More from BLEEDING KANSAS: “In the Night Kitchen” Part III

This series of excerpts from Bleeding Kansas begins shortly after the last one ended. The Dark Resurrection is in full effect and nowhere outside this downtown Kansas City hotel is safe. Derek Grace has already lost his wife. His children are 600 miles away in Colorado Springs. He has no weapons, and his one companion is a smug, manipulative corporate hustler who nearly allowed Grace to be overcome by an undead woman, just to watch him struggle. 

Derek Grace has much to think about, and much more to do. First and foremost on the list: a transformation. From desperate middle-aged job seeker into the DEAD SILENCER.

“Her flesh-clotted teeth bared to their blue-black gums”

I’m casting about the room, looking for the—there. The chef’s station.

A heavy, cleated meat tenderizer. A cleaver.

She has animal sense enough to brace one arm against the hot table to hold herself upright as she takes large strides to close the distance between us, her blue-gray hand gliding along the brushed steel of the grill table. But I have two working legs and a righteous fear for my life.

The cleaver is in my left hand, the meat hammer in my right. She rounds the edge of the table. Her arms stretch to take me, her flesh-clotted teeth bared to her blue-black gums as she moans in anticipation of fresh meat. I bring my left arm across my body and swing out.


One arm falls just below the elbow; the other dangles by a strip of flesh. The woman yelps, more in rage than pain, and lunges at me with her legs. My right arm comes up, around, and brings the hammer square between her eyes.

I can’t tell if she’s truly down or just stunned. Recalling the reporter’s admonition that the lower brain must be destroyed I bury the cleaver in the back of her skull where she lies face-down on the floor. If that doesn’t do the job I don’t know what will.

“Unnnnh?” says Officer Dalton, and I’m so glad he spoke up or I wouldn’t have seen him. I pull at the cleaver.

It’s stuck. I step out of the way and end up tripping over the woman’s body. Officer Dalton reaches down for me and I roll away just in time. He falls across the woman, his hand pushing at the blade in the back of the woman’s skull. With a sklutch-squish it bends to one side, prying up a section of bone. Best of all, it’s loose.

I can’t reach it without being grabbed. Dalton’s hands flail and grasp at me across the remains of the woman who turned him. I think of how that Guardsman’s flesh bulged in the grip of that fat woman, of the lampstand in that girl’s hands. Once those things have a hold on you, that’s it. You’re done.

It’s probably what happened to Dalton. No telling what he was doing with this woman in the first place, but it’s a safe bet he didn’t think someone so small had a chance of taking his fat Trained Professional ass down. All she needed was a couple of handfuls of clothing and flesh and her jaws did the rest.

I scramble to my feet. Knives of varying lengths hang from the wall behind the chef’s station but they’re not long or thick enough to sever hands. Not as fast as I need to do it. The world’s largest iron skillet sits to one side. I swipe at it with one hand and nearly dislocate my shoulder. I grab at it two-handed and swing as hard as I can at Dalton’s hands. I hit one; with luck I broke the bones in it.

Like the woman before him, though, mere injury only enrages him. He lunges for me. 

NEXT: “I turn to face the bodies”

There's more where this came from in BLEEDING KANSAS, from SEVERED PRESS.

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And THAT story continues in GRACE AMONG THE DEAD.

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Coming in 2016: THE WRONG KIND OF DEAD.

More from BLEEDING KANSAS: “In the Night Kitchen” Part II

This series of excerpts from Bleeding Kansas begins shortly after the last one ended. The Dark Resurrection is in full effect and nowhere outside this downtown Kansas City hotel is safe. Derek Grace has already lost his wife. His children are 600 miles away in Colorado Springs. He has no weapons, and his one companion is a smug, manipulative corporate hustler who nearly allowed Grace to be overcome by an undead woman, just to watch him struggle. 

Derek Grace has much to think about, and much more to do. First and foremost on the list: a transformation. From desperate middle-aged job seeker into the DEAD SILENCER.

