Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Steak and Potatoes Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

STEAK AND POTATOES

Family, friends, job, life, all of it gone, and sometimes that was too hard to face, as if out there was a glimmer of the past and if she could just catch it and hold it, the world might come back to its senses. She went to the roof of the shed daily to watch them milling around. Zombies weren’t exactly how they were in the movies, but it wasn’t so far off.

It created the world, fed the world, and then took it away: the goddamned sun. And its accomplice. The sun hit the ozone layer in a moment of pollution flux. The radiation from that big ball of life was the same as ever, but the chemical balance of the ozone layer was in mid-transformation for about thirty seconds. The early reports explained this—those three days until it all fell apart. People unlucky enough to be outside for those thirty seconds, day or night—1:23 PM GMT on August 26, 2015—felt the sudden shift of zombifying radiation.

Jody Zettle was not outside and she was fortunate enough to avoid the ravenous aftermath. So far.

She stared down from her roof in the early hours of the day, quiet as she could. If she didn’t make noise, they remained in rest and she could pretend that her husband and children were just sleeping on the lawn.

“Mommy’s got to finish her work,” she’d said the day her family went shopping, stopping by the fish market on the port. Those were the last words her husband and children ever understood her saying. She’d flipped down her visor and returned to the welding bead she had underway. One of the county’s three snow plows had cracked late in the season, but since they’d contracted her, they’d delivered the other two as well, for touch ups.

A bit of fortune at that, just maybe, perhaps.

She wondered who it was at the grocery or the fish market that infected them. “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker?” she whispered and a tear rolled from her right eye. Her husband—not that he really was her husband, not anymore—lifted his head from the grass and stumbled toward the sound of her words. The sun powered the undead like solar, but they kept a charge all night, just in case a meal came along.

On any given day, Porter’s Island had fifteen thousand residents, it all depended on how many vacationed and how many left the island. For the first few weeks after her family had her pinned down, she’d sought help on the telephone to no avail and went looking with only terror to find.

“I should’ve used the shovel on you, huh?” she whispered to her zombie husband, staggering toward the shed. “Are you still in there, somewhere?”

In marriage and in business, he’d done all the paperwork, advertising, scheduling, and sales, and she focussed on the welding. Their marriage was a happy one and the kids were adjusted, smart, and sociable.

Jody wiped another sliding tear from her cheek. “We were a good team!” she shouted down to the twenty-nine mostly dead people lifting their sleepy heads around her yard. Every day she went to the roof after a long day’s work and put bullets through heads and every day a few more folks would stroll in at the booming sounds of her stereo. She played it loudly, speakers pointed out the window hoping to attract another survivor. She’d quit with the music once she reached her final box of ammunition, but until then it bumped hard.

She welded, assumed the power would stop eventually, but it hadn’t yet. She had a generator with a good reserve of fuel, so time, to a point, had been on her side.

“Back to work,” she muttered and stepped back to the dismantled ceiling vent. It had been three weeks, the first two wasted, some days she took a ride to town, barrelling up and down the street hoping to stir conscious attention, other days she cried to herself, flipping through the three hundred channels on the satellite dish, until it stopped working.

The big idea came to her a week ago.

She took the step ladder from the attached car garage and straddled the roof of her house and a high window into the shed. Nothing about her plan was easy. She used crane wenches and an engine mount on castors to move the plow blades. Two of the blades fit on either side of the newest plow where she bracted everything together. She welded sheet metal between them—wouldn’t do much good to have an old neighbor climb into the cab and say hello. She welded a sheet metal wall over the back, too, eight inches from the ground. This would allow for crushed zombie ejection and keep her from ever getting held up on a mound of run-over corpses.

Almost ready but for the extras: chains over the wheels, a rifle mount on top, and wire over the cab’s windows.

Overhead, the sun was already beating down. The zombies were jittery and moaning. It promised to be a hot day—yesterday’s high was forty-five Celsius. Hot. With a welder humming and that steel blasting from the gun, it would only feel hotter.

Informer by Snow came on her stereo and she laughed until she cried. Her dummy of a husband had learned all the words in college and every time he drank one too many…she finished the final bead on the rifle mount when the power in her generator died. Had to come sooner or later, but this was bad timing, but not horrible.

The plow was almost the reality of her vision, but not quite, would it even work? If not, she might as well act on that impulse that suggested she eat a round herself, solve all her problems with the squeeze of a trigger. She decided that she’d take a break for a day, head back to town and look for other survivors…or she could drink herself stupid.

“Too hell with it,” she said to the vast space of her enormous shed, zombies knocked on the steel walls outside. She took her rifle, climbed the ladder, and went out for some rays.

—

Wayne Klima, Captain Wayne Klima, hadn’t left the ship when things went bad, when the sun scorched the sanity from the planet. He and the survivors of his new crew tossed the infected overboard, hoping to get back to the mainland, praying to a plethora of different gods that the problem was central to the ship.

