Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (Vol. 1, 2 & 3) by James Roy Daley & Jeff Strand & Simon Wood & Joe McKinney & Bev Vincent & Robert Swartwood & Kim Paffenroth & Tim Lebbon & Harry Shannon & David Niall Wilson & Nancy Kilpatrick & Gary McMahon & Rio Youers & Jeremy C Shipp & Nate Kenyon & Paul Kane & Cody Goodfellow

Author:James Roy Daley & Jeff Strand & Simon Wood & Joe McKinney & Bev Vincent & Robert Swartwood & Kim Paffenroth & Tim Lebbon & Harry Shannon & David Niall Wilson & Nancy Kilpatrick & Gary McMahon & Rio Youers & Jeremy C Shipp & Nate Kenyon & Paul Kane & Cody Goodfellow [Daley, James Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lang:en
Publisher: Books of the Dead
Published: 2012-03-30T14:07:09+00:00

Viva Las Vegas

THOMAS S. ROCHE

I cruise the blackened city in the primer-gray Caddy, all-steel construction carving a path of blood and bone as I search the faces of the living dead. I stalk the streets like nightmares on a pale horse with a 390 pre-smog, radials and a big ugly hood ornament of a woodpecker or something, the air conditioning on high and the Beretta across my lap. I drive the Strip with its shattered neon lights and fragments of plate glass windows, silver dollars and poker chips and hundred-dollar bills forming drifts like the desert sands across Las Vegas Boulevard. I look into the desperate eyes of the rotting, watching them claw at the windows of the Caddy, and I put my shades on.

Emily is nowhere in sight.

But I hold on to the faith that’s kept me on the highway since I started. It’s a small burning coal at the pit of my stomach that tells me one day very, very soon I’m going to have my Emily back and then not even Manny Pearlman can take her away again. Off in the distance, I hear the howl of a dog.

I park the Caddy in the parking lot of a Mister Doggy and light an unfiltered Black Lung. I sit there, smoking, and thinking about the way Emily’s eyes are going to light up when she sees me. It’s been a long time coming––pedal-to-the-metal in the Caddy, burning up the road to this place, and every time I look into the face of Death he is a brainless zomboid drooling green muck on his shirt. Every time I get cornered and try to speak words of wisdom to the great unwashed (which has gotten particularly unwashed of late), I find myself face to face with a greater kind of pinhead––the occupant of a brave new and even stupider TV nation looking for a rather unwilling TV dinner, namely, me. Every time I point nine millimeters of death at the brain of the New Regular Joe, his jaws just clack and his hands claw to get a grip on my arm and peel off a succulent morsel.

But none of that matters worth rat-shit. I know, know in my heart, in my soul, that when I finally find Emily I’m gonna take her in my arms and she’s gonna see me, recognize me, remember everything we had together. That’s when her eyes’ll brighten and I’ll see those beautiful shining tears of hers. At long last I’ll have my Emily back from the hands of Death.

All at once I see them, two dead hippies, one short and one tall, wearing tie-dye shirts with skull logos. They have just walked up to the Caddy’s side windows like they’re trying to sell me some weed with a couple of Louisville Sluggers. No time to get the car in gear. I open the door fast so the short guy takes the bottom edge in the knee; the bat goes flying. I lean out of the