“This is a monster’s face”

Cool, air-conditioned stench washes over me. God only knows how bad this would be if the power was out. I listen for movement while my eyes adjust to the darkness. I notice the curious dead have left the windows and doors about the hotel. Most of the traffic is concentrated on the streets and sidewalks. Our fountain-centered plaza outside of the front doors provides a wide buffer.

I hear noises ahead. I spare a glance at the bodies on the floor so I can step around them. The old man in the boxers is on his back, his junk still hanging out the flap. Mercifully, all I see of the woman whose face I’d ruined are her pale, blood-and shit-streaked legs. I walk past the front desk and Angie’s still on the floor. Poor Angie. I step behind the desk, stop short when I see her face.

There’s no way Angie could have made a face like that when she was alive. Not on tequila, not on angel dust, not on a dare. Her teeth are dry like her eyes; they don’t glisten so much as glow with menace. This is a monster’s face. I realize now the worst wasn’t leaving her on the floor like a pair of dirty socks. It was letting this dutiful, sweet daughter of the paved-over prairies turn into this.

The light outside is fading. I edge around the front desk to the lounge area. The TV is still on. The screen shows a stock loop of landmark shots from around the world, implying that the SOS is going out to all the powers that matter, so remain calm (and feel free to join in the prayers if you need something to do while cowering in your shelters-in-place). 

There is no news on what is happening in the individual countries, let alone here in town. Just shots of large congregations, close-ups of supplicants on their knees, mumbling into their clasped hands. I’d try the other channels but that noise in the kitchen….

With the mmmm! and hnnnnn! sounds over the slurping and smacking there’s no doubt as to what it is. The question is, who is that thing eating? Did Tanner come down ahead of me and get caught?

(Goddamnit I don’t want to do this I don’t want to do this I don’t want to do this!)

I push through the swinging doors.

I see the dark mass on the floor before me. The creature—Jesus, what do we call these things?—doesn’t look up until I turn on the light. She was a woman once, younger and somewhat more attractive than the scrawny cougar I defaced earlier. She looks up at me from where she sits carelessly on the floor, like a toddler plopped on her butt to play with something. She doesn’t see me, of course, but she knows I’m there. She sniffs. Smell must be a major factor in how they register living flesh.

This lady’s problem is she’s got a scabby Van Dyke beard from feasting on the cooling remains of Officer Dalton. Registering new scent is difficult with her current meal literally under her nose.

I stand as still as possible. After a while she resumes noshing from a rip she’s torn through Officer Dalton’s exposed man-boob. I take a step back.

With a triumphant roar she rises quickly, facing me as if she really sees me. Her arms thrust forward, fingers clawing. I swing the floor lamp stand and she grabs it with blood-freezing force, the metal support pole warping in her grip.

I let go of the stand and duck behind the hot table. She slings the stand away, stumbling over Dalton’s body as she comes for me. 

NEXT: Part III: “Her flesh-clotted teeth bared to her blue-black gums”

There’s more where this came from in BLEEDING KANSAS, from SEVERED PRESS.

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And THAT story continues in GRACE AMONG THE DEAD.

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Coming in 2017: THE WRONG KIND OF DEAD.

More from BLEEDING KANSAS: “In the Night Kitchen” Part I

This series of excerpts from Bleeding Kansas begins shortly after the last one ended. The Dark Resurrection is in full effect and nowhere outside this downtown Kansas City hotel is safe. Derek Grace has already lost his wife. His children are 600 miles away in Colorado Springs. He has no weapons, and his one companion is a smug, manipulative corporate hustler who nearly allowed Grace to be overcome by an undead woman, just to watch him struggle. 

Derek Grace has much to think about, and much more to do. First and foremost on the list: a transformation. From desperate middle-aged job seeker into the DEAD SILENCER.

“Like Mardi Gras”

On my way down the hall to my room I’m startled by the whump! of a body throwing itself at the other side of a door, roaring and snarling like a frustrated predator behind the glass at the zoo. Thank God that thing hasn’t figured out how to work the latch. Thanks again for being many doors down from mine. I don’t want to have to try and sleep with that thing’s angry, hungry yowling in my ears.

