Necrosis by C.L. Schneider

Every breath could be their
last.

Necrosis

Raspy sounds of hunger pushed from her rotted throat, washing over me with the smell of
old blood and things long dead. I didn’t understand how breath still rattled in her lungs. How her
vocal cords, exposed and moldy, were still capable of producing noise—a terrible wet, scraping
that was so far from human. So far from her.
My mother had a sweet voice in life. Melodic. Powerful, when she wanted it to be. Her
songs were one of my sharpest memories as a child. They were the soundtrack of my youth.
Everyone used to say, “Bridgette could have made it big.” If she didn’t have four kids, two jobs,
and a husband who cared more for drinking than working. Now she’ll never sing again.
For some reason, the thought struck me harder than the look of her gray, decomposing
flesh and patchy hair; sporadic clumps of white strands, matted and darkened with bloody tissue.
Beside me, my daughter screamed, with all the gusto of a nine-year-old whose world had
fallen apart. Her gaze darted from the horror inching toward us in the dining room to the real-
time carnage of my boyfriend’s death happening in the kitchen, and she screamed louder.
I put a hand over her mouth, silencing the high-pitched dinner bell before it carried into
the street and brought more of the undead in through the busted front door. “Shhh, Lila, please,”
I whispered. “You know better.”
She nodded, tears streaming, and I removed my hand. Her shoulders shrugged in a fast,
heavy breath. “Grandma…” It was all she could get out before burying her face in my leg.
I peeled Lila off me and shoved her toward the bathroom. “In there. Lock the door. Don’t
open it for anyone but me. Go!”

Lila hurried off, messy, brown ponytail bouncing, as her short legs carried her down the
hall and into the bathroom. The door closed. Locked. I imagined her hiding in the bathtub, curled
up in a ball, clutching the dirty ladybug covered backpack she hadn’t put down since we left
home. I raised the tire iron in my grip and vowed, as I had a hundred times, to do whatever was
necessary to protect her. Lila was the only good thing I’d ever done in my life.
We shouldn’t have brought her here, I thought, watching my mother’s bloated jaw,
snapping involuntarily, searching for a meal. My stare darted to the body in the kitchen, blood-
soaked and twitching, as the mindless fiends bent over my boyfriend, devouring him alive.
It’s too much.
It’s all too much. No child should have to see what we’ve all become.
We should have gone to the country like Rusty wanted. There’s too many in the city.
Coming home was a mistake.
The outbreak was too widespread for an old, wheelchair dependent woman with a bad hip
to survive on her own. If I’d gotten here sooner…. But there were too many states between us,
and with the roads clogged and gas scarce and wandering bands of the undead everywhere, the
trip became painfully long. My mother couldn’t run, couldn’t fight. But I let wishes override
common sense, and convinced myself she’d be here, barricaded in, alive and well. Maybe, with
Mr. and Mrs. Hitchens next door. Or the Walker family on the corner. It was a close-knit
neighborhood. Everyone looked after each other. Particularly her, after my father left.
Yet, in my heart I knew better.
I knew I’d find her stricken with the virus, holed up in the dusty rooms of the ramshackle
house I grew up in. I knew what she’d look like, flesh disintegrating and mind gone. I knew what
I’d have to do. I’d seen, and killed, enough of the ravaged these last four months to be prepared.

Except, I wasn’t.
Her sallow, blood-stained eyes (once a soft brown) locked on me, not with the love of a
mother, but with the malice of a starving predator. Her bloated fingers, tips torn down to the
nailbed, dug into the floor as she crawled toward me. She wouldn’t stop unless I stopped her.

Necrosis is a short horror novel, feature a special type of zombie. I love zombie books, as they are usually so descriptive and honestly one of the more realistic monster horror out there, and Necrosis did not disappoint.

Featuring a good amount of action, this is a fast-paced read that you won’t want to put down.

The book starts already deep into the action and zombie outbreak. Amy, our FMC, is put in this predicament to protect her daughter, Lila, and first must take out her own mother.

The bond between the two (Amy and Lila) is so real, you instantly feel for them and root for their survival.

After finishing the book, I’m still not sure how I feel about Amy. She has both good and bad qualities, as any great character should, but there is just something about her that makes me dislike her.

Necrosis, while short, feels like a thoroughly fleshed-out novel. The world building is astounding. Schneider provides all these details, providing the reader with a highly detailed, and often time unpleasant (in the best way), imagery.

The ending was bit brutal. You come to connect with these characters and it just.. end. I would love to see more from this author, maybe a sequel with Lila!

I rated Necrosis four point five, rounded up to five stars!

This is a horror story you won’t want to miss!