Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead

Also by A.P. Fuchs

Undead World Trilogy

Blood of the Dead

The Axiom-man™ Saga

(listed in reading order)

Axiom-man

Episode No. 0: First Night Out

Doorway of Darkness

Episode No. 1: The Dead Land

City of Ruin

Of Magic and Men (comic book)

OTHER Fiction

A Stranger Dead

A Red Dark Night

April (writing as Peter Fox)

Magic Man (deluxe chapbook)

The Way of the Fog (The Ark of Light Vol. 1)

Devil’s Playground (written with Keith Gouveia)

On Hell’s Wings (written with Keith Gouveia)

ANTHOLOGIES (as editor)

Dead Science

Elements of the Fantastic

Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head

Non-fiction

Book Marketing for the

Financially-challenged Author

Poetry

The Hand I’ve Been Dealt

Haunted Melodies and Other Dark Poems

Still About A Girl

Coscom Entertainment

winnipeg

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons living or dead or living dead is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-926712-20-8

Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead is Copyright © 2010 by Adam P. Fuchs. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.

Published by Coscom Entertainment

www.coscomentertainment.com

eBook Edition

Cover Art by Matt Truiano

Interior “hand” illustrations by A.P. Fuchs

This is for those who get their face kicked in for a living, those who aspire to get a fist to the face while dishing it out to the other guy, and to those of us who like watching them.

Author’s Note

The following is a book about zombies, fighting and . . . well, that’s about it. Although a story has been crafted to book end the tale, its main focus is blood, guts, UFC-style fisticuffs, monsters and cage matches. I mean, robots versus zombies is cool no matter how you lay it down.

Why did I write a book that’s all about throwing fists? The short answer: I’m a guy and this is what we do.

Putting it a bit longer: I love kung fu movies, action flicks and, growing up, was a big time Jean Claude Van Damme fan, whose movies were a bit of both.
Lionheart
?
Bloodsport
?
Death Warrant
? Couldn’t tell you how many times I watched those flicks. What I especially liked about his movies was they always had two things in common: he always learned to do the splits at some point during the film, and he always finished off the bad guy with that big 360˚-kick of his.

I got goosebumps every time I saw that stuff. Nothing but adrenaline-charged fighting.

Even when I found out the other week they made a third
Universal Soldier
movie I was geeking out.

There’s a magic to fight movies that you don’t get anywhere else even with, say, superhero flicks. At the same time, they do have that
hero
quality, the one where the good guy lands the finishing blow and you geek out inside because the bad guy got what was coming to him.

Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Jet Li, Sly Stallone—they all equal fight magic. Battles. Primal violence that deep down we all enjoy—especially guys, the whole hunter-gatherer thing.

Action.

And that’s what this book is about. It’s an action flick told in novel form. It’s a B-horror/martial arts movie blend stuffed between two covers.

Guys and fighting. Good times.

So with that said—

Let’s get it on!

- A.P. Fuchs

Winnipeg

March 2010

Battles

1:
The Problem

2:
The Cure

3:
Ready to Rumble

4:
Vampire vs Zombie

5:
What’s Next?

6:
Samurai vs Zombie

7:
Nachos

8:
Thai Fighter vs Zombie

9:
Gettin’ Ready to Rock and Roll

10:
Axiom-man vs Zombie

11:
So, What do You do?

12:
Minotaur vs Zombie

13:
The Old Guy Beside Him

14:
Zombie vs Zombie

15:
The Bald Guy in the Spider-Man Shirt

16:
Bruce Lee vs Zombie

17:
The Old Man Just Sits There

18:
Robot vs Zombies

19:
Being a Kid Again

20:
Viking vs Zombies

21:
A Hard Kind of Loathing

22:
Werewolf vs Zombies

23:
Of Vomit and Men

24:
Sumo vs Zombie

25:
No Anna

26:
Wrestler vs. Zombie

27:
Option Four

28:
Bigfoot vs Zombies

29:
This is New

30:
Two of a Kind

31:
The Corridor

32:
All Bets Are Off

Epilogue:
What Goes Around . . .

Bonus battle:
Mick’s First Fight: Ninja vs Zombie

1

The Problem

2
037 a.d.

Mick Chelsey couldn’t believe it had come to this.

He stood outside Blood Bay Arena, hands shaking. His left cheekbone hurt from when his wife, Anna, slapped him. She was right. He was pathetic, an addict and a downright lousy husband.

Some provider I turned out to be, eight hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars. I’ve gotten us in way over our heads
.

The enormous stone structure of the arena loomed over him like a judge pointing a finger, condemning him to a sentence he wasn’t sure he could face.

Eight hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars. How could any man repay that?

How could any man
lose
that?

For a moment he wished it was ten years ago and he could get back to being in his late twenties where the biggest bet he lost was a couple hundred bucks. But it was also ten years ago the world changed.

The story was different depending on who you heard it from, but there was a common thread that united them all: a Middle East chemical spill and a small town. Some folks said the spill occurred near some old tombs outside the town, the mysterious substance having washed over the rocks, drops of it leaking through the cracks and reanimating whatever remains there were within. The only problem Mick had with that story was if indeed this happened, how could these fragments of bone and dust suddenly get up and walk around and, better yet, move the heavy rocks away from the tomb entrance so the once-dead person could roam about?

Another tale said the spill occurred
in
the town as the trucker hauling the stuff was passing through. After the accident, the bizarre liquid running everywhere, all who touched it were transformed into something neither living nor dead, but caught somewhere in the middle.

Mick believed the latter story. There really weren’t any other tales floating around out there that adequately explained it. Nothing plausible, anyway.

The undead had quickly covered the Middle East, all having a strange need to feed on human flesh. Those they didn’t devour were changed—
infected
—and became one of them. Somehow, one got on a boat undetected. The infection spread. Soon nearly every country in the world was being overtaken by the mindless creatures.

The past ten years could have pretty much been divided in two: five years of conquest; five years of revival.

Nearly every superpower that had the capability wanted to nuke the creatures. This idea was quickly vetoed at a UN hearing because, given the instability of each nation and the frame of mind of the desperate leaders in charge, nuclear winter would have been sure to follow and humanity would have vanished forever.

Instead, the slow-but-steady approach was taken and troops were re-trained using Intel gathered from around the globe as to where the dead roamed, how they operated and how they could be disabled.

Working together, humanity unleashed its forces and slowly but surely overcame the creatures. Millions of troops went out. Less than a quarter of that came home.

Some of the undead were captured and kept for observation. Some were tortured for fun. Many were bought at a high price by Mr. Tony Sterpanko, a self-made billionaire entrepreneur before what the media had dubbed the “Zompocalypse” and one of the few who found a way to hang onto their cash when money became obsolete for a time. It was these few who led the world economically once order was reestablished, but Sterpanko was the leader of them all.

He began a little program for all who were willing to come and watch as humanity had its revenge on the undead up close and personal.

It was called Zombie Fight Night.

And the whole world was watching either at Blood Bay Arena or on TV or the Internet.

Fighters from around the world came to exact revenge on the monsters that stole their loved ones and ravaged their cities. Other creatures who once posed a threat to mankind now allied with it to destroy the remainder of the dead. Others thought to be fable now existed and came forward to battle, the Space-Time Continuum having gone bust thanks to the unnatural rebirth of that which was dead. Worlds and universes collided—or so the theorists said—and those out of folklore wandered into our world. Zombie Fight Night was the most profitable business on the planet.