by Rob Morganbesser (Genre: Living Dead)

Ten years after the dead rose.

Jim Evans awoke to the sounds of silence. This lack of noise brought him instantly to his feet, hands coming up to rub sleep snot from his eyes. Silence? There hadn't been any silence since they had chased him in to this small store. Fortunately the door was stout and he'd blocked it off well. He tried to stay awake while they rampaged about, but lack of food (his last had been some moldy chocolate bars) and water (drunk out of the tank on back of a toilet, happy that it wasn't the bright blue of disinfectant) had driven him to sleep.

Rising, he checked his pistol. A .45 caliber revolver, it had four rounds in the chamber and he had none on his belt. He'd been out foraging when the idiots, for that's what they were, moronic shadows of humanity devouring the living whenever they could catch any. But Jim was too smart for the bastards. A survivor, he'd been in Special Forces (among other things) in the military and that training (again, among other things) did him well, twenty years later, now. That he was tough he knew. When one of them had latched onto his left pinkie finger, he'd chopped it off; stopping the infection that otherwise would have doomed him. It didn't make his hands, which he'd used to kill many ghouls by breaking necks and slamming their nose bones into their skulls, any less dangerous. He'd even killed a few with his elbows. Smashing their occipital lobes into their brains.

Zombies they were called. Ghouls. He called them brain dead bastards and he didn't care how many he killed. Maybe they'd eventually get it through their rotted brains that he was dangerous and let him the fuck alone. If they'd do that, he'd leave them alone. Tit for tat. Quid pro quo. All he wanted to do was live.

Jim had one other weapon, a ten pound maul. One end was flat and covered in dry black goo, the remnants of many rotted brains. The other end was pointed and covered in the same substance. He'd seen many people go down before the zombies, those were always people who panicked. Jim wasn't much for panicking. He was one for surviving. Now his curiosity compelled him to peek out of the window and see what the silence was all about.

Carefully, revealing as little of himself as possible, Jim let one blue eye glance out into the daylight. He was careful because in the fall of civilization, he'd killed more than one living human as well as ghouls. People who'd tried to kill him found out the hard way it wasn't that easy. After a while Jim just stayed alone. He felt safer and in control.

Pulling back he ran his hands through short cut (he did it himself, the barbers all on permanent vacation) dirty brown hair. He smiled. It had snowed last night. Not a dusting. Not a small storm. It had SNOWED! A killer blizzard, the kind that blew out of the Rockies from time to time obliterating small towns and burying large ones.

Snow.

It could be a lifesaver for one Jim Evans, former resident of Boulder (among other places), Colorado now citizen of the dead world. Jim thought of the line, in the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Well, he was going out to claim his kingdom! Glancing around the room, he saw several pair of snowshoes hanging on hooks. Taking a pair the fit reasonably well, he started to leave then saw the chainsaw. Grinning, he hefted it, then checked it for fuel. It was ready to rock! Fixing a makeshift sling for his maul, he turned to leave.

Hefting his maul, Jim lifted the bar in front of the door and pulled it open. Snow spilled in, but he didn't care. He wasn't coming back here. He was going back to his home, a survivalists place north of town. Pulling on ski shades, Jim grimaced as a cold wind blew across him. There, not ten feet from the door stood one of the ghouls. It was trapped in the four feet of snow that had fallen. Jim tried to remember had it been snowing last night when he had to abandon his 4X4 and run in here? He dimly remembered the feel of wetness, but it didn't matter now.

Ignoring the ghouls hissing, he pulled on his snowshoes and started to walk. Ah, yes, he thought. This was great. Here it was late November and the ghouls were for the most part, helpless.

It was payback time.

Coming almost to within reaching distance of the first ghoul, Jim yanked the starter on the chainsaw. With a low growl it came to life. "Hey there, ugly," he said. And the ghoul was ugly. One half of its face was decorated with shattered bits of auto glass where it had gone through a windshield sticking out. Blood that had come out (proving this one was alive when it was killed, ghouls don't bleed, having no circulatory system) had dripped down the left side and dried. The rib cage showed internal organs, some of which had been chewed on. The ghoul started to reach out again and Jim took a swipe with the chainsaw. With a wet plopping sound, both of the ghoul's lower arms halfway toward the elbow were sliced off.

Jim almost laughed at the comical expression on the thing's face. Did they feel pain he wondered, the thought fleeing almost as soon as it came. Who cared? The humans they slaughtered at Boulder General Hospital certainly did. Jim moved to the ghoul's side and brought the chainsaw up and down again. The blade bit into the ghoul's brittle skull, slicing down as far as the teeth before the saw skittered sideways. The ghoul collapsed, its brain destroyed.

Jim took the heads off seventeen more before he ran out of gas and tossed the useless chainsaw away. Moving down the main street, impudent in the face of his enemy, he lifted his maul. Here, a female ghoul clad in the remnants of a leopard spotted jumpsuit, her breasts devoured; the skin of her face from the nose down gone, snarled at him. Up came the maul. Down came the maul. Six inches of cold rolled steel impacted on the ghouls head so hard, it drove her head, skull now fractured down into her chest cavity. With the barest of sighs, she collapsed sideways, dead again.