Excerpt: Zombie Home Movies

David's stream jerked up across the inside of the coffin and up to the nearby wall, so startled by the sudden, reverberating tone. He gathered himself and zipped up, looking around, certain that it had been some sort of alarm, but so loud? With no apparent locus of origin? He turned, slipping on the wet floor, but catching himself on the door through which he'd entered the small room, slamming it closed. The sharp sound was nothing compared to the alarum, but did nothing for his nerves. He regained his balance and tried the handle, but the door was locked, or stuck, he panicked at the thought of being caught with the desecrated corpse of his father, then of being stuck in the confines of the small room with said corpse... nearly as bad as being stuck with the living version.
Behind him, cloth slid on cloth, a low moan turned into a sputtering cough. His eyes opened wider and he turned slowly, fearing the impossible, yet seeing it happen: his father sat upright in the coffin. The world became gray, then slid away as the cool stone floor rose to meet his bottom.
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She fell lazily back, as though having little muscle control and lolled against the open coffin lid, which tipped a bit farther, scraping the wall eerily. She looked around, and saw him. Smiled. As their eyes met, though, he could tell he'd been wrong. She was definitely dead... or had been. Her eyes were white, her skin paler than Camber's. One of the latches on the side of the coffin had dug into her chest, just below her left breast, repeatedly, but she didn't seem to notice, and the fluid there was a mix of light and dark colors, not just blood, if any of it was. The low light washed out color, so he couldn't tell for sure. Inanely, he recalled the Hitchcock class he had taken the summer before. The man had used chocolate syrup for the blood washing away down the drain in Psycho, because in black and white film, they looked so alike.
The dead girl saw his expression, and felt her face. Shock spread there, and she wiped at her ichor-glazed lips, then pawed at her ebon hair, streaking it with slime which only made it clump together.
"I'm sorry." Duvall started, unsure what he was saying even as the words spilled out. "I didn't mean to stare. Sure you're a bit disheveled, disoriented? Who wouldn't be after waking up in a place like this?" Frustrated, the girl sat back, arms over her head, elbows forward, knees pulled up to her chest and sobbed. It was a horrid gollum sound. Duvall swore at that piteous moment to never make fun of a particular popular character anymore. The real thing tore at his heart. "Come on, now. Calm down... please?"
She moved her arms slightly to one side and looked out from the tangle of dark hair. She took a lazy swing at the camera, trying to push it away from her. "Okay, okay, no more filming. See? I'm putting it away." He slung the camera bag around from where it hung behind him and settled it in place, zipping up the edges and snapping the latch to.