Disco Inferno
I Will Survive the Crispy Zombies...
Alyssa survived three months of the zombie apocalypse by trusting two things ~ good bass lines and bad decisions.
Tonight was about to require both.
The Velvet Underground was a second-rate disco club before the meteors fell. The kind of place where divorced dads came to relive their youth. And failed.
Now it was a fortress of funk. A bastion of bass. Possibly the only place in Crescent City where Burned Ones feared to tread.
Alyssa discovered it by accident. Two weeks ago, she’d been testing the sound system. Because, what else was there to do when the world was ending, except make sure the speakers still worked? A Burned One shambled too close to the loading dock. The moment she’d dropped the bass on “Le Freak,” the thing recoiled. Actually stepped backward, its crackling intensifying, amber eyes flickering like disturbed flames.
She’d tested it seventeen more times since then. Same result. Every time.
Now the club held forty-three survivors. Alyssa had appointed herself DJ of the apocalypse. The mirror ball still spun. The strobes still flashed. When the bass dropped, the Burned Ones stayed the hell away.
Until…
“They’re not stopping,” Nikki said from her position at the barricaded front entrance. The pragmatic woman had shown up three days ago with her sister, a glowing nurse who looked like a human-shaped furnace, and a haunted-looking man who hummed disco under his breath to keep from screaming. “Alyssa. I count at least twenty. They’re not avoiding the sound. They’re pushing through it.”
Alyssa cranked up the volume on “Dancing Queen.” The bass hit like a physical force. It rattled the windows and made the floor vibrate. The Burned Ones outside wavered. They didn’t retreat.
“They’re adapting,” Ignacia said quietly. The Nurse stood near the stage. Her skin pulsed with that familiar crimson light through the cracks in her arms. “The warmth learns. It’s figured out the frequencies aren’t fatal. Just uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable enough to stop them?” Melissa asked. Nikki’s sister, gripped a metal pipe like it was the only solid thing in the universe.
“No.” Ignacia met Alyssa’s eyes across the club. “Maybe uncomfortable enough to slow them down.”
The front barricade splintered. Wood cracked with a sound like breaking bones. The first Burned One pushed through. Thier skin crackled like bacon grease. Heat rolled off it in visible waves.
Alyssa made the only decision that made sense. She grabbed the mic and shouted, “EVERYBODY DANCE!”
“Stayin’ Alive” dropped at max volume.
The bass hit like a bomb. The opening notes, iconic, undeniable, and perfect. They exploded through the Velvet Underground’s sound system with enough force to make the mirror ball shake on its chain. Strobes kicked in. It painted everything in stuttering white light.
The Burned Ones stumbled.
Disrupted. Their movements became jerky, and uncoordinated. Like the rhythm was interfering with whatever signal the warmth used to puppetier them. They lurched instead of lunged. Crackled discordantly.
“MOVE ON THE BEAT!” Alyssa screamed into the mic. “DODGE ON THE DOWNBEAT!”
Nikki swung her crowbar on the “ah-ah-ah-ah” of the chorus, catching a Burned One in the chest. It staggered back—one-two-three-four—and she followed up with a kick timed perfectly to the bassline. The creature collapsed into steaming crimson. She rolled away before the splash before it touched her.
“HOLY SHIT IT WORKS!” someone shouted.
Daniel was dancing. Actually dancing. The haunted man who hadn’t smiled in weeks was doing something between the Hustle and violence. His movements sharp and precise. The rhythm was keeping him anchored. Every beat was a choice. Every step proof he was still human.
Ignacia blazed forward into the mass of Burned Ones. She moved like liquid fire choreography. She spun. The mirror ball light fragmenting off her glowing skin, and pulled heat from two of them simultaneously. They collapsed into puddles. She kept dancing, restraining The Warmth within her.
The strobes made snapshots of apocalypse set to disco.
Flash: Melissa swinging a chair leg
Flash: A Burned One collapsing into crimson goop.
Flash: Nikki and two others forming a line, striking in rhythm
Flash: The mirror ball spinning, spinning, spinning
The club had become a BeeGees battleground.
“They’re still coming!” Nikki shouted. More Burned Ones pushed through the shattered entrance, drawn by the concentrated heat of forty-three living bodies.
Alyssa switched tracks. “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire. The opening horn section, the building rhythm, the pure unbridled joy of it.
Do you remember ~
The Burned Ones hesitated. Actually hesitated. Like the emotional frequency was as disruptive as the bass.
The twenty-first night of September ~
Daniel laughed. High and slightly hysterical. Genuine. He grabbed the nearest person, a teenager who’d been too terrified to move. “Come on! Dance or die! DANCE OR DIE!”
It was absurd. Forty-three people disco-fighting their way through a horde of walking crematoriums while a mirror ball painted everything in scattered light.
It was working.
Until the scream.
“I’M HIT! OH GOD, I’M HIT!”
The music didn’t stop but Alyssa’s heart did. A woman near the back. Mina. She stared at her arm where crimson ooze from a collapsed Burned One splashed across her skin. The thermal reaction beginning.
The rumor said amputation saved you from bites. But Burned Ones didn’t bite. They splashed. No one knew if removing a limb helped with thermal conversion.