I open the door to my room, this same room I woke up in this morning. The same room on another planet, where the hotel staff is dead or food for the same. I close the door behind me and secure the latch.

The sun edges below the horizon, its orange-yellow beams blazing like a silent scream through the window. I look down onto streets that were completely empty this morning. Still no cars or trucks rolling about. Just…people?

It’s like Mardi Gras, wall-to-wall bodies, and not one of them walks a straight line. I see no cars or trucks, armored or otherwise. No muzzle flashes of rifles or sidearms. All you see are these erratic, atomized little blotches, every one a stone killer.

I could get a view of the park from the other side of the building, see if the National Guard vehicles are still there, what the police are doing, if anything. If I had the master key, that is. I might take a quick trip downstairs and look, maybe find a weapon I could use…no. I couldn’t find one in the lobby to save my life earlier.

But in the kitchen? All those knives and tools.

It’s a long way down. Why not wait for the morning? We’re leaving then, anyway. Tanner’s got that Glock…

…with how many bullets left in it? Besides, the blasts attract others.

When did I start trusting that smarmy bastard, Tanner, anyway?

I’m pounding down the fire stairs, the heavy base of a floor lamp cradled in one hand. Going around and down the concrete and steel flights, the reality slams home: I’m in a 20-story hotel with no staff on duty. Mobs of flesh-eating pedestrians fill the streets outside. Law enforcement and the military have been neutralized, if not eliminated altogether. There’s no one left alive but people with severely morbid Irish luck—like me—and smooth-talking psychopaths like Tanner. And I expect the rest are plain psychopaths who don’t have Word One to say whatsoever.

The 15 flights go quickly. I take deep breaths to steady myself at the door into the lobby.

I push it open.

NEXT: “This is a monster’s face.”

There's more where this came from in BLEEDING KANSAS, from SEVERED PRESS.

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And THAT story continues in GRACE AMONG THE DEAD.

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Coming in 2017: THE WRONG KIND OF DEAD.

As the Dead Begin to Rise in BLEEDING KANSAS, Part IV

THE SETUP: Two men sit at the bar in a luxury hotel in a city on lockdown. Most of the hotel’s guests left while it was still possible to travel, but there are a few still in their rooms, many of them too sick to move. 

The narrator is one Mr. Derek Grace, who will, in time, go from middle-aged job seeker to the Dead Silencer. It’s difficult taking in the end of the world as a whole when your personal life has already crashed and burned. Now he’s stuck at a bar 600 miles from his surviving children, as the dead rise to attack the living. He may be locked inside...but the menace isn't all outside in Bleeding Kansas.

“Goddamn it, shoot the bitch!”

“Can anyone here say his or her name?” Tanner asks.

“Unnnnh!”

“Mmmmmgh!”

“All right, then. Good night!”

This gray, big-bellied old man wearing nothing but boxer shorts with his wedding tackle hanging out goes down, a red-black hole misting open between his eyes and exploding out the back of his skull. The man in the soiled and stinking flannel pajamas springs backward, as does the one in the gray track suit. God help us, the next one sweated out his last fever nude, his final death-shit moist about the backs of his thighs. Tanner drops him.

“Okay,” says Tanner, still grinning. “The last one’s yours.”

“What? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. You’re taking her down.”

She’s a slight, bird-boned thing with expensive hair poofed into a cloud behind her head from lying feverish in bed. She dressed in pink silk pajamas but like all God’s children, male and female, rich and poor, she voided her bowels at point of death.

“Look around you!” says Tanner.  “Find something you can use!”

The shit-stench is eye-watering. I don’t see anything around me but various pieces of furniture.

“Come on! She’s just a woman! Not even a big one!”

I pick up the single big upholstered chair—lighter than you’d think, really—and throw it. It knocks the woman onto her back. I pick up the seat cushion, which had flown loose, and put it over the woman’s grunting, snapping face. She bites the cushion. The force of her contracting jaw deforms the cushion from the other side. Like it’s being pulled into a black hole.

Putting all of my weight into my heel I stomp down upon the woman’s head. I feel teeth break, then her jaw. But I can’t quite kill her. I start jumping up and down on her head. I lose my balance and fall backwards.

The pillow tumbles from her face as she rises. Rage flares in her undead eyes, standing one on top of the other as her broken-necked head rests with one ear flat upon her shoulder. Her face is black and blue, her teeth bloodied, but there’s enough of them left to inflict damage.

“Goddamn it, Tanner, shoot the bitch!”

“You sure?”

“Fucking positive!”

“You don’t have to curse.”

“Are you fucking serious?” I roll to my feet, the woman between me and Tanner. I put my heel into her solar plexus and kick her towards him. He’s startled so the first shot misses her head. His second shot drops her.

“Are you all right?” Tanner says over the ringing in our ears.

“You mind telling me the point of this?”

“I was curious to see how you would react in extreme crisis. You handled it in a manner…quite unorthodox.”

“I finally got you to shoot it, didn’t I?”

“Yes, and thanks to your rage issues, it’s not pretty.”

“Whatever works.”

“The question is, should we trust you with a weapon?”

“Is that really up to you?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“In your dreams.”

I look at him, he at me. He holds the Glock up just so. I turn and walk back to the bar. Shoot me in the back while I’m going for a beer. I can think of worse ways to go.

“Okay, let’s stop this!” Tanner says. “We’ll find you a weapon, if only to double our firepower! There’s this one thing, though.”

“What?”

“Guns seem to attract them.”

I look out the front. The shadows of a dozen or so once-living people lean against the glass by their foreheads. Most of the men are dressed in suits, but barefoot. The women are in nightgowns or simple dresses.  Some have dirt down their fronts where they clambered over the other bodies to get out of their trench. Maybe half have that wide streak of red-brown blood around the mouths and down their middles.

“We need to get out of this lobby,” says Tanner.

“Ya think?”

The story continues in BLEEDING KANSAS, from SEVERED PRESS.

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And THAT story continues in GRACE AMONG THE DEAD.

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Coming in 2017: THE WRONG KIND OF DEAD.

As the Dead Begin to Rise in BLEEDING KANSAS, Part III

THE SETUP: Two men sit at the bar in a luxury hotel in a city on lockdown. Most of the hotel’s guests left while it was still possible to travel, but there are a few still in their rooms, many of them too sick to move. One of them has bitten Angie, the desk manager, and she’s reacted badly to it. 

The narrator is one Mr. Derek Grace, who will, in time, go from middle-aged job seeker to the Dead Silencer. For now, he’s fuming over the recent death of his wife, who died with all the other victims of the Final Flu, while the job that was going to save his family literally perished before he could take that final interview. 

It’s difficult taking in the end of the world as a whole when your personal life has already crashed and burned. Now he’s stuck at a bar 600 miles from his surviving children, as the dead rise to attack the living. He may be locked inside...but the menace isn’t all outside in Bleeding Kansas. Who knew?

“She wasn’t dead all that long”

God knows what took them so long to switch back to the studio. It’s just one man at the news desk, no spiffed-up female counterpart. He eventually looks at the camera, his forehead creased as if weighing what he’s about to say next. 

Finally:

“Homeland Security told us to make sure no one was frightened or otherwise led to believe that this situation was out of control. Well, you all saw what we saw. If you have Flu sufferers in your house, you have a decision to make. You can either finish it now and put your loved ones out of their misery—or you can try and finish it while fighting for your life. Fighting against what has to be the devil’s cruelest trick on humanity since—”

The anchor swallows hard. “For our viewers, however many are left out there, please stay indoors like they’re telling everyone now—but don’t trust the authorities to get this under control anytime soon, if ever. Not only are people still dying from the Final Flu, a lot have died already—and not all of those bodies made it to those burial sites. As you could see from the live feed we had earlier, most of these wandered in from—”

The screen goes to a generic blue “Loss of Satellite Feed” page.

“I can’t believe it took them that long to cut him off,” Tanner says. “This is looking to be much worse than anyone thought.”

“The people you talked to knew about all of this and thought they could contain it?”

