Target Practice: ZOMBIE Flash Fiction
By Kate Madison
Copyright © 2011 by Kate Madison
All rights reserved.
Published by Drive Fast Press
They each had guns stuffed in the back of their shorts as they walked. The day was mild by semi-desert standards. It was fall but summer still had this little part of nowhere outside of Dallas Fort Worth in its clutches. The dust kicked up a bit as they sauntered to the target practice area. Well, Josh sauntered and Talon perfected more of a trudging, reflecting his generally serious nature. Buzzkill nature, really.
“Come on, we do this every day. What’s your problem?” Josh said before aiming and tossing a rock at Talon. It him lightly in the shoulder.
“They should be back by now,” he replied, then added, “They shouldn’t have gone in the first place.”
They walked for a beat before Talon picked up a rock and lobbed it at Josh, hitting him in the leg.
“Hey, man, don’t break the skin. You’re worried and pissed. I get it. But there was nothing we could do. She wanted to go back alone. We were lucky to get her to let Sean go with. He’s probably told her the whole plan by now anyway.”
They had almost reached the target staging area where they would practice shooting bullets, arrows, and/or rocks, depending on their mood. And how many passing zombies they had seen from the house that morning.
The gunshots always pulled in some of them. Josh and Sean never seemed to mind, as there was a fair amount of sport to killing a small batch of them. Televised sports was near the top of Josh’s miss list—a list that seemed to get longer with every passing month. Josh knew it probably did him no good to think about those things. But if life went on in some weird way, and he maybe had a wife and kids or something, he thought it might be good to remember those things so he could tell them about it. Cheesy, yes, but Josh didn’t care.
The area was wide open and about a half mile from the house. And the highway. There was a huge eleven foot boulder that sat there all alone in the middle of the vacant, spread out valley. That boulder took bullets like the tank that it was.
When they first got here a couple of months ago, they managed to create a nice divot at eye level so they could simulate shooting the zombies in the head.
That was one of many fun facts about zombies from fiction that proved to be absolutely true. Josh often wondered if maybe there had been so many stories written about the zombie apocalypse that it was somehow willed into existence. That in a Final Destination type of way, there was no way it could not happen. It was these types of thoughts that replaced the hours of playing video games and watching tv that his brain had previously been used for before the infection. Not an improvement, in Josh’s opinion.
“He’s going to trap them. Hannah for sure. He’ll never let her back out now that she’s well,” Talon said.
He then reached for his gun with ease like actors used to do on tv and in movies. It was a standard nine millimeter. It was clearly the gun of choice for the previous owners of the house Josh and Talon now lived in as there was an abundance of ammo for it in the storm cellar near the house. He shifted the safety off, aimed, but didn’t shoot.
“You didn’t say anything,” Talon said.
“What?”
“You didn’t argue with me about them keeping Hannah and probably Sean, too.” Talon stared at Josh with his massive brow that made him look menacing even when he wasn’t.
Josh got his gun out but looked at the ground while Talon stared at him. Josh knew what Talon was saying was true. But there was nothing to be done, not unless they made a new plan. Which they hadn’t.
The faintest shuffling noise, not the normal kind, but like an echo of the normal kind, snapped their attention to a shape by the boulder.
Josh raised his gun in the same second he made eye contact with the zombie. That’s what made him hesitate.
It…reacted.
Fear flashed across his rotting face as he turned and actually ran (ran!) back behind the boulder.
He wasn’t newly turned, the zombie’s flesh was desiccated and his clothes were torn and dirty. There was also the faint, acrid, smell they give off after many months of decay. But somehow this one had muscles that still functioned to give it speed, something Josh had never seen before.
And his face. Josh thought he looked like a real person, maybe a thief who had been caught stealing or something. He still kicked up a trail of dust despite his unusually fast speed, the tan colored air screaming that that space was no longer occupied. It was empty.
Josh and Talon shared a glance before running towards and around opposite sides of the boulder, guns blazing.
Josh reached the other side the same time Talon did. Josh was weary of friendly fire which made him notice the tip of Talon’s gun before he noticed the zombie crouched down between them.
Again, neither of them shot. They pointed at it with their weapons. And stared. One second. Two.
The zombie launched himself towards Talon’s tan, muscled calf, his mouth open. Josh jumped back at the explosion of sound and brains as Talon shot the thing easily.
