Free Zombies! Episode 1 - Shawn of the Dead by Ivan Turner Page A

zombie had been a man, a white guy. Its
hair was black or at least dark brown. Even at this distance, Shawn
could see that its pallor had gone from the normal peach tone to a
ghoulish sort of grey. The arms hung at the sides, moving only with
the jerky momentum of the body rather than the careful rhythm of a
human being. It wore a coat. It had to be close to eighty five
degrees, sunny as it could get, but the thing wore a long rain
coat. Shawn couldn't get a good look at the clothing beneath but he
was pretty sure it was wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt.
     
    What struck him the most about it was that
there was no blood. Kind of like the guy at the beginning of Night of the Living Dead . You know, in the cemetery? He
could have been a person if it weren't for the complexion and the
way he walked, the way he just bounced off the wall. There were no
wounds. This thing had yet to kill and it hadn't been killed by
another zombie. That meant it was the first. Shawn knew it
was the first.
     
    Every few steps, someone would come into
Shawn's range of focus, close to the zombie but not close enough
for it to take notice. They seemed to wrinkle their noses and give
it a wide berth but gave it no further consideration. This, if
nothing else, jarred Shawn out of his reverie.
     
    Doesn't anyone realize what that thing
is?
     
    A block and half from the train station and
his ticket to Marcus, Shawn stopped. On his left was a stone
building with glass doors and no windows. On his right was a giant
pile of trash including bags and furniture and paper and various
articles of mayhem. Beyond that the traffic. And ahead of him was
the zombie.
     
    And the woman.
     
    Shawn saw her even before he gave thought to
how he was going work out his passing of the zombie himself. The
woman was also a white woman, somewhere in her upper forties,
dressed for the office, and totally engrossed in the small screen
of her smart phone. She was also oblivious of the impending danger.
Smart phone. Stupid woman.
     
    By the time she got close enough that she
could no longer ignore the smell she was already too close. The
zombie caught her scent and pounced. It grabbed the arm with the
smart phone and, with the strength of the truly famished, pulled it
right to its rotten teeth.
     
    The zombie bit down hard.
     
    The woman screamed.
     
    She did not drop the smart phone.
     
    Shawn's bag was off his shoulders in an
instant and he reached out for a length of pipe sticking from the
pile of garbage. It came free, one jagged end jutting away from the
boy. Rushing forward, he used his momentum to drive the pipe into
the gut of the zombie.
     
    Now there was blood.
     
    Shawn had never hurt anyone before. Well,
that wasn't entirely true. He'd grown up in a culture of fist
fights but had somehow managed to avoid anything that included
knives, broken bottles, and most especially guns. The feeling of
the pipe entering the body was weird. He'd expected a sucking
feeling, like the blood and tissue gripping the pipe, but that
didn't occur. Instead, it felt like stabbing a pillow filled with
rotten lettuce. The dead tissue inside the zombie didn't react to
the intrusion of the pipe the way live tissue would. The dead
tissue hardly reacted at all.
     
    Because of Shawn's running start, the zombie
was knocked away from the woman. It took with it a chunk of her arm
but left behind the pipe. There was gore dripping off of the end of
it but Shawn didn't take the time to notice. Adjusting his grip, he
stepped forward and swung it down like a billy club just as the
zombie was raising its head in recovery. Forged metal met hair and
flesh and bone, all dead and desiccated. Now destroyed. The zombie
went down like a paper doll, its skull caved in and its undeath at
an end.
     
    Still holding the dripping pipe, Shawn turned
to the victim. She was bleeding badly, the smart phone gripped
tightly in her bloodless hand. She was mumbling something about 911 when he came to his decision.