Short-Story.Me!

“It is for stamina.”  She said to him with her cute mouth on her cute face.  She was Korean.  Just Korean - no hyphen.  Her English was as cute as her face.

“I am strong enough.  American macho me.”  He laughed.  They had met in Koreatown by accident.  By traffic accident.  She had run her Silver Lexus into the back of his red BMW.  The true American auto industry in action.  A coming together of  countries.

“Not strong.  Endurance.  It is very hot.  It will keep you hiking.”  She placed the strip of jerky to his lips.  He was sweating.

Chad still hadn’t returned by morning.  We all knew he’d been taken, just like Sandy.

That was the way it was, ever since the dead started walking again – the Zombie Uprising that had seemed like just a stupid joke until it actually happened.  How?  Who knew.  Why?  An even more impossible question.  We just crouched in the darkness of the Payless Shoes storage room, keeping quiet.  Dark, so maybe they wouldn’t see us.  Quiet, so maybe they wouldn’t hear us.

The Eastern Gate was deserted, save for the huddled family that awaited transfer to the Deep. He could see from their dirty and malnourished faces that they were no surface dwellers, their skin was too ashen and pale, pallid even in the sweet air of the cities' edge. No, these people were from the Deep, the shanty slum that rose from the core, eight levels down. Those that lived there often gave it a different name however; many simply called it Hell.

At 52 years old Hernandez Holanda could be considered a veteran.

In fact the current life expectancy for his colleagues was a little under two years. Hernandez, or Paco as he was generally known, had been working for the cartel since retiring from the Mexican air force at the age of 35. Paco was a survivor and fully intended to live long enough to see out his retirement. The current vibrations in the converted Cessna Titan gave him some cause for concern though.