She reached out and touched her fingers to my mouth as I faded. I fell asleep with a smile on my face. For the first time in years, I didn’t dream about monsters.

Dial M for Monster

The Dead Don’t Die

By the time I got the call most of the town was already infected. That’s the way these things happen. If I got the calls sooner I might be able to save more lives, but I never do. The dumb fucks usually go through the usual law enforcement agencies—who of course have no clue how to handle undead outbreaks—and the problem winds up eating through and spreading.

Near as I could estimate the first zombie rose from the dead on Tuesday, in the first week of June. By that Friday, the dead outnumbered the living, and the mayor of Mendez, California had eaten most of his staff, including his wife and twin daughters.

The place was a fucking bloodbath.

I got word of the outbreak through some ghouls, who had heard about it from a vampire fleeing the scene. Even vampires can’t deal with zombies. They are without a doubt the most brainless and aggressive freaks on the scene and they’ll take a bite out of anything even remotely fleshy.

The key was to move fast, before the problem spread to another town. Luckily Mendez was isolated. It was a little shit-hole west of Los Angeles. From the air (I flew over it once) it looked like a perfect circle surrounded by trees, with an outer ring of dessert wasteland. If a zombie infestation broke out, this was the place you’d want it: remote and easily contained.

I asked Mo’Lock to gather up as many of his freaky ghoul friends as he could. In the end we wound up with two busloads of dead postal workers, UPS drivers, and movie producers, packed in and ready for action. It’s always easy to round up a crew of ghouls in L.A. They’re fucking everywhere, like rats and strip malls.

The buses were surprisingly simple to swipe. A couple ghouls Mo’Lock knows work in a lot where they park them for repairs. They scrambled a couple of manifests and the next thing I knew I had two Greyhounds parked outside my house. Some joker had changed the destination signs above the outside drivers’ windows so they read “Straight to Hell.” As soon as the sun went down I had ghouls loading in by the dozen.

For once they all listened to me and brought their own “gardening tools,” as I requested. Some had axes and picks. Some brought pikes and hoes. One jackass brought a rake.

Unfortunately, no LAPD ghouls could make it.

Most of them work the night shift.