“How hard could it be? One in every three caught the Final Flu. Not everyone died at once. Even if they did, it’s still two-to-one. You’ll notice they don’t move very fast, either…oh, and speaking of which, could you get off your chair and move behind me as fast as possible?”

I look over in time to see Angie. Her eyes are dry and unfocused but I’m sitting closest to her and she’s stumbling straight towards me. I jump away from my chair and Tanner bangs a slug between her eyes. She falls, her arms still reaching out to take me. Her teeth are still showing from under her lips as she sprawls across the floor.

Tanner slides off from his chair to stand over her. “Look at the color of her skin,” he says. “She wasn’t dead all that long. Her lividity would have changed over time but looking at her you’d think she was just fine, if a little pale. Feel her skin, though!”

“Er, no thanks. Her eyes were all I needed.”

“Hmm…well, yes. They can’t produce tears or blink anymore. Good catch. Hadn’t considered that one.”

“Goddamn it, it’s obvious this has been going on everywhere else. Why aren’t people being warned about this?”

“Actually, the reanimation phenomenon started just last night Stateside. People have been dying of the Flu in Europe and Asia all last week but this business with walking, flesh-eating cadavers is a new development. I must admit, though, I’m curious. How would you explain this?”

“How about we start with the truth?”

“Who would believe it? That’s why they were encouraging people to see it for themselves on their local channels. People can deal with it that way. Or so they thought. The National Guard here certainly wasn’t ready for it. They didn’t fill in that trench like they were supposed to once those things started stirring.” Tanner glances towards the plate glass entrance.  “We might want to get out of sight of the doors.”

The first shadows are stumbling forth into the street from between the buildings across the avenue. They’re far enough away; we’re buffered by a wide, brick plaza anchored by a center fountain. Still….

“We should kill the lights,” I say, but Tanner has them off before I’m halfway through saying it.

Just as I’m turned to walk back to the desk the elevator door dings and opens. The light in the elevator is blocked by one, two, now five figures stumbling hesitantly into the lobby.

“Tanner!” I spring for the front desk.

“Nnnnh-waaaaah!” They key in on my voice and movement and shuffle in my general direction.

NEXT: “Goddamn it, shoot the bitch!”

There's more where this came from in BLEEDING KANSAS, from SEVERED PRESS.

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Deutsch Sprachübersetzungs!

And THAT story continues in GRACE AMONG THE DEAD.

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Coming in 2017: THE WRONG KIND OF DEAD.

As the Dead Begin to Rise in BLEEDING KANSAS, Part II

THE SETUP: Two men sit at the bar in a luxury hotel in a city on lockdown. Most of the hotel’s guests left while it was still possible to travel, but there are a few still in their rooms, many of them too sick to move. One of them has bitten Angie, the desk manager, and she’s reacted badly to it. 

The narrator is one Mr. Derek Grace, who will, in time, go from middle-aged job seeker to the Dead Silencer. For now, he’s fuming over the recent death of his wife, who died with all the other victims of the Final Flu, while the job that was going to save his family literally perished before he could take that final interview. 

It’s difficult taking in the end of the world as a whole when your personal life has already crashed and burned. Now he’s stuck at a bar 600 miles from home, watching the mass burials on TV. It’s not going smoothly. And he’s only blocks away from the action in Bleeding Kansas when... 

“Crimson spray erupts”

A woman runs screaming to the girl but is blocked by a Guardsman and his M4. He pushes the little girl’s mother so hard she falls backwards. Another Guardsman runs forward as the little girl falls atop one of the volunteers trying to wrap her up. It’s the volunteer’s turn to kick and flail now that the girl has her head nuzzled into her neck. Crimson spray erupts along either side of the girl’s head. The second Guardsman shoots twice, once into the girl’s head and again into the head of the injured volunteer.

“Holy shit! Tanner, what do you know about this?”

“It’s been a busy 12 to 18 hours. No one knows what to make of it. I’ve been reading messages from my sources overseas but I picked up a lot of intel just walking around with Officer Dalton. The cops and the Guard know all about this.”

“This?”

Two Guardsmen hold the screaming, kicking woman while two others pull the little girl from the body of the volunteer. Her face is blotted out with red. Bits of pale matter dot the clot of scarlet clenched between her tiny teeth. After some deliberation they toss the volunteer into the trench as well.

I can’t believe what they’re showing next. The bodies of the little girl and the volunteer are lying on top of what looks like giant writhing maggots—the corpses struggling against their shrouds in the trench.

“Yeah,” says Tanner. “They’re gonna have to close that up fast. Weird how so many of them will come back at once like that. It’s like that first one woke them up.”

“What the blue screaming hell is going on here?”

Tanner nods at the screen. A reporter is speaking urgently to the camera: “What we’re seeing here is a post-mortem reaction to the Final Flu. These are not your loved ones all of a sudden getting better. These are—”

We hear the automatic gunfire echoing loudly among the buildings outside before hearing it on the TV. The camera swings away from the reporter to down the street from the park. A figure falls forward, a broad stripe of blood plastered from his mouth to his groin. As that one falls we see another man behind him, comically barefoot in his Sunday best suit. He’s clasping a woman to him. You can see the woman’s screaming face over his shoulder as he chews into her. A bloom of red appears on the back of the man’s head and he falls, pulling the woman with him. The Guardsman runs over, points his rifle down and fires.

“As you can see over here,” we hear the reporter’s voice over the image, “victims of bites from these reanimated bodies need to be put down, too. No matter how slight or severe the wound, the person bitten will sicken, die, and rise to bite someone himself. Reports of this phenomenon in other cities have indicated that the lower brain stem must be destroyed to drop the reanimated ones.”

The air crackles with the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. “It’s not just here in this park!” the reporter yells over the blasts. “This is happening with the burials at other parks! This is why everyone was supposed to stay home!” 

The camera finds the reporter at last. He’s got his back to the trench, where one can see hands waving over the lip of it. There were other bodies wrapped in sheets waiting to be put into the trench. They writhe and twist like oversized grubs. Legs begin kicking free, arms thrust stiffly out. “Many of the dead are getting free,” says the reporter, “either from the sheets or from loved ones who think their deceased have miraculously recovered. The ones in the trench aren’t likely to get out, as it was dug a solid six feet. The dead are utterly mindless on top of very uncoordinated. They don’t—”

A scream close by cuts the reporter off this time. The camera pans right to show a Guardsman taken down from behind by a big woman in a pink muu-muu and a pale, thin teenager dressed in what must have been his prom tuxedo. They each have an arm upon which they batten down. They gnaw and tear furiously at the tough cammie sleeves. The Guardsman is young and fairly robust yet he can’t break the grip these people have on him. The fat paws of the big woman close so tightly you can see the Guardsman’s flesh bulging white between her fingers.

The camera turns back to the reporter in time to show two dirty figures shambling up behind him. There’s this animal hnnnnnnnh! and the camera’s image is jerked backwards. It bounces once, rocks, then settles for a view of the clear blue sky. The screams are so loud and close the mic is distorting. Beyond the screams the background is filling with the sounds of weird moans, a low growling. And more screams. A dog yelps and cries over and over….

The slurping and smacking noises are the worst. And the hungry mmmmmm! you hear as they tear into another bite.

NEXT: Part III: “She wasn’t dead all that long.”

          

That’s right, there are THREE different covers for Bleeding Kansas. The story of the first two is at the end of Part 1 of this excerpt series. The cover on the far right is for the German translation by Luzifer Verlag. The apocalypse has gone international. Put your affairs in order. Better yet, put in an order for one of these books! You’ll want something to read in the down time between catastrophes.

###

As the Dead Begin to Rise in BLEEDING KANSAS, Part I

THE SETUP: Two men sit at the bar in a luxury hotel in a city on lockdown. Most of the hotel’s guests left while it was still possible to travel, but there are a few still in their rooms, many of them too sick to move. One of them has bitten Angie, the desk manager, and she’s reacted badly to it. 

The narrator is one Mr. Derek Grace, who will, in time, go from middle-aged job seeker to the Dead Silencer. For now, he’s fuming over the recent death of his wife, who died with all the other victims of the Final Flu, while the job that was going to save his family literally perished before he could take that final interview. 

It’s difficult taking in the end of the world as a whole when your world has pretty much ended all on its own. Now he’s stuck at a bar 600 miles from home, listening to this guy brag about his fabulous life, and he can’t even leave to see about his wife.

Things are about to get worse. Much, much worse. From the pages of Bleeding Kansas comes...

“Tasteless frosting on an unspeakable cake”

It comes off as quite the magnanimous gesture when Tanner pauses in his litany of First World problems to let Angie know he’s thinking about her: “Why don’t you find an empty room and go to sleep for a while?”

“I feel better out here with you guys,” she croaks at us.

“So long as you’re comfortable,” he says.

“Fine. Thanks.”

I get up and walk to the sofa we’ve dragged behind the front desk for her. Angie’s skin is covered in a greasy sheen. I touch the back of my hand to her head. “Ow!” she cries out.

“I’m just seeing if you have a fever.”

“It hurts!”

“What’s going on over there?” says Tanner.

“She’s got an infection,” I snap, annoyed at the accusatory tone in his voice. I look down at Angie. “Can I get you to drink some water?”

“I just want to sleep.”

I go into the back and fill a glass with crushed ice and water. “I’m setting this here,” I tell her when I get back. “Don’t be shy. Believe it or not, you need this.”

I’m aware of Tanner looking at me as I return to my seat at the bar. I pointedly ignore him.

“There are a lot of germs in the human mouth,” he says. “In fact, a bite from a human is one of the worst you can get.”

He says this oh-so casually. Never mind the young woman burning up with fever on the couch. Just when I think I’m the most bitter-twisted, soul-numbed waste of skin in the house, here comes Mr. Cool-Head All-Is-Well Security Consultant.

I pick up the remote and begin flipping through the channels. The coordination of the media is impressive. Each of the local stations has their assigned neighborhoods and their parks to cover. They have their separate theme music, even separate logos and titles but the narrative is the same: a straight-out-of-nowhere summer cold somehow became the Final Flu and now the world takes historic pause to bury their first wave of dead from this once-in-a-century epidemic. 

“Like in the days of the 1918 Spanish Flu we all look forward to getting back to more-or-less normal,” I hear people on two different channels say word for word. “Of course, the new normal will take some getting used to!”

The other satellite channels show documentaries on the Spanish Flu, with nods to plagues past. I suppose if you watched some of that for long enough you might come to accept that one out of three people dropping dead is perfectly natural.

Of course there’s the usual corny-phony scenes of prayer among the surviving members of Congress and the Senate on the Capitol steps. “We encourage everyone watching to tune into their own local channels for coverage of what’s happening in their own areas,” says the voiceover. “We know it seems out of the ordinary to ask viewers to turn away but it is imperative we stay in touch with our local communities and do what has to be done to normalize issues specific to our respective localities. Every community has its own issues with the Flu, and its own requirements for taking care of the remains of the deceased. Meanwhile, we take you to scenes of faith from around the globe….”

The clips they’re showing from inside churches could just as well have come from coverage of Easter services in any given year. The voiceover repeats the script.

So, good citizens that we are, we click on to the coverage on the parks closest to our area. The solemn bumper music plays as they come back from break—the break being a list of the stations to call to have your deceased removed for you, based on ZIP code, school district, etc.

“Worldwide catastrophe” is a phrase that turns up now and again. We’re coming together, of course. Americans always come together in Times of Crisis.  (Unlike those snooty French, I suppose.) And so we will gather to mourn our dead and carry on…shopping, or whatever.

The narration is hushed as the camera follows a soldier/Guardsman pulling a little bundle in a sheet from the back of a canvas-covered truck. “The flu was extremely random in its selection of victims,” says a male narrator. “Whereas the Spanish Flu of nearly a hundred years ago targeted young, healthy adults and spared the very old and very young, this flu took infants, the elderly, the young, middle-aged—everyone. Every family has been affected. My family, my co-host Andrea’s family, Jeff the cameraman’s family, our producer, Jean, in the van. Your family, too.”

