Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse (Issue #2 | September 2015) Read Online Free

Lee had been hearing a faint screaming from the time the attacked. It wasn’t until the sound was choked off from the shock of his hand parting from his arm that he realized the sounds were coming from his own mouth.
     
    The new pain had forced his eyes away from the zombie now gnawing on his femur. The wrist his hand had once been attached to was ragged and gushing. The pink flesh torn as easily as paper and just as jagged edged. The shock of white from his exposed bone was soon stained scarlet. The hand that had pulled the trigger was gone. Lee couldn’t hold back the hysterical laughter that bubbled up from his painfully raw throat.
     
    The crack of breaking bone told him that his unclean hand was no more. The crunching from the zombie that was eating his hand was more than he could handle. It had all been too much the second he pulled the trigger. When the zombie on his thigh buried a hand in his stomach and twisted his guts painfully, Lee escaped into his subconscious. His mind went hazy, not fully unconscious, but not fully there. Lee could still feel each tear and wretched burn as he was eaten alive. His only thought: I deserve this.
     
     

“Grabbing Take-Out”
    Story #3
     
    By
     
    Christopher D. Hartpence

“On the left! On the left!” Milo screamed as he ran frantically in that direction. There were just too damned many of them.
     
    “We make it out of this, I’m never going on a take-out run again!” Jasper yelled as he brought his machete down on another zombie intent on eating his face off. Blood and gore spraying over him when the blade hit home. It got lodged there, and he actually had to stick his hand in the muck to help pry it loose. He tried not to think about the thick, blackish liquid now coating his left hand to the forearm. Sticky, disgusting, it smelled like a mixture of feces and death.
     
    Rebecca, who was on the left, and in danger of getting overwhelmed by a trio of them, dodged away just in time to avoid the snapping of jaws that were way too close to her exposed neck. Milo shouldered past her and sent a knife into the brain of that one, and like Jasper, found his knife hand coated in that nasty, viscous black goo that was zombie blood. One down, but the two that remained wasted no time closing on him. He couldn’t knife one without risking a bite, so he had to grapple with both until ‘Becca pulled it back together.
     
    “Any day now, ‘Bec!” He shouted, cringing inwardly at the raw fear in his voice as they pressed relentlessly closer. After what felt like way too long, she finally pulled it together and used her rebar to put another one down with a vicious overhanded strike that shattered the zombie’s skull and sent rotting grey matter flying in all directions, coating both of them with a fine spray of filth and gore. Milo couldn’t help but notice the triumphant gleam in her eyes. Having been driven back a moment before, she almost seemed to enjoy it.
     
    “Where the hell is Frank?” Jasper asked as he untangled himself from his latest kill and ran for the door of the IGA, where three more were shambling inside.
     
    Frank was supposedly on guard duty in the parking lot to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. Not counting the three new arrivals, Jasper could see at least eight more in the parking lot, so wherever Frank was, he was either dead or hiding and pissing himself in terror. In either case, it didn’t look like the cavalry was coming.
     
    ‘Becca and Milo finished off the last one they had between them, with Milo holding the zombie’s arms and ‘Bec finishing him with the head shot. Rebar through the eye. Gets ‘em every time, then, the two of them rushed to the front of the store to help Jasper with the new arrivals.
     
    Zombies are mean. They’re relentless and they never get tired or have to sleep, but also, they’re stupid and usually fairly slow, so in a three on three match up, the humans won handily, putting them all down in a