With the last 3-book of arc of the DEAD series (the proper series, not the SNAPSHOT spinoff that is in production), I introduce my last vignette. Enjoy.
The following is an excerpt from a journal found in an abandoned camp
just outside of the ruins of Billings Montana:
Entry One—
My name is Adam. I won’t bore you with my last name, since, if you are
reading this, you would probably mispronounce it anyway. How about just Adam
V.?
I am a hunter.
That opens up the question of what I hunt. Well, in the world of the
dead, most of us are hunters of some sort. We hunt for food, or we hunt for a
safe place to live. Some may even hunt for the lost world that lives in our
memory.
I hunt the living. Don’t worry. I have a reason, and I don’t just hunt
any living person. I only hunt the ones who have been brought to my attention.
As many of you know, when the dead came, it changed damn near everything.
Some was actually for the better. No more Hollywood tabloids for one.
Seriously, who cares about how some talentless popstar’s sister was banging the
manager? Although, now that I think about it…the manager might have made my
list. I think the sister was only fourteen or fifteen and the manager was some
skeezy old dude in his forties.
Some was for the worst. That first year, it seemed like every creep and
playground lurker decided that it was open season on women and children. You
could not run into a group of people that didn’t have at least one sad story to
tell. And you always knew which one right away. They had that haunted look nine
times out of ten. Most would jump out of their skin if you tapped them on the
shoulder.
Zombies were not the worst problem like the old movies, books, and
television shows always made you think. Nope, it was the living. As far as I am
concerned, that ius still the case.
Personally, I can’t be mad at zombies. That is like being mad at a great
white shark or a grizzly bear. You show up in their home smelling like food and
then get upset when they took a bite? Zombies are the same way. They are just
doing what they do. They are the ultimate species when it comes to equal opportunity.
Rich, poor, fat skinny. You are all the same in the milky eyes of the undead.
But when it comes to people, that is different. You are making a choice
to prey on those weaker than you for your own sick gratification. That is why I
must wipe you off the face of the earth. With the population being reduced like
it is, a single death is equal to thousands. So, the way I see it, every single
time I kill one of those useless shit bags, I am actually killing thousands of
the bastards.
My actual number of official kills is eighty-nine. Five escaped, and
eleven I never found. I am currently hunting number ninety. He won’t escape. I
know this because I am sitting on a log, writing this journal entry while he
sits five feet away, staked to the ground. His name does not matter, and I will
not let him become some sort of legend by writing it here.
Words are power. They last for all time. Whether you write them or say
them, once they are out there, they live for eternity.
I actually found this journal in his backpack. It belonged to a girl
named Suzie Strahan. Most of her pages had been torn out. I don’t know why, I
didn’t ask. I have no idea what became of the poor girl that used to write in
this book, all I do know for certain is that this guy will never do anything to
anybody again.
So…why have I appointed myself the judge, jury, and executioner of these
scum bags? Simple. I was a dad before the zombies came. And it wasn’t zombies
that took my precious little girl away from me. Death by zombie would have been
a kind mercy compared to the fate my angel suffered at the hands of Ward Thomas
Wilson.
Sorry…I had to stop writing for a minute. I spent a while kicking some
garbage around. I am sure you get my meaning. Then I had a good cry. Not enough
years will pass that I won’t randomly break out into tears over losing my baby
girl.
You might be wondering why I would use Ward Thomas Wilson’s name, and not
the name of that piece of crap that is sobbing just a few feet from me as I
write this entry. Easy, Ward Thomas Wilson is a name that belongs in history.
He put me into motion as the man I am today. He launched me on this quest that
has no apparent ending. It is Ward Thomas Wilson that has helped bring the
painful deaths I have handed out to the eighty-nine souls that now burn beside
him in Hell.
Entry Two—
And now there are ninety.
He cried. Actually, he cried more than most. When I told him that he had
to tell me every single thing that he did to that poor boy, he thought that I
was joking. When I applied that cord to his scrotum and pulled it tight, he
figured out that I was entirely serious.
I always make them spill the details because I want to make them admit to
the sick shit they have done. Most of them start crying when I ask them to tell
me what they might think if I were to do those things to them. The main reason
I want them to say all their crimes out loud is because I like to watch their
eyes. Those are the window to the soul.
His eyes were full of guilt. That is why I took them
before he died. He might have continued crying…hard to tell with all the blood.
powerful
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