Josh checked himself—no open wounds for the small smattering of guts on him to catch an express ride into his bloodstream. And though he knew from experience that the virus didn’t penetrate skin over time, he still planned to stop by the river and wash off before heading back to the house.
“Okay. That was different,” Josh said while looking at the ravaged backside of this strange creature’s skull. The black liquid that was their decayed blood and gray matter formed a Rorschach test on the dirt around its head.
“What was it doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Talon asked, surveying the valley.
That was a good point that Josh hadn’t thought about. He was busy watching the flies descend. That was different, too. Flies didn’t feast on zombies. At least they didn’t used to.
Something was up. Zombies didn’t act like that. And this on top of their maybe missing friends. Josh felt as if the air had gotten twenty degrees hotter. Target practice was definitely over for the day.
“Let’s get back, T. We need to figure this out.”
[THE END]
Thank you for reading.
This is a prequel flash fiction short story. Stay tuned for EMPTY (Evolution ZOMBIE Book 1), coming soon. Excerpt included below.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
Excerpt: EMPTY (Evolution ZOMBIE Book 1) by Kate Madison
Copyright © 2011 by Kate Madison. All rights reserved.
Colby Serns wasn’t dead. This was a fluke, an outlier, an improbable occurrence. Because she should most definitely be dead by now. Seriously dead. But she wasn’t. And that was a problem for her.
Survivor’s guilt? Isn’t that the name?
Colby gingerly lifted her cheek from the asphalt. Dirt and pebbles stuck to her skin as she scooted out from under the car and lifted the rest of her body up. The blue tarp that had been on top of her slid to the ground. Hiding didn’t usually work against the zombies, but she’d had no choice in this case.
She searched for her backpack and spotted it ten feet off
of the parking lot that used to be a highway. Having waited on the ground, under the car, and under the tarp for over an hour, she was pretty sure there weren’t any more of the things around.
For the most part, Colby would stay hidden if things were only pretty sure. But lying under that tarp in the vast quiet was starting to feel a little too much like those minutes each night before sleep finally took her.
She did a final three sixty sweep before heading down into the brush to get her backpack. The zombies had an hour head start back the way she had come from if she wanted to turn around, run back, and chance an attack. Probably wasn’t a good idea since she was low on ammo. But killing zombies was Colby’s only entertainment these days, her only sport. And, except for an hour ago, she was pretty good at it.
They weren’t technically zombies. Not the way she had thought of them, at least. Or rather, not the way they were in movies. Back when there were movies.
They weren’t the undead. Because they never actually died. The ones who got the disease or infection or virus or whatever. They just became lethargic and then a little aggressive. Then a lot aggressive. There wasn’t any real way to tell the difference between someone having a bad day and someone who would need to be shot in the head.
That made for some pretty horrific scenes a year and a half ago when everything went down. Things were calm and empty now.
Or at least they were.
Colby froze when she heard the faint buzzing coming from the west where she was headed. She didn’t see any movement on the road or in the sky. Then she spotted it. Something blurry some yards off the highway.
Colby ducked between two cars and waited, her hand on her pistol inside her bag. Sweat beads formed on the tan skin of her forehead. Colby had given up desiring the company of people a while back. There was only so much horror and tragedy a girl could take.
She waited as the mechanical moving thing gradually took shape. It moved like a car, small, and darting around large bushes. But it was different. Only when the vehicle was almost upon her did she see what it was and its driver.
It was a dune buggy. The glorified go cart kind that people used to rent for the day out in Baja, California.
And the person in it, well, he looked like he had done just that. In the brief seconds when Colby could see him as he passed in front of where she was hidden, Colby saw a scary sight. A smiling, laughing guy driving the dune buggy like a maniac.
Colby sat on the concrete, contemplating, torn. That stupid smile. That stupid smile seemed to bring back all kinds of hope and other useless emotions. There they were, on the surface, making her do stupid things like the thing she was about to do.
Colby climbed on top of one of the cars she was hiding beside and started shouting, jumping up and down, and basically making a visual spectacle of herself.
Problem was—the smiling guy had already driven by and couldn’t see her spectacle. With dawning realization and crazy hope coloring her otherwise good judgment, Colby retrieved her pistol from her bag and shot it up in the air—at an angle because she really didn’t want a not-so-random falling bullet to be the reason for her demise. That would be silly.
She saw his head whip around at the sound and a second later, the dune buggy did the same. It slowed and Colby put the bag down and raised both hands up in the air like she was caught. Of course, she was. Stupid girl.
[end of excerpt]
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