* The truck sputters to a stop and Jay Wilburn curses as he steps out. He sees the collapsed and abandoned tents from the old army camp. He’s already searched them, but he heads that direction to see if there is anything else he might be able to use. Maybe fuel for the truck. *

* He stops as he sees a cabin. Smoke rises from the chimney pipe. He takes a deep breath and then opens the door. Brent Abell raises his hands in front of his face from the bed. *

Brent Abell: I’m still alive.

* Abell has a bandage over his right forearm. Green infection appears to be seeping through. *

Jay Wilburn: Bitten?

Abell: It happened during the battle. I’m not sure if it was a zombie or not.

Wilburn: What do you mean?

Abell: I think Armand bit me before he got away. I decided to stay back from the patrols to be safe.

Wilburn: Well, thoughts and prayers … Do you want to go ahead with an interview? You’re my last one.

Abell: It’s the least I can do for you coming to check on me.

Wilburn: Um … sure. State Your name and your latest work.

Abell: Brent Abell and Dying Days: Death Sentence.

Wilburn: Describe it to me.

Abell: Peopled ways to survive the Florida heat and the undead while scavenging for food in an amusement park. George and Harry also are trying to reach a FEMA camp in fin St. Augustine in hopes of finding other survivors.

Wilburn: Tell me about the characters.

Abell: George Harrison is an older man who finds himself finally leaving his house and hitting the road in the zombie apocalypse. He served in Iraq during Desert Storm and when the world fell apart he had owned an advertising firm. He thought he left the wars in the past, but he finds himself becoming someone he thought he’d forgotten. Leaving with Harry, a neighbor who knew his son Trent, they embark on a journey to St. Augustine. There he hopes to find Trent and try to find a way to live in the new normal.

Frank is a pug who shows up later in the book as a traveling companion for George and those who travel with him. Frank is based on my late pug and it was both very painful and very comforting to write. He is a good dog and is a welcome part of the group.

Wilburn: How does this fit into the Dying Days universe as readers know it?

Abell: Dying Days: Death Sentence is set in Armand Rosamilia’s Dying Days world. While it is a new adventure in the universe, it is independent enough for new readers to enjoy without any knowledge of the series. I hope it can grow and act as a companion series to the original. Armand is drawing the series to a close, but there are other places and characters I want to explore.

My take on Armand’s world begins to advance the action to the northern portion of Florida. What I want to do is continue moving the story further north to see how the infection has changed life nation-wide. In the Dying Days world, there is a southern migration of the zombies, but how does this change life in states like North Carolina or Maryland?  Does the United States still have a government? Are they in hiding? Has the military taken over? There are many questions and story lines I hope I get to explore with readers.

Wilburn: Thank you for the interview. Good luck with the bite. Here’s a bag on M&M’s I … found. Use them to buy what you need, however it turns out.

Abell: Can you stay with me a while longer?

Wilburn: Sure, let me grab a couple things from the truck.

* Wilburn steps out of the cabin and closes the door behind him. He stares at the truck for a moment and then walks the other way. As he leaves the camp behind, he takes out a handful of M&M’s. He pauses as a flash of color catches his attention. A bag of peanut M&M’s. Unopened. He reaches for them. *

* Chuck Buda lunges from the opening of a tent and uses his undead teeth to tear open Jay Wilburn’s arm. Wilburn scrambles away, but falls. Buda gets hold of Wilburn’s leg and bites again. Wilburn kicks him away and keeps crawling. Buda catches up and bites once more. *

* They keep crawling. They keep going long after Wilburn’s heart beats no more and Buda loses his taste for his victim. They keep crawling long after their dead brains and still hearts forget why they were doing it in the first place. Wilburn still has the M&M’s clutched in his cold, dead hand. They stay there a very long time without melting, never to be eaten. *

Check out Dying Days: Death Sentence by Brent Abell.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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