They’d prayed so hard it almost killed them when they got to shore and found scores of the undead. Search parties went out for supplies and to find survivors—most of the men were worried there were no women left. The captain lost the brunt of his crew with this plan.

Down to himself and two young men who’d stayed healthy by hiding out in a closet when things turned bad. They had kept aboard when everyone else went to shore. They’d sneak out while the crew slept to steal food and take shits. They hadn’t come out until Klima started knocking on doors.

The trio travelled from port to port along the coast looking for survivors. They’d wait a day or two and then head off when the only attention they garnered was from puffy-faced zombies with bloody mouths and active feet.

“What do you boys think?” Klima asked the men as they drifted toward Porter’s Island. One of the men was named Winston and the other was Arthur.

Arthur shrugged.

Winston watched the water and said, “If there’s nobody there, then that’s it. You think?”

Klima didn’t answer and Arthur started to cry. They reached the port in time to see the neon lights of Benny’s Fish ‘n’ Chips die.

“Looks toast,” Arthur said, sniffling.

Fewer zombies than at the mainland docks, but plenty enough. There were skeletons picked clean all over the parking lot and the walkways. The boardwalk, once picturesque, was a putrid collection of decomposing Mammalia—humans, dogs, cats.

“We’ll wait a day and then head south,” Klima said.

“Right,” Winston said.

—

Klima awoke from a short sleep. According to his wristwatch, it was minutes after nine. He stepped out of his room to find an echoing whimper bouncing along the corridor. It was Arthur, always Arthur.

“What’s wrong now?” Klima asked as he approached the outside at the end of the long corridor—this new crew was bottom of the barrel.

“Winston.” Arthur pointed out to a group of dirty backs huddled over something on the pier below.

“What?”

“That’s his shoe, see? Winston said he couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted to stop him, but he never listens to anything I say.”

“That’s it then. If nobody’s here, then we’ll probably have to switch boats and I don’t think that you—”

Arthur’s wail stopped the conversation. Klima patted the man’s back

—

Jody swayed and leaned on the ladder path. There was a zombie in the alley beneath her with its arms raised and its mouth obscenely wide. “Eat this,” Jody said and flipped the woman off, nearly teetering from level. She’d spent the day in a bottle, attempting to find a new perspective.

She climbed to her sniper’s perch on the roof and aimed. She fired and missed, filled the chamber, aimed and missed again. “Third times a charm,” she slurred, focussed the sights, and squeezed. The little round made a small hole through the back of a head. It was dim under the moon and she blinked. The rifle slid from her hands, rattling along the steel roof until the butt snagged on the eaves trough.

“Damn you.”

She crawled on her belly toward the weapon. The sleepy figures were up and ready to eat, following the sound of meat.

She slid sideways on the slick steel. “Whoops,” she said and tittered drunkenly.

She reached for the rifle, closing one eye as if that helped, and let her tongue play over her lips. She looked out onto the lawn, side-eyeing the most recent target. Something about it. Her foot dangled and the zombies gathered in tight, arms up as if being robbed.

She righted herself and climbed back to the vent hole. There was a pile of winter coats and some blankets in the rafters and she made a nest. So drunk she slipped her pants down and scooted backwards a couple feet to piss on the floorboards and then the cement below. She spent the night there and woke with a dry mouth and a fierce headache.

Something clicked in the daylight, beneath the hangover, and beneath the survivor’s depression. “Was it a little one,” she whispered. She scrambled up to her perch. Her heart thumping a double time beat.

The zombies heard her and rushed over to the walls of the shed, arms and faces raised.

She inhaled a deep breath and then vomited onto her open pants and sweat-stinking shirt. Faces she recognized followed her movements: townsfolk, a neighbor, people she’d seen at the port, her husband, her son, but not her daughter. Her daughter remained half eaten on the lawn, bullet hole through the back of her head.

—

“While we’re here, we should at least look, don’t you think?” Klima asked.

Arthur shook his head, still whimpering.

“Need you to man up.”

Arthur shook his head some more. Klima pushed a rifle to Arthur’s chest and the man conceded. He followed the captain toward the rope ladder. The captain’s feet firm on the top rung and Arthur reluctantly awaiting his turn to follow, gunfire rattled off in the distance.

“Watch my back, I’ll watch our front, got it?” Klima whispered.

Arthur nodded and pointed the rifle at the corpses lounging along the dock beneath the moonlight. Arthur followed Klima down once the man could hold steady aim at the figures a few feet away. They moved slowly toward the ticket booth.

Klima gave a thumbs up and turned. Arthur wasn’t behind him. “What the—” he began.

“Win-in-ston!” Arthur howled holding up a bloody sneaker, the skeletal remains of foot falling out in a stringy red and white mass.

