Shovels always make the best noise when you’re bouncing them off a skull.

No, seriously. When I really put my back into it, the sound that rings off a cracked zombie head sounds an awful lot like the quaint tolling of church bells. Or what church bells used to sound like, anyway. Now that all the parishioners are the undead, there hasn’t been any reason to hear that sound anymore. Watching Reverend Osgood chase elderly Ms. Walker down the street and gnaw on her wrinkled old arm was enough to make me glad that I’d never had the misfortune to attend his services. Now there’ll never be any church services ever again, so I won’t have to feel bad about sleeping in on Sundays anymore.

We’ll just have to make up our own religion as we go along, I guess.

***

My family and I had been holed up inside our tiny house in Forks ever since the “contamination” started last month. At first we’d all thought it was a massive widespread flu epidemic, but it quickly evolved into something much more sinister. People started violently attacking each other. The hospital closed down. You could try to call 911, but all the circuits were busy. Finally the phone lines stopped working altogether. There were body parts littering the street, like a bomb had gone off or something. It was a total gore fest.

My father was the local sheriff and an ammunitions aficionado (he had his own NRA card and everything), so he did a fairly good job of safeguarding our house when all those “undead sons-of-bitches” tried to bust through our windows or break through the door. At first he’d tried to stay out and patrol the streets, but that had quickly turned into a lost cause. There were just too many of them for him to take on alone. After he’d had to shoot one of the ladies from the PTA right in the face, he’d just given up and barricaded us inside our house.

My mother was what I would call a hippie throwback from the sixties. Before the epidemic had started, she’d been an artist and avid gardener. She’d sold her organic fruits and veggies at the weekly Forks farmer’s market and tried to spread the word about herbal remedies. After people started killing each other right outside our house, she just hid in her bedroom playing Beatles records full-blast, and she’d only come down to use the bathroom. Then she’d just run right back upstairs, covering her ears so that she wouldn’t have to hear all the shrieking and moaning coming from outside. I think the zombies grossed her out more than anyone else in the house because she was a vegetarian. The whole cannibalism aspect was too much for her to take.

My younger brother Tyler and I just watched the proceedings from the safety of the attic window. People were running up and down the street like the entire world had gone completely outer limits. My brother was nine, and at first he’d thought the idea of zombies was cool because he’d gotten to stay home from school. I kind of had to agree with him on that point. At least I’d never have to go back to work at the diner again. That place blows.

As for me, I was home on break from college when all this began. The biggest worry I’d had the whole summer was whether or not I should let Mike Newton feel me up in the backseat of his dented old Toyota Corolla. Then all of a sudden people were dying and miraculously reanimating – then chasing each other down and eating the still-twitching bodies in the middle of our suburban neighborhood. I felt like I was in my very own horror film. It was as if all those times that I’d stayed up late watching Romero movies on the Chiller network had permanently damaged my brain. I mean, we’d been sitting at the dinner table, and my father had very seriously told us that the entire United States was under attack by the zombie horde and that we were all probably going to die. Then he’d asked my mother to pass the mashed potatoes. It was surreal.

Then the inevitable had finally occurred: one of the undead had somehow managed to pry open the back door. It had all happened so fast. My father had pushed my brother and me down the basement stairs and yelled at us to lock the door and not let anyone in. I’d fumbled around in the dark and pulled the chain to the single overhead light bulb. It swung around in an arcing halo, giving the whole space a supremely creepy effect. Then I’d listened in on what can only be described as the real end of my youth.

I’d heard my father shouting for my mother, and the ricocheting sounds of shotgun blasts as they went off in our living room. I’d heard the clomping sound of her clogs as she’d rushed down the stairs, and then her screams of pain. There had been a lot of scuffling and then an awful silence. I’d walked back up to the head of the stairs when I’d heard my father’s hesitant knock on the basement door. He’d told me that both he and my mother were infected, and that he was going to take her upstairs to “put an end to things.” There had been tears in his voice as he’d told me to take good care of Tyler. The fact that my stoic father was actually crying (something I’d never witnessed once in my entire life) was really what had terrified me the most. A few minutes later, I’d heard his shotgun go off twice, signaling the end of life as I knew it.

My brother had huddled next to me on the floor, crying his eyes out and begging for our mother. I’d just sat there, stunned into total disbelief. It hadn’t seemed real until my parents were gone. Up until that point, it was easy for me to pretend that it was all just make-believe. I couldn’t do that anymore, because my life wasn’t a horror movie. My father had really shot my mother and then turned the gun on himself. All I knew was that I was alone in a basement and that I was now responsible for the care of a nine-year-old child. I wasn’t mature enough to remember to brush my hair every day, and now I had to act like a mother. I was only twenty-one. I wasn’t ready for such a boatload of manly responsibility.

