Over at Reanimated Writers group on Facebook, we had a speed writing zombie story event where two authors bounced a story back and forth for one hour. We based it off a picture. Stefan Lear and I teamed up. This is what we produced…
The woman peered into the room. There had been a door before, but it had been torn off the frame. She had thought she was safe in the abandoned building. It had previously been a sanitarium, and she thought that the thickly framed door would keep the monsters out.
But if they’d torn the door off, where were they? Could they even do something like that?
Sarah had only glimpsed them as she fled for her life from her wrecked Honda. She’d swerved to miss a woman in a tattered dress. Too bad that tree jumped out in front of the car. The woman was nowhere to be seen by the time Sarah scrambled from the mess.
Then…then the figures came. They came running up the road. They did not come to help – their screeching told Sarah that.
First the sanitarium, and now the car. Dammit, don’t these creatures ever tire? Or get hungry? “Here, have a coke and smile.” Yea, Sarah didn’t think that was gonna work with these lurching bags of puss and fetid flesh. They were relentless.
Sarah reached into the wrecked car and pulled out her treasured Reaver Cleaver. It looked like a giant meat cleaver on steroids. It was sharp as a diamond blade and could cut through a neck if she put her weight behind the swing. She gripped the leather covered metal handle and looked around for a place to make a stand. Except for the tree, the best ground she could find was on the roof of the car. By the time she reached the top, the creatures were almost on top of her.
They gibbered and screamed at her as they closed in around the vehicle. Chunks of their oozing flesh had begun to slough off. The nearest thing’s chin dripped onto its chest. “That’s taking a turkey neck too far.”
She wrinkled her at their stench. The closest two lunged at her. She sidestepped one and brought the cleaver down on the other’s skull. Rotting brain splattered.
More were coming. Killing this one had really pissed them off.
Treading carefully so as not to slip in the splatted brain, Sarah steeled herself. She noticed one of the creatures was trying to crawl up on the hood of the car: it was getting close to success. Another tried to grab her ankle with arms that belonged in the NBA – well, would have belonged in the NBA. She pulled the giant clever over her head, took a half second to aim, and brought the weapon down on the creatures arms. The cleaver whooshed through the air as it whistled toward its target. The weapon connected with the rotting flesh and sliced through the arms, bones and failing muscles severed with the precision of a chain saw. Thick, fetid, dark mucous oozed form the beast’s stumps.
Sarah jumped down on the hood of the car, raised the cleaver over her head and swung with the might of a Greek DemiGod. At least that’s what it felt like to her. It might have been the adrenaline pumping through her veins, but right now she felt like she could take on Zeus in a contest of wills. The blade found the back of the skull of the zombie trying to climb on the hood. It cracked open like an overripe cantaloupe, and the creature lay as still as King Polydectes after looking at Medusa.
But the monsters, as terrible as the Titans who warred against the gods, kept coming. She slashed at the pussy bastard who surged toward her. The strike opened its bloated belly. Guts poured out like a bucket of night crawlers. Sarah nearly gagged from the stink.
Damn it, the only hope lay in going back to the sanitarium. There had to be some room she could block off. Trees lined the road, holding more darkness.
Screw it! If she stayed here she was going to die. There were just too many to kill in open combat. She would have to hope that her muscles could move her faster than their rotted flesh could propel them. “I hope none of those bastards have made it inside yet,” she thought to herself.
She swung the weapon at the nearest outlier of the group surrounding the car and opened his throat. Her swing didn’t kill the creature, but it bought her enough room to jump through the hungry mob without being caught in midair by one of them.
She landed squarely on the ground, rolled forward, and came up running. Running for her life. She sprinted toward the sanitarium doors as fast as she could. Where were winged boots when you needed them. She cursed at the gods for her predicament. Still she ran. Hard. Muscles churning. Adrenaline pumping. She was almost there. She could see the front doors. Still she ran, sweat almost blinding her.
Sarah tore through the doorway. She whipped her flashlight from her pocket. The beam pierced the gloom and played over the mess around her. Broken chairs, overturned gurneys – all of it at least a decade old.
Her sneakers thudded on the tile as she sprinted down the main hall. Empty doors opened off the sides of the room. Some held seats where the “doctors” probably did lobotomies. Ugh.
A light glowed ahead around the corner.
Sarah skidded to a halt at the hall’s intersection, skidding on the tile flakes.
The woman in the white dress stood before her, glowing softly like a ghost or a Christmas angel decoration. She waved Sarah behind her.
No time to worry. The monsters were roaring down the hall toward the women.
The instant Sarah passed the woman, she raised her hands. Light glowed from them. The monsters halted. Screams tore from them as the light washed over.
“I am the Hunter, I am the Moon. I am the Goddess of War.” The voice echoed.
“And I have found my Avatar.”
LC Champlin
Writer, traveler, adventurer. Lover of all things Geek and Dark. I admire villains, antagonists, and rogues more than a little. They really do have more fun, and they can teach us important life lessons.
I write fiction because the characters in my head have too much attitude to stay in my skull. I want to see the world through different eyes, and I want to live life through different souls.
You can stalk LC Champlin at these places:
https://www.facebook.com/LC.Champlin.Author
https://twitter.com/LCChamplin
Stefan Lear
The stories that I create are dark in nature. Foolhardiness is now mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in life. I live in the shadows of the land between dark and light. Without light, there is no darkness, and without you I can’t be me. So grab one of my books, sit back, and let’s play. Your demons are welcome in my hell.
You can stalk Stefan Lear at these places:
https://amazon.com/author/stefanlear
https://www.facebook.com/groups/stefanlearslaughterhouse/
https://twitter.com/stefanlear
https://stefanlear.com