Lord of the Zombies: Apocalypse (Lord of the Zombies Zombilogy Book 1) Read online

  “Oh give it up will you?” Simon said to nobody in particular.

  He was getting angry.

  Clearly he was unaffected. Clearly he was superhuman, and clearly this was fucking brilliant. He was in a bus full of zombies who were trying, and failing at every turn, to eat him, which was clearly the brilliant bit.

  He was just getting annoyed that they didn’t get the whole, “I am a fucking God! Touch me and you’ll regret it,” thing.

  He stopped at the door and turned back to the old woman who, throughout this whole unpleasant affair, was quietly keeping to herself, sitting in her chair, and chowing down on an annoying ex-teenager who was now providing a nice square meal and contributing something useful to society.

  Simon smiled at her. “You have a lovely day.”

  “Thank you dear, I couldn’t interest you in a,” she offered him an arm.

  “No thanks, I’ve already had breakfast.” Simon replied as he almost brought it up.

  Chapter 5

  Nick

  The world turned slowly through space. Most of the human race turned quickly into something else - something very nasty else. Those who didn’t turn started running or got eaten.

  But Simon was something else entirely. He was walking, not running, and definitely not being eaten. He was being accosted every step of the way, but every zombie that tried to make a meal of him was tossed through the air like flying zombie confetti.

  It was both exhilarating and a little unnerving. He had seen so many zombie movies and he knew as soon as someone was bitten, they became a walking, if somewhat vacant, mobile home for maggots.

  But try as they could, no zombie was gaining any purchase on his skin. Instead of biting him, the zombies’ teeth wouldn’t even scratch the surface. At the instant of contact, zombie teeth, jaws, hands and feet would catapult away from him and not always in the same direction.

  It was one thing to be disliked, but another thing entirely to be liked too much, and for all the wrong reasons. This could make someone a little paranoid and Simon was becoming just a little paranoid. He needed to find stability, a touchstone where he could get in touch with himself and what he was feeling.

  He needed a beer.

  The pubs were closed, and probably wouldn’t reopen until the apocalypse passed, so the next best thing would be Nick.

  Nick was Simon’s mate. Nick would still be at home because Nick was an ex-human resources manager whose own position had been outsourced. Nick no longer had a job, but he did have beer. It always amazed Simon how a man who has no visible source of income always had a visible source of beer.

  Simon walked up to a car that was stopped half on the footpath and half on top of a complaining zombie that growled and grunted as it tried, unsuccessfully, to lift the car off itself. Simon took pity on the zombie and leaned down to help it.

  “Here mate, let me give you a hand.”

  The zombie tried to bite Simon’s arm and the explosive reaction hurtled it, or at least the top half of it, against a nearby wall while the legs were left pinned under the car. The head and torso swore at him from where it lay by the wall.

  “Um, sorry ‘bout that.” Simon said, feeling guilty about what happened, but reasoned the zombie shouldn’t have tried to eat him in the first place and got what it deserved.

  The zombie didn’t agree. It was now dragging itself towards him and clearly hadn’t given up on getting what it still believed it deserved.

  Simon opened the car door and got in the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition; the driver had clearly abandoned the vehicle in a hurry.

  He started the engine and slowly backed off the zombie’s legs.

  The head and torso crawled to its own legs and looked slightly puzzled. It tried to fit itself together again, but really needed some strong sticky tape.

  Simon turned around in the street, avoiding all the other abandoned vehicles, but completely failing to avoid all the zombies who kept getting in his way. It was a bumpy, somewhat messy, drive to Nick’s place and involved a lot of wheel skidding on slippery roads.

  Simon tried not to picture what he was driving over and what those all too frequent bumps were. The car had good suspension and he was thinking he should get one of these models. The traction control was particularly useful when he skidded over a small group of zombie tourists who kept trying to snap his picture with their phones, even as they tried to climb into the car to eat him, but there was nothing he could do about that. He had somewhere to be and a beer was waiting, as well as another rational human being he could talk to – at least, this is what he kept telling himself.

