Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies

People stopped coming to the North Carolina coast when the dead returned to the beach after four decades away. Got to the point where folks couldn't sit outside their own beachside trailers with a case of Bud without some rotting corpse staggering up and asking for directions to the cemetery or the bars or the bait shop, the whole time smelling like spoiled tuna. They killed us for most of the entire tourist season before we realized what they were up to and actually did something about 'em. Goddamn zombies.

Back then I spent most of my days down at the end of the pier, the longest one in the state, where the stink of fish innards cooking in the sun never got to me like the reek of dead-person guts in some walking corpse did. If you come out to Long Beach -- which you should do, even now, with the zombies and all -- to fish and swim in the bath-warm water during the day and eat seafood and drink cold ones with us at night, you'd find me there at the farthest tip of the pier, past the signs saying "No Spectators Beyond This Point" and "King Mackerel Fishing Only." If you give a shout for Big Al, I'd come over and say hey to you, long as the kings weren't biting.

I caught my limit most days by noon, smoking and drinking with the other old men with skin like leather and just enough teeth to hold their Camels in place. After the doc threatened to cut a hole in my neck, I stopped with the cancer sticks, but I still liked a cold Bud while I watched my lines in the salty hot Carolina air.

High point of my days that summer came late in the afternoon, when the pretty girls came up and visited with us after a day of sunbathing and gossiping. Oh Lord, to be young again. Their tanned stomachs were tight and their long hair was salty and wet from the Atlantic, and they acted like they wanted to learn about fishing. We all knew they weren't interested in any of that. They were up there on the pier with us for protection.

Because every afternoon, when the tide started to head out, the dead came lurching out of the brush on the other side of the dunes and headed for the waves. The girls don't want to be alone on the beach wearing just their bits of bikini as the zombies walked past, dragging their coffin lids behind 'em. Couple of the girls even recognized their grandparents, stripped down to their birthday suits, showing off their pale gray skin. That shook 'em up pretty good, let me tell you.

Far as I could tell, the girls didn't have nothing to worry about. These zombies were here for one thing only -- they wanted to surf.

Continued...

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What the critics said about "One Night in Rosecroft":

"Michael J. Jasper is drawing upon Troma Productions in 'Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies.' The notion of zombies taking up surfing as a beloved preoccupation is weirdly satisfying enough; the rest of Jasper's story is frosting on the cake."
— Edward Bryant, Locus

"Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies" is about (you guessed it) surfing zombies. That is, they start out eating people's brains, just like any zombie would, but the locals teach zombies to surf, and the new passion distracts them from mayhem. In less skilled hands, that would be an interesting gimmick but not much of a story. Jasper throws in a narrator—a man who likes to fish and surf, and who is getting old. The end result is a bittersweet meditation on mortality and afterlife, and a strong message of hope.
— E. Sedia, Tangent Online

"With a title like that, how could a story miss? Well, actually, it could easily have been one of those one-joke groaners. Jasper shows here how finding just the right voice makes a story work... The concept of surfer zombies is funny, but the joke could so easily have become tired. Jasper takes a funny concept and makes a good story out of it."
— Sherwood Smith, SF Site