Darkest Days: A Southern Zombie Tale Read Online Free Page A

nature’s clean-up process. She saw no reasoning or divine plan in the everyday workings of the world. Her reflections on the idea of an interventionist God fell between atheistic on her bad days and simple agnosticism on her good days.
    Cara may have been incorrect on H.G. Wells’ beliefs on God, having never read any biographical information on him, but she saw her point of view in that novel. Unfortunately, she felt little comfort in those beliefs this night. The protagonist wandered aimlessly until the invading force of aliens simply died by a lack of resistance to common Earth bacteria. Thinking about the hero, isolated and fighting for his pathetic survival in a world gone berserk, prompted the thought “He doesn’t even have any companionship. At least if he had a wife or even a friend, the end would not seem so . . . lonely.” The young girl glanced around her room, letting the packed boxes and barren walls speak for her. She realized her heart ached. The urge to go back downstairs crept through her. Through force of will, she stayed on the bed with the book clasped in her hands. “I don’t need them. I’m perfectly content up here with my intellectual pursuits. I just need some new reading material and I’ll be fine.” She made a mental note to check out the town’s public library in the next few days. Eventually, she felt her eyes tire and let the book fall closed on her chest. There was no need to save the page; she had read it before. Her eyelids slid closed and her breathing slowed. In a few moments, she descended into the little slice of death that people call “sleep”.
    ***
     
    Bryant left McDonald’s for his meager lunch break Saturday night. After eating the previous twelve consecutive breaks in the lobby of his place of employment, he desperately wanted a change. Pizza was always appetizing. The very moment that he imagined a personal pan from Pizza Hut, he knew he should have phoned ahead and placed an order. Ten to fifteen minutes to cook the dish cut his break in half.
    As he lamented not planning ahead, he thought about another lunch sitting alone in a restaurant. In his fantasies, love finds him. That means that he no longer eats by himself, he no longer has to put up with the false sympathy; he no longer has to pretend to be friends with people he doesn’t like (because when someone’s in love, none of that matters). Love would distract him from the pain of his past.
    While driving the paltry quarter mile to Pizza Hut, his mind broached the taboo topic of his father. It was a natural progression from the innocuous thought “It feels good to drive. There’s nothing like the open road.” It was one of his Dad’s favorite sayings. He could not resist using it every time he got behind the wheel.
    Mister Allens had been a loving man who was never wealthy but always smiled. Bryant (and everyone else who ever met his father) remembered his wide grin, oblivious to the knowledge that his life would be a short one. Dad had a romantic vision of how one should live his or her life that Bryant feared may have infected him as well. The man’s prize possession was a big chopper. On that raucous motorcycle, he had wandered up and down highways, interstates, and dirt roads trying to see America. He looked in every backwater town and every big city searching for something. What it was, not even he knew.
    When Bryant would ask what Daddy had been looking for, the man flashed his smile and said the same thing every time. “I didn’t know, but I just knew something somewhere would end my roaming.” He would get a far-away look in his eyes imagining the end of his wanderlust. “Then I pulled into a tiny little town called Fayette.” Bryant slightly mouthed the words, having heard the story countless times. “I saw a girl in a sundress. She stood by the road with her white purse clutched in front of her and looked lost. She glanced up and down the road, expecting something any moment when I rode