[Heartland Junk 03] • Vitala Rising

It came at you first like an unexpected chill breeze on a warm day. Most people never had a chance to figure out what was happening before it was too late. Only the lucky ones, the ones already ruined, like me, were able to defend ourselves.

The terrifying second installment of Heartland Junk , a zombie apocalypse serial novel!

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The window over the sink crackled again, then shattered inward with long, razor-edge shards. They showered over me and broke still further on the floor, skittering off under the legs of the kitchen table. Titan's head shot up. I grabbed the backpack, grabbed Titan around the belly, and lurched to my knees. I turned and saw a rotten torso climbing through the little window, glass embedded in his shoulders like stegosaurus spikes, blood and a putrid, snotty yellow liquid streaming from the fresh puncture wounds. It saw me, pink eyes flaring, and chattered its teeth. Black saliva hung in dribbled strings from its decayed gums.

I tried to slide away from it, struggling to get one of the bag straps over my shoulder, but the zombie's hands scrabbled against the counter tile, pushing itself in, and reached down and snagged me by a thick clump of hair. I screamed and beat at it with my free hand, but beneath the spongy flesh, the hand was made of vice grips. I shouted again, felt the hand drag me back, saw a flash as it smacked my head against the cabinet door.

Something jabbed my other hand and I thought it was glass but it was Titan, squirming out of my grip. The cat leaped onto the kitchen counter beside the zombie and hissed, then—this motherfucking cat—swiped at the zombie's cheek. Little scraps of flesh fell away under its claws, sloughing off like tender roast beef.

The stag let me go and the arm clumped toward Titan and he caught the cat around the midsection. I dropped to the floor, rolled away, now cutting myself on the glass slivers. Titan yowled and thrashed so quickly I lost sight of all his limbs, clawing and biting at the grayish hand holding him down. Any sane man would have dropped the clawed dervish, but this thing was impervious to the pain. Titan buried his hind claws into the stag's wrist, kicking with both legs like he was trying to dig a hole. A bloody, red-black-and-yellow groove appeared in the wrist under Titan's thrashing legs, bits of flesh stripping away in ribbons, until Titan was scraping bone down at the bottom of that flesh-rimmed ravine.

The zombie lifted Titan into the air and brought the furball to its mouth.

"Get your hands off my fucking cat," I said, and swung my crowbar into his temple as hard as I possibly could. The iron bar dug three inches into his skull and sprayed the room with that weird, runny snot fluid tinged crimson with normal blood. I wrenched the crowbar free and hit him again, crunching the skull plate like a flower pot. The zombie spasmed and stilled, still halfway through the window, head leaking a gallon of red and yellow pus into the ceramic sink. Titan squirmed free, leaped to the floor, and sat beside my food and began licking his paw as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't just attacked a zombie.

"Good kitty," I breathed.