it? Whatever turned him into that, it's in the air.' I shudder. ‘And we're breathing it in. Oh Mother, I'm breathing it in. Is that what is going to happen to me? I don’t want to be a monster.’
‘The virus isn’t in the air.’ Mother takes hold of my hand. ‘Do you know how much you were wanted? For years before you were born, your father and I tried and tried to have a baby but no matter what, I didn’t get pregnant. Until I made a scientific breakthrough.’ She shakes her head. ‘How could I know that it would give me a child who would…?’ she sighs.
‘What?’
‘The virus. The monsters. All that has happened. The destruction of the world. It all came from you. You are the virus, anyone but me who gets close to you, they get infected. You are the source of the monsters. The zombies are here because of you.’
Jacquera Black is a pen name, the person behind it lives in Blackpool with two teenagers, and is currently editing. Something. Hopefully. But editing is hard. And procrastinating on Facebook is so easy.
Not Another Zombie Story
By Rowanne Carberry
I always knew my life would end when I wasn’t looking my best. I always thought I would be murdered. I don’t know why I believed that; I suppose it’s because I’ve got such a morbid and twisted mind. I may not have been murdered in the way I assumed I was going to be, but I still like being able to say I was kind of right.
I’m not a ghost. I was murdered, I was reborn. When I died, I turned into something new, something that I never believed existed and laughed at all those people who said they did. It’s nothing cool like a vampire; they don’t exist as far I’m aware. No. I turned into a zombie as part of some stupid zombie attack that the nerds were always warning us about and none of us ever believed. Well, it happened and is still happening.
Let me take you back to the start of it all. It was a miserable Wednesday afternoon (since when do life changing events happen on a Wednesday afternoon?) It had been a nice morning, a warm temperature, which is rare for Blackpool, the sun was shining and it was finally beginning to feel like summer. It was a half term so I had absolutely nothing to do, well ok, I had university work to do but that doesn’t really count. I arranged to meet my friend Katy for afternoon cocktails. I dressed in a pair of cut-off jeans and an old tank top, threw my hair up in a messy bun, applied the bare minimum of makeup and off I set.
Well, it certainly didn’t stay nice. By the time, I’d gotten to the Central Pier I was soaked. My clothes were clinging to me, my shoes felt like they had a lake inside of them, my makeup was smudged and my hair probably looked like a dead rat. Katy didn’t look much better though which made me feel good. We ran into the bar and quickly ordered ourselves two pitchers of purple rain cocktails, as they were on offer, and began to drown our sorrows at the weather
It wasn’t long before we were feeling decidedly tipsy and that it would be a good idea to walk down to the Pleasure Beach and go on some of the rides whilst it was less likely to have massive queues with people hiding from the rain. I checked the time on my phone and saw that it was half two exactly, quickly putting it away so it didn’t get drenched, we continued laughing and stumbling our way down the promenade. That was when we heard the first screams. We looked at each other in silence and then burst out laughing.
Everything seemed eerily quiet as we crossed the road. Even when it’s raining people are still generally on the rides and you can hear the laughter and screams from miles away. I had a weird feeling that something was going to happen; I was just about to turn to Katy to suggest we go back to mine when I heard the screaming again. It was a different type of screaming to usual. This was the type of scream that stopped you in your tracks and turned your blood to ice in horror.
Turning to Katy I was just in time to get a splatter of blood across my body and face as her throat was ripped apart from behind. Her eyes went wide and her mouth was moving like a gasping fish. Blood began to gurgle from the hole in her throat and seep from the corners of her lips as she slowly fell to her knees.
Behind her stood a man whose hands were dripping with blood. I watched in horror as he lifted his hands to his mouth and started sucking the blood off his fingers, closing his eyes in pleasure and groaning as his throat worked to swallow the liquid. My brain had stopped working; I couldn’t take in what I was seeing. My best friend had just had her throat ripped out and the person who did it was in an orgasmic state. As my mind started to process the scene, I could hear more screams coming from all around me, looking around I saw people were running and being chased, some were falling and being jumped on by those that were chasing them and, when they were jumped on, they were eaten.
Someone ran past me and seeing that I was just standing there they came back and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me after them whilst screaming at me to run. My adrenaline finally kicked in and I started running with them, but I wasn’t looking where I was going and I fell over the body of one of the fallen. The person that had tried to save me didn’t even seem to notice, they just carried on running. I don’t blame them; I think I would have carried on running too. They’d tried to rescue me, but you can’t save everyone, I just hope they got away and are still living.
I was just pushing myself up when I felt more hands on my arms pulling me up. Looking at the person who had helped me, this time, I let out a sigh of relief and relaxed into their arms.
‘Oh Ed, thank god.’
The arms tightened around me.
Lily, I’m glad I found you.’ I looked at him to tell him we had to get moving when I noticed the red tinge to his eyes and the feral look to his face. That was the last thing I noticed before Ed lowered his face to my neck and took a chunk out of it.
And that was when I died.
Somehow I woke up. I woke up changed. I’d gone from being Lily the super student to Lily the zombie.
So now you’re caught up on how I became a zombie. I’m still not sure how the attack actually started, or why they picked Blackpool of all places to start it. Maybe it’s because it’s already full of people that act like zombies half the time? All I know is that it ended up being a worldwide attack and now zombies and humans are living in an uneasy truce across the world.
I say an uneasy truce, as we still need to eat, and the humans let us in moderation, or they know what we would all go on a full out attack again and kill them all. They give us the people that are in jail for murder, rape, and paedophilia.
I keep saying ‘we’, to clear this up, I am not a part of this collective we. I make a rubbish zombie. You’d think being turned would do the same thing to me that it did the others, take away some part of my humanity that would make it easier to kill and eat people, but it doesn’t. The first time I ate someone was because I was starving. I’d only been turned a couple of days and I had been forced out on an attack with some of the others. The smell of the blood had been overwhelming and before I knew what I was doing I was on my knees with my face shoved in someone’s belly tearing at their flesh with my hands and teeth. I was sucking on an intestine like it was a piece of spaghetti when the body moved.
I stopped with one hand still buried in the stomach and looked up to see the blood smeared face of a child staring down at me with a look that I will never forget. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, mouth stuck open with a scream that would never come. He took one last shuddering breath and the stomach shuddered around my hand and then he died. With one hand in his stomach and an intestine in the other. I promptly threw up, in the open stomach wound and then I sat in the middle of the street and cried tears of blood.
I haven’t touched another human since, and that was before the truce came into play. Even though it’s now absurdly legal to eat people, I still can’t eat them. The craving for human flesh is still there, the smell of blood intoxicating. However, even the thought of eating another person is enough to send my stomach into revolt and blood to come pouring out of my eyes.
I’d tried not eating anyone for a while after the first murde
r but the pain was unbearable. Fire sung through my veins, my head felt like it was being continually crushed between a vice. I began to fade. As I faded it got harder to control my impulses. The other zombies stayed away from me, I think they were afraid that the fading was contagious. No one else seemed to have any problem with what I saw as murder; they all seemed extremely content to carry on until they’d had their fill. One day when the pain was so bad I could hardly see I went out in the middle of the night, I was walking down the promenade trying to stay in the shadows so no one would be able to see me. I’m not sure what they would have thought if they did see me, my skin is drawn and pale, I had bags under my eye. I was wearing ripped clothes. The best bet with it being so dark was that they thought I was some homeless addict. Well, that would have been the best bet for most people, my hope was that someone would recognize what I was and kill me, I wanted to die but I was too much of a coward to take my own life. That’s why I kept hidden in the shadows.
There are two reasons I didn’t fade. The day after my night time stroll I couldn’t take it anymore, everything had become unbearable; I’d gone out with the intention of finally giving in and eating when I came across a dog that looked skinnier than