“Let that lonesome whistle blow my blues awaay. Marty, grab me another beer, hot today.” “You’ve got it, John.” “Not a single bite today,” John sighed, drained the last stale drops from the can he’d been nursing, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Marty tripped up the bank, catching himself on the cooler. “It’s…

Rhine was sitting on another rooftop just outside a town called Rawlins, Wyoming. While taking a deep yawn, he adjusted the cheap plastic beach chair beneath him. Everywhere they went it was the same story over and over. Direct refugees and then fall back once Zack showed up. Every single time, just as he thought…

After the long winter, the zoners needed some excitement.  The teams were divided into four groups. Each group matched up 16 squads according to their rank. The rules were simple. The squad with the most kills wins.   Brackets were filled out. Food rations were wagered. “March Madness” was in full swing. In the first round, the…

The butterfly walked across the bridge of Rhine’s nose as he fought the urge to shoo it away. The slightest movement or sound would give his position away, but the itching on his face made it hard to concentrate on his surroundings.  He allowed himself the slightest nose twitch to scare the insect away but…

It started as kind of a joke, but by the end it had become much more. She didn’t mean for it to be a big deal. Who knew a sticker could change your world? In the early days of the Blue Zone, Erin McGraw found herself separated from everything and everyone she had ever cared…

She screamed. She grunted. She bit into the gag. For hours, they watched as she rocked back and forth, jumped into and out of the bath they prepared. She sweated. They mopped her brow. They waited. Finally it was over. In a burst of bloody gore, it ended. They all breathed a sigh of relief.…

The heat was incredible, burning Rhine’s face as if he had stuck his head inside an oven. The normal heat of the Afghan desert was complimented by the flames licking up from the burning Humvee. Through the flames, Rhine could see the corpse of one of his men burning in the passenger seat. The head…

The front cab of the M939A2 cargo truck smelled like the Army. It was a mixed smell of metal and  some type of oil or grease. It was comforting and took Lieutenant Rhine’s mind back to more pleasant times in his life; times when the term “Zombie” had only been  a stupid movie gimmick. The…

People used to rake leaves out to the curb into giant piles to get sucked up by giant vacuums attached to dumptrucks.. Kids would play in them and get killed by passing cars. It made me wonder what kind of idiot parent would let their kids play in the middle of the road and what…

I thought I saw a zombie today. Don’t worry though, it was only a false alarm. Sometimes when I get cooped up for too long, I think about things that are highly unlikely. Today was especially eccentric. You’d think being stuck in the middle of an uprising hoard of the undead would be a little…

Rhine watched the wind carry away the cigarette smoke as he stood atop the M1128 Stryker armored vehicle. Below the cliff top they occupied, the highway was clogged with cars and people slowly making their way forward. The only change of pace from the monotonous flow was when every couple minutes a vehicle that had…