How Light Rock Saved The Human Race

Jimmy waited by the car. His prox­im­ity mon­i­tor was vibrat­ing on his wrist and he knew they would be get­ting close, but he was frozen in place, watch­ing them.

They approached slowly over the rise; row upon row of the sham­bling dead. Vacant eyes were star­ing out of decay­ing faces, lank hair and open wounds par for the course. They moved slowly down the embank­ment toward the high­way where Jimmy stood.

In his ear, a voice. “Are you ready, Private?”

They were less than fifty feet from him now. Some started to sniff the air, to catch wind of the warm flesh beneath Jimmy’s Kevlar body­suit. Jimmy reached into his pocket and with­drew the small black box with the shiny red button.

“Ready,” he sub­vo­cal­ized. “You have eyes on this?”

The voice in his ear responded, “Affir­ma­tive. Acti­vate at will.”

With his other hand, he removed a set of from earplugs from his vest pocket and fit them snugly into his ears.  He waited.

Forty feet.

Thirty.

When they reached twenty-five feet, Jimmy pressed the but­ton and dove away from the car. The auto­matic win­dows rolled down and the high-powered speak­ers in the back seat clicked on with a thun­der­ous pop and a loud hiss.

The zom­bies, still focused on the car, con­tin­ued to move forward.

Then.…music.  Horns. A slow intro, then a woman’s voice, singing:

“Why do birds sud­denly appear.…every time.…you are near…?”

The zom­bies stopped, then began to sway back and forth slowly to the tempo of the music. Their eyes turned toward the sky, their mouths opened…low groans ris­ing in volume.

“Just like me.…they long to be…”

Then, as the singer reached the cho­rus, the whole pack of undead sang as one,

“CLOSE TO YOOOOOUUUUU.…“

Christo­pher T. Miller

Christo­pher T. Miller is a soft­ware devel­oper by trade and a writer by neces­sity. He is one of the co-founders of Podiobooks.com and is the Over­lord of The Secret Lair. He has not yet been eaten by a grue.