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  NOTES FROM A NECROPHOBE

  How to Survive Your Own Survival

  The Necrophobe Series Book One

  T C Armstrong

  A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

  Published at Smashwords

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-549-0

  NOTES FROM A NECROPHOBE

  How to Survive Your Own Survival

  Copyright © 2015 by T.C. Armstrong

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by David Walker

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Permuted Press

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  Franklin, TN 37067

  http://permutedpress.com

  Table of Contents

  1. Kc

  2. Renee

  3. Kc

  4. Renee

  5. Houston

  6. Jesse

  7. Kc

  8. Houston

  9. Kc

  10. Jesse

  11. Houston

  12. Renee

  13. Kc

  14. Renee

  15. Jesse

  16. Houston

  17. Renee

  18. Kc

  19. Jesse

  20. Houston

  21. Jesse

  22. Kc

  23. Renee

  24. Houston

  25. Jesse

  26. Kc

  27. Ghost

  28. Jesse

  29. Renee

  30. Jesse

  31. Kc

  32. Houston

  33. Kc

  34. Renee

  35. Ghost

  36. Houston

  37. Jesse

  38. Houston

  39. Ghost

  40. Renee

  41. Kc

  42. Houston

  43. Ghost

  44. Kc

  45. Jesse

  46. Houston

  47. Ghost

  48. Kc

  49. Renee

  50. Houston

  51. Ghost

  52. Kc

  53. Houston

  54. Jesse

  55. Ghost

  56. Houston

  57. Kc

  58. Renee

  59. Kc

  60. Jesse

  61. Houston

  62. Kc

  63. Renee

  64. Houston

  65. Renee

  66. Kc

  67. Renee

  68. Kc

  69. Jesse

  70. Renee

  71. Houston

  72. Kc

  73. Houston

  74. Jesse

  75. Kc

  76. Renee

  77. Houston

  78. Jesse

  79. Houston

  80. Kc

  81. Renee

  82. Jesse

  83. Houston

  84. Kc

  85. Renee

  86. Jesse

  87. Houston

  88. Renee

  89. Jesse

  90. Kc

  91. Houston

  92. Renee

  93. Jesse

  94. Ghost

  95. Kc

  96. Renee

  97. Kc

  98. Houston

  99. Renee

  100. Jesse

  101. Killer

  Acknowledgements

  KC

  I can’t believe we killed Catherine.

  It’s not like we were ever friends. Every neighborhood needs a crazy cat lady and she was the crazy dog lady. I’m not missing those steaming parcels of poo her terrier left on our lawn. Yet I would love to be back in a world where we could walk our dogs and gamely smile as we passed each other by.

  Time had lulled me into a false sense of security. Things had been so quiet lately, we hadn’t seen the Pickup Truck for ages, and the outdoors did not smell as bad as it used to. It only took a couple of weeks to fall into some sort of rhythm: up at sunrise, exercise, salt shower, online school, TV, card games, and bed at sunset. We couldn’t risk anything seeing a light or hearing a sound once it’s dark…the Infected know that where there’s light and sound there’s life, and they’ll make a beeline for it. The thing is, we weren’t too good at schedules until we were forced into one a month ago, and the boredom of doing the same thing day in and day out eventually drove me out of the safety of our home.

  I remember thinking how good it was to be out. We weren’t exactly getting a “breath of fresh air,” not with the stink of decay stronger outside than in, but I was willing to put up with anything to get out of the house. At least that’s what I told myself while the smell of rot grew stronger and stronger. The stench was definitely worse than the last time I had gone out. It was worse than the time we ran over a skunk, worse than my brother’s sweat socks, even worse than that Washington, DC summer sewer smell. I had hoped that our car would provide a barrier to the odor outside. Our windows were rolled up tight, and we had a virtual forest of air fresheners swinging from the rear-view mirror. Yet little stabbings of stink still managed to sneak their way inside.

  I sat back, sighed, held my hankie to my face and breathed in deeply. We had drops of lavender on our tissues to try to distract us from the smell…it helped, but not much. I watched the back of my mother’s head as she drove, grateful I could avoid her stressed-out look. I concentrated on her hair as it bounced with each dip in the road. It was still in a cute short bob, but I wondered how much longer it could stay trim now that all the hairdressers were either hiding or dead. My mom’s hair is the same color as mine, auburn with strawberry blonde streaks in it, except mine’s not straight and in place like hers; mine is long and wavy and always looks like I just rolled out of bed. Into a hedge. After three days of not brushing it.

  We’ve got the same pale skin too, but hers is smoothed out by makeup, and I’ll wear pancake batter before I slap that stuff on my face. We have the same green eyes and cheekbones and pointy chins. I may not care for fashion like my mom does (“What’s wrong with being pretty?” she asks when I put my slouchy yoga fashion on), but we do share things like hair, skin, eye color and shortness (“KC, we’re not short; we’re petite!”), and that’s about as much as we have in common. My older brother and little sister look more like my dad with their olive skin, thick brown hair, and above-average tallness.

  Mom’s voice broke into my wandering urbane thoughts. “Honey, are you sure about this? We don’t have to go. You can do lunch with Gemma another day.” Yeah, right, like she’d forgotten that I had been begging to get out of the house the past two and a half weeks! Besides, I was starving and looking forward to eating something different to the food storage we’d been living off of. My mother was annoyingly cautious as she inched forward while looking for anything threatening. I don’t know why she bothered; we hadn’t seen a soul in weeks. I wished it were like the old days when all you had to look out for when you were driving were pets and people and other cars.

  I
was reminiscing about how I used to ride my bike to Gemma’s house every day when my mother commanded “KC, get your head down—now!” The fear and authority in her voice made me obey, but not before I caught a glimpse of the neighbor from the house on the corner. It was Catherine, aka the CrazyToiletBrush Lady.

  CTB Lady wasn’t crazy about toilets. She was obsessed with her yappy Yorkshire terrier, and my equally yappy little sister used to say, “Those Yorkshire terriers look just like toilet brushes!” It was that punch line that came to mind whenever we saw her dog, so over time, “Crazy Dog Lady” became Crazy Toilet Brush Lady. One of CTB Lady’s less desirable habits was when she would let her dog crap on her neighbors’ lawns in full view of everyone. While the pile was still fresh, she would look at whoever was there at the time, point to the poo, and say, “My dog didn’t do that.”

  And suddenly she was in the middle of the street. CrazyToiletBrush Lady was clearly dead, and not recently. I only got the briefest of looks, but even a quick glance revealed oozing black hollows where her eyes once were and the decomposition that had eaten holes in her cheeks. My nose confirmed the rest. I looked at my mother and wondered what she was going to do next. Would she do a quick U-turn and race home to call Homeland Security, or would she zoom around Catherine’s body and call Homeland Security from Gemma’s house?

  She did neither. My mom floored it, hitting CTB Lady dead on. It was bad enough smacking into our neighbor with a teeth-rattling “thump;” it was even worse driving over her. My stomach flipped as I felt her bones snap under the weight of the car. It made me queasy thinking of how close we were to that eyeless corpse as we rolled over her.

  My mother drove about fifteen feet, then stopped the car and watched out the back window. She was staring so intently at what was left of CTB lady that she didn’t notice when I lifted my head to watch with her. We stared at the broken body in the street, both of us as motionless as Catherine’s corpse and barely breathing. I stole a glance at my mom and wondered when we were going to move again. I looked back at the body.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I swear I saw CTB Lady twitch. Suddenly my body lurched forward as my mother reversed the car—right over her head.

  I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  RENEE

  I don’t know how long Catherine has been dead or how she evaded authorities, but the sound of the car must have drawn her out into the open. I can’t believe I let KC talk me into this. I should have listened to my gut instead of my head.

  Actually, it wasn’t my head that I followed. It was KC’s incessant begging and pleading. Her insistence on connecting to her best friend was enough to push us right out of the house. If I’m going to be honest, it was my mutual need to get out that made me give in.

  Gemma’s family is still a bit new to the neighborhood, but that didn’t stop KC and Gemma from becoming fast friends. Yes, KC was missing her friend, and yes, I needed to talk to an adult in person for a change, but I just drove over a speed bump named Catherine, so this will have to be the last outing we make until this all blows over.

  As soon as we arrive we charge up Gemma’s driveway and pull right up alongside the front door, azaleas be damned. I check to make sure the coast is clear before we open the car door and cross the two-foot distance to the front door. As I look around I remember that I once admired the garden at this house. It was once a riot of color and diversity, but there’s nothing left to look at now. A combination of neglect and an unusually cold fall has turned the flowerbeds grey and brown. The trees have reacted to the trauma of a hot summer followed by the shock of a frigid fall and have given us a stunning show of color, but we know it’s only their swan song before dying. The only real sign of life is the steady creep of weeds that slowly reclaim the land.

  Gemma’s mother, Grace, is waiting at the door with the phone, her hand shaking, her eyes wide with fear. The gore and smell of rot on my car need no explanation. “It was CrazyToiletBrush Lady!” KC blurts out as she races upstairs to Gemma’s bedroom. I take the phone from Grace’s trembling hand to call for the Pickup Truck. I give them the details of what happened and where and silently hope they clean up CrazyToiletBrush Lady before we go. I’ll be carrying enough of that woman back home on my wheels as it is.

