Arlene ate her fill and by the time she was done, that sweet old woman looked like a car-wreck victim, sans safety belt. Arlene turned and strayed into the night. She didn't wait around to watch the old woman's gnawed carca.s.s scramble back to hungry life.

Mind you, while all that was going on, poor, confused Lorraine was hiding in some bushes in the school playground, screaming and wondering why all these bad things were going on in her head. The other kids thought she had gone nuts. Her parents and the teachers talked about it later, and based on what she'd told them, they decided she had an overactive imagination. They told her not to let the bad images scare her... they were make-believe, so they couldn't hurt her. It was all in her head, they said, and in a way it was. Hers was a sort of Reality Surplus Disorder. It's hard to concentrate when you've got another personality playing in your mind.

My best guess is all the movie's fans created that personality, that black-and-white world of death... all those watchers in the dark, thinking about that movie, those zombies, and of course, poor little Arlene Schabowski. All that feverish brain energy. What is reality, anyway? A mental collective, that's all. The result of multiple minds, mulling over enthralling stories. I'm sure that somewhere, out there, Moby d.i.c.k is still swimming and the House of Usher is still falling. I'm sure Dorothy is still wandering down the Yellow Brick Road, having new adventures, fighting more witches and flying monkeys. And I'm sure she's still a tiny young thing, just as Arlene Schabowski is still a tiny dead thing.

But let us return to Arlene. She walked down a gravel lane until she came to the highway. Car lights were heading toward her. She held out her bloodstained, skinny arms and waited. The driver would stop. Of course they would. She was just a little girl.

So she waited. And the driver stopped-a fat, middle-aged man with a bulbous nose and horn-rimmed gla.s.ses.

"Was there an accident?" He ran up to her, crouched and thrust his fat face near hers.

"Help me, Mommy," she said.

"You poor thing," he said in a low, sad voice. "What the h.e.l.l happened to you?"

Another one who thought she was simply a poor thing. She smiled, leaned forward and bit off his nose-it was too large and juicy a target to resist.

He screamed, so she bit off his lower lip, which made him scream that much louder.

She gnawed and gnawed until he was too cold for her to stomach. Then she began shambling down the road. And because that entire movie took place at night, the daylight never came. She wandered an eternal night of fields and rural back roads and farmhouses, feasting on innocent country folks who only wanted to help her.

And Lorraine... She endured Arlene's adventures in her head, and finally even got used to them. A person can get used to anything, really. Folks who live near airports soon learn to ignore the roar of planes coming and going. Lorraine grew into a tall, willowy lady. Always slender. Having a zombie in your head is enough to spoil anyone's appet.i.te. There were plenty of times when she would sit down to dinner, and Arlene would suddenly go on a rampage in her mind. Little zombie-girl would rip apart a couple farmers, tear out their guts and gobble them down, and suddenly that plate of lasagna would seem like a hideous, visceral thing. But Lorraine wouldn't scream over it...wouldn't even bat an eyelash. She'd just push the plate away.

As I mentioned, Lorraine eventually became a school teacher. Because a part of her was still a little girl, she liked being around children. She lived in a big nice apartment building, surrounded by families-all the kids there thought she was great. Some of the people in her building had seen her movie, and they were always telling their friends that their neighbor was a movie star. Sometimes folks who had seen the movie would call her Arlene. She'd smile to be polite, but she didn't like it. "Hey, Arlene-'Help me, Mommy!'" was the favorite greeting of the fat guy who lived six doors down. She'd always try to take a different route to avoid him if she saw him coming.

Eventually she started dating the school's janitor, and all of her friends made fun of her for that, joking that the lovers were probably always sneaking off to the boiler room or some such place. The janitor, whose name was Kurt, was a good-looking man, only in his mid-thirties and in fine physical shape. And truth to tell, the two did sneak off together sometimes. To Kurt's office. His door had a fancy t.i.tle-Environmental Control Specialist-but it still meant janitor.

Once while she was in his office, Lorraine saw a key hanging from a little nail on the wall behind his desk. The key had a sc.r.a.p of paper taped to it. The word ATTIC was written on that sc.r.a.p in blue ballpoint ink. She waited until Kurt's back was turned, and she took that key.

Even while she was reaching for it, she wasn't sure why she was taking it. She just knew she had to have it. After school, she stayed behind, waited until everyone was gone and then went up to the attic. It was all storage up there, and the things that had been packed away up there so long ago were now all but forgotten.

Remember where little Arlene ate her parents? In the attic. That's where the movie-family went to hide from the zombies. The movie-attic had a bed in it, where Arlene used to sleep. She says her four-word line while she's in that bed. The school attic had a broken cot among its various odds and ends. Obsolete school books, tennis shoes, sacks of that pinkish, pulpy stuff to sprinkle on barf to soak it up and make the smell go away. Lorraine strolled among rows of dusty boxes and stayed up there for about an hour, looking at spider webs and old papers and outdated globes. She realized then that this was the first time she'd been in an attic-any attic at all-since the filming of that movie. Her parents had always lived in apartments. Her dorm room in college had been on the ground floor. A life without attics. She now felt oddly at home-but was it a good home?

When she came down from the attic, left the building and went to her car, the world around her seemed different somehow.

A little less...colorful.

A moment later, Arlene Schabowski saw red in her night-world for the first time. Usually the blood of her victims was shiny black. But she looked down at the hitchhiker she had just torn to bits and saw red, red everywhere. Then she saw that her dress was stained not merely with various splotches of gray, but horrible gouts of rotted filth and gore-red, yellow, brown, green, a veritable rainbow of decay. It made her smile.

A few days later, Kurt was completely confused by Lorraine's birthday gift to him. "Rainy," he said, for that is what he called her, "this tie...don't get me wrong, I think it's great. And silk, it must have cost plenty. But purple? I don't know if I'm the purple type..."

"Oh," she said quite softly. "Is it purple? I thought it was some kind of dark silver. Are you sure it's purple?"

Lorraine sometimes would bring a book to school to read in the attic, after hours. In the days to come, her students became more and more confused by some of the things she said-especially during art cla.s.s. Whenever one of them did a drawing, she would ask things like, "What color is that horse?" Or, "That's a very pretty mermaid-which crayon did you use for the hair?"

Arlene began to notice green leaves among the gray when car headlights. .h.i.t them just right, and some of the towns she meandered through were bigger than the little country burgs she usually came across. One even had a supermarket. She would hide in the bushes bordering the parking lot and watch the front of the supermarket. Watch all the people rushing in and out. It made her hungry. Sometimes one of the shoppers would hear something rustling in the bushes and go see what it was, worrying that it might be a lost child. They were right to worry.

Lorraine found that the drive back to her house seemed a little shorter every week. And there were fewer cars on the road. Not as many buildings behind the sidewalks. Fewer kids in the school, but more birds in the light blue sky. There was still a bit of color in her world, but not much. The changes were all huge yet gradual. Kurt usually wore a nice polo shirt and jeans to work. It didn't even surprise her when he started wearing coveralls, or when his voice started to take on a rural tw.a.n.g. He even took to calling her "Honey."

Arlene just kept on wandering-she was so good at it. Wandering and eating, eating and wandering, always keeping to the shadows, which was getting harder, since there were so many streetlights around. But she was finding more homeless people, so at least she had been eating regularly. No more fields-she was in the suburbs now, and the skies were starting to lighten. Night was slowly giving way to a light blue morning.

You see what was happening, don't you? They were starting to meet in the middle. Why do you suppose that was happening? Maybe it was because Lorraine was spending so much time up in that attic. I suspect attics have strange powers. They come to points at the top, like pyramids. They're rather intriguing, aren't they? And bear in mind, zombie movies were becoming more modern-perhaps the imaginations that had pulled Arlene into existence were pulling her into the present day.

Lorraine was getting pulled, too, but in a different way. Into something...but what? One morning she thought she saw a tractor drive past the school. Later that day, she knew she heard cows mooing in the distance. She broke off her relationship with Kurt. He was becoming more and more rural, like some of the extras in Fear-Farm of the Undead Fear-Farm of the Undead. He was growing too much hair and losing too many teeth. That wasn't the kind of boyfriend she wanted and this certainly wasn't the life she wanted to lead. She didn't like it. No, not one little bit.

Especially when she found herself chewing on what was left of the Algebra teacher, late at night up in the school attic. She couldn't even remember what she had done to get him up there. Not that it mattered. There were shreds of flesh under her nails, and her belly was swollen with food.

She wasn't sure if what she had done would turn the skinny old teacher into a zombie, but better safe than sorry. She went down to Kurt's supply closet, grabbed a hammer, and used it to cave in the old man's gnawed head.

And then she waited.

Pretty soon she heard the tappity-tap, tappity-tap, tappity-tap of little-girl heels coming up the stairs to the attic. And then...

That's when you walked in, Arlene.

You walked in and said the four-word phrase that you said in the first half of that movie, in the scene when your mother was putting you to bed: "Tell me a story." Most people don't remember you said that. But you did, in that sweet, soft, cheery voice. Though that's not what your voice sounds like now. You sound like a record that's slowly melting as it plays.

So. Did you like my story, Arlene? It was all about you-and me, too. But I said "Lorraine" instead of "I" because... Well, I don't really feel like me anymore. But I'm not you.

I don't know who I am, where I am or even what I am.

Hmmm...?

No, I'm not your mommy, and I'm afraid I can't help you.

But who knows. Maybe pounding your head open with this hammer will help me.

Zombie Gigolo By S. G. Browne

S. G. Browne's first novel Breathers: A Zombie's Lament Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, "a dark comedy about life after undeath told from the perspective of a zombie," came out in 2009 and was a finalist for this year's Bram Stoker Award for best first novel. His second novel, which comes out in November, is Fated Fated, "a dark, irreverent comedy about fate, destiny, and the consequences of getting involved in the lives of humans." His short fiction can also be found in the anthology Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead.

One of the things that's appealing about zombie fiction is that zombies used to be us us, and we're just one bite or infected wound away from becoming one of them.That's a sentiment Browne shares, but he also believes they're experiencing their current popularity because they're no longer just the mindless, shambling ghouls we've known and loved for the past forty years. "They're faster. Funnier. Sentient," he says. "Plus there's this constant fascination with the inevitability of a zombie apocalypse. I mean, no one ever talks about the werewolf apocalypse.That would be ridiculous."

Browne's own take on zombies, in his novel and two short stories, intended to show a different side to zombies: giving them sentience, viewing the world through their eyes and what they have to deal with."When you think about it, most zombie films and fiction are really about the people rather than the zombies," Browne says. "My fiction is about the zombies zombies."

Just to warn you, our next story is a little little gross. It was originally written for the "Gross Out Contest" at the 2008 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. Browne had just sold his novel gross. It was originally written for the "Gross Out Contest" at the 2008 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. Browne had just sold his novel Breathers Breathers, so, for his contest entry, he took a couple of ideas from that and ratcheted them up viscerally. The rules stated that the story had to be between three to five minutes in length when read aloud, so the authors had to be frugal with their words, maintain a decent gross-out factor, and cut out anything that didn't move the story fast enough.

Browne didn't win, but he did come in third, winning him the coveted gummy haggis prize. But if our next story wasn't gross enough to win, I'm not sure I want to know what did.

Is it necrophilia if you're both dead?

Okay, technically we're not dead. We're un undead. But semantics tend to take a back seat when you're banging a three-week-old corpse who's moaning that she's about to come just before one of her main body cavities bursts open.

At first I can't tell if it's the abdominal cavity or the pelvic cavity, because honestly when you're an animated corpse, everything smells like a fecal smoothie. But then I see something that looks like a partially dissolved kidney and the fluid spilling out of her has the consistency of chunky chicken noodle soup, so I'm guessing abdominal cavity.

I'm suddenly wishing I'd worn a condom.

Though I suppose it could have been worse. I could have been eating her out. But she didn't pay for the Surf and Turf.

Not that this is the first time something like this has happened to me. After all, when you're a zombie gigolo, you have to expect the smell of hydrogen sulfide and the oozing of intestinal juices and the occasional skin slip. But I should know better than to accept clients who are more than a couple of weeks past their Use By date.

If you've never had your tongue down the throat of a zombie whose liquefied brain suddenly bubbled out of her mouth, you probably wouldn't understand.

The Cavity Burster gets up from the bed, apologizing for the mess as she tries to pack her internal organs back into her Lucky Brand jeans, dripping a trail of liquefied internal organs across the concrete floor on her way out. That's why I use plastic sheets instead of Calvin Klein. They're easy to rinse off and with the set-up I have in the cellar, I just wash everything down the drain. Otherwise, I'd spend all of my time at the laundromat.

My two o'clock appointment is less than a week old. A Freshie. Still, she doesn't exactly smell like Irish Spring. More like summer compost. Her stomach is already starting to blister, she has skin the texture of a greasy banana peel, and when I slide inside her, it feels like I'm f.u.c.king a nest of mummified cats' tongues.

The thing about zombies is that, other than our internal organs turning to soup and liquid leaking from enzyme-ravaged cells, there's not a lot of natural lubrication.

However, for those of us who were fortunate enough to have been embalmed, formaldehyde is the magic elixir that allows us to maintain some sense of pride.

The Freshie wasn't one of the fortunate ones.

In addition to her cracked, bloating stomach and the aroma of rotting eggs that keeps leaking out of multiple orifices, the tips of her nipples are coming off in my mouth.

Liquid from the deteriorating cells of a corpse can get in between the layers of skin and loosen them. This is called sloughage. It usually starts with the fingers and toes. Sometimes the skin of the entire hand or foot will come off.

Not a pleasant thought when you're f.u.c.king sandpaper.

If you've never had the skin of your c.o.c.k peel off like a used condom, you probably wouldn't understand.

As I slide in and out of the Freshie, I open my eyes and glance down at her face just inches from mine. Her eyes are closed in ecstasy, her mouth is open in a silent gasp, and greenish fluid from her lungs is oozing out of her nose.

Morticians call this "frothy purge," like it's some new drink at Starbucks.

Just as I'm about to blow my load, the Freshie sneezes and I've got frothy purge on my tongue and lower lip.

Some zombies are walking Petri dishes, serving host to a plethora of bacteria and fungi. These are the unlucky ones who weren't embalmed and who suffer the indignities of putrefaction as they slowly dissolve. In zombie circles, we refer to these pathetic creatures as Melters.

My last customer of the day is a Melter.

Her skin is peeling away, her body is covered with festering wounds, most of her hair has fallen out, and when she smiles, what few remaining teeth she has are coated in an oily black goo that runs down her chin because she has no lips.

Before she gets on the bed, I pull out a can of Glade Neutralizer and circle around her, covering her from head to toe. I prefer the Neutralizer fragrance because it works directly toward the source of the odor, though Tropical Mist has a nice, fruity scent.

The moment I climb on top of her, I'm wondering if I've made a big mistake.

Her breath washes over me like fresh, hot vomit. Her skin is the texture of raw chicken, sliding back and forth and tearing away in my hands. When she drags her fingers down my back, her fingernails detach. Occasionally, the pus oozing from her wounds erupts in an o.r.g.a.s.mic geyser.

Keeping your focus when you're banging a Melter isn't easy. It's enough to deflate even a post-mortem permanent b.o.n.e.r. So I think about human flesh and I close my eyes and I keep banging away.

But with every thrust it feels like I'm f.u.c.king mashed potatoes. Like I'm f.u.c.king overcooked rice. Like the rice is swarming around my c.o.c.k.

When I pull out, my c.o.c.k is covered with maggots. They're swarming around my shaft, trying to eat their way inside. At least I remembered to wear a condom this time.

I slap at my permanent erection, knocking the majority of the maggots off, but I can feel some of them scurrying across my nuts, tickling my perineum, headed for the nearest point of entry. Before I can brush the rest of them away, I have maggots squirming up my a.s.s.

I need a bidet.

I need a Clorox douche.