Klima looked around, caught the gaze of open eyes, murky and bloodshot. The zombies moaned and wheezed, rising and bursting into action.

“Damn you!” Klima shouted and took aim, firing his magazine empty to clear away the three figures between him and the ticket booth. He swung open the door. Dirty, bloody fingers with blackened nails reached in as he attempted to slam it shut. “No!” He tugged and tugged, the fingers cracked and tore, eventually fell to the ground like tumbling Vienna sausages.

The tiny booth rocked and Klima locked the door before slamming shut the steel window gate. Outside, Arthur was a buffet.

The booth rocked more. The frame seemed steady, but eventually, “Shit,” nails creaked and wood and steel began to shake loose.

—

Her daughter’s motionlessness settled it. She’d test the plow, clear the space needed to get into Maritoon’s, step inside, and fix herself a swanky, candlelit last meal. The grills would still work so long as they used gas and she couldn’t see a reason they wouldn’t be that way. The fridge wouldn’t be cold, but cool still.

The shed door slid open and she ran to the back of the plow for the ladder. Hungry moans and groans trailed her like a lovesick puppy. The footfalls, wet and awful, seemed everywhere and faster than ever.

The rope ladder reeled in just as a teenaged boy who’d worked at the Super Saver touched the bottom rung. Next to him were her husband and two of the closest neighbors. The zombies began slapping the plow’s steel like angry monkeys, too stupid to comprehend the barrier. She got behind the wheel, the engine roared into life, a fat black exhaust cloud burst into the air and she let go of the clutch. The plow rocked backward and she crushed the only man she’d ever loved. “’Til death,” she muttered and aimed for her son, and then the others.

The plow blade was magic. The zombies spilled away like dirty snow.

“But what’s the point?” she asked.

—

The glass broke and the steel on one side of the booth gave, hands reached through and Klima stood on the counter. He looked around frantically. This was it. The little shack had held together for hours because he’d been quiet, but the sun was out and they had the edges, found the weak spots. He looked to the ceiling and threw a fist. The wood bent with a hollow sound and he pounded again. It gave and he felt the soft pink insulation beneath. He punched and pulled. The roof was about five feet squared, he thought if he could get half of it off, that he might get topside, jump and run. “A chance at least,” he mumbled as he dug at the ceiling. Blood dripped to his elbows, his knuckles ached, but a spot of sunlight shone down like the hand of God.

—

The trip to Maritoon’s took about nine minutes—four minutes longer than normal—but Jody had some frustration to release so she peeled past where she’d originally parked and continued obliterating the undead. Cleansing the block of movement, but making one hell of a mess. She idled at a stoplight and popped the plow door, then climbed to the roof. She aimed the mounted rifle at Ms. Margaret Brown, her first grade teacher. That horrid, prudish, bird-faced bitch. Ms. Brown ran at the plow, attracted by the gentle rumble of the engine. The fired round went through so clearly and easily that the bitch kept coming for six steps before falling flat. Then came Tony Lumpkin. He’d grabbed Jody’s breast in the tenth grade and declared the goods edible. “Want a bite now, you prick?” His head exploded in a mist.

After nine more singles died by way of flying metal, she climbed back into the plow. A horde had come at the sounds of her activity and they wanted a piece. She’d oblige, and headed toward the hungry pack.

—

Klima got through far enough to understand what he heard, the loud growl, wasn’t the voice of God accompanying Its hand, but a decked out snow plow. He struggled to get higher, get seen.

The bodies fell sideways like a surf’s wake as the plow cut through the lot and ripped the ticket booth in half. Klima leaped as high as he could at the last possible moment and found grasp at the top of the blade.

“I’m alive!” he screamed pulling upward, gawking through the glass at the sad eyes of the woman behind the wheel.

“Holy shit!” Jody shouted and then let her foot off the gas, still rolling toward the ship, and she slammed the clutch. She opened the swinging windshield and grabbed onto the man’s arms. Moans and groans rose in the air as the battered zombies recovered what little wits they had. Living legs dangled from hips like piñatas at a birthday party.

Klima fell onto Jody’s lap, half on the massive steering wheel, legs out the window, face nestled in her stomach. He struggled upright, but the cab was tight and busy with disconnected levers.  Jody popped the clutch and pushed the shifter as Klima settled in on the floor next to her captain’s seat. The zombies attempting an un-human pyramid fell aside and she drove in circles, clearing the lot of all but the puddled remains.

Klima watched in awe.

“So where’d you come from?” Jody said.

“Ever ride the Cheema?” Klima asked.

“Sure.”

“That’s my ship.”

She looked at him then, really looked at him. “Interesting.”

Three hours later, they ate steak and potatoes and discussed the future by candlelight in the only fine dining option on Porter’s Island.

XX