COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2012 by Mark McLaughlin

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      Stories from this collection previously appeared in Aberrations, At the Foothills of Frenzy, The Book of All Flesh, Chews Life, The Dream People, Fantasy Macabre, Freaks, Geeks & Sideshow Floozies, Heart Attack, Horrorfind, I Gave at the Orifice, Midnight Premiere, Midnight Zoo, Motivational Shrieker, Night Terrors, Not One of Us, OctoberLand, Once Upon a Slime, Palace Corbie, The Piano Player Has No Fingers, Pig Tales: Tales from the Trough, Rehearsals for Oblivion, Small Bites, Split, Strangewood Tales, Terror Tales (website), The Third Alternative, Twisted Tales for Sick Puppies, and ZOM BEE MOO VEE & Other Freaky Shows.

      DEDICATION

      To

      Michael S.

      who can always reanimate me when I’m feeling down.

      To

      Pamela and Mike McC.

      good friends, like the living dead, are a joy forever.

      To

      Kyra

      the prettiest ghoul in town.

      Introduction

      STILL ZOMBIE AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

      I get a kick out of zombies. I’ve been writing about them for years.

      Oh, sure, they like to hurt people. And kill people. And ultimately, eat people.

      But hey, we’ve all got to eat. We all consume other life-forms every day, plant or vegetable, whether we like it or not—and whether they like it or not. I have yet to meet the person who can live off of minerals, water, and/or air.

      I enjoy writing about zombies because they are truly the baddest of the bad. They don’t follow the rules. Vampires and werewolves obey very strict regulations. Vampires only come out at night and werewolves only do their dirty work during the full moon. Vampires can be repelled with garlic, crosses and holy water and werewolves can be sent scurrying with wolfbane.

      On the other undead hand, zombies shamble about the countryside whenever they please. The only thing that will discourage them is a shotgun blast to the brain or, of course, decapitation.

      Zombies and werewolves are created when a person is bitten by one of those toothy terrors. But zombies—! They can rise from the dead for lots of reasons. Any horror movie enthusiastic can tell you that.

      Sure, a zombie’s bite can turn its victim into one of the living dead. But that’s not all. Corpses can be turned into hungry zombies through voodoo, nuclear power, viruses, parasites, ancient Egyptian curses (if you count mummies as zombies), toxic chemicals, the Black Mass, hypnosis, or even sonic radiation waves (whatever those are), like in the movie, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, also known as Don’t Open the Window and The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue.

      Zombies are delightfully flexible and versatile. And their insatiable hunger for the flesh of the living has given me a lot of food for thought.

      In this volume, you will find a bumper crop of zombie stories—seventeen in all. Among them, you will find three stories about zombies created by Internet witches and four set on the isle of Zovemba, also known as Zombie Island, ruled by the very beautiful and very dead Necrilda Voltaire.

      I’ve also added sixteen stories about other types of humanoid horrors for your amusement. So sit back, relax, and let all my hideous, undead darlings shamble into your brain and maybe, into your heart.

      After all … zombies need love, too.

      Zombies

      Beach Blanket Zombie

      Lornetta fluttered her false eyelashes at her hunky boyfriend. “Golly, I can hardly wait for the big pig roast tonight, Turnpike.” She shifted on her beach towel to give him a better view of her new bikini top.

      Turnpike flashed her a big toothy grin. “Honeybee, it’s gonna be a gas! Big Kuka-Lu-Lu and the Beachtones are even gonna make the scene.”

      “Big Kuka-Lu-Lu? He’s the grooviest! Except for you, of course!” She gazed up into his sky-blue eyes and wondered: Would tonight be the night? Would Turnpike actually make all her dreams come true and let her wear his class ring?

      A sea gull, flying in from the open waters, squawked wildly. “Man, that bird is loony tunes!” Turnpike said. He turned toward their friends, who were playing volleyball. “Moonray! Darlena! Sandburn! Foreign exchange student Yvetta! What’s up with that wacky bird?”

      Yvetta pursed her glossy pink lips. “Perhaps it has—how you say?—an emotional disorder.”

      Lornetta laughed. “You kooky foreigners with all your Freud and whatnot! I’d better not tell you about those doughnuts and sausages in my dream last night. Moonray, what do you think?”

      Moonray turned his goofy patched hat sideways—he did that whenever he had to think really hard. “Hmmmm. I know that government island where they do those creepy, far-out DNA experiments is about three miles that way.” He pointed out to sea.

      Sandburn nodded. “That’s right, dude. Big Kuka-Lu-Lu works out there when he’s not singing and racing dune buggies.”

      “Golly!” Darlena moaned, dreamy-eyed. “I didn’t know the Big K worked in a fancy lab. Yvetta’s so lucky to have him for a boyfriend! So he’s some kind of scientist, huh?”

      “Yep!” Turnpike said, “and he’s half-Swedish and half-Hawaiian, and a prince on both sides of the family. He’s a best-selling novelist, too. Why, here he comes now!”

      A muscular, bronzed man with thick blonde hair and startling green eyes swam to shore. “Hey, gang! I’m sure glad I found you crazy cats. We gotta get out of here, and pronto!”

      Lornetta gasped. “Leave our favorite beach? Whyever for?”

      Five other young bronzed men also swam to shore, with guitars strapped to their backs. Big Kuka-Lu-Lu grinned. “I’m sure glad the band is okay. They work out on the government island, too.” He rushed up to Yvetta. “Sweetie, in case we don’t get out of this scrape alive, I just want to say: I love you!”

      Yvetta swooned into his meaty arms. “I—how you say?—love you, too. But why are you acting so funny? I bet it’s because of those genetic experiments on the island. My uncle who works out there—Dr. Frankensvenson—has mentioned them from time to time.”

      “It was one crazy shindig out on that island last night, baby!” Big Kuka-Lu-Lu cried. “You see, we had a pig roast and I was the chef. We cooked up an old sow—the mother of all the pigs we’ve been experimenting on. I even made bacon sandwiches. I just looooove bacon!” He licked his full but undeniably manly lips. “Unfortunately, an unwelcome guest crashed the party. You see, we’d mixed in some radiation-infused human chromosomes with the DNA of one of the sow’s little piglets, and it grew into a mutant that looked like a human, except it had a curly tail.”

      Lornetta, who was eavesdropping from a polite distance, grinned as she said, “A curly tail? That sounds cute!”

      Big Kuka-Lu-Lu shivered. “The tail may have been cute, but the rest of him was a freaked-out nightmare! He had crazy crooked teeth and one eye was way bigger than the other—and it glowed! The mutant tried to attack Dr. Frankensvenson last week, so the doc shot him dead. But the crazy thing came back as a zombie!”

      Yvetta cocked her head to one side. “Why did he do a silly thing like that?”

      “Because he’s radioactive!” said Big Kuka-Lu-Lu. “We stuck him in a cage, but somewhere also the line he’d also developed psychic powers, so he read our minds and found out what we did to her mom. So he busted out of his cage, found a chainsaw and a surfboard, and crashed our party.”

      “So, he was the unwelcome guest, yes?” Yvetta asked.