I need a turkey baster and some gasoline.

On the bed, the Melter is picking larvae out of her pubic hair and asking me if I want to clean her carpet. She smiles at me, black saliva dripping from her lipless mouth. She says if I do, she'll suck the maggots out of my a.s.shole.

I tell her to get out and to take her infested p.u.s.s.y with her. Then I lock the cellar door, grab a bottle of Jack, put on some Barry Manilow, and try to figure out what I'm going to do now.

You spend your entire undeath working to cultivate a reputation for affordable, high-caliber, parasite-free s.e.x and in one moment of misguided judgment, you throw it all away.

If you've never had maggots crawling around inside your rectal cavity and feasting on your subcutaneous fat, you probably wouldn't understand.

Rural Dead By Bret Hammond

Bret Hammond is the coauthor of the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geocaching The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geocaching and the publisher of Geocacher University (www.geocacher-u.com), a website devoted to providing education and materials to both new and experienced geocachers. This story is his first and only fiction published to date, which originally appeared on the zombie website and the publisher of Geocacher University (www.geocacher-u.com), a website devoted to providing education and materials to both new and experienced geocachers. This story is his first and only fiction published to date, which originally appeared on the zombie website Tales of the Zombie War Tales of the Zombie War. In addition to his interest in geocaching and zombies, he's also a pastor and has published articles and cartoons in a variety of religious publications.

The Amish are a Christian community of Swiss-German origin centered in Pennsylvania, perhaps best-known in pop culture thanks to the Harrison Ford movie Witness Witness. Amish culture emphasizes hard work, humility, and family. They dress simply, largely forego modern technology (notably automobiles and electrical appliances), socialize mainly among themselves, and work in trades such as farming, construction, and crafts-making. Their main method of ensuring that members keep to Amish ways is peer pressure, known as shunning. Whether or not an individual is to be shunned is determined by the leadership, and when someone is being shunned even their spouse may refuse to speak to them. In severe cases of noncompliance a person may be expelled from the community, though they are always welcome to return if they mend their ways.

Many schisms have developed in Amish communities over the years over what rules are to be followed and how severe shunning should be. The Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder established the precedent that Amish are exempt from many American laws, including those involving compulsory education (Amish children are not educated past eighth grade), child labor, and Social Security. The Amish are also extreme pacifists, and once faced severe penalties and abuse for refusing to fight in America's wars.

Our next story, which is a bit bit more wholesome than the last one, takes a look at how this unusual and close-knit community weathers a zombie apocalypse, and what happens when extreme pacifism collides with extreme circ.u.mstances. more wholesome than the last one, takes a look at how this unusual and close-knit community weathers a zombie apocalypse, and what happens when extreme pacifism collides with extreme circ.u.mstances.

We've blocked off the reference room in the small community library for these interviews. Otto Miller sits across the table from me, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He is an elder in this small Amish community and looks every bit the part. I ask him to state his name and he simply stares at me and then looks down at the digital recorder I've placed on the table. He strokes his beard a couple times and then folds his arms again. I can see we're going to get nowhere with this.

I click the device off. That's not enough. I put it back down in my satchel and pull out a yellow legal tablet. As I click my pen he begins to speak.

"I have nothing against you, English, nor your devices. But you have to understand us us. We don't cling to your machines, we don't partic.i.p.ate in your ways, we don't ask anything of you. But you and your...things...your ways...they are constantly thrust upon us. Even your plague."

He points his finger squarely at me. I've heard of "righteous indignation," but I think this is the first time I've ever seen it. "I read your newspapers, listen to your broadcasts. You think this plague was the hand of G.o.d? Wouldn't that be convenient? If all this were simply the divine pouring out judgment and wrath upon the world? No, this was your own doing. You-you English-you played with the natural order of things and this was the result. Like breeding your livestock in one family line, sooner or later the results will haunt you. They haunt all of us."

I'm eager to get the interview on track. "Why don't we back up a bit, Mr. Miller. When was it the infection first touched your community?"

Otto Miller looks out the window for a moment and gathers his thoughts. "You are from the city, yes?"