Dying Days

Dying days

Armand Rosamilia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without expressed written consent of the author and/or artists

This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All stories copyright 2016 by Armand Rosamilia

Cover copyright Jack Wallen

Darlene Bobich: Zombie Killer first printing February 2012

Dying Days first printing April 2011

Updated May 2016

This one goes to

The Extreme Zombie Readers…

Jeff Beesler, M.J. O’Neill and Robert Clark

I couldn’t have done this one without you Undead Three…

And to the
real
Darlene Bobich, the inspiration and name-sake herein…

This rerelease consists of two novellas:
Darlene Bobich: Zombie Killer
and
Dying Days

The original covers

And now, a message from the
real
Darlene Bobich…

"I am a zombie aficionado. I have always loved the zombie genre. Something about them, the look, the idea that they just keep coming, the fact that you can shoot one and not worry about the consequences, has always intrigued me. For decades now I have imagined them. Coming in hordes or singularly down the road. Where would I go at that moment? What would I do? Would I really have what it took to shoot one? To bash one in the head with a rock? What if I looked up and saw my grandmother coming for my brains? A child? What just may terrify us about zombies is the fact that they represent humanity at its worst. Taking and never giving. Rotting and filling the world with stench and destruction. Perhaps thats what frightens us the most. They are us.

"Yet I still adore them. I appreciate the opportunity to read about Darlene Bobich the Zombie Killer. It gives me hope that when they do come down that road, I will be strong enough to slay them. Getting to know Armand and his particular brand of brainwaves has been an adventure on its own. I'm riveted, wanting it to go on and on, to never end. Keep me alive out there in Zombie World, Armand, it gives us all hope that we will have the strength to stand up to the hordes."

PART ONE

DARLENE BOBICH: ZOMBIE KILLER

Chapter One

Anything But Luck

Darlene Bobich never believed in luck. There was a reason for everything, and whether it was the good graces of God Above or skills and experience that got you through, it was never a random occurrence. Things happened for a reason, as her daddy used to say.

This morning she put a bullet through her daddy’s heart. He didn’t stop trying to kill her, so she put another through his stomach.

The one between his eyes and the one through his left eye stopped him.

The gun, a Desert Eagle gas-operated semi-automatic, was given to her as a gift from her daddy. This was one of the first that he’d had a hand in creating when the Israeli manufacturer had moved its operations to Maine.

A small five year window before the Desert Eagle was once again back in Israel. Her daddy had been working in a factory in Dexter making footwear for twelve years. When it was announced that better paying jobs were right in town instead of thirty miles away, he’d jumped at the chance. Her daddy knew nothing about weapons but it didn’t stop him from being hired, and he was a fast learner.

Darlene remembered the look on his face when he handed her the present, a large box wrapped in Christmas paper with a silver bow. “I made this for you,” he’d said and kissed her cheek. Darlene was seventeen, on the verge of graduating high school and going off to college in the fall, when he’d given it to her.

Ten years of weekends on the gun range with daddy had taught her how to handle the weapon and defend herself. She’d never needed to until the dead started to rise.

Fittingly, ironically or just plain horrifically, the first zombie she’d had to kill was her own daddy. Her aim hadn’t been off; she thought that a bullet through his heart would stop him, but now she knew that his heart had given up the fight already. The second shot was meant to slow him down so she could think, but he didn’t double over in pain. Pain was not an option for him anymore, only the hunger.

Darlene took the last two shots in quick succession, hitting both targets perfectly. Daddy would have been proud of the accuracy. Even as he fell, lifeless, to the kitchen floor she knew that it wasn’t luck that had put this weapon in her hand and the skill to use it.

It was her sweet daddy that had.

Chapter Two

The Neighbors

There was a time for praying and a time for thinking. Right now, for Darlene Bobich, those times had passed.

She stood on her front porch, her hands shaking and the Desert Eagle brushing against her thigh in tandem. The McCrory's house across the street was on fire. Normally that would have scared her, bothered her, and maybe caused her to leap into action.

Mister McCrory, blood running down his chin, dragging his teenage daughter onto the sidewalk and ripping at her clothes while he tried to bite her, caused Darlene to hesitate.

"Has the world gone fucking mad?" she whispered. Darlene had a bad habit of whispering to herself, spilling her thoughts with no filter when she was alone.  She glanced back through the open front door and sighed. Her daddy, four bullets in his lifeless body, was still in view. Absently she checked the Desert Eagle to make sure she'd loaded it again, patting her jeans pocket to make sure she had more bullets.

Darlene walked calmly across the street, ignoring all sounds from east or west. Her eyes were focused on the back of Mister McCrory's head. "Tunnel vision," she murmured. There was no way she wanted to think of what he was trying to do to his daughter.
Was God really going to let this happen? To his daughter, to all of them?

Darlene put a bullet in the back of his head, the gore splashing on the girl. His daughter was already dead. Darlene didn't even know their names, even though she'd lived across the street from these people for at least ten years.

When the daughter stirred Darlene pushed his body off of her and held out her hand, a part of her brain screaming to stop. How could she, when this child might need medical attention? She was still alive.

The teenager's mouth snapped at Darlene's fingers. Without a second's thought Darlene pulled the trigger and her forehead exploded. She fell back to the grass, now engrossed with blood.

A car alarm down the street echoed, police sirens in the distance, a scream just audible. The smoke was getting thick, billowing from the windows and opened door.

Darlene needed to run, but didn't know where. She had no real family left now. She glanced at her Toyota Tacoma pickup and smiled. "Three more payments on it."

A real laugh escaped her lips and she thought she was losing it. In the last half an hour she'd killed three people - one of them a young girl - and here she was, standing on the neighbor's lawn, with the proverbial smoking gun. Thinking about car payments.