Hank poured himself a drink and smiled at his fiance, who was seated across from him at the dining room table. He struck a match and lit a candle. The flame took with a sickening hiss and the room -- which had been previously dark and shady -- was suddenly illuminated by a flickering glow. Hank exhaled with excitement and smiled across the table at his fiance, who sat unmoving in the chair as if bound. The light flickered in a particular way and revealed the horrible truthfulness of the sight there in the dining room.
Ginger -- Hank's fiance -- was tied securely to the chair with sturdy rope and her bloody hands were bound with duct tape. Her face had three ragged slashes across it and one eye had swollen closed. The other eye was milky and unfocused. Old, crusty blood was stained all around Ginger's mouth, which emitted a steady, hungry moan every few seconds. The worst part of the sight was when the light flickered again and showed her torso. Ginger's intestines oozed slowly and continually out through the gash in her stomach. She was dead -- but yet alive, somehow.
Hank smiled lovingly at her once more and began to speak to the undead representation of a being that had once been his fiance. "I've set up a really romantic dinner for you, my love," he whispered. "It's finger-lickin' good, I promise." Hank exscused himself from the table politely but returned a few seconds later dragging something heavy along the floor. "Here's the first part of her three-course meal, dearest." Ginger expressed no opinion about this, but she did seem to notice the object Hank was dragging. Her head snapped to attention and her once-unfocused singular gaze suddenly transfixed downwards and Hank grinned, following her stare to the heap at his feet that he had been pulling along. "You're gonna love it," he whispered quietly and giggled. Ginger's lips twitched hungrily but she still stared sightlessly without any further reaction.
The heap at Hank's feet sobbed softly. "Don't do it." It was a weak, hoarse voice, the voice of a battered, defeated soul that was on its last legs.
Hank frowned suddenly and slammed the toe of his shoe into the heap, soliciting a cry of startled pain. That cry seemed to satisfy him, for the strange smile soon reappeared. "Stay quiet," he ordered in a cheerful voice. "This is going to hurt." He dragged the heap to its feet and slammed it back-first into the side of the table right beside where Ginger was seated with such force that the head bounced backwards and forwards like a ragdoll. He held it there despite its struggles. He slammed his fist into the dazed face of his captive and when he withdrew it, there was warm, slick blood covering his hand.
"That's nice." Hank smiled even more widely, if possible. He wiped the blood on the tablecloth carelessly and made sure that his prisoner wasn't going to move for the moment, before reaching over and ripping the duct tape unceremoniously off of his dead fiance's hands and neck so she could move her head completely. This is when the prisoners usually began to plead for their lives. This one was different, however. The tears flowed freely, but the begging didn't come.
Hank muttered and frowned, laying a hand on his pistol where it was holstered on his hip. That gave him a renewed sense of happiness and he stepped away to a safe distance, shoving the prisoner closer to Ginger with his foot. The maniac giggled and clapped his hands when the prisoner's legs buckled and she fell over. Her head lolled into Ginger's lap. Her wide horrified eyes stared up into the bloodied face of a monster.
Ginger moaned loudly and leaned forward, biting into the young girl's face with a sickening snap. A warm spray of blood squirted out and splattered the wall and Hank gave another delighted giggle as he watched. Ginger moaned again, more softly, as she began to eat slowly. The girl was still alive and screaming horribly for somewhere around ten minutes before Ginger bit into the right spot and her victim went limp and dead. Once Ginger had eaten her fill from the corpse's face and neck -- the only place she could reach -- she looked up emotionlessly at Hank and he nodded in understanding, carefully dragging the corpse away from the chair where his dead fiance was bound.
"My, oh, my," he whispered. "This sure was a pretty one though, Ginger. I know you don't like it when I cheat on you with these women but just ignore them. They mean nothing. I love you so much and they are just meat for you now - and for me, in a different way of course. That is their only purpose. I know you prefer the flesh of the males but I couldn't find one today so . . . " He shrugged apologetically, drawing out his pistol and aiming at the back of the corpse's head where it lay facedown on the dining room floor. He squeezed the trigger and turned her head into a cocoon, staining the wall red, of course. He had always wanted to paint it red.
Putting the pistol on safety and stuffing it back in the holster, Hank turned to Ginger. "I've got to go and dump the body now at the place where I put your other meals. I can't have 'em laying around here. It entices you too much and it makes people nervous and makes 'em not trust me, somehow." He shrugged. "I don't know why. It's just a dead body. Anyways, if they don't trust me, I can't lure them in and capture them for you. I'm going to go and dump the body, dearest. I'll just be gone for a few hours. I'll miss you. Be a good girl."
Whistling quietly, the man lifted the dead-weight of the headless body onto his shoulders with a grunt of effort and hauled it to the front door and heading outside. He looked around for any of those icky, mean zombies -- Ginger was a nice zombie, Hank loved her so much -- staggering around and when he didn't see any, he threw the girl's body into the back of the truck. He turned the key in the ignition and smiled at the comforting hum of the engine.
The city was weedy rubble, Hank noted as he drove through the deserted streets. It had once been quite a large city and it had been pretty well known. It had been called Miami or something such as that. At one time, the army had been advancing through the city but eventually -- as with all cities around the world in those few months last year -- eventually the city had been completely overrun by the zombies and there were few survivors remaining.
Hank finally pulled to a screechy stop by the railroad tracks and cursed the brakes. He got out of the truck and wrapped a rag around his face but it didn't do much help. The stench was horrible around those particular railroad tracks and it was all Hank's fault. He had been very naughty ever since about a week after the outbreak started. He grabbed the girl's heavy corpse out of the truck and carried it over to the steep dropoff on the other side of the tracks and looked down. The dropoff was about twenty feet deep, into a ravine. Piled seven or eight feet tall in every direction was a field of corpses, and all had bullet holes in their heads and most were in an advanced state of decomposition. Most had large chunks of meat missing from their faces and necks.
"Thank you kindly," he whispered into the ear of the body before tossing it off the dropoff. Landing with a thud on one of the smallest piles, the girl rolled a few times and came to a stop facedown, sprawled out. "Welcome to my secret place. I hope you can stay. It's really fun here. A little smelly, though."
Hank was about to continue with his insane little speech, but he was interrupted by gunshots echoing further down the railroad tracks. The man drew his own pistol and ran down the tracks. Rounding a bend, he came upon the usual scene that he encountered every few days. A zombie knelt over a screaming woman or man, about to begin devouring the survivor eagerly. Hank sighed and aimed the pistol and fired and the zombie's head disappeared in a cloud of pink, slumping over on its side lifelessly.
Hank helped the survivor to her -- it turned out she was a young girl, maybe nineteen, as usual -- feet and smiled welcomely at her. "You okay?"
The young woman nodded, still panting from the close shave and wiping the blood off her face. "You have my heartfelt thanks, sir, honestly. You're a perfect gentleman." She looked around and sniffed with a strange look on her face. "It stinks around here kind of. Like a graveyard or something."
Hank smiled at her and his eyes twinkled mischeviously. "Very proud of it. Would you like to come back to my house? My fiance would love to have you over for dinner." He gave that little giggle and nodded. "She really would."