  I hand my gift to Grace. It’s not the bottle of wine we would have given in the old life, but the most valuable thing we have now—a bottle of water. “Heard from John lately?” I ask. I’d rather not ask about her husband, but somehow I feel like I’m supposed to. Under the circumstances, it’s the polite thing to do. Her expression tells me she hasn’t.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much,” I lie. “There have been rolling media blackouts in the last two weeks. I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you soon.” Grace and I are in the same boat with our husbands. Both of them are away; hers with the army, and mine was overseas when this whole thing started and is trapped there now. The difference between the two is that John puts his life on the line every day while he’s out fighting the Infected, whereas Grant is safe in a secure compound he helped create for his clients and their families.

  I change the subject. “How’s the roof garden coming along?” Grace is fortunate to have a flat roof, and like many others, she has taken to growing as much food as she can on it. We only have a little balcony garden, and we are grateful to have that. It’s small, but all that matters is that no one can reach it from below.

  “It’s going well, but I’m still too afraid to eat anything. I can only use rainwater to water it—what if the parasites live dormant in plant cells, waiting to be ingested by a hungry victim?“

  I’ve had the same fears, but I’m not about to share them, so instead of saying how I really feel I point out, “They proved on TV that it doesn’t. Remember when the governor ate that tomato he plucked off the vine? He took his time eating it…if there were parasites, he would have been infected within a minute.”

  Grace and I fall silent again. I search my mind for something to change the subject, something that won’t bring up the world as we know it, but my only thought is that someone must be cleaning Catherine off the street right now. Come to think of it, I’m tired of avoiding the present in our conversation. Instead of steering her attention elsewhere, I ask, “What do you miss most from your former life?”

  Grace looks thoughtfully into the distance and eventually says, “I miss taking Gemma to visit my parents. I’ve felt so alone since we moved away, and I’m constantly worried about them. What do you miss?”

  Suddenly I think of what I can say to turn this gloomy conversation around. “Oh, I miss the simple things, like being able to walk naked.”

  Grace blinks rapidly, like she wasn’t too sure she heard me right. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “I said I really miss being able to walk naked. I used to walk naked every day, twice a day if the weather was nice.”

  The look on Grace’s face shows she doesn’t know how to deal with this tidbit of information, or how to deal with me for that matter. “Didn’t the neighbors mind?”

  “It’s never seemed to bother them. They’d just smile and wave.”

  “And you, um, you really did this every day?” She’s blushing now.

  “Well, if it was raining pretty hard or if I was out of town I didn’t. But I really did miss it if I didn’t get a chance to walk naked. Sometimes I’d be somewhere like the grocery store and think to myself ‘I can’t wait to get home and get naked’!”

  Her eyebrows shoot up at this and the redness starts to spread from her cheeks to her ears. “Did you only walk n-n-naked?” she stammers.

  “Not always. Sometimes I got naked in the car.”

  Grace is now shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She probably regrets getting to know me. She’s fidgeting as she searches for something else to say. Finally she looks up and pointedly asks: “Was Grant fine with this?”

  “He got used to it.”

  “So how did he feel about you walking naked?”

&
nbsp; “He didn’t really care. He just wished we didn’t name the dog Naked.”

  KC

  I thought it would be fun to see Gemma. I thought that we could recoup a bit of the old days by pretending it was just another day hanging out after school, but we’re not very good at pretending. We can’t talk about girls who annoyed us today because we haven’t seen anyone else in weeks. We can’t moan about our homework or how unfair our teachers are being because we no longer attend school. We can’t talk about going to the mall or parties. We can’t even talk about what we want to be for Halloween because there’s no way we’ll be let out for trick-or-treating. And we won’t complain about how unreasonable our moms have been lately because these days we’re just grateful to still have them.

  The only thing left to talk about is the very thing we want to avoid mentioning; like talking about it could pop the precarious bubble we’ve carefully fashioned to cushion us from reality. So Mom and I stay till we’re sure that CrazyToiletBrush Lady has been scraped and bleached off the street, say our polite good-byes, and leave.

  We’ve gone quiet now that we’re back on the road. What is there to say? We thought it was safe to go out and we were wrong. Now we are dealing with that putrid cadaver smell.

  This is all my fault. If I hadn’t pestered Mom to let us go, we wouldn’t have had to hear/witness/smell/feel CrazyToiletBrush Lady’s second death. What was I thinking? The sound of our car was the only sound around. If there are any more Infected, like CTB Lady, they’ll head for the noise like a beacon. I shudder as I realize that Mom will now have to stay outside and hose the car down before she parks it in the garage. She’ll be vulnerable while Naked and Houston and I play lookout. On top of that I know that no matter how much soap and water she uses, she won’t be able to get rid of the odor. It’s not like she’s going to squeeze under the car and wash the leftover bits of fetid flesh off the bottom. Why didn’t I think of this before we left? Cabin fever makes me do stupid things, and nowadays stupid can get us killed.