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For

Zom-Bas, my undead lass!

OBE (Order of the Bloody Entrails) to:

Laura Zi Giuseppe, for a brace of carefully

coordinated Irish jobs!

dead good editors -

Venetia GoZling and Kate Zullivan

oes out, as always,

to the ChriZtopher Little brainiacs

THEN

It was the darkest, ht when the dead caue of e of Pallaskenry The luckier victihtered in their sleep, their skulls ripped open, their brains devoured The others suffered a farand the undead shared the village for a short, frantic time, but it was a balance made in hell and it could not last One side would surely wipe out the other As the de prey, killing or infecting, it soon beca had never been destined to win

Brian Barry watched sickly as his h the shredded remains of her husband’s face to scoop out his brains Muhts when he had stumbled home from the local pub, or when he wouldn’t shut up about soccer Brian and his dad had always laughed when shenow

Brian couldn’t understand how the world had changed so abruptly It had been an ordinary Sunday night He’d watched so to bed, and settled down for a night of sweet dreams before another school week kicked off

Screaht sleeper, but even the dead were unable to sleep through the uproar in Pallaskenry that night

Brian had thought at first that so a party But he lived on a quiet stretch of road His neighbors weren’t party ani noise and chaos to the countryside?

As his head cleared and he turned on the light in his bedroom, he quickly realized that this was no party The screa out of his , he spotted so He watched, awestruck, as Mrs Shanahan stabbed one of her sons in the chest with a long knife, then staggered away, keening sharply

The stabbed son should have died instantly, as the knife had pierced his heart But to Brian’s astonishment he yanked out the knife, tossed it aside, then fell upon his mother with a bloodthirsty howl Mrs Shanahan had time to scream once ers and began pulling out lumps of her brain

Brian turned away and vomited as Mrs Shanahan’s son stuffed bits of his dead leefully Then Brian rushed to his mum and dad’s room to seek protection

They weren’t there

As if in a nightmare, Brian shuffled towards the kitchen, where he could see a light Pushing open the door, he spotted his parents, but he didn’t call out to them There was no point, he saw that iain His face had been ripped apart and his body was deathly still

As for Brian’sher dead husband’s brain to care about anything her son ht have to say There was a nasty cut on her left ar across the wound There was soers too, but Brian didn’t focus on those details He could sto softly, he backed away froht of blood and screams

Brian headed for theHe could see atrocities unraveling wherever he looked, corpses littering the road, people - neighbors, fa into their brains

Fighting was rife, brother struggling with sister, ith husband, child with parent It h the village and struck at random Anyone who tried to reason with the cannibalistic crazies was knocked down and ripped apart The only ones who stood any chance of survival were those who didn’t stop to ask questions, who didn’t try to help, who simply turned tail and ran

But Brian was a child and he believed that adults had all the answers, that you should always seek assistance if you found yourself in trouble So he pushed on, searching for a police officer, a teacher, a priest anyone