Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel Read Free

see, but I don’t buy that they can smell because they don’t breathe. Although they make audible sounds, so they must draw in air to push it past their decaying vocal cords. If that’s the case then maybe they can smell. OK, I’m on board with the smelling thing. As of now.
    Now now, not then now.
    So she let go of me and I rolled off of her and aimed at number two, who had gotten significantly closer during my hasty tussle with number one. I couldn’t focus for shit though, and missed my first two shots. Well, I mean, I hit her, just not in the head. She did the same face plant on me, but I blasted her on the way down. She hit me hard, but I was able to push her off before she chomped down.
    I rolled left, or maybe it was right, it was a while ago. She was on her face, the back of her melon now spread out on fatty number one. It was gross. Them lying there with holes in them that I had put there. I would have tossed them again, but I was shit out of cookies.
    I had never shot anyone before. No, I wasn’t that type of criminal.
    I sat up, and I can remember looking at them lying there. They were pathetic. They had probably been eating pie (double portions) at a church lunch a couple of days before, and I had smoked both of them. I felt like I had just won a seal clubbing contest.
    That was when that little dude who runs stuff in your body jerked the adrenaline shut-off valve extra hard. My leg and shoulder wounds decided to remind me of our acquaintance. That same little guy, who was probably giggling maniacally, next launched an all-out ballistic missile attack on my pain receptors.
    And yet I stood. The sound of the last shot was still ringing in my ears when I started my trek north. My plan was to find someplace nice to swallow a bullet, because I did not fancy being eaten, and I didn’t want to be one of them. Either way, I would be part of the living impaired soon enough.

 
    Trailer Trash
     
     
    So the Runners. We all know they’re fast. We all know they hate us and want to tear into us. They eat us. But do they drink? I mean if you forced one to fire down a handle of Stolies, would it stagger like its dead buddies? And that’s something else…if they aren’t dead, why don’t the dead ones eat them? If you put nine Runners and one uninfected human in a room with a dead one, the dead one will come straight at the live guy. I’ve seen it. Well, not as an experiment, but I’ve seen that type of scenario. That would be a crappy experiment for the dude in the room with all those infected types. Downright cruel.
    By nightfall, the heat of the day had been replaced with a biting wind. I had decided that I would slog into the woods and end it in a pretty place if I had the stones. It had gotten cold fast though and I had a fever. Have you ever had a fever and been subjected to cold? You might not remember what it’s like if it’s been a while. It sucks. I needed a place to crash pretty quickly, and a beat up old silver airstream trailer about a mile into the woods looked damned inviting.
    I got in the trailer easy enough. It was state of the art. In 1963. It had holes in the walls and roof that had been poorly patched, and there were indeterminate stains all over. It was heaven. The wind howled outside and I told it to screw off. I found some ratty old blankets near the bed in the back of the trailer that were undoubtedly knitted by Betsy Ross herself. I clutched the revolver tight to me as I shivered, and then realized what an idiot I would be if my shaking caused me to shoot myself in the nuts or something. I put the gun on the moldy mattress next to me to avoid a .38 caliber vasectomy. If I died tonight, it would be with my twig and berries un-perforated.
    I bundled up and waited for the sickness to get worse before I pulled the trigger. It got way worse. Other than one particularly vile experience I had with some scallops and tequila in Boston’s North End, this was the worst night of my life. I got