Short Story Spotlight: "Twenty-Three Second Anomaly"

"Twenty-Three Second Anomaly" by Ray Wallace   (The Zombie Feed Volume 1)

To delve here into details of plot would surely spoil the reader's enjoyment of this story (and gradual discovery of what is actually transpiring).  I'll just say that "Twenty-Three Second Anomaly" could be envisioned as a Deleted Scene on the Day of the Dead
DVD.  In this short piece, author Ray Wallace creates a significant amount of suspense by ticking off the seconds on a stop watch (the numbers steadily creeping up to the "twenty-three" foreboded by the story title).  Such methodical progress is reinforced by the hideous image of a fly crawling across an open, unblinking eye.  The climax of the story packs all the wallop of a close-range head shot, as Wallace demonstrates that the shocks of zombie fiction involve more than graphic depictions of cannibalistic carnage.