  Chapter 6

  The Axe Falls

  Nick lived in an apartment block with a delightful view of another apartment block. Simon would often go around there. He and Nick would sit in the dark and peer at the other apartment block, hoping to see some beautiful woman dancing in the nude, blissfully unaware of two slightly creepy guys perving on her. Of course this never happened and the most they would ever see was some other guy perving back at them with exactly the same idea.

  Simon pulled up and opened the car door, decapitating a zombie who appeared suddenly, growling at him through the open window. The detached head fell through the window of the open door, hit the ground, and rolled under the car.

  Simon leaned down to see where it went. It was sitting halfway underneath, lolling around uselessly and drooling. He thought it best to leave it there.

  He stepped, absent-mindedly, over the headless body then turned his attention back to his quest.

  The apartment block looked normal, well, as normal as a drab concrete lump sticking vertically into the sky could look. A zombie leapt at him and was flung over a retaining wall, landing with a thump somewhere.

  Simon walked up the stairs. He preferred the stairs; he hated using the lifts in these old buildings. The last thing he wanted to do was survive a zombie apocalypse only to suffocate in an elevator, or drop three storeys in a box that was supposed to go up but which, due to age and senility, may get a little confused.

  After some huffing and puffing, because fitness was not a close friend or even a passing acquaintance, Simon found himself outside Nick’s door on the third floor.

  He hesitated; a zombie ran at him and ricocheted back down the corridor before vanishing from view down the stairwell. Simon was nervous as he looked at the door to Nick’s apartment. This wasn’t like a first date. There would none of this mutual getting-to-know-you nervousness; Simon simply hoped his best friend wouldn’t try to eat him.

  He swallowed, gathered his courage, and knocked. The door swung open of its own accord. This was not a good sign.

  Simon spoke, whispering hoarsely, his nerves clearly showing.

  “Nick, Mate? It’s Simon. Look, I’m not a zombie, please don’t clock me with your bat, I’m coming in now.”

  He gingerly stepped inside the apartment. “I’m walking in now, I’m walking in very slowly, I just want to talk and have a beer.”

  There was a sound of movement from somewhere inside. The apartment was well lit, there were no dark corners, just normal corners Simon couldn’t see around, and that made him even more nervous.

  “Listen mate, if you are a zombie, don’t try to eat me, because it won’t go well for you.”

  Every word Simon uttered came slowly, in time with his footsteps as he gingerly made his way further into the apartment.

  “It’s just that I seem to have some kind of zombie repulsion force. Every zombie that touches me is flung violently away. I don’t want that to happen to you, mate.”

  “Well, I’ll just rip off your head then,” Nick said as he appeared in front of Simon, a perfectly calm look on his zombie-ravaged face.

  “Fuck!” Simon screamed as Nick grabbed for his head and was unceremoniously flung across the lounge room.

  Zombie Nick stood up awkwardly and shook his head.

  Simon was angry now.

  “I told you not to fuc
king do that. Why don’t you fucking listen?”

  “I am a zombie, what can I say, it’s what we do.”

  Nick was so very calm and so very certain. He finished his sentence very calmly, and then equally as calmly, rushed at Simon, his face a mask of zombie hunger.

  Once again, the same thing happened. Nick found himself flying backwards across his own lounge.

  “This is fucking ridiculous!” Simon yelled. “Stop trying to fucking eat me – I’m not a Mcfucking happy meal.”

  Nick quietly sat up. “Yeah, you’re right –wanna beer?”

  “Yes I fucking want a...” Simon caught himself, mid-sentence and tried very hard to calm down. “Yes – I want a beer.”

  “Fair enough.” Nick stood up and walked past Simon to the kitchen just off to the right of the lounge room. He opened the fridge, plopped an open bottle of beer down on a small kitchen table, which was decorated quite fetchingly with a flowery tablecloth that seemed oddly out of place, in view of what had just happened.

  Nick then pulled out a jug filled with a cloudy, lumpy–grey and red liquid, which he poured into a plastic cordial glass and sat in a chair one size too small for him.

