Free The Dead & Dying: A Zombie Novel by William Todd Rose Page A

somewhere safe to hide until the helicopters flew over and broadcasted that it was safe to go back to your homes now, safe to go back to your lives.
    Me, I knew better. I knew that once something like this started there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. You might've as well tried to hold the wind in your hands as my father used to say. So I tried to step right into the role I always thought I was born to play.
      Very early on, I met up with this woman and her little boy. Somehow, we'd all ended up in the same patch of forest at the same time, not too far from the interstate, and I knew, I just knew , that this would be my one big chance. I'd lead them through the ruins of civilization, would protect them from marauders and the throngs of undead that were sure to come; perhaps, in time, the woman would come to love me and we'd steal tender moments whenever we could; I would teach the kid how to stay alive, how to survive in this new world, and there would come a day when he would shyly call me dad and Monica would smile over his shoulder as I tussled Jason's hair and laughed.
    But first, I had to lead them through the maze of trees we'd found ourselves in. And, in my own defense, I thought I was doing pretty good in the beginning. I channeled every action hero I'd ever admired, every bad ass who'd slaughtered the undead in the name of all that's righteous and pure.
    I was Bruce Campbell, Woody Harrelson, and Ving Rhames all rolled into one. When I walked, I adopted this little swagger that (I hoped) let Monica and her son know that as long as I was with them everything would be right as rain; I spoke only in short phrases that could've been lifted right from the script of any low-budget fright flick and sometimes motioned for them to stop as if I heard something out of place in the forest. But, truth be told, more often than not I was just doing it for dramatic effect.
    See, back then it all still seemed almost like some kind of game. Despite seeing a man I'd known all my life turned into a human torch, it had the feeling of a dream that you were sure to wake from soon: a dream where you could be anyone you chose and no one would ever call you on it. I could be the devil-may-care Zombie Killer Elite and who was to say that wasn't who I truly was inside?
    Funny thing about reality though is the way it has of keeping you in check. In this instance, it happened when I'd left Monica and the boy in a clearing to scout out the way ahead. Truth be told, I just had to take a dump so bad my stomach felt like I was about to give birth to a fire-baby. But that's not really the kinda thing a hero tells the damsel in distress, ya know?
    So I walked about fifty or sixty yards out into the forest, made good and sure that I was well outta sight, dropped my trousers, and squatted down beneath this big oak tree.
    In my past life I'd always kept a book or magazine within arm's reach of the toilet. If, for some reason, I found myself without suitable material, I'd reach for a shampoo bottle and start reading the information on the back of it. Anything to give me something to actually do but sit and listen to the sounds of my own waste. Out there in the woods, though, I didn't have anything to distract me; so I just kinda looked around, taking in the way the sunlight dappled through the canopy of leaves overhead, trying to remember what those little blue flowers that crept up all over the damn place were called, that sorta thing.
    I was studying this tree that somehow had an old tire stuck on a limb about halfway up the trunk, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Snapping my head to the side, I saw this little girl in a pink dress come staggering out of the bushes.
    As far as I could tell there weren't any obvious injuries on her: no cuts or lacerations, no burns or bite marks or shards of bone jutting out through the skin. The front of her dress had been splattered with blood... but somehow I knew it wasn't hers.
    So I just