Dead Earth: The Green Dawn by Mark Justice

ground.
    The fat Bensons were still coming at him.
    As the Bensons groped for him and Pops got
back to his feet, Jubal ran around them and out to the front
yard.
    Glancing up and down the street, Jubal saw
that the whole town had turned up for a visit. Old neighbors,
friends and acquaintances shuffled about, some falling over as if
not able to control their bodies. One or two noticed Jubal and
turned towards him, moaning to others, who turned towards him as
well.
    “At least these fuckers are slow,” he said to
no one, as he ran into the house, slamming the door behind himself.
“And I’m talking to myself again.”
    With reluctance, he went to the bedroom of
tragedy for his Glock. Someone—some thing was pounding on the
bedroom wall. He ignored it. He made his way back down the hall to
the living room. He checked the shotguns—they were loaded and
ready.
    Multiple fists pounded at the front door. It
shook in its frame.
    Jubal reloaded his Glock, holstered it, hung
one shotgun from his shoulder and gripped the other one in his
hands.
    The front door, tearing from its hinges,
slammed straight down against the floor, as the crowd of undead
fought to be the first one to get hold of Jubal. They wedged against
each other in the doorway, blocking their own progress. Their
antics reminded Jubal of a Three Stooges routine.
    He put his back to the hallway. If things got
real bad, he could always run down the hall to his mother’s
bedroom, where there was a window into the front yard, giving him
better access to his cruiser parked at the curb. He was thankful he
didn’t have to go through his own bedroom. The sooner he forgot
about that room, the better.
    Jubal began shooting zombies.
    Randy Minear was first. He and Jubal had
played little league baseball together down at the city park. Randy
had been an amazing short stop. He still moved pretty quick, faster
than any of the walking dead Jubal had seen. He was almost on Jubal
before the shotgun was raised. The blast removed most of Randy’s
head, splattering bone and brains and gore onto the undead behind
him. The headless corpse toppled backward, causing several of the
zombies to trip and become tangled up.
    Jubal took a few steps back to give him some
room to maneuver. As he did, he pumped another round into the
chamber of the Mossberg. Seven shots to go. Then he had the other
shotgun on his back and the Glock in his belt.
    A nude figure struggled past the mass of
zombies on the floor, rolling over the other bodies and landing in
front of Jubal. The dead thing stood and he recognized the decaying
form of Margie Gilmore, the first woman he ever saw naked. When he
was 13, he had chased a baseball into her backyard. After he
retrieved the ball, Jubal glanced at the sliding glass door and saw
Mrs. Gilmore—the mother of his friend Kent—standing there in the
nude. Her breasts were quite large and sagged more than a little.
Jubal didn’t care. He was frozen in place, blushing over his entire
body as he stared at the brown areolas and incredibly large
nipples. She held a drinking glass in one hand and she used the
other to rub her belly, which served to direct his eyes toward the
unkempt thatch of black hair below her navel. Jubal managed to get
his body moving then, and he sprinted back to the city park. He
never told anyone about the encounter, perhaps because he found it
both disturbing and arousing, and he took care to stay far away
from Mrs. Gilmore after that.
    Now she was within a foot or two of him. The
thought of her touch made his stomach do a nauseating flip. He
pointed the Mossberg and removed the left side of her head. Her
right eye stared at him as she toppled to the floor.
    Six shells left in this one, Jubal. Choose
wisely.
    Three of the disgusting creatures squeezed
through the door, two pushing the one in front. Jubal didn’t
recognize any of them. All three tripped over the two bodies on the
floor, and one of them flew through the air and struck