Then I’d seen her.

She had been leaning against the wall of the basement, lined up neatly with all my mother’s forgotten gardening tools. My shovel. My savior. Her handle was long and lean, and her spaded head glinted dully in the light from the bulb swaying gently above me. I’d gotten unsteadily to my feet and walked to her, my trembling hand outstretched. I’d touched her, and immediately all my fears had dissolved into angry determination. I was Ash from Evil Dead. I was Jim from 28 Days Later. I was freaking Francine from Dawn of the Dead – without that effed-up pregnancy side plot that had totally ruined the movie. I’d protect my brother and myself to my last dying breath. If any zombie dared to cross my path, they would be in for a world of hurt.

I’d named her Rosalie. She would be our protection and my talisman against the dark forces that were congregating within the town of Forks, Washington. Besides, I’d never learned how to use a handgun. My father had once told me they weren’t for “nice girls.” Now it looked like I was in for quite a bit of hand-to-hand combat. Terrific.

I’d pulled my brother to his feet and wiped the tears from his face. “C’mon,” I’d said, hefting Rosalie over my shoulder. “Let’s go get some goddamn food.”

***

I made the executive decision that we should hide out at the Stanley’s next door. I refused to stay in our house any longer. I couldn’t go upstairs and look at the carnage that was most likely sprayed all over the walls of my parent’s bedroom, and I doubted I’d be able to sleep or focus knowing that their lifeless bodies were up there rotting. Another morbid fact – I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the place started to smell like a butcher’s shop. I refused to remember my parents like that. We had to go.

I had to forcibly carry Tyler out of the basement as it was. He was completely freaked out and kept crying for our dead parents. Finally I thought of the one thing that I knew would shut him up: french fries. I knew that the neighbors kept a handy supply of frozen ones in their freezer. They were pretty much all that their grossly obese daughter Jessica ever ate. She and I had attended high school together, but we hadn’t ever really hung out. From what little I could recall, she was a huge gossip and was vaguely slutty in an off-putting, clothes-bulging kind of way. I’d seen her around town a few times this summer, mostly when she’d come into the diner to chow down on amazing amounts of food, but she’d always acted like she didn’t know who I was. There was nothing quite like being shunned by your own grotesque neighbor to make you really feel inferior.

I had no clue if Jessica or her parents were still in residence (perhaps they’d booked it out of town, they were dead in their house, or they were walking around undead somewhere), but I figured we had to at least try and find some other survivors. Tyler and I packed our backpacks full of provisions and some fresh clothes, and we crept like skulking ninjas through the front door of our house. It was the home where I’d spent my entire childhood, and I knew we’d never see the place again, but I felt oddly detached from it. It was like my brain could only focus on one thing at a time. Nostalgia just wasn’t important enough at the moment.

I kept Rosalie close at hand. I had yet to use her on an actual zombie – I’d just practiced on some leftover gourds that my mother had been planning to turn into some kind of vegetarian feast we’d all been groaning over. I figured if I was going to re-kill something, I needed to go for the head. At least, that was how it always worked in the movies.

I kept Tyler pressed tightly to my side as we navigated through the yard. It was still light outside, but just barely. Twilight hovered on the distant horizon, giving everything around us an eerie, unsettling feeling. Our dark shadows trailed the building beside our bodies, making me jump and slice my shovel through the air every few feet. I could hear moans and screams in the distance, but our street appeared oddly silent. I tried to convince myself that this was a good thing. My gut was telling me otherwise, but I just pressed on. I needed to get Tyler inside.

The Stanley’s front door was still closed, but not locked. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I ushered Tyler over the threshold, and we slowly made our way toward the heart of the house. We’d been here for potlucks before. The place was retro-kitschy with knick-knacks of the country western variety. Mrs. Stanley had a thing for cowboys that generally grossed me out. The house was quiet, except for a strange thumping sound that I could hear coming from what I thought might be the kitchen. I held out a warning hand to Tyler, motioning for him to stay where he was and to be silent. He nodded his head, thankfully listening to me for once in his young life. Ever since he’d seen me whacking those gourds to itty bitty pieces, he’d had a new appreciation for my authority. It was pretty nice.

