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  Season of Rot

  Eric S. Brown

  Features five diverse tales of the living dead from zombie fiction master Eric S. Brown!

  SEASON OF ROT: Safe from the walking dead that rule the streets, a band of survivors holes up in a hospital. When their supplies run low, they must either migrate or trust a stranger who promises them salvation—except the stranger isn’t who he seems to be, and neither are the dead.

  THE QUEEN: To escape a plague that has turned most of mankind into ravenous cannibals, a crew of survivors takes refuge at sea. But supplies only last so long, and the crew must face their enemies on land in order to keep themselves alive and afloat.

  THE WAVE: When a wave of mysterious energy from outer space washes over the earth, electronic devices fail worldwide and communications break down. Worse still, the energy alters human brain waves and turns billions of people into bloodthirsty animals. Only a small pocket of humanity is immune, but their only chance of survival may also be their grave.

  DEAD WEST: The Civil War is over. The Confederacy is gone. But in the West, a new threat is rising. Accompanied by a regiment of inexperienced soldiers, a journalist ventures into the frontlines of a war against the walking dead, and the truth he finds there is far more frightening than any living corpse.

  RATS: Rats are everywhere and can get into anything. And now they are swarming mankind. Those bit rise again as undead pawns in the rodents’ onslaught, and no place is safe—no place except one. The problem is getting there before the rats’ next attack.

  Eric S. Brown

  SEASON OF ROT

  Introduction

  You hear their moans and the sound of them pawing over each other to get to you. Swarms of them now flood the room as you load the last of your rounds into your gun. They’ve devoured your family, your friends, and you are the only one left, alone, isolated, empty, your soul shattered. They will kill you now in unimaginable ways, but you are determined to take some of them to hell with you. You aim and pull the trigger…

  Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? Welcome to Eric S. Brown’s Season of Rot. Here you will find a sense of paranoia, dread, isolation, shock and horror, and all of it adeptly woven into one tasty, flesh-eating morsel.

  I have worked with Eric firsthand on some projects in the past, and his stories have always captivated me. His bleak, intense world vision gets under your skin and makes you face the biggest, scariest “what if” you could ask… What if the undead took over the world and the last hope of humanity was an inch away from oblivion? Well, the zombie man, as I like to call him, delivers again with Season of Rot.

  Eric has become known for turning out the most original end of days, apocalyptic, zombie-mashing tales around. From the get-go, his stories assault you with relentless action, twists and turns and enough human drama to give you nightmares for weeks. They’ll make you stay far away from cemeteries for as long as you can until the end finally comes.

  Season of Rot does all this and much more. This isn’t just a zombie fest. It’s not just an end of the world scenario. It’s a glimpse into a universe, one created and orchestrated by Eric himself. If you think you know where this story is going, think again. It’s not your mom’s zombie story. Forget that old black-and-white Night of the Living Dead—this is full-blown color in your face. Season of Rot takes the zombie convention and turns it on its head.

  I guarantee that you won’t know where the story is going until Eric wants you to know. He successfully reinvents zombie fiction and makes us think. His mix of characterization, plot and action is well done and makes us care. You will be with these characters all the way; they are alive, they breathe and you will beg to know what happens to them next. You will pick a favorite and follow them all the way through. You will feel their horror, their fear, their sense of isolation, their hopelessness and helplessness. But you will also feel their courage, their sense of community, their determination to live and their hope. Yes, hope. Hope in a world gone to hell. There are glimmers of it here and there, but you never truly know how it will play out, and just as you think you know, it sucker punches you.

  In recent years Eric S. Brown has spawned more zombie fiction than you can shake a corpse at. From The Queen to Zombies: The War Stories, to his most recent Zombies II: Inhuman. In these tales you will find no ordinary zombies. They think, act in groups, plan, communicate, run, and kill with intelligence. Through these tales you discover how much like us they are. They really are us. The enemy is within. They are our sisters, our brothers, our neighbors, our fathers and mothers. Everyone you could trust and love is now out to kill you and ravage your flesh, and it happens in the blink of an eye.

  If anything Eric’s tales have made us analyze ourselves and the human condition, our interaction with each other and the world around us. For the battlefield, when it comes down to it, is the entire world. Eric has turned the formula of the living dead into a world-ending apocalypse. As if nuclear war, the greenhouse effect, disease and starvation weren’t enough, now we have the undead rising from their graves to end the world. And this is his universe, spanning volumes of stories, chapbooks, collections and novellas, all woven together to tell the ultimate tale of humanity’s survival.

  Add to this The Season of Rot—a fine collection that only enhances this universe. From beginning to end, the book sucks you in with its seemingly simple premise, but then snags you deeply, forcing you to ride alongside these people as the unreal unfolds and the real story takes hold.

  You might think that after all the zombie fiction there would be no new way of telling this tale. Eric shows you that is painfully untrue with his new offering of undead delight, a feast for his fans, an homage to all those who love the living dead.

  It’s clear that Eric has much more to say on this subject, many more poor souls to thrust into a world overrun and overthrown by legions of the undead. It’s clear that Eric isn’t done twisting and turning this new icon and reinventing it. This tale, like his others, is no ordinary zombie tale… it has bite.

