Billions, Tales of the Zombie Chronicles by Mark Clodi

Author:Mark Clodi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: +AA, Horror, Short Stories, +IPAD, +UNCHECKED
Publisher: Ctales
Published: 2011-03-24T07:00:00+00:00

Eight in Billions

Ben is insane. It isn't his fault the voice in his head never seems to give him good advice.

The bike path was deserted at this time of the morning.

'It is far too early for the normal dinks to be out and about,' thought Benny, 'too early for me too. Too damned cold.'

Serves you right for leaving your wife and kids. You deserve to be cold, homeless and alone! Another part of him thought.

"Shut up!" he mumbled. Benny wasn't much to look at anymore. Once he had sported a fine figure, which had led Jane to him in the first place, but that was thirty years ago now and she was long dead.

Fucking justice the way it works, isn't it? You cock up.

"Shut up!" he said louder. "No fucking people anymore, not anywhere."

Maybe they knew about you, about how you killed her and left those babies all alone.

"No, they don't, no one cares 'bout that anymore."

The kids care. Marly and Donna care.

"They pro'lly aren't even alive anymore." Benny said about his former father and mother in-law. "The kids are better off without me."

And Janie is dead. All these years dead.

The morning was a cold one, Benny had been driving out of the mass of cardboard and leaves that he had piled together the night before in the woods behind the truck stop. It was drizzling rain too, which didn't help improve Benny's already tenuous grip on reality. It had been raining the morning he killed his wife.

Ever since that act he tended to become violently irrational if he were caught in the rain. Now he was stalking the paved bike path looking for someone to provoke him. If luck were with him one of two things would happen, he would beat someone badly enough to land back in prison for a few years or he would get the living shit kicked out of him. At this point he didn't have a preference. Maybe the jogger would have pepper spray. If luck were not with him, it would not be a young man, but a young woman who looked like his dead wife.

Jane never aged, not in his mind. The frequent apologies to the young women he had accosted over the last twelve years didn't ease his conscious for longer than a day or two and had resulted in several short stays in county prisons around the country. He had never attacked a woman, not since killing his wife. Lately he was starting to get angry when he approached women who were not like his Janie.

'It's just a matter of time before I do.' Ben said to himself, then out loud, "I served my time. It's over."

It is never over. Not until Janie says it is. She hasn't told you it is over, has she?

"Shut up."

Has she? His inner voice pressed.

"Look!" Benny said pointing down the path. Someone was coming. Ben was dressed in ragged, dirty clothing; he gave up personal hygiene after about two years on the streets. Not much of a loss there.

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