I took off my backpack and set it gently on the floor before grasping Rosalie with both hands. I tiptoed toward the swinging door in front of me, totally unprepared for whatever I was about to find. I sincerely hoped it was going to be the Stanley’s dog, Sparky. Crusading heroes always managed to find a good dog in the horror genre. I remembered Kojak being especially cool in The Stand. I knew that I was just trying to think of anything other than what was making that noise on the other side of the door, but I couldn’t help myself. My hands were sweating, and I tightened my grip along the handle of my shovel. I needed to focus.

I reached out a trembling hand and pushed. The door swung open, revealing an immaculately clean kitchen. A bright print of little red roosters patterned the wallpaper, and there was an apron hanging from a hook next to the stove that said “Kiss the Cook” in cheery yellow letters. The noise was coming from behind the granite-topped island in the very center of the kitchen. I could see a pair of brown tasseled loafers with the feet still in them sticking out from behind the counter space. The legs were flopping back and forth, which accounted for the thumping sound I’d been hearing. I cleared my throat, not terribly excited about what I was about to discover.

Survey says: probable zombie.

“Mrs. Stanley?” I called, and my voice felt like it was way too big and loud for the closeness of the space. I heard my words echo back at me off the shiny tile flooring. “It’s Bella Swan from next door. Me and Tyler are alone, and we’re hungry. We were wondering if you had anything we could eat.”

The hulking behemoth that raised itself from behind the kitchen island wasn’t Mrs. Stanley. It was Jessica, and it looked like she’d been pigging out hardcore on more than one person. Surprise, surprise. It turned out that she liked to binge-eat even after death. There was blood and gore smeared all over her chubby face, in her hair, on her skimpy clothes. Her lips were pulled back in a gruesome simulation of a smile. Chunks of flesh hung from her lax jaw. A resonating growl rose up out of her chest, and part of her top had been torn, exposing one mammoth breast.

“That’s fucking disgusting,” I muttered under my breath. She ambled around the countertop, headed in my direction. She nearly tripped over the feet of what I could only assume was her father, and her dirty, clutching hands reached out toward me. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough to eat?” I shook my head as she approached. “God, you’re such a pig.”

As Jessica lumbered within a few feet of me, I pulled Rosalie back and really let fly. It was effortless, really. Like hitting a baseball, or whacking a piñata. The accompanying thwack was like music to my ears. She went down in a heap of jumbled limbs, sprawled out on the tile with her legs spread wide. I could tell that she was trying to get back up, but my hit had really disoriented her. I quickly brought down my shovel, shoving the business end of it directly into her grinning face. After that, she didn’t move again.

“Bella,” I heard Tyler call from behind the closed door, “what’s going on? Did you find any food in there?”

I braced my booted foot against Jessica’s portly waist and yanked Rosalie free with a rough tug. The wet sound that resulted might have made the old Bella barf all over the sparkling kitchen floor, but I was pleased to find that I was already beyond such feminine hysterics. My stomach must have been made of iron, because I was shocked to discover that I was actually hungry. Killing zombies was kind of a workout, and I hadn’t eaten a decent meal in days. Walking around the island, I quickly dispatched of Mr. Stanley as well, who was already beginning to rise up off the floor.

“Yeah, buddy,” I yelled back, wiping my shovel on the red-and-white checkered kitchen towel hanging from the handle of the fridge. I opened it up and peered inside. “Ooh, they have snack packs! You want chocolate or vanilla?”

***

We hid out at the Stanley’s for a few days (after I’d dragged the lifeless bodies of Jessica and her father out to the backyard), but eventually we ran out of food. I was amazed that the power was still on at all. There had been limited zombie activity in the neighborhood. In fact, none of the undead that I’d spied through the window had tried to break into the house or anything, and I was on constant guard. My thoughts were that they’d probably run out of fresh blood, and now they had moved on to other more populated areas.

I was subsisting off a few hours of sleep a night, and I was doing okay for the moment, but I knew we needed to try and find other people. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this kind of schedule up for much longer. Plus I wanted to be able to bathe sometime in the near future. I’d found the decomposing body of Mrs. Stanley in the upstairs bathroom. She’d slit her wrists in the bathtub. I was more than a little bitter that she’d decided to end herself in the only available shower in the house. I washed as best I could in the downstairs sink, but it did little good. I was starting to smell pretty ripe. Even Tyler couldn’t stand to sit too close to me, and he’d become an almost permanent fixture on my body since our parents had passed.

