Free Wake Up Dead - an Undead Anthology by Adam Millard, Guy James, Suzanne Robb, Chantal Boudreau, Mia Darien, Douglas Vance Castagna, Rebecca Snow, Caitlin Gunn, R.d Teun Page B

saw the sky was betting lighter. He was scared. He knew he could not get back home in time.
    He tried to move, but the slightest fraction of movement sent bolts of pain throughout his ruined body.
    Then he knew what was going to happen, and smiled. He hadn't seen the sun in over two hundred years. Today he would see it again.
    Looking over at Barry's dead body, which was already attracting flies, he said "We're off to a better place, my friend."
    At five-thirty-two Randy saw the sun rise. At five-thirty-four he died for the second, and the last time.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    VOODOO CHILD
    Caitlin Gunn
     
    Adisa walked slowly back to the camp, knowing that the night would be long and painful. Before morning, though, she would hold her child for the first time, and that was enough to settle her mind and ease the terrible aches from within her belly. She had spoken with Acua'ba – the Goddess of fertility – and had been told that the birth would be horrifying; she would wish herself dead, according to the great Goddess. Yet, she knew that all would eventually be well, and her child would be the most beautiful she could ever wish for. It was that mentality that would get her through.
    She hoped that Acua'ba was wrong, somehow. Her pain was already intolerable, which was one of the reasons why she had not ventured far from the camp.
    'Adisa!' a voice called out. She turned to find Nkechi, her brother, looking more than a little concerned. 'Where have you been? You shouldn't be walking around in your state. You have given father a headache with your mindless wandering.'
    Adisa smiled. If she hadn't been in so much pain, she would have laughed aloud. 'Father has a headache because he drank too much,' she said. 'I needed to walk. I can't just wait.'
    'But you must,' Nkechi said, leading her back to the camp with a hand on her shoulder. 'No harm must come to you, or the child. You know how important it is.'
    She did, but she couldn't help thinking too much was being made of her fertilization. Her husband was the reason, or had been before he had been executed. If Aloozo had been normal, there would have been no such fuss made; Adisa would have been seen as nothing more than another pregnant girl in a world full of them.
    'I will be grateful when she is born,' Adisa said, accepting Nkechi's help crossing a particularly rickety bridge.
    'She?' Nkechi said, confused. 'You didn't ask the Goddess of the sex?'
    Adisa did laugh, now, but it hurt too much and she cut it off. 'Of course not,' she said. 'It is forbidden, and I will find out soon enough. I just know, Nkechi. It is a girl.'
    'How can you know?' Nkechi asked. 'Aloozo came from a long line of men; he only had brothers. The chances of you birthing a girl are little.'
    'That might be true,' she said. 'But I can feel her, and I can hear her thoughts inside of me. That is enough, Nkechi, for me to know.'
    He shook his head, not accepting her ridiculous theory. 'It will be a boy,' he said. 'Like Aloozo, only hopefully not like Aloozo.'
    She shuddered at the thought. Things had not been right with her husband, right up until his beheading at the centre of the camp. It had not always been like that, of course. When she married him, he had been relatively normal, one of the best warriors in the tribe, but something happened, something that made him lose his senses.
    He had tried to kill her in the dark of the night, like some maniacal assassin. Yet, as he snapped for her with those fierce teeth and glassy eyes, she had seen that he was not well, that something had afflicted him.
    Stricken.
    With a plague.
    'My daughter will be nothing like Alooza,' Adisa finally said, forcing herself from the nightmarish reverie that had momentarily returned to taunt her. 'She will be strong, stronger than even Alooza had been before...before...'
    She couldn't finish; she had no idea how to.
    He had been a good man, and yet he had raped her, taken