It Rolls Down Hill
Author:Jake Bible
introduction
Adrabble, you ask? I thought I was purchasing a story!
Well,you are. A drabble is a form of flash fiction that is exactly 100words long- no more, no less. Now, I'm sure some of you will bepissed that you just bought a story that is only 100 words long.Well, not to worry, there are way more words here than 100. I'mtaking this opportunity to give you free excerpts from DEADMECH,from TheAmericans,and fromStark- An Illustrated Novella.Trust me, you are getting way more than 100 words. In fact, you aregetting over 19,000 words for the price of 100. That's a prettyfancy deal!
Stillnot happy? Well, feel free to get all of my 100 word drabbles forfree at jakebible.comor at Smashwords. If you go to my website then look for the link toFriday Night Drabble party. There are tons and tons of free drabblesthere for you to enjoy! If you go to Smashwords then you can downloadthe free drabbles in any ereader format. I'm sorry I can't offerthem for free on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but them's thebreaks.
Enjoy!
Oh,and feel free to give this to anyone you like! Copy it, post it,share it! As long as you don't try to profit from it then you canshare with the entire world! Spread the words!
It Rolls Down Hill
Once theadults were dead, the voices only stopped for the teenagers.
The tweensquickly dispatched them. Then their voices ended.
Theyreally shouldn't have been surprised when the pre-tweens attackedwithout mercy, bludgeoning them brutally across the globe.
Thepre-tweens did expect the attack from the little kids and foughtmadly to protect themselves, but without the voices to guide themthey became disorganized and were quickly separated and disposed of.
The littlekids had planned, though. When silence hit their brains, they wereready. Ready to smash every last binky sucking, Barney watchingtoddler that came at them.
Wantmore drabbles? Want them for free? Then subscribe to Friday NightDrabble Party at jakebible.com!Or feel free to purchase them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble orSmashwords.
About The Author:
JakeBible lives in Asheville, NC with his wife and two kids. He is theauthor of many published short stories and the creator of a newliterary form: the Drabble Novel. DEADMECH represents the introduction to theworld of the Drabble Novel, a novel written 100 words at a time. TheAmericans represents the sidequel to DEADMECH. Jake really likes making shit up,even brand new words and literary forms. He also has many storiesavailable as ebooks, including the collection BethanyAnd The Zombie Jesus: A Novelette And 11 Other Tales Of Horror AndGrotesquery and 31Days Of Halloween.
Learnmore about Jake and his work at www.jakebible.com.Links to his Facebook fan page, Twitter, as well as his weeklydrabble release, Friday Night Drabble Party, and his weekly freeaudio fiction podcast, can be found there.
Free Excerpt From DEADMECH: The World's First Drabble Novel-
Description:
Hundredsof years after the zombie apocalypse decimates the world, humancivilization has put itself back together again. Their secret weaponagainst the zombie hordes: the Mechs. Massive robotic battlemachines. But what happens when a mech pilot dies in his mech andbecomes a zombie? Hell on earth is unleashed... Prepare for a highaction, fast paced, hell ride through a futuristic wasteland as MechBase Commander James Capreze and his crew of mech pilots battlezombies, cannibals, religious cults and worst of all, the Dead Mechs,all to try and save the human race one last time.
JakeBible's Dead Mech: The future may not be completely dead, but it's onits way...
Prologue
Part One- The Virus
It would be decades after the restructuring of humansociety before records were found declaring that the virus thatcaused the zombie apocalypse was not the first. It wasn't even thesecond.
According to scientific records, there had been at leastfour earlier outbreaks of related viruses. Government organizationshad been successful in all cases until the final virus. Prevailingtheory was the virus's mutations finally outran the scientists.
The final mutation was all the virus needed to survive.
It is unknown how many people were spreading the virusamong the world's population before the first carrier died andre-animated.
***
It is believed that every member of the human speciesbecame a dormant carrier of the virus. Thus, every human that diedcame back as a re-animated corpse. No cure could be found, norecourse.
However, worse than the fact that people knew their bodywould come back as a voracious nightmare, was the discovery that abite from a zombie would mean death and re-animation within 24 hours.
