Free I, Zombie by Hugh Howey

Any words
to the gods she didn’t believe in? Any prayers to those she would never see
again? The interminable minutes of her infinite days now felt like precious
moments, little jewels. The woman directly in front of her took the next bullet
in her shoulder and spun around, arms rising from the centrifugal pull as she
twirled. Crack-pow! None in the shuffle flinched. Maybe they were also silently
praying for and dreading the next one.
    This was what a death sentence felt like, Jennifer realized.
She was walking down a prison aisle, cages on both sides of her, like Central
Park Zoo. She was walking to her death, unable to control her legs, terrified
and resigned. This was what it felt like.
    The woman who had been hit and spun around had a new jagged
wound to live with. She straightened herself and trudged forward with the rest.
Another hit, another excellent shot, Jennifer both spared and cursed. Where was
this person with the gun? Why shoot them from a distance? And how did they
choose? Would she be next?
    Her feet dodged around one of the victims of their own
accord. All women, Jennifer realized. Four in a row.
    The shooter knew. He had to. Or was it a she? A sympathizing
woman or some kind of gentleman. Jennifer became convinced of this as an
elderly woman in a nightgown with a horrible neck wound was the next to go.
There was an eruption of blood, a warm mist on Jennifer’s cheek, and then the
woman’s body sagged straight to the pavement like a fuse had been removed.
    Someone was sparing them this torture. They had limited
ammunition. Couldn’t save them all. Someone knew. Not those army pricks who
flew by with their hazard suits on, watching, watching. They probably had
orders. Don’t kill civilians. As if that’s what any of them still were.
    But this angel with her long barrel of release, with gifts
of lead as valuable as gold, these bullets that could transmute the half-dead
into the full, she had watch over them.
    Jennifer’s fear vanished. It was the intentions that warped
her mind, twisting shadows into bright ribbons of color. The shooter was up
there crying, wiping tears from her eyes, using a skill her father had blessed
her with on a farm out west, releasing poor creatures from the half-grip of
death every time she pulled the trigger—a nice little fiction.
    Another soul was released, a cloud of brains raining down,
splattering the others, the delayed echo of a bang, the crack of prison walls
crumbling, the resounding boom of freedom.
    Sounds. Sounds that came late. Sounds Jennifer Shaw never
heard for herself as they came, singing through that mad, mad air, to release
her.

 

 
     
     
    Part II • Dying for Seconds
    Chiang Xian •
Dennis Newland

 
     
    18 • Dennis Newland
     
    Dennis sat in a pile of cereal boxes while the others
stacked food in shopping carts. Cans rattled to the ground one aisle over. In
front of him, little sacks of organic coffee rustled on the shelf as his
girlfriend Lisa dug through something on the other side. Dennis looked down at
his arm, pulled his hand away from the sleeve of his denim jacket. It was dark
and sticky with blood. He should tell somebody. He should tell somebody. He
should have told them back when he still could.
    A cart squeaked past, little wheels spinning, a crushed box
of Cheerios wedged under the front bar. Matt stopped and grabbed a few boxes,
threw them on his pile of canned goods. “You okay, dude?”
    Dennis jerked his head up and down. He could still do that.
Maybe he could still speak if he really had to. He hoped he didn’t have to. His
jaws felt locked together. Stiff.
    “That shit was close back there. I thought we were goners
for sure this time.”
    More jerking of his head up and down. Matt stooped and
grabbed a box of Captain Crunch. “I like this stuff. Good without milk.” He
glanced over at Dennis. “You think we’ll ever taste fresh milk again? Or just
that Parmalat crap for however long we’ve got left?”
    Dennis tried