Want a free copy of Rot? Plus some? Here’s the deal. Below is a photo of a mysterious wound I suffered (okay, some of you, probably even a lot of you, know how I got it). Your job is to tell me a story, your best story, on how this wound was inflicted on my poor fragile flesh. No word limit. No genre preference. The one I like best wins:

An ebook copy of Rot

A *print* copy of Rot from the first Skullvines edition

A Rot promo package featuring, well, whatever I still have, possibly including a magnet, bookmark and postcard

Oh, plus I’ll give away two addition ebook copies of Rot.

Post your stories right here in the comments. And stick around for a free sample of Rot after the gory picture.

Rot

by Michele Lee

When I met Amy, she’d been back from the dead for four days. She’d been at the facility for three of those days. At that point, I’d only been there two. Not that anyone needed more than a few moments to get the gist of the place. She was more bitter about being at the facility than the being dead part, and honestly I didn’t blame her.

She had a scowl on her face as I walked into the office at the Silver Springs Care Community. She had pale skin graced with freckles, soft chin-length brown hair, and the brightest hazel eyes I had ever seen – they made the attractive, mildly chubby, early twentysomething-year-old woman into something extraordinary.

“You’re dead.” I couldn’t stop it once I’d thought it. The words fell out of my mouth like something rotten. Her scowl deepened and I felt bad immediately.

“You know, I hadn’t noticed. Thanks for telling me.”

“I didn’t mean… Look, all of the zombies I’ve seen so far have been…”

“Like them?” She pointed out the window to the grounds, where I could see a keeper leading a train of desiccated corpses on their daily walk.

The facility employed people with enough skill at raising the dead to keep the zombies’ urge to chew on people at bay. Me, I didn’t have a talent for commanding the dead. What I had was twenty-plus years of military and security experience, and the ability to look someone’s ninety-year-old grandmother in the eyes and shoot her.

The job called for all sorts of skills.

“Some of us still retain our own thoughts and personalities. I’m Amy, by the way.” She didn’t offer a hand. She held her arms across her stomach and leaned forward slightly, those eyes boring into me. She was at once defensive and furious. And absolutely lovely.

I nodded. “I’m Dean.”

“Which would you prefer, Dean? Being one of those things out there, rotted to mindlessness, or being locked in a dead body, knowing that’s the future you’ll face? Knowing that someone loved you enough not to let go, but didn’t love you enough to care for you themselves? Instead, they locked you in here where they didn’t have to see or smell you, but could take comfort in the idea that you weren’t exactly dead anymore.”

I thought both options sucked.

*****

It used to be that death, maybe even a long or violent one, would be the worst thing you’d ever have to face. In the few skirmishes I’d served in, other soldiers had taken some comfort in knowing that. But then, that was before they started raising people from the dead.

My nephew used to play a video game where the point was to wander around shooting zombies. There was only a little more to it than that: a bit of mystery; a touch of evil corporation or government conspiracy. The games said that zombies were the result of a disease.

When they started showing up in real life, people assumed the same thing. Government experimentation, biological terrorism, some sort of corporation poisoning the public – the fear and wrath from the living humans caused more damage in those days than the few confirmed zombies. I was privy to a few case reports of homegrown terrorist plots against global corporations who had nothing to do with the occasional walking dead. They were just good targets.

And there was Black Wednesday, too. Forty-five civilians dead. They never did confirm how many employees of that soda company burned, barricaded inside the building by an outraged mob.

Then the truth came out, and I still wonder how many people harbor the secret memories of doing violence that day in the name of protecting themselves or their families. Creating zombies, it turned out, was just a matter of will. The first few we caught in public had likely raised themselves – a few assholes too stubborn to die. The problem came when people started to make zombies for fun and profit. About two percent of the general public had the will to force people back from death. It was a very lucrative, unregulated business.

Places like Silver Springs came in at the end of the line. A loved one coming into our facility was a brutal lesson for those involved. Too many people fell into the category of potential customers, but not enough saw what happened once a zombie entered the gates. I don’t doubt that having a place to tuck away your loved one, who turned out to be too much for you to handle, was useful. But if more people saw the end result of never having to say goodbye, they’d damn well learn to say it.

Amy, yeah.

“So,” she said after I failed to answer her aloud, “if you don’t mind my stench, I’m here to help out.”

I declined to add fuel to her little fire. “What can you help with?”

“I’m good with computers, and organization. I’ve been an office worker and a nurse before.”

“Good, because I’m not good at any of those things.”

“Why are you here, then?”

I shrugged. It was a job. “I guess for when things go wrong.”

She snorted. I hadn’t killed her the first time. But chances were high that when she finally lost control, I’d be the one to put her down. It was a shame, but we both knew it. In another time, I’d fancy that my old ass might have a chance to enjoy the pleasure of her company, if only for dinner and conversation.

We were the only ones in the office. It wasn’t the office outsiders saw. It was more functional than the maroon and white showroom out front. For one thing, there were bars on the windows, as pretty as they were, and the steel doors were magnetically sealed, verified for at least 1800 pounds of force. The front room was unsafe should the facility go all Jurassic Park, but the rest of the building was secured.

I leaned back in the chair, propped my feet on the desk and watched the security grids on the computer screen. Amy sorted through stacks of paper mechanically. Sometimes she filed things away, sometimes she tapped madly at the keyboard, recording files or transferring them to the home office in the city. Of course, that place did nothing but record what happened here. It was our black box, not our cavalry.

“How did it happen?” I asked the silence. I was uncomfortable with Amy at my back, but more so treating her as nonexistent, like many of the other employees did. I turned toward her, still keeping the monitors in my peripheral vision. “Is that too personal?”

“Probably, but believe it or not, no one ever asked. Not here, anyway. It’s probably in my file.”

“Don’t take offense. It’s easier to keep a distance than sympathize with a terminal patient. It’s human nature to avoid pain.”

“Stroke.” Amy still wasn’t looking at me. It bothered me. I guess I thought that since she didn’t look dead, something in her eyes might betray her. Not seeing them kept me from reassuring myself.

“A stroke? But you’re so young.”

Amy shrugged. I had the feeling she was hiding a lot of how she felt. “I don’t remember dying. I just know what it says on my death certificate.”

“Morbid fascination?”

“No. My husband threw it in my face before he had them bring me here.” She paused and looked to the grassy expanse outside the barred window. “He had me raised because he couldn’t let go, but he couldn’t find it in himself to touch me. ‘You’re not my Amy anymore,’ he told me. Then he called his new girlfriend over to console him when they took me away.”

“And you didn’t fight it at all?” The thought of passively leaving the person I loved was alien to me.

“Are you kidding me? If I’d showed any emotion other than obedience, they would have napalmed me right there on the street.”

I stayed quiet. No, it seemed unfair. But I’d seen bodies in the morgue that had been savaged by angry or mindless zombies. That wasn’t exactly fair, either.

“What about you? What brings you to our fine zombie herding establishment?”

I thought about lying to make her feel better, but she’d given me the truth. “Money. This field is so specialized, it pays real well.”

Amy finally looked at me and smiled viciously. “At least my husband is paying for one of us.”