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  “Nice,” Nicholas said. “Best shot you’ve made all week.”

  She didn’t respond, nor did she turn around to look at him. She kept her rifle up and sighted on the second zombie’s head.

  “One chore says you can’t make it two for two.”

  Nicholas enjoyed his little games, thought they made the day go faster. Kate didn’t care one way or the other, but she usually indulged him. After all, it wasn’t as if they had anything better to do. On any other day, she would’ve taken him up on the bet. But not today…not when the zombie she had her gun trained on was her brother. Or rather, what was left of him.

  The two of them stood a hundred yards from the playset, next to a large oak tree on the southern edge of the park. It was early November, and most of the leaves had changed color and fallen from the trees. They’d had to be careful to avoid crunching any of the leaves while walking through the thigh-high grass. Most of the time zombies seemed unaware of their surroundings, and they usually moved slower than a glacier made of molasses. But when meat was nearby, their systems revved into high gear. Their senses became sharper, and their reflexes became quicker—almost as quick as a human’s. Even the smallest noise could catch their attention. And while Kate was by this point a practiced hunter and could pick off a charging zombie with relative ease, she preferred to kill them from a distance. When zombies got a whiff of meat, especially when it was still alive, they moaned, yowled and hissed in a way that reminded Kate of a pissed-off cat. Not only was it creepy as hell, the sound drew other zombies like sharks to blood in the water.

  “Something wrong?” Nicholas asked.

  Kate didn’t answer. She knew the question he was really asking: Why hadn’t she shot yet?

  Eight months ago the plague had hit. She didn’t know the scientific name for it, but the media had called it Blacktide because of how unbelievably fast it had spread. In less than a month, two-thirds of the human race was dead. Of the surviving third, three-quarters became zombies. The rest—whether through some kind of immunity or sheer dumb luck—survived and remained human. Kate had been one of the fortunate, although there were days when she didn’t count herself as such. She knew David and his family hadn’t shared her immunity. One day, before everything had really turned bad, she had gone over to their house to check on them. David, Sarah and the kids were gone, their front door left wide open, but their golden retriever Sasha—or at least her savaged, half-eaten corpse—had been left behind, along with a dozen or more bloody handprints on walls and doors. Some made by children, most by adults.

  That was the day Kate had become a Ranger.

  For the last six months—in addition to making supply runs—she had helped patrol Lockwood, killing zombies and disposing of their bodies in the fire pits outside town. And all that time, she had kept an eye out for her brother and his family, but she had never once caught sight of any of them. Until now.

  Each day before going out, she told herself that if she spotted one of them she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. She wouldn’t be killing them; she’d be setting them free. It would be a mercy, a last act of love from a family member. And she believed that, she really did.

  So why couldn’t she pull the trigger?

  David wasn’t just her brother. He was her twin. Fraternal, of course, but from the day they were born, they’d shared a bond just as deep as if they had been identical. But that should’ve made it even easier to shoot, shouldn’t it? If their positions were reversed, she’d want David to put a bullet into her brain, and she was certain that was what he’d want her to do for him.

  Still, she hesitated.

  David stood there, blood smearing his mouth and chin from the squirrel he’d bitten into. Blood on his hands from where he’d torn the animal in two in order to share it with the other zombie—and wasn’t she having a hell of a time wrapping her head around that? She’d never seen a zombie do anything like it before. With them, it was every dead man for himself. He still held on to his half of the squirrel, the back end, she noted with a twist of nausea, tiny entrails dangling from it. He held the nasty thing down at his side, momentarily distracted by the sound of her gunshot, Kate guessed—but not so distracted that he would let go of his grisly little treat. Once zombies got hold of food, they didn’t release it. Not willingly, anyway.

  She was surprised by how much he still looked like the David she remembered. His clothes were filthy, covered with old bloodstains, dirt and mud. If she hadn’t known that he always wore a light-blue, short-sleeved shirt to work and navy-blue pants, she would’ve been hard-pressed to guess their original colors. He also always wore comfortable black work shoes, the kind with thick soft-rubber soles for people who were on their feet a lot. He’d lost one of them along the way somewhere, the right one. The black sock on that foot had been worn through some time ago, and its remains hung in tatters around his ankle, leaving his foot exposed. His brown hair hung tangled and matted down to his shoulders, and his face was covered with patchy stubble. Once someone became a zombie, their hair continued to grow for a couple months, although the rate of hair growth eventually slowed and finally stopped altogether. Facial hair ceased growing even faster, usually after only a week or two. She had no idea why. She wondered if there was anyone left alive in the world that did know or—for that matter—cared.

  His skin was leathery, his complexion sallow, eyes cataract milky. He stood awkwardly, left shoulder higher than his right, head canted to the side, left foot turned slightly inward. She wondered if he’d been injured sometime during the last six months. Zombies weren’t alive, but they weren’t exactly dead, either. As far as Kate knew, there wasn’t a word for what they were. They ate, they breathed—although infrequently—and they even excreted. They also healed, if slowly and at times imperfectly. She wondered if that’s why David carried himself the way he did.

  But for all the terrible changes Blacktide had wrought in her brother, he still looked like David to her. More, he felt like David. And even though she desperately wanted to do her duty to him as his sister, as the last living family member he had in the world, she could not bring herself to shoot him.

  The entire time she had been struggling with her feelings, David had merely stood and looked at her, his face expressionless, eyes cloudy, dead and dull. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her and what, if anything, he thought or felt.

  On impulse, she reached out to him with her mind.

  “David? Are you in there?”

  David stood frozen in shock, unable to believe what had just happened. Up to this point, the most serious injury he had ever witnessed in person was when an old man had slipped on a patch of ice outside of Walmart one winter. The man had broken his hip, and David still remembered the horrible snapping sound and the man’s scream as he hit the ground. He’d called 911 and waited with the man, talking with him to keep him calm until the paramedics arrived. But this…this was in a whole different league. Hell, a whole different galaxy. This was the Super Bowl…no, the goddamned Olympics of physical injuries. The woman’s head had exploded right in front of him, like someone had stuck a firecracker inside of a melon filled with red juice and meaty pulp.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Far worse was the thing that had killed her.

  Decoration Day

  Vic Kerry

  Welcome to Innsboro. We’ve been waiting for you.

  To Reverend David Stanley, the small town of Innsboro, Tennessee, seems heaven sent, appearing out of a fog on a secluded mountain road. When he hears the town needs a preacher for its annual Decoration Day service, it’s as if God himself called him to duty here.

  But as Decoration Day draws near, David begins to wonder about Innsboro. It doesn’t appear on any map. It lacks any conveniences of modern life. In fact, the whole town seems cut off from time. Worst of all are the hideous nightmares, terrifying visions of monsters…and a strange, pulsing purple light. Perhaps it wasn’t heaven that sent Innsboro after all.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Decoration Day

  Copyright © 2014 by Vic Kerry

  ISBN: 978-1-61922-236-6

  Edited by Don D’Auria

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2014

  www.samhainpublishing.com