Free Zombies! Episode 2 - Abby's Bad Day by Ivan Turner

Zombies! Episode 2 - Abby's Bad Day
    Smashwords Edition
     
    Copyright 2010 by Ivan Turner
     
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    ***
     
    What has come before:
     
    Shawn Rudd, a high school senior in a hurry
to meet up with his secret boyfriend, encounters a zombie on the
streets of Brooklyn. With no hesitation, Shawn confronts the
zombie, stabbing it and then bludgeoning it with a lead pipe. He
then turns on the zombie's hapless bite victim, killing her with a
blow to the head as well.
     
    Investigating the crime, Detectives Johan
Stemmy and Anthony Heron are confounded and chilled by the fact
that the man Shawn killed had been dead for twelve hours at the
time of the incident. With thoughts of zombies on their minds, they
begin to investigate local gyms.
     
    At Push Ups Fitness Center , the two
detectives encounter Abby Benjamin. Abby is able to identify the
zombie as Larry Koplowitz, a frequent customer of Push Ups .
She gives the detectives his address.
     
    At the apartment, Detectives Stemmy and Heron
confront Mrs. Lucy Koplowitz, already a zombie by the time they
arrive. She sustains two gunshot wounds which would incapacitate a
normal person yet still keeps on coming. Detective Stemmy finishes
her off with a shot to the head. Unfortunately, he fails to notice
the child zombie, Zoe Koplowitz. Zoe bites him in the leg, thus
infecting him.
     
    Stemmy is placed in isolation and, though the
surgery on his leg is successful, the infection spreads quickly
throughout his body. Heron meets with Captain Lance Naughton, his
immediate supervisor, and Dr. Denise Luco, a pathologist who has
worked with the police on investigations before. She explains that
the aggressive nature of the infection makes it impossible for them
to save Stemmy.
     
    Heron goes and sits with Stemmy through the
hours of the night and when Stemmy finally passes, Heron enters the
room and puts a bullet in his head to make sure that he won't ever
get up. Though Captain Naughton seems unfazed by this, Dr. Luco is
extremely irritated, having wanted to observe the process of
turning in a victim of the infection.
     
    In the wee hours of the morning, Detective
Heron arrivs home to find his wife awake and a phone message from
his doctor. Heron, a heavy smoker, had been in for a biopsy which
had come back positive. So it appears that his battle with the
undead will have to be put on hold so that he can battle
cancer.
     
    ***
     
    THE alarm went off promptly at 4:00
am. Martin never heard it which made Abby wonder, not for the first
time, why he insisted on keeping the clock on his side of the bed.
The blaring tone had startled her out of a terrible dream about the
flesh eating dead. There was some buzz on the internet about
zombies in New York and though she knew it couldn't be anything
more than a War of the Worlds hoax, it had stuck with
her.
     
    Crawling over Martin's prone body she managed
to find the button on the clock and put the buzzing to rest.
Resting on top of him, now, she stared at his sleeping face. It
never ceased to amaze her how stupid people look while they're
asleep. A sleeping child may as well be surrounded by a peaceful
and glowing halo. Sleeping children look beautiful, angelic. But a
slumbering adult is stripped of virtually all of his dignity. His
mouth is open and he makes frightening and disgusting noises. He
drools like an infant.
     
    She kissed him once on the cheek.
     
    Then she smacked him on the same cheek.
     
    "Get up," she said.
     
    Without waiting for him to respond, she
slipped gracelessly out of