  Prepare for the Season of Rot; it’s going to be a rough season, one you won’t soon forget. Grab your shotgun, your hunting knife and food rations, and turn the page, brave fan. The Season of Rot has just begun.

  —John Grover

  Author of Terror in Small Doses, Shadow Tales, and Space Stations and Graveyards.

  SEASON OF ROT

  One

  Daniel dangled his feet over the edge of the demolished stairwell. Two floors below, the creatures waited, stretching their decaying arms toward him. Frustrated, unable to reach their prey, they pushed each other and occasionally knocked one or two of their brethren off the jagged end of the stairs. Daniel imagined the bottom of the stairwell, dark and littered with broken bodies, masses of them crawling and dragging themselves about, unable to work their way back up the stairs or find their way out of the hospital.

  When Daniel and his group took refuge here, they destroyed the stairs and cut the cable to the elevators, leaving the dead no way up to reach them. The effort had proved well worth it; now the refugees could sleep in peace.

  Daniel shifted the rifle across his lap and checked its chamber, then lifted the gun to his shoulder and aimed at the horde below. Only a headshot, or general destruction of the brain, would send the things back to Hell. Daniel found a target and squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked as the high-velocity bullet tore through the dead thing’s skull in an explosion of wet pulp. It was a futile gesture, really: millions of people, nearly everyone in the city, had turned into walking mounds of rotting flesh whose sole purpose was to tear off your face and eat it; Daniel and his group could never kill all of them. But he enjoyed it from time to time. He joked that it was his tiny piece of vengeance.

  No one
from the floors above came running to investigate the shot. They knew Daniel was on watch today and were accustomed to his habits.

  Aside from Daniel, more than four dozen living souls called the hospital home. They collected rainwater on the roof, tried to grow crops in or on the building wherever they could, and rationed out the dwindling supplies from the hospital’s cafeteria and emergency stores. They’d moved the generators and the fuel supply to the upper floors and had limited the use of electricity as much as possible. Even so, their time here was running out. One day soon, if help didn’t come, they’d all be forced to pack up and move… assuming they could find a way through or past the thousands of creatures occupying the bottom three floors of the building and surrounding its walls outside.

  Daniel sighed and lit up a cigarette. He was down to three packs and getting nervous about the supplies running out. Luckily only two other people in the group smoked, or the cigarettes would have been gone already. He took a deep drag and held it in, savoring the taste before exhaling. Glancing at his watch, he noticed his shift was almost over, and hoped it wasn’t an omen of some sort. He stood up, thanking God he could return to his real job in the communications room, and headed out of the stairwell to meet his replacement.

  * * *

  Laura sat up in bed as the coughing fit hit her. She threw back her blankets and slammed her bare feet onto the cold tile in a frantic dash for the bathroom sink. She stumbled into the room, wearing only a t-shirt, and she grabbed the sink’s edge to support herself as the coughing grew more intense. What she hacked up was more solid than mucus and drenched in blood. She stared at it in horror as the coughing died down.

  Letting go of the sink’s edge, she slid to the floor and tried to catch her breath. I’m a doctor, damn it. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to her. She had never touched a cigarette in her life. She worked out and ate right, yet here she sat dying of cancer in a time where people needed her skills and knowledge more than ever.

  No one else knew how sick she was. She hid it well and put up a good front. The hospital was stocked with the medicine she needed, enough medicine to curb her symptoms and keep her comfortable most of the time. At least it had been enough until things began to get worse.

  With her t-shirt, she wiped the blood from around her mouth and got to her feet. Today was going to be a busy day. Not only was she the doctor of the group, she was also a member of its leading tribunal, a responsibility she shared with Jack and Vince.

  She was also supposed to be finding a cure for the plague, but that was a joke. She wasn’t a research scientist, just a doctor, and even after months of studying the plague she knew little more than when she started.

  Today, her focus was on her administration duties and helping Jack and Vince agree on an evacuation plan for when the time came to find a new home. According to Jack’s last inventory check, even with their rationing system they had a month, tops, before people started starving and their tiny piece of the civilization collapsed into mutiny.

  Laura changed into her day clothes and put on her happy face. Then she headed out to meet up with the boys.

  * * *

  Jack stood on the roof of the hospital, looking out into the city, parts of which were still ablaze. Dark smoke joined the usual clouds of lingering smog, making the day seem pale like the rotting flesh of the creatures on the streets below.

  It was hard for Jack to remember what the world had been like before the creatures came. Less than a year ago things had been normal, but the plague had spread so fast that no one, not the government, the military, nor the C.D.C., had been able to stop it. The city around him had changed from his home to a sick version of Hell on Earth where only the strong and the determined stayed alive.

  Jack was a tall man and well built. Standing there on the roof he looked every inch a king, and in a sense he was. This new world had forced the burden of leadership upon him.

