Alone with the Living Dead

By Jonathan Crowl

Enter Charlie Loomis. Locked safely behind a solid steel door in the embalming room of Pine Hills funeral home, he chronicles his experiences in the embalmers notebook, before he prepares to decide his fate!

A gravedigger at Pine Hills cemetery, in his hometown of Dyersville. Charlie has started his day as he would any other. Digging a fresh grave with his workmate Bill Myers on a rainy summer morning. Except on this particular day, the people he worked so hard to put in the ground are returning to life! In fact, worldwide the dead are rising and Charlie flees for his life as the corpses rise from their muddy graves; hungry to feed on live flesh.

Relive the nightmare as Charlie takes you through every gory detail as he battles rotted corpses, observes a feeding frenzy in the bedroom of a deserted home, falls elbow deep in the blackened guts of an obese zombie, and attempts to save the life of an eight- year -old little girl named Sally, All while on a frantic desperate search to find his wife and son.

Body fluids spew and appendages fly as Charlie fights his way to the church where he desperately hopes to find his family, Only to experience a scene of horrific and epic proportions.

Injured and in shock, Charlie and Sally face an impending doom. That is, until they are saved by an unlikely hero. A local homeless man named Archibald Jones. As the one time doctor turned local mad man performs surgery and tends to their extensive injuries, deep in his sewer home, Charlie starts to suspect that their savior might have a more sinister motivation for keeping them alive! Live (or die) with charlie as you follow his nightmare alone with the living dead!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450270847

Jonathan Crowl

Jonathan Crowl was born in Orange county California but grew up in Iowa City Iowa. After spending years doing a variety of different jobs like slaughter house worker, truck driver, bouncer and Gravedigger Jonathan Crowl sets loose his morbid imagination with alone with the living dead being his horror writing debut. Jonathan enjoys time with his family, and horror, written or cinematic it doesn’t matter as long as it tests the limits of truly disturbing. Jonathan resides happily in Des Moines Iowa with his Wife and two children.

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iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Alone with the Living Dead

Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan Crowl

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Edited by: Brandy Boyett

Photo by: Kate Wishman

Theatrical make-up by: Cari Hagen

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7083-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7084-7 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/11/2010

Contents

Dedication

Special Thanks

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

chapter 17

chapter 18

chapter 19

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife, Shaelynn. Who listened to every nauseating word and suffered zombie nightmares to make this book possible.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank my family who helped me in so many different ways. To My wife Shaelynn for her invaluable opinion, my kids Caylea and Alexander for rooting me on to keep writing when I needed it. My in laws for volunteering to help whenever they could. My mother in law for all the times she played chauffer (I promised her I would mention that, thanks Ma. haha). To Kate and Chuck for the photography and participation in support of my book. To Ross and Mercedies for playing their parts as Charlie and Sally so well. To my friends Bill and Brandi who brainstormed with me on numerous occasions, leading to some wonderfully morbid Ideas. And once again to Brandi whose punctuation skills and grasp on the English language helped the story evolve through what seemed like endless hours of editing. (Just kidding Brandi, I really did enjoy the process.) To Cari Hagen for her hours of tireless makeup she did for the photo, (everyone looked great!). And to all the volunteers who gave up their Sunday to make my vision come to life. And lasty, to anyone who shares the same morbid sense of humor and supports the continuation of gore horror novels like this.

LONG LIVE THE DEAD!

chapter 1

My name is Charlie Loomis. This is my recollection of events since the beginning of, well, for lack of a better word, the apocalypse. Certainly this could be no less than the hand of God Himself. I have to admit that I didn’t think he had such a sense of humor. Think about it, He said He wouldn’t flood us again, but He never said anything about unleashing the dead to feast on our flesh.

The way I see it, I don’t have much time. Ironically enough I have managed to find safe shelter in the embalming room of Pine Hills Funeral Home. The walls are thick brick and the door is solid steel. Finally, I am safe from being devoured. It kinda’ goes without saying that there is no food, although, I do have running water, for now. If I stay in here I will surely succumb to starvation and die.

Anything is better than facing those things. I figure if I keep writing I can keep my mind off of those awful screams and moans. They certainly know I’m in here and, unless some other fool comes along, they won’t be going anywhere.

I’ve seen my share of zombie films, but they never told us in the movies that zombies could talk as well as moan. I mean damn, moans and groans are one thing—but to hear a little girl with a stomach void of any organs and half a tongue gurgling the words I need to eat your flesh, you bad, bad man. Talk about a mindfuck.

Okay I have to hold it together. I have a responsibility to document my experiences. Honestly, I don’t think there is anyone else left, or even if there is, anyone else sane enough to do it. Shit, giving myself this purpose is the only thing keeping my sanity boat afloat.

