The following is an excerpt from Chapter Eight of the zombie novel ‘Wave of Mutilation’, you can find the full novel on Amazon in eBook and paperback form.

Early the next morning, the second day since the rise of the undead, the airspace over Manhattan was abuzz with activity. Military, law enforcement and civilian aircraft were suspended in the air or darting like flies over the corpse of the great city. Pilots did what they could to help but there was so much chaos to try and contain, and nowhere truly safe to take survivors. A small NYPD helicopter sprinted over the Upper East Side, above 5th Avenue as it ran alongside Central Park. On board were six people, rookie officer Maxine Schreiber, two other uniformed cops, the pilot and co-pilot and a SWAT sharpshooter. Maxine knelt by one of the open cockpit doors while the sharpshooter, a swarthy man named Reynolds, was ready for action at the other side with his huge SIG Sauer sniper rifle. Below, 5th Avenue and the numbered streets branching off it teemed with violence and swarming masses of the living dead. Even worse than the streets were the hundreds of people taking refuge on rooftops throughout the Upper East Side. They waved their arms, jumped up and down or used makeshift signs, anything to try and flag down the passing police helicopter. These people were hanging on by a thread, but there was no one available to save all of them by this point. Maxine’s chopper was tasked with rescuing some doctor VIPs from further uptown instead. Continue reading →

I want to tell you what happened to my grandfather, what I know of his disappearance at least. The Judge, everyone called him, which wasn’t all that creative since he was actually a courtroom judge before retirement. My mother called and said that the Judge wanted to see me, ‘You’ve been summoned’ was the joking way she always put it. The Judge was my grandparent on my father’s side and mom had always found him intimidating for his stature in the community and the legal world. I hurried to his apartment in the city on the tail of a nine-hour shift. The truth of it was I was feeling a little bit frightened about what he might want to see me about. The large, hale man who was my grandfather had lost vitality shockingly fast in the last few years since my grandmother passed, and he stopped working. Every time someone called me about the Judge, I couldn’t help but think that at some point that call would be to tell me his health had taken a final turn for the worse and he was gone, and all his wisdom, stories and generosity would have passed out of reach forever. Continue reading →