“NIKKI!” Alyssa screamed.
Nikki was already moving, fire extinguisher in hand, blasting the affected area with CO2. The crimson darkened. Cooled. BUT the damage was done. Mina’s veins began to glow beneath the skin, spreading from the point of contact.
“The music’s helping!” Ignacia shouted, pressing her own glowing hands near Mina’s arm. She pulled heat away. “The bass, it’s slowing the conversion! Keep it playing!”
Alyssa’s hands flew across the board, adjusting frequencies, maximizing the bass, finding the resonance that made the warmth settle. “Boogie Wonderland” kicked in. Mina’s glowing veins pulsed slower and slower. Fighting against the rhythm.
“We need ice!” Nikki barked. “Now! Bar freezer, move!”
People scattered. The battle continued around them. Burned Ones pushed through. Survivors fought to the beat. A circle formed around Mina. Protection while Ignacia pulled heat and Nikki coordinated cooling.
The power stuttered.
Music cut to static.
Strobes died.
The mirror ball stopped spinning.
In the sudden darkness, Alyssa heard the warmth surge.
Every Burned One in the club crackled louder. Moved faster. Coordinated without the bass to disrupt them. Mina screamed. The glow in her veins exploded. Brighter. Ignacia gasped. She doubed over as her own warmth tried to take advantage of the silence.
“Generator!”
Alyssa raced through the darkness. Stumbling toward the back room. The glow of the Burned Ones as her only light.
The generator room was a cloud of oil and ozone. Emergency lighting showed the problem immediately. A loose connection. Probably knocked free by the vibrations of sustained bass.
Alyssa’s hands shook as she reconnected it. Tightened the coupling. Slammed the reset.
The lights flickered.
The speakers crackled.
And then—
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
“I Will Survive” hit like divine intervention.
Alyssa sprinted back to the DJ booth. She grabbed the mic, and screamed, “AT FIRST I WAS AFRAID, I WAS PETRIFIED—”
Every survivor in the club took up the anthem. Singing. Shouting. The words becoming a weapon ~
“KEPT THINKING I COULD NEVER LIVE WITHOUT YOU BY MY SIDE—”
The Burned Ones wavered. The bass surged. The mirror ball spun.
“BUT THEN I SPENT SO MANY NIGHTS THINKING HOW YOU DID ME WRONG—”
Ignacia blazed brighter. The warmth inside her answering the rhythm. She was controlled. She moved through the Burned Ones like a comet. They couldn’t touch her. She sang…
“AND I GREW STRONG—”
Daniel was singing. Both hands raised, moving to the beat, the warmth inside him settling into the rhythm like it had found its proper place.
“AND I LEARNED HOW TO GET ALONG—”
One by one, the Burned Ones collapsed. Too disrupted by the frequency, too overwhelmed by the coordinated assault of humanity refusing to stop being human. They puddled on the dance floor—cooling crimson among the scattered light—and still the survivors sang.
“GO ON NOW, GO! WALK OUT THE DOOR!”
The last Burned One fell.
The music played on.
Alyssa looked out at her dance floor covered in thermal residue and broken furniture. Forty-three people disco-fought their way through the apocalypse.
They all started laughing.
Mina’s arm was bandaged. The glow faded to barely-visible. Held back by bass and ice and Ignacia’s careful heat-pulling. She wasn't cured. But she had time. A chance.
Nikki approached the DJ booth, fire extinguisher still in hand. Expression caught between disbelief and grudging respect. “Did we just…”
“Save the world with disco?” Alyssa grinned. “Just this room. Just tonight. Just us.”
“The BeeGees are a legitimate tactical weapon now,” Nikki said flatly. “I need to update my crisis management protocols.”
Ignacia stepped onto the stage. Her skin still glowing but controlled. She looked out at the survivors. Her people. Her mission. Her impossible hope given form. “We need to document this. The frequencies, the rhythm patterns, the emotional component. If music can disrupt the warmth…”
“We can take it on the road,” Daniel said, voice hoarse from singing. “Mobile disco. Traveling salvation by funk.”
“Disco apocalypse resistance,” Melissa added. “DAR.”
“That acronym needs work,” Nikki said. She was almost smiling.
Alyssa looked at her equipment. The speakers that had saved them. The turntables now weapons. The mirror ball like a glitter-covered moon.
“You know what?” she said, cueing up “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” “I’ve had worse gigs.”
The bass dropped.
The mirror ball spun.
In a second-rate disco club at the end of the world, forty-three people danced like humanity depended on it.
Because maybe—just maybe—it did.
First rule of the apocalypse: Stay alive.
Second rule: Staying alive is better with a soundtrack.
Third rule: The warmth cannot survive the funk.
Written for Bradley Ramsey Flash Fiction February.
Musical Inspiration ~
🔥🥓🔥🥓🔥🥓🔥🥓🔥🥓🔥🥓🔥🥓
Previous story in this world…
Daniel Coates …. Your zombie origin story…
Disco Crisp Zombies. Sorry. I laughed while reading this so hard.
Oooh LOVE!!!! 💃🕺🪩