I have no idea what the date is or even the time of day. I know it’s summer. The thick putrid stench in the air is a constant reminder of that. And not to dwell, but if you’ve ever inhaled the pungent smell of decaying human flesh, you’d never forget it. It is truly a smell all its own. A single fragrant corpse is bad enough, but thousands! Talk about vomitrocious. Even if I had any food, the thought of eating would be out of the question. And may I add I’m a caretaker or gravedigger if you want to be a stuck-up judgmental-dick about it (we get a bad rap from society). I work at the Pine Hills Cemetery, proudly serving the needs of the deceased. Therefore, I am constantly subjected to the foul fuckers so I could only imagine how bad the aroma would be to the average person. If the living dead don’t get ya, their smell will.

That sounds exactly like something Bill would have said. Goddamn I wish he were here. He had a way of giving comedic value to the most morbid of situations.

Bill Myers is, or was, my workmate and friend. A forty five year old man, tall and thin with horrible arthritis in his hands. He knew! He was always talking about the dead rising. At first, I thought it was just to scare me, a little new guy hazing so to speak. But after three years of working together, he never relented with that shit. Not that I didn’t enjoy his ramblings, honestly I did. He gave light to the whole death issue, which was good when you spend your workday planting people like flowers. Constantly surrounded by death, the subject is hard to avoid discussing. Not to mention, that I inevitably found myself constantly pondering my own mortality.

Bill would drag me into the funeral home and give me behind the scenes tours, as he called them. His favorite attraction was the bucket of artificial body parts behind the crematory oven. It was filled with pacemakers, screws, artificial knees, hips, and other miscellaneous hardware. None of these would burn up with the bodies and ended up in the bucket. Where they went when the bucket was filled was always a mystery to us, it just never seemed to fill completely up. Embalmers are known for being strange cats so we figured he took them home and made art, or, picked up a couple extra bucks here and there selling them to freaks on the Internet. Honestly, that was our idea.

The worst were the accident victims that arrived in boxes, disassembled like a puzzle. We always got excited to see a new refrigerator sized box arrive, sneaking into the crematorium during the embalmer’s lunch break and peaking into the box to see the difficulty of the puzzle by counting how many pieces it arrived in. Then we would spend the rest of the day discussing whether it was a beginner, intermediate, or advanced difficulty. I guess in a way we deserved this nightmare for using this place like our own fucked up amusement park. But Sally, I know that poor half-tongued child didn’t deserve her unfortunate fate.

chapter 2

I have no clue where it all began so I’ll just start where it began for me. Was it a week ago? Ten days? Fuck, I don’t know, it all happened so fast. Between passing out, being sedated, and running for my life, it’s hard to tell.

Bill and I were digging a fresh grave between two occupied plots. It was raining and muddy as hell. I was in the backhoe digging and Bill was on the ground, guiding me as usual. Things were going along smoothly until I felt the engine bog down. I figured it was just hard ground, so I throttled up and dug in with the powerful hydraulic arm. Bill was waving his arms frantically, trying like hell to get my attention. He was too late. The damage was done.

Suddenly, the bucket broke free of the obstruction and sprung out of the hole. It was filled with dirt, wood, copper, and what looked like a large piece of raggedy slacks and an old dress shoe. I instantly shut off the engine and jumped out to assess the damage. Looks like you finally got your wish Bill said, chuckling at me mockingly.

Is that…? I asked, knowing the answer.

Yep Bill replied, still chuckling with enjoyment of the situation. Looks like you got the leg and foot in one swipe. Bet you’re real good with one of those claw machines you get the stuffed prizes out of, ain’t ya?

I don’t know, why don’t you ask your wife, ass hole? I smiled, content with my insult of retaliation as I stared down the hole.

I had ripped into a casket, tearing a chunk out and taking the poor body’s leg and foot with it. You said you always wanted to see an aged corpse. Well, here’s your chance. Climb on down there and take a look, Bill suggested.

Curiosity got the best of me and I had to check it out. I jumped down with my shovel and pulled the flashlight out of my pocket. Fucking gross man, this fucker stinks.

Yep, old George has only been planted since, let’s see, 1982. He’s still got some ripeness to him, Bill laughed.

I looked in the torn casket with my flashlight. A shriveled corpse of a man lay slumbering stiffly on its back. The once beautiful satin interior was as rotten and putrid looking as the man inside. The corpse had grey cracked flaky skin, sunken eyes, and a shriveled mouth giving it the appearance of smiling. I poked at it with my shovel. It rolled side to side as if it were petrified, or whittled out of an old log.

You better quite playin’ around and get out of there, Bill suggested. Before you get some sort of nasty disease.

I placed my shovel across the top of the hole to climb out when suddenly I heard a tapping sound. Hold on, I said.

What? Bill questioned.

Shut the fuck up, what is that?

Shit man, maybe an animal moved in with old Grace there. He pointed to the other side of the hole where an undisturbed dilapidated casket protruded from the mud. She’s been here since 1965 and they didn’t make caskets as strong back then as they do nowadays. Caskets are one of the few things in life that don’t improve with age.

"I don’t know man, but this shit is freakin’ me out.