I scoured the garage and found a tandem bicycle that had seen better days. It was the best that we were going to be able to do, because the Stanley’s car was as dead as the family who’d previously owned it. I got out a can of WD-40 and greased the bike chain, smiling when I realized that it might actually be pretty serviceable. I brought it into the house and coaxed Tyler into taking a test ride with me around the tiled living room floor. We pushed back the furniture and made an obstacle course. He rode pretty well. Dad had been teaching him over the summer before this had all started, and it seemed as though the lessons had managed to stick. I decided it was time for us to go.

We got our stuff together and pulled the bike up through the foyer to the front door of the house. I found a coiled length of rope and strapped Rosalie onto my back. There were a few places that I thought might be good to try and find other survivors. Number one on my list was the mega supermarket. It was huge, it was full of food, and it was close by. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, anyway.

It was overcast outside when we took off down the deserted street, and the dark clouds looked as though they were threatening rain. We pedaled slowly at first, trying to pace ourselves. I didn’t want us to get worn out. Tyler was pretty small, and I wasn’t exactly an Olympic athlete. The neighborhood was quiet. There were no birds, no buzzing insects, no traffic sounds. I was on high alert as we maneuvered around stalled cars and fallen bodies. For a solid fifteen minutes we didn’t run into a single solitary person. I allowed myself to get lulled into a false sense of security. I began to believe that maybe all the zombies had moved on somewhere else far away and that we’d be able to get all the way across town to the grocery store without incident.

I was very wrong.

We’d just rounded the corner of Lexington when they spotted us. A near army of the undead appeared to be milling around aimlessly in front of the local convenience store. My eyes almost bugged out of my head as I took in the sheer numbers of them. There had to be over a hundred twitching, grunting zombies just loitering in front of the gas pumps. It was as if a sea of very dirty hobos had just decided to take over the mini-mart.

I suddenly spotted my father’s old fishing buddy, Billy Black. He used to bring me a Hershey’s kiss every time he’d come over to the house. He had the sweetest smile I’d ever seen. Now he was missing an arm, and his shirt was covered in an unrecognizable dark gunk. I saw my preschool teacher, Mrs. Cope. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, and her hair was matted and filthy. These were people I knew. They were people I’d grown up with. I was so overwhelmed that my feet stopped pedaling, and we began to roll to a slow, coasting stop. I felt Tyler tugging on my t-shirt.

“Bella, please keep going,” he whispered, his voice high pitched and terrified. I finally managed to shake myself out of my stupor. The group of zombies had already started toward us, mouths agape, and we were on a creaky old bicycle. There was no way I’d be able to combat such a massive horde by myself. We’d have to try and outrun them.

“Tyler, ride as fast as you can, okay?” I forced myself to remain calm. The last thing I needed was for him to start freaking out and tip us over. Then we’d never make it out of this mess.

We both started pedaling double time, and the old bike protested fiercely. It wasn’t used to such vigorous speeds. The squeak of the gears almost drowned out the growls and grunts coming from the mob chasing us. We somehow managed to stay upright, and the bike started really rolling. The scenery whizzed past at an alarming rate, and I could hear Tyler’s wheezing breaths as he tried to match my grueling pace. I hated pushing him like this; he was so tiny, but it was the only way for us to get away.

I could see the grocery store ahead of us on the horizon, but the undead were gaining on us. I could hear the sound of their feet pounding the pavement in an uneven rhythm as they ran behind us. Sweat dripped down my face and into my eyes, nearly blinding me. I kept pedaling, muttering words of encouragement to Tyler. My father’s last request had been to take care of my little brother. There was no way in hell that I was going to allow him to be ripped apart in the middle of the street, all because I was too stupid to come up with a better plan than riding a tandem bicycle through zombietown to the supermarket.

“Oh God, oh shit, oh God,” I chanted as we finally reached the parking lot of the supermarket. There was no way we were going to make it. The bike was about to fall to pieces. I could feel it shuddering and quaking beneath us, ready to give up the ghost at any moment. We were going to die horrible, painful deaths, and it was all my fault. We should’ve just stayed at the Stanley’s. Starving to death would have been better than this. Anything would be better than this.

Just as I was about to completely give up any hope of us surviving, I heard a human voice screaming at me over the din. I looked up ahead to see that the back service entrance to the grocery was propped open and that someone was waving at me. I summoned the last of my flagging strength and stood up on the bike, pedaling with everything that was left in me. We flew through the open doorway like two bats out of hell, crashing into a huge pile of boxes with enough force to send us flying through the air. I landed on my back with a grunt of pain. I lay there, writhing, as I waited for the breath to come back into my lungs. Pounding was coming from the closed door, but it didn’t appear that the zombies could get inside. I couldn’t believe it. We were safe. We’d actually made it.

