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    Not Quite Dead: Short Story
    Not Quite Dead: Short Story
    Not Quite Dead: Short Story
    Ebook48 pages44 minutes

    Not Quite Dead: Short Story

    By James Loscombe

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    About this ebook

    Devastated by the death of her brother and torn apart by guilt for her part in it, the last thing Joanie needs is for him to rise from the dead seeking revenge.

     

    Joanie is nine years old and she didn't didn't mean to kill Ben, but she knows it was her fault. Judging by the way her parents look at her, they know it as well. Not that they would ever say it to her. They just treat her like a child, which she supposes is better than a murderer, but not by much.

     

    On the day of Ben's funeral, Joanie gets her chance to earn forgiveness and prove that she's more than just a little kid, but the stakes have never been higher. If she fails, then she and everyone she loves will be massacred by zombies.

     

    Can Joanie stop the dead from rising? Or is this the beginning of the end? Not Quite Dead is an action packed short story about the consequences of our actions. And zombies.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJRV Press
    Release dateSep 17, 2018
    ISBN9781386930969
    Not Quite Dead: Short Story
    Author

    James Loscombe

    James Loscombe has been publishing under various pen names for the last five years. He lives in England with his wife Tamzin and their sons Jude and Oscar.

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      Book preview

      Not Quite Dead - James Loscombe

      Not Quite Dead

      NOT QUITE DEAD

      A SHORT STORY

      JAMES LOSCOMBE

      JRV Press

      Copyright © 2023 by James Loscombe

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      The first thing she noticed was the size of the coffin. It was only four feet long, a deep red wood that she didn’t know the name of, but mahogany was the word that came to mind. It was sitting on the dining room table, where she had eaten her Cheerios that morning. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, looking at it.

      She was wearing a black pleated dress with a little black ribbon around her waist. She had a matching ribbon in her hair and shiny black shoes that clacked as she walked through the hallway.

      Are you okay Joanie?

      She turned around at the sound of her name and saw Mrs. Mitchell standing in the dining room. Mrs. Mitchell was old. Really old. She had curly gray hair, and she wore cardigans with wool skirts. She always wore skirts.

      Mrs. Mitchell was Joanie’s neighbor and sometimes baby sat her and her brother.

      I’m fine, said Joanie, and pushed past Mrs. Mitchell to get out of the room.

      She stopped at the foot of the stairs. She could hear her parents talking in low, monotone voices. They always spoke like that now, as if they might wake a sleeping baby if they used their normal voices.

      Joanie went up to her room, but once she was on the landing, she decided she didn’t want to be by herself. So she went into Ben’s room.

      It was a mess. Soft toys all over the floor and his bed was unmade. She still remembered when he got the bed. He’d been so excited about being a ‘big boy’, but he couldn’t have slept in it more than a dozen times. Ben had nightmares and, more often than not, come morning they would find him sleeping on the floor next to her bed or in her parents’ room. He hadn’t liked sharing a bed, but knowing someone was close helped put him at his ease.

      Joanie bent down and picked up a teddy bear. Tried not to think about how scared he would be all alone in that coffin. She put the teddy bear on his bed and walked back downstairs, determined to keep him company for as long as she could.

      Mrs. Mitchell was sitting at the kitchen table, and the kettle was boiling on the side behind her. Hello dear, she said, as Joanie walked in and sat down opposite.

      She could see Mrs. Mitchell’s gray curls peering over the top of Ben’s coffin. Joanie crossed her arms on the table and waited for Mrs. Mitchell to say something. She didn’t. When the kettle had finished boiling, she got up and poured herself a cup of tea and sat down again.

      The coffin didn’t move. She didn’t really expect it to, but she watched it, anyway. Inside, her baby brother was lying on his back with his hands crossed over his heart. He had his eyes closed and, because Joanie was the kind of girl who liked to know about these things, she knew that most of his insides had been removed and replaced with something like cement.

      Mrs. Mitchell had explained that lots of other children were now alive because Ben’s organs had been given to them. Joanie didn’t care about lots of other

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