“Balls,” I say. “Let’s open up the bar.”

“Let’s wait until all this is over,” says Tanner. “Then the first one’s on me.”

This pompous ass is hardly dressed to be in charge of anything but a country club tennis court and I wouldn’t recognize his authority there, either.  I’m sliding off my stool to pour myself a beer when I hear the firecrackers again. I go to the plate glass doors and try to make out where it’s coming from.

“Sound to me like its coming from one of the problem areas,” Tanner says.

“Problem areas? How is anything a problem with damn near everybody dead and the National Guard on the streets?”

I’m aware of Tanner looking me over, weighing my capacity for frankness: “There are certain cultures that resist having their deceased taken away from them without a proper viewing period.”

“The blacks aren’t giving up their dead so the National Guard is shooting them?”

“Ah! You’re aware of the practice.”

“Of the long vigils, yes. Shooting people for it, no.”

“We’re in the midst of an epidemiological emergency. Two days ago it was a bunch of people with colds. Now people are dead. A lot of people.” Tanner gestures toward the TV. “This is about getting a biohazard good and buried before we lose what’s left of us.”

We see shots of the canvas-covered flatbeds pulling to the curb in various neighborhoods. The volunteers in their Day-Glo yellow vests walk up to the doors on either side of the street. They don’t use gurneys but stretchers. Once they have the body they jog to the back of the waiting truck.

The survivor fills out the paperwork on the clipboard held out by one of the government volunteers. Name, age, sex, approximate time of death. They get a numbered receipt for the body in lieu of an official death certificate.

The narration is excruciating to listen to. Platitudes, benedictions, soothing words: tasteless frosting on an unspeakable cake. I think of Sibyl and Jack having to deal with their mother’s lifeless body. And I’m not there. I keep telling myself they’re capable and mature enough. Which they are. Still….

The scene cuts to a park. There’s a long trench and yellow police tape all around.


“This is just three blocks over,” Tanner says.

“Yeah, we heard the backhoe earlier.” I’m looking at all the people behind the yellow tape. Even from the screen you can feel the tension of the crowd. They want to see their loved ones covered, even if it is with a backhoe.

Tanner frowns. “This isn’t good.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t take his eyes from the TV. “They’ve had some issues at some of these burials.”

“I thought this was the first wave.”

“The first wave here. Burials have been going on pretty much all day everywhere.”

“So, aside from the logistics of burying so many people at once, what issues have they been having?”

“There,” says Tanner.

Most of the bodies are wrapped in sheets; the ones that aren’t are wrapped there at the park before being lowered into the ditch.

One of the bodies is apparently resisting being wrapped up. A pale little girl kicks and flails at the sheet. The two wrapping her are knocked back on their rears as the girl sits up.

“The hell?”

“Watch!” says Tanner. He leans eagerly towards the image on the screen.

NEXT: Part II: “Crimson spray erupts”

First edition. Available
only in paperback.

AFTERWORD: Crazy as it sounds, there are two editions of Bleeding Kansas, and they differ in more than just their covers. The first edition contains more overtly misanthropic observations from Grace about the people and even the undead around him, some of which apparently hit some reviewers where they live. It also contains the death of a special-needs child that really upset some others. The child dies because Tanner is a nasty piece of work, but people blamed Grace, then me, because innocents don’t die in zombie apocalypses, only people who have it coming. Or who can defend themselves. Or whatever.

Second edition, in Kindle
and in paperback.

So I rewrote the book. Six pages fell away as I niced it up for sensitive readers. We slapped a new cover on it and figured we could leave the bitchy reviews behind. Although the reaction to the new version hasn’t been all that bad, it seems we got more positive vibes from those discerning readers who expect a properly violent and nasty apocalypse than not. When I finish the third book in the series (yes, the second is already out) I’ll restore the child’s death and some of the misanthropic snark, in the course of making the Ultimate Version. If the death of special-needs children bothers you, if angry people make you feel uncomfortable, this is the version for you. 

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