And that those bitten became contagious within twelvehours, infecting friends, family, co-workers, anyone they in turnbit.
And bite, they did. No exceptions, no remorse, noreasoning.
Madness was unleashed.
***
Only one thing could be confirmed regarding the virus:everyone infected became a zombie.
No one was spared. No matter what anti-viral drugs wereused, immuno-suppressants, gene therapies, nothing worked. Nothingeven slowed it down.
Once the living died it took less than twenty minutesfor the corpse to re-animate with only two things on its mindlessbrain: kill and eat.
Killing seemed to be its first priority. Feeding wouldnot distract the virus driven undead from their need to kill. Toomany citizens learned the hard way, thinking a zombie was distractedby flesh; thinking they had a chance.
***
The zombies the virus created were not shuffling, footdraggers, but active, homicidal, very hungry re-animated corpses benton killing every human they could and feasting on their flesh. Theywere unbelievably strong and fast.
They were driven to kill, first and foremost. Thisinsured the supreme dominance of the virus.
Feeding was secondary. And feeding on fresh flesh wasthe key. While never proven substantially, the belief was that thezombie was able to feed off the energy still stored. Old, decaying,rotten flesh was of no interest to the zombies. Thus they did notfeed off each other.
***
The zombie physiology differed greatly from its originalhuman form. No longer were organs needed for survival, since theycould not digest or process what they caught.
All energy, all sustenance went into building andmaintaining connective tissues.
While bones could not be reset, they could be healed,the break fusing and strengthening. Tendons, cartilage, ligaments andmuscle could be rebuilt and re-grown. As long as the zombie fed, thezombie stayed fit and deadly.
This was another triumph of the virus. It gave thezombies a sense of self, a reason to fight, to kill, to feed. Tosurvive.
***
The virus learned and encouraged learning.
It had the potential to allow its victims, the zombiehordes, to process, store and analyze information. It was a strippeddown, simplistic way of reasoning, but the zombies could think andlearn.
They learned to hunt in packs. They learned to split up,to surround their prey, to actively catch their victims instead ofjust running them down.
They learned to listen, to smell, to watch.
They learned to be predators, not just scavengers.
Worst of all, they learned their limitations andadjusted accordingly.
The fast pursued, the slow waited, the broken hid.
***
The speed with which the virus took control of a deadbody astonished the doctors and researchers assigned to find thecure. In minutes their test subjects would go from corpse to zombie,ready to kill, eat and kill some more.
Too many lab assistants and eminent scientists losttheir lives by underestimating the power and scope of the virus. Soonmany of the researchers became the researched. Their re-animatedcorpses dissected and studied using protocols and procedures theythemselves had created.
By the time the virus was isolated nearly half theworld's population had succumbed.
The other half cowered.
Part Two- Society Re-born
Population centers were the first to go. The density ofpeople made it impossible to control the spread of the virus. Withinmonths both the East and West coasts were lost.
Communication with Europe, Asia, the Middle East andother world regions soon amounted to sporadic info bursts from shortwave stations. Eventually, those too ceased.
The seat of power was moved to deep within the ColoradoRockies. What was NORAD became the United Defense Council.
The UDC hunkered down and waited, issuing surgical,tactical strikes to the former great cities of the nation.
Most of the country became uninhabitable.
***
Nuclear cleansing was the only option for manypopulation centers. Up and down the East and West coast, and placesin between, cities were laid to waste, their poison scoured from theplanet.
New York, LA, Chicago, DC, Atlanta, San Diego, Seattle,Denver, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, Miami. All gone.
What was left of the country was called the wasteland.
For several generations, human kind became hermits,forced into indoor seclusion to avoid the toxic air and rains thatswept through.
When they emerged and the rolling skies didn't produceboils and blisters upon their exposed skin, they found themselveslost.
***
The wasteland: deadly gas clouds, acid rain, freakmega-storms, earthquakes, scorched earth. This was what the humanrace had to fight through to survive.
Before the city/states, many survivors lived in caves;burrowed under buildings, adding basement levels as needed; foundsanctuaries in the mountains.