  He lifted his binoculars to his eyes, trying to figure out a path through the dead. The only vehicles he had at his disposal were locked away in the hospital’s garage. They were mostly simple cars built for civilian use, not for fighting through a horde of hungry, flesh-eating monsters. The only larger vehicles were a few dump trucks left behind from his work crew. None of them were what he needed, and even if they were, reaching them would be a problem.

  The safest way to the garage was a long and difficult climb down an elevator shaft. At the end of the shaft dozens—maybe hundreds—of the creatures waited; like the first three floors of the hospital, the garage was infested with the dead. There simply hadn’t been time to close it off when Jack and the group had taken refuge here.

  Some of the other refugees still believed help was coming, but Jack suffered no such delusions. Any survivors out there were certainly in the same sort of mess his group was in, or at least incapable of breaching the armies of the dead to rescue them. There would be no help coming. It was up to him, to them, to find their way out of the city—if there was one. Any attempt to escape would cost them lives, but Jack was willing to accept some losses for the greater good as long as some of them survived to carry on. And as long as his ass wasn’t one that got chewed off along the way.

  * * *

  Clutching a beat-up Daffy Duck doll in his sweaty palms, Chris made his way down the winding hospital corridors to the nursery. In a few moments he would see his daughter for the first time. The doctor, Laura, hadn’t let him stay during the delivery last night. There had been complications with the birth beyond his understanding. He’d been forced to wait outside as Natalie entered the world and his wife Rebecca left it.

  He had watched as Jack and Mitchell carried her to the roof, her body wrapped in bloodstained sheets bound with thick ropes. Chris had cried and screamed, had even tried to attack Mitchell, but Jack calmed him down. “Think of your daughter,” he had said, as if giving an order. “She does need you.” Chris knew he was right and did his best to hold in the sobs.

  He tore the hospital apart after that, looking for a gift he could take to his new daughter. At last he found Daffy inside a desk drawer in one of the offices. He sat and stared at the doll for hours, weeping for Rebecca, himself, and Natalie. He managed to pull himself together just as Laura found him and told him he could visit his child whenever he was ready.

  Before he went in, Chris walked around and gave himself time to prepare, letting his excitement drive away the horrors of the world. Finally, he was ready. He ran the last few steps to the nursery proper, and as he rounded the corner he saw his daughter and stopped dead in his tracks. His breath left his body as if someone had punched him in the gut.

  Beyond the nursery window, a nurse cradled the newborn, trying to soothe her as she cried and waved her tiny arms. Chris took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The nurse smiled and held Natalie out to him just as he held out the doll. He reddened, embarrassed by the mix up. And then he took his daughter into his arms, and his heart nearly burst with pride.

  * * *

  Jack and Laura waited in the conference room for Vince to arrive. As usual he was late. Jack gritted his teeth and, scowling, checked his watch again. Laura hoped Vince would show up soon; it looked like Jack was on the verge exploding.

  She picked up the stack of inventory reports Jack had brought her, then thumped them down on the table, straightening the pile of papers.

  “Jack,” she started as the door swung open. Vince came in and plopped into a chair at the table. He hadn’t shaved in a day or two, and he wore a battered t-shirt, jeans, mismatched socks, and sneakers that had seen better times. Vince’s appearance was another sore point with Jack, who believed those in power should set an example for those they led.

  “Good morning, guys,” Vince said cheerfully, ignoring Jack’s glares. “Sorry I’m late. I had a busy night.”

  “So did we,” Jack pointed out. “Rebecca died in childbirth last night.”

  Vince’s cheerful expression crumbled. “God, I’m sorry. Why did
n’t you call me?”

  “We did,” Laura said. “You didn’t answer your radio.”

  Vince shifted in his seat. “Oh yeah, I had to leave it behind. I was doing some work up on the roof.”

  “I was on the roof this morning, Vince,” Jack said. “You weren’t there.”

  “No. I turned in around three or so.”

  “What were you doing up there, Vince?” Laura asked, heading off an outburst from Jack.

  “Brainstorming.” Vince smiled.

  For a second, Laura thought he meant brainstorming for one of his novels. Although he had worked as everything from a dishwasher and taxi driver to a bookstore owner and photojournalist, Vince was primarily a horror writer, with the mindset and attitude of an artist. If he started talking about his writing, that would set Jack off like nothing else.

  “I think I’ve come up with a way to solve our supply and escape woes,” Vince added.

  Laura relaxed a bit. She really hadn’t felt up to playing her usual role as levelheaded mediator between Jack and Vince. Without her intervention she often thought the hospital would either become a pseudo-military dictatorship or fall apart completely from neglect.

  Jack still seemed dead set on making her job difficult this morning. “Do tell,” he said sarcastically.

  Jack was a hardheaded son of a bitch any way you looked at him. Before the dead rose and claimed the world he’d been the foreman of a construction crew contracted to remodel the hospital. He wasn’t a fool—the man held degrees in engineering and architecture. He was just too accustomed to being in charge. He’d grown up in a military family, so structure and discipline were almost holy to him. It was as if he saw himself as the group’s commander in chief. And at times he felt his way was the only way.

  “Well, my plan’s pretty simple really,” Vince said. “The hospital has a helipad right?”