  Simon calmed himself and slowly, very deliberately, eased into a chair opposite his best mate who was just sitting there, quietly drinking his strange cordial, as if nothing had happened.

  A tatty t-shirt hung loosely over Nick’s broad frame, a pair of crap-brand tracksuit pants covered his legs, and a pair of old trainers held in his feet.

  Simon slowly took a gulp from the opened bottle and gazed at Nick uneasily. His best friend’s broad face was just as he remembered, apart from the gaunt, withered grey zombie skin, but there was a hunger in the eyes that flickered in and out of the moment. Simon looked around the apartment; it was messy as if a zombie lived there, but it always looked that way, so nothing had really changed.

  In the corner of the kitchen, a small birdcage stood on a stand. There was an almighty tear in the bars and no bird. He knew Nick had a small, blue-green budgie named Axe, but Axe was nowhere to be seen. Simon was deathly afraid to ask what had happened to Axe because he already knew the answer as he glanced at the strange cordial.

  Simon had to ask, he really didn’t want to, but he had to know. He had to know what his best mate had become, what he had done. He looked at the cordial and swallowed.

  “Is that Axe in your glass? You’re my mate. You can tell me, I promise I won’t get upset.”

  Nick looked at his cordial, “What, my budgie?”

  “Yes Mate, is that what’s left of Axe?”

  “No – get out of it, I may be a zombie but I couldn’t eat my little buddy. No, this is from old Mrs Miggins up the hall. She makes her own cordials.”

  At that moment, a fluttering blur appeared from up the hallway. It was Axe, Nick’s cute little blue-green budgie. It landed on the table by Simon’s arm, except it wasn’t cute anymore. It was larger, much larger, and closer to a small chicken in size and half its feathers were missing. Where feathers were missing was bloated, distained flesh, and any feathers remaining were matted and bloody, but it was the eyes and the beak that gave the game away. The eyes were large, dark, and had a bloodshot ring around them and the beak was jagged and very nasty.

  Simon had never seen a zombie budgie before.

  Axe looked contemptuously at him and reared back, its beak opening wide. It plunged its beak into Simon’s sleeve and was catapulted across the room.

  Simon and Nick winced, but Axe just shook himself off and stomped back across the floor towards Simon.

  Trying to lighten the mood, Simon indicated the cordial. “So, that’s Mrs Miggins?”

  Nick looked at the cordial and took a deep swig. “Yeah – I puréed her brains, made it easier to lug around.”

  Simon threw up.

  He’d wanted to do that all morning. He did it all over the zombie budgie at his feet.

  Nick screwed up his face. “Euwerrr, that’ll be a bitch for him to clean off.”

  “Oh shit, sorry little guy.” Simon spluttered as a piece of sick fell from his mouth and buried the budgie completely.

  The small pile of sick shook and the top of a zombie budgie’s head emerged. Axe stared at him, a single black eye visible.

  With a determined effort, Axe dug himself out, shook himself off, and climbed up the tablecloth hanging off the table until he reached the table top where he once again locked eyes on Simon, continuing to stare as Simon straightened himself up and wiped his mouth.

  “Do you think he’ll hold a grudge?” Simon could feel the weight of the budgie’s unwavering gaze.

  “I dunno? He hasn’t killed the neighbour’s cat yet.”

  A movement at the corner of his left eye caught Simon’s attention. A large black cat climbed in over the lounge room windowsill. There was malice in the cat’s gaze as it stared at Axe.

  Axe stared back at it for a moment before returning his cold eyes to Simon.

  Simon backed up a little. “Why do you keep looking at me? The cat’s the one you should be worried about.”

  “I dunno about that,” Nick added. “I think it might be the other way around.”

  Axe leapt at Simon again. It was sudden, unexpected, and brutal. A zombie budgie in full leap, its claws splayed out before it, was a terrifying and formidable sight, and also completely useless. Simon leapt back in horror and threw his arms up to protect his face but, once again, as soon as he touched Simon, Axe was flung across the room.

