"The Skull-Faced Boy" - The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams, Night Shade Books, September 2008 - Pseudopod, June 2008 - Gothic.net, March 2002     The man's face was encrusted with dirt, and his eyes were ... oozing. Through his twisted, rotten teeth came a long and wordless moan.     Jack stared, uncomprehending.     Suddenly Dustin's voice burst out, "He's dead."     Jack turned. Dustin stood there, his nose and cheeks torn away. Two giant white eyeballs filled the sockets of his freakishly visible skull. Scraps of flesh hung from his jaw. Jack screamed.     Dustin stumbled over to the wrecked car, to where one of its side view mirrors hung loosely. He tore off the mirror and stared into it. For a long time, he neither moved nor spoke.     Finally he called out, "That man has come back from the dead. Look at him, Jack. He's dead, and so am I."     Jack shuddered and backed away from the man.     Dustin's eyeballs fixed on Jack's stomach. Apprehensive, Jack looked down. He lifted his blood-drenched shirt to expose the ripped and mangled mess beneath.     "And so are you," Dustin said.     College buddies Jack and Dustin find themselves killed, but brains uneaten, on a night when the dead come back to life. Jack tries to find acceptance among the living, while Dustin rallies the mindless hordes of brain-eaten dead for total victory. Some rivalries you keep to the grave, and beyond.     The Living Dead is an anthology of zombie fiction edited by John Joseph Adams. Here's the table of contents: "This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link "Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey "Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alexie "Blossom" by David J. Schow "The Third Dead Body" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman "The Dead" by Michael Swanwick "The Dead Kid" by Darrell Schweitzer "Malthusian's Zombie" by Jeffrey Ford "Beautiful Stuff" by Susan Palwick "Sex, Death and Starshine" by Clive Barker "Stockholm Syndrome" by David Tallerman "Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead" by Joe Hill "Those Who Seek Forgiveness" by Laurell K. Hamilton "In Beauty, Like the Night" by Norman Partridge "Prairie" by Brian Evenson "Everything is Better with Zombies" by Hannah Wolf Bowen "Home Delivery" by Stephen King "Less than Zombie" by Douglas E. Winter "Sparks Fly Upward" by Lisa Morton "Meathouse Man" by George R. R. Martin "Deadman's Road" by Joe Lansdale "The Skull-Faced Boy" by David Barr Kirtley "The Age of Sorrow" by Nancy Kilpatrick "Bitter Grounds" by Neil Gaiman "She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave" by Catherine Cheek "Dead Like Me" by Adam-Troy Castro "Zora and the Zombie" by Andy Duncan "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Z. Brite "Followed" by Will McIntosh "The Song the Zombie Sang" by Harlan Ellison & Robert Silverberg "Passion Play" by Nancy Holder "Almost the Last Story" by Almost the Last Man by Scott Edelman "How the Day Runs Down" by John Langan     Gothic.net was one of the first web-based fiction magazines to meet the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) strict criteria for a "pro" market. Fiction editor Seth Lindberg bought this story.   Illustration by David Barr Kirtley Coming soon on: Download the story: