Dust

by Joan Frances Turner

After she was buried, Jessie awoke and tore through the earth to arise, reborn, as a zombie. Right there, in good old "Hicksville" Indiana.

Jessie's gang is the Fly-by-Nights. She adores the ancient, skeletal Florian and his memories of times gone by -- and the mysterious beach he longs to return to. She's in love with Joe, a maggot-infested corpse. They fight, hunt, and dance together as one -- something humans could never understand. There are dark places humans have learned to avoid, lest they run into zombie gangs.

But now, Jessie and the Fly-by-Nights have seen new creatures in the woods -- beings neither human nor zombie. And a strange new illness has flared up out of nowhere, causing the undeads to become more alive and the living to exist on the brink of death.

As bits and pieces of the truth fall around Jessie, like the flesh off her bones, she'll have to choose between looking away or staring down the madness -- and hanging on to everything she now knows as life...