  He smashed against the far wall and fell to the floor. In an instant the black cat was on him and swallowed him in one bite.

  “Oh my God!” Simon screamed.

  For a brief moment the cat seemed quite pleased with itself, then it began to jike around, as if it were bringing up a fur ball, and suddenly an angry zombie budgie chewed its way out through the top of the cat’s head.

  Axe shook himself off and stomped off towards the remnants of his cage. Behind him, the cat fell down dead, and then got up again, very groggily, with a big hole in the top of its newborn-zombie head.

  It slowly trotted over and jumped on the table, one eye missing and a big hole matted with blood and bone on top of its head, through which Simon could see a messy, mashed up brain.

  “That is one fuck-ugly cat,” Nick murmured as he placed his glass neatly into the hole in the cat’s head. “But it makes a smashing drinks holder.”

  The cat lay down on the table and quietly went to sleep with a glass of Mrs Miggin’s brains sticking out of its skull.

  Chapter 7

  Lunch

  “So you’re a brain munching zombie then?” It was another obvious question, but one Simon felt he needed to ask. It was painfully obvious that the creature sitting opposite him looked vaguely like his best friend, but the gaunt, grey look, the steely hunger, and the permanent sneer around a set of appalling teeth, was a real giveaway.

  And so was the smell – and it was bad, really bad. Like something dead had been left in the room, or in this case, sitting opposite him downing a cordial of puréed brain.

  The smell was something Simon had never considered before. He was considering it now, but his body was so past gagging that it decided against throwing up again and just go with the flow, reasoning that any retching at this point would only serve to make the smell worse.

  So Simon stuck with pondering what lay before him. He’d watched countless crappy zombie movies and, in many ways, was now taking part in his own crappy zombie movie, but he had never considered the smell. Of course zombies had to smell; a creature could not subsist on brains and body parts without stinking the place out and after all, a zombie was basically a dead person trying very hard to make a lot of other dead people.

  Simon contemplated this as a reproductive strategy and realised that normal sexual coupling could prove difficult, and potentially embarrassing, for any zombies taking part. One of the rules of this new zombie-sphere, if there were any rules, was that zombies were pron
e to having bits of them drop off through putrefaction and if the wrong bit dropped off, got stuck somewhere, or broke off at an inconvenient moment, it would ruin the entire attempt.

  He subconsciously adjusted his crotch.

  Simon looked at Nick; Nick looked back at him as a grey streak of frontal lobe ran down his pale and sticky chin.

  Apart from the obvious zombie apocalypse, which was clearly in full swing, Simon knew something was wrong; the rules of zombie etiquette were being broken. Zombies were mindless, intent on killing and eating the living. They didn’t generally possess self-awareness, intelligence, or the power of speech and definitely were not in the habit of offering someone a beer just after trying to bite their head off.

  “You’re not normal.” Simon said in a matter of fact way, without thinking it through.

  “Well, I am a zombie.”

  “Yes but you’re not normal for a zombie.”

  “What’s normal for a zombie? We eat brains; we distend people, chow down on their intestines, and turn them into us. Who are we to question why?”

  “But you can talk and you’re still you, or at least a vile unnatural version of you.”

  “Maybe I should get a job.”

  “What?” Simon was alarmed. Nick was expressing an emotion completely foreign to him; something opposed to every fibre of his being since he lost his job. Nick had a persona; something he had worked hard at cultivating and to be finally seeking a job again, was like dying and being reborn.

  Simon realised the irony in this.

  “Well, seeing as I am going to live forever, I will need some kind of purpose, something to devote my life to.” Nick put down his drink and stood up, wiping the brain matter off his chin, a determined set to his brow.

  Simon pushed his chair back. “What?”

  “I’m going to devote my life to - finding a way to eat you!”

  “Jesus!” Simon leapt out of his chair just as Nick launched himself across the table, arms reaching out for him, lips curling back, red bubbly saliva dribbling from his gaping zombie mouth.