My breath finally came back as a looming black shape hovered over me. I heaved in giant gulps of air before pushing past the muscled body to search for my fallen brother. He was lying on the floor next to the wall. He wasn’t moving.

“Tyler,” I murmured, petting his sweaty golden hair, “please wake up. I’m sorry, okay? That was a dumb plan. I’ll do anything if you’ll just talk to me. Please just be alright.” I lay down beside him and pressed my head to his little chest, trying to listen for a heartbeat. “Wake up.”

His tiny arms came up around me and I nearly sobbed, I was so overcome with relief. “Belly,” he whispered, patting my back, “that was fun. Let’s do it again.”

I nearly choked on my laughter. “God, you’re such a freak.” I hugged his little body close to mine, thankful to be alive. I was so full of happiness in that moment, my heart was literally thumping double-time in my chest. “I love you, weirdo.”

I heard a throat clear above me and looked up at the hovering shadow-man who’d opened the door for us just in the nick of time. It was dark among the boxes, and my eyes still hadn’t really adjusted to the dim lighting in the room. I could only make out his general shape: tall, fairly muscular, messy-looking hair. All of a sudden the overhead fluorescent lights kicked on, and I squinted against the sudden painful brightness.

“What the hell was that noise, Edward?” a nasal, feminine voice called from the far side of the room. “Please don’t tell me another zombie got in. I swear, I will totally projectile vomit if I have to watch you deal with one of them again. It’s just not sanitary.”

I shaded my eyes with my hand in order to see the shadow-man in his full glory. He was wearing a bright green supermarket apron over a pair of khakis and a white oxford shirt. His messy hair was tinted a reddish bronze, his face held about a week’s worth of scruffy beard, and his blazing green eyes peered out at me from behind a pair of chunky black framed glasses.

Suddenly it all came to me in a rush. I knew this guy. We’d gone to high school together. He hadn’t really had any friends. He’d been in the accelerated learning program and spent all his time in the computer lab. I’d been lucky just to make it to class when I wasn’t sleeping in the bed of my truck. He’d been some kind of crazy genius and had gotten a full ride to some prestigious school on the other side of the country, and I hadn’t seen him since. He must’ve come back for the summer to work a part-time job, too. Stock boy, maybe. I guessed the zombie attack had pretty much leveled the playing field when it came to collegiate smarts. None of us were going back to university any time in the foreseeable future. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

He extended a hand to help me up off the dirty linoleum and I took it, struggling to get to my feet. Almost immediately he released my hand, backing away a few steps like I might be contagious. He rubbed the back of his neck and gawked at me, as if trying to process the fact that I was really standing in front of him. I could understand where he was coming from. After all, he was the only other human being besides Tyler that I’d seen in almost a week who wasn’t devouring the mutilated carcass of a townie. God only knew what kind of effed-up stuff he’d witnessed. I was sure everyone and their dead mother had tried to come to this grocery store. It was the biggest business in town, besides the Walmart.

I pulled Rosalie off my back and stretched my tired muscles. I felt like I could sleep for a week after that crazy bike ride from hell. My shirt rode up on my waist, and I yanked it down with my free hand, grimacing as I noticed the multitude of caked-up dirt underneath my fingernails. Tyler and I were both pretty filthy. It was a wonder the guy hadn’t mistaken us for the undead. Good thing they didn’t have the motor skills to ride bicycles, or we’d probably be the main course at their zombie buffet at this very moment.

Mr. Glasses just kept looking at me, totally silent, and his unwavering gaze sent a weird tingling feeling through my body. Awareness washed over me. I began to worry about things that’d had no meaning to me since the zombies had taken over the city. I suddenly became extremely worried that he might be able to smell me from across the room. Nothing made a better first impression than horrific body odor.

He finally seemed to realize that he was staring at me like a total creeper and he held up his hand in greeting. “Edward Cullen, MIT,” he said, his voice much lower and rough than I would have ever imagined. It was nice. Comforting.

I waved my shovel back at him and smiled politely. “Bella Swan, zombie killer.”

I wrote this on a napkin, listening to Izza Kizza’s “They’re Everywhere” on repeat for a full hour. You can blame Sparglekun for giving me the idea. We both share a miraculous love of zombies that knows no limits. She’s my zombie queen.

This will be a continuing story. Don’t worry, TCB will update as regularly as it always has. I just had a little horror in me that I needed to get out. Zombies on the brain. Pun intended.

Big fat kissy-face thanks to my beta, Lisa89, for correcting this for me.

I still don’t own anything Twilight.