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Fiction Horror

Life After Redby

by (author) Kaitlin Caul

Publisher
Renaissance Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2018
Category
Horror, Action & Adventure
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781987963298
    Publish Date
    Apr 2018
    List Price
    $18.00

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Description

Die. Become a zombie. Get needled. Do it all over again... In Redby, zombies weren't the enemy. They were just one step in a never ending cycle. Die, become a zombie, get a needle full of nanotech and live to die once more. Immortality. Or the next worse thing. But that was how life went in Redby, otherwise known as Zombie Hell. Cassandra Saratores, former soldier turned zombie hunter (and sometimes zombie), lived in that hell for ten long years. Caught in the endless cycle of death, zombification, and resurrection, Cass became scarred inside and out. When the walls came down and Redby became nothing more than a sensational news story, those scars remained. Now she spends her days in a mental hospital, reminiscing on life as one of the undead. Ten years in hell changes a person. When news arrives that Almesa, the company responsible for the zombie virus and its cure, isn't as dead as they were rumored to be, Cass has to make a choice: remain in the hospital and work toward a normal life, or suck it up and reclaim her mantle as the last zombie hunter? If Almesa's plans succeed, the world is going to need as many hunters as it can get.

About the author

Kaitlin Caul has three great loves in life; writing, drawing, and dragons. She is also a gigantic geek and grew up on a healthy diet of Star Trek: Voyager, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dragonlance. As such, she has developed a fascination with awesome stories, quippy characters, and things that go bump in the night. Kaitlin was born in Toronto and proceeded to live in various places across southern Ontario during her youth. She chose to move up to Ottawa after graduating from the University of Guelph with a degree in Psychology. Her degree has helped a great deal in developing her understanding of the human psyche and just what gets under a person's skin, but has not found much use in her chosen profession; cooking. Her artistic side delights in the freedom of the culinary arts though, and she spends much of her time at work inflicting new recipes on her poor co-workers. Now Kaitlin lives and works in Gatineau, where she splits her free time between assisting her fellow NaNoWriMo MLs with plans of how to drive themselves insane come November, and delving the depths of her characters' minds. She has published several short stories in various venues, and is the author of Life After Redby; a merry romp through the mind of someone who survived the zombie apocalypse by dying a lot.

Kaitlin Caul's profile page

Excerpt: Life After Redby (by (author) Kaitlin Caul)

OAK RIDGE MENTAL HOSPITAL, TEXAS

August 22, 2032

Once upon a time, there was a little town called Redby that nobody cared about. Some evil pricks from Almesa Corporation built giant walls around the town, filled it with zombies, then sat around and watched all the little people run and scream and die. We lived that way for ten years, screaming and dying and starting all over again. Being immortal kinda sucks like that. Then my friend made a cure, we got out, Redby burned to the ground, and Almesa collapsed. That part all happened a little fast. Then I went nuts, and the rest of the world went back to being full of sunshine and rainbows and blissful ignorance.

The end.

On the inside of the glossy green journal, neatly typed out on a name tag, read my name and current residence. Cassandra Isabella Saratores, resident of Oak Ridge Mental Hospital. The doctor gave me the journal with my name tag already attached. I guess he figured I wouldn't remember my own name if I didn't see it every day. Some days, he wasn't far off.

Inside the journal, filling exactly half a page, scrawled the details Doctor Brown had asked me for. A quick summary of all the shit that had happened over the ten years I'd spent trapped in Redby, also known as Zombie Hell. I glossed over the part about how, a few days after getting out, I decided the free life wasn't my thing and opted to kill a guy. Insanity plea, lots of media attention, a year of court appearances that played out more like a reality fucking TV show, and suddenly I'm the newest resident of the biggest, baddest max-security nuthouse in the United States. Welcome to Oak Ridge Mental Hospital. Would you like the blue pills or the red pills?

Setting the journal on the bed, still open to the first page, I shifted around to get comfortable. The mattress squeaked a protest and the cold stone of the wall pressed against my spine. There would be no getting comfortable in this room, and no escape from the reflection in the door's window.

Most of the details bled out beneath the hall's light, save for the ugly, dark lines stretched across my skin like puckered, jagged cobwebs. Mementos of all my failures.

A shadow passed through my reflection. The guard making his rounds. Inside of half an hour, the pill cart would be at my door. The nurse would smile and make small talk, waiting for me to finish taking my meds. She'd ask to see my mouth to make sure I'd swallowed them. Then she'd tell me how cooperative I was, not like the other patients, and leave. Same shit and same day for all I knew. I stopped caring about the days of the week years ago.

Except for that damn journal.

I kept a journal back in Redby to report on movement patterns and supply drops. Helped me keep track of important shit like how much longer we could stay alive. It wasn't my style to write down my feelings and all that mushy emotional stuff.

"Just a summary," the doc had said. "It doesn't have to be detailed. Just write down as much or as little as you feel you need to regarding what happened in Redby."

Right, easy. I did that. On to the next exercise.

Except it wasn't good enough. I never did anything half-assed. Wait, that was a lie. I did a lot of things half-assed. Just not when it came to important things, like Redby. Maybe it was the old military training kicking in, telling me to keep records of everything, telling me to make a good report. Or maybe it was just the damn shrink knowing I wouldn't be able to leave Redby as a footnote in my life. It didn't matter why.

I tore out the first page, crumpled it up and threw it into the far corner. Next I picked up the pen, growled something unkind regarding the doc under my breath, and started writing.

They say when you die, you see a light at the end of a tunnel. I've died plenty and I can promise you, there is no light.

I don't mean mostly dead either. I mean face ripped off, guts spilling out, all dead. It sucks at first, but you get used to it. In Redby, you had no choice. You either learn to live with cursed immortality, or you crawl into a corner and give up.

I never give up. I guess that's why I'm here. The Hunter in me never died. Even if my body did.

My name is Cassandra Isabella Saratores. I am thirty-two years old this month. At eighteen years old, I joined the military. At twenty-one years old, I became a captive of Redby, Nevada, otherwise known as Zombie Hell. For ten years I lived in a constant state of life, death, and undeath and if there is one thing I learned through all those years, it's this:

Dying hurts.

Every time.