z was concerned. Instead of the growling and hissing and raspy calls indicative of a first turn whose vocal cords had dried and atrophied, all he heard was teeth grinding and clicking excitedly an inch from his ear.

Arching his back with all his might freed his left arm. Drawing his face away from the creature’s chattering maw, he wrapped the fingers on his left hand into its greasy hair, drew its head back, and buried the Gerber to the hilt in its right temple. As Cade felt the Z go limp and slide sideways from his body, he firmed his grip on the hair and blade and stared into the lifeless eyes of the thing that nearly REDACTED

Veins on his neck showing, he bellowed, “Not today, motherfucker! The Reaper can’t have me until my work is finished.”

The Humvee came to a stop a yard from his head.

Cade let go of the Z’s hair, released his grip on the Gerber, and flung the corpse off of him. As he rose up off the road and was bathed in the headlight wash, he looked down at his chest but didn’t bother to wipe away the detritus accumulated there. The maggots inching between the magazine pouches and crawling upward on the exposed skin of his neck didn’t seem to register to him, either.

Duncan stepped from the idling vehicle, leaving the door hang open. “I distinctly remember you telling Taryn to watch for beasties springing out from behind closed doors.”

Cade said nothing.

Peering down on the rotter, Duncan noted, “This one has no vocal cords.” He went to a knee and adjusted his glasses. “It’s been silenced. Damn cuts look real precise. Exactly how Daymon described the work on the critters Taryn and Wilson ran into in Woodruff.”

Still, Cade made no reply. He was squared up to the rear of the van, hands on hips, letting his eyes roam the interior, and learning that his earlier assumptions had been all wrong. There was no plush carpet or velvet headliner. There wasn’t a bed or even a pair of captain’s chairs in back. Judging by the welded metal cage between the cab and cargo area and that the floor and walls were covered in gore, the van was used solely for hauling the “silenced” Zs REDACTED liked to use to booby trap buildings after thoroughly looting them.

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Check out Abyss or begin the entire series with book one now.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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