Free Zombies II: Inhuman by Eric S. Brown

Introduction
    A lot of people ask me why I write zombie
stories. The simple truth is that I am a zombie fan. From the
moment I first watched Dawn of the Dead, I was hooked on the zombie
genre of horror. I don't care that many feel zombie tales are
cliché. I have never cared that zombie tales are often more
difficult to sale than straight horror stories. When other authors
ask me if I am worried about being labeled as and known only as a
zombie writer, I just smile.
    Writing for me isn't about money or fame.
It's about fun and the walking, flesh-eating dead. Aside from my
family, zombies and comic books are my life. I devour every zombie
film and book I can get my hands on and yet my wife still lets me
live in the same house as her. She's very supportive of my career
and my addiction as long as my zombies never leave my study.
    After writing zombie tales for a bit over
five years, I started thinking about combining my two hobbies:
Superheroes and the Undead. Pretty much any zombie tale worthy of
being called one is about the end of the world and the extinction
of the human race. In a world where the dead walk is it therefore
so unlikely that God or nature or merely evolution would grant a
select few the power to survive to carry on the species? That's the
concept behind several of the tales in this collection. "Evolution
like Lightning" attempts to quickly answer the question of how
normal survivors of an undead plague would respond to super-humans
suddenly appearing among them while the tale "Ghost" is actually
the origin story of one of the characters from the title tale
"Inhuman."
    "Inhuman" itself attempts to take a look at
what life could be like for meta-humans who can read thoughts, bend
steel with their bare hands, or channel electricity as a weapon in
a world where every day is a fight to stay alive. And if
super-humans aren't your thing, well, this book contains zombies in
the old west, some very hungry animals, intergalactic zombies used
as weapons of war, and traditional zombie tales too. So dear
reader, I hope you enjoy reading these tales as much I did writing
them and that you remain a fan of the dead. I know I will be a fan
of all things zombie for the rest of my days and nothing will ever
change that.

Evolution like Lightning
    Michael blinked and looked around. They were
gone. The pack of dead creatures which had nearly managed to
surround him intent on making him their next meal was nowhere to be
seen. His heart was thundering in his chest and he reached up to
touch the fresh sweat dripping from his hair as it began to sink
in. The dead weren't the only thing that was missing. Everything
around him had changed.
    He'd been standing on his front porch trying
desperately to get back inside his own barricaded house with the
supplies he'd looted from what remained of the local grocery store.
The dead had followed him home and had been closing in. All he
could remember was thinking he'd never get the locks undone in time
and that he needed to just drop everything and run. Now he stood in
the middle of a city street as barren and dead as the ones in his
hometown with skyscrapers looming above him.
    A woman's scream ripped him from his
confusion as she rounded the street corner and came running into
view. Her clothes were ragged and it was clear the end of humanity
hadn't been as kind to her as it had to him. Here in the city, or
wherever the hell this was, it must be harder to survive than just
being boarded up in your own house alone. Five of the dead
creatures, two women and three men, came bounding around the corner
after her. Blood and drool flew from their snarling mouths as they
closed in on the woman.
    Michael had no weapon. He'd dropped his .38
on his porch along with everything else as he'd fled still he
couldn't just stand by and watch her die. He screamed what he hoped
sounded like a battle cry and charged the dead things, punching the
lead creature in the face.
    As his fist made contact, two things