Whisper House Press

Life Choices

by Liam Hogan

My arm is tired, the baseball bat is slick with gore, and the light is fading fast. I try a swing with my left, but I make a meal of the strike (you’re hitting like a girl, Maggie!). Accuracy and power are equally important, my father always said.

Whether this is the rapture or a zombie apocalypse doesn’t matter. Same difference, far as I can tell. The dead are restless. As soon as I heard, I high-tailed it to the cemetery. I never got to say goodbye or do the things I should have done, and I wasn’t going to miss a second chance. I had to abandon the Honda in gridlock around Main Street and jog the rest of the way, giving returnees a wide berth, panicking at the thought I’d be too late. But his plot was undisturbed, which was more than I could say for his neighbors.

If I’d been better prepared, as he would have wanted me to be, I’d have brought a head torch, and more than my by-now empty canteen of water. I didn’t expect to wait this long. Maybe it’s exhaustion, but as the bruised shadows gather I can almost hear him.

“You oughta consider your life choices, Maggie,” he’d say in his lazy drawl. “Lookit where they got ya.”

But they were never my choices, were they, Papa? And this is where they got me: waiting with my Louisville Slugger, waiting for the moment you claw your bastard way back out of the grave.

Liam Hogan is an award-winning short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He helps host live literary event Liars’ League and volunteers at the creative writing charity Ministry of Stories. More details at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk.