Being
a zombie is no picnic and it's one hell of a handicap in the romance
department when you fall in love with a 'breather':
Aleta
is a breather with short blonde hair and brown eyes - two of them! -
and the whitest smile Fred has ever seen. Every day at a certain time
she sits at her window, and every day he stands in the rubble across
the street among a crowd of zombies waiting to break through the
fence and eat her.
'You
are beautiful, like an angel', he thinks, but all he can moan is,
“Braaaiiinss."
Still,
as zombies go, Fred's quite a catch. Underneath all the gangrene and
rot, Fred is different. This girl will probably turn out to be yet
another dead end, an infatuation, someone whose image he cannot get
out of his mind and whose taste he cannot get out of his mouth, but
the heart wants what the heart wants.
For
breathers, it is always only a matter of time, however beautiful they
are and whatever the government is assuring people.
Which
makes Fred sad because he has a beautiful 11 year old son called
Timmy, and Timmy may still be alive.
Genre:
Horror/romance
Publisher:
Taylor Street Publishing
Date
of Publication: July 2, 2012
ISBN: 9781478180784
ASIN:
B008H04Z0G
Number
of pages:306
Word
Count: 90,000
Cover
Artist:Tim Hewtson
Excerpt
Chapter I
Commute
Fred's
ruined face stared back at him from a fractured, mold spotted mirror.
The remains of breakfast pooled around his feet and a pair of lace
panties clung to his shoe, glued there by God knew what.
Bits
of flesh were stuck between his yellow teeth, along with the sodden
remains of a hand-wash-only label. There was no denying that he'd
seen better days.
Being
a zombie is no picnic.
Compelled
to pause and take stock of himself, he wiped his gore stained hands
on a filthy shirt, unsure if he was cleaning the hands or the shirt.
His right eye looked like a crushed egg yolk and his left leg was
broken in two places. A large splinter of bone poked through the
nskin above his thigh, fine dark lines etched across the surface like
a bad piece of scrimshaw. The open wound on his neck had started
leaking again, but at least the fluid was mostly clear now.
No
use dwelling on negatives. Time to get to work. He turned away from
his reflection, and limped out of the men's room of the Vince
Lombardi rest area.
An
overly bright morning sun assaulted him as he stepped outside.
Fred
gave a mental wince, wishing yet again that he could blink.
Sunlight
had no adverse effect on the undead, but he had never been a morning
person. Rain or shine, today he had to shamble over to Terminal C of
Newark Airport, where eight breathers were making their last stand.
Zombies were lone hunters and rarely worked together.
Every
so often, however, a kind of collective broadcast signal went out
over the undead grapevine, announcing the newest brain buffet - in a
shopping mall, a church, or an airport - with predictable and
satisfying results.
Dozens
were already making their way down the New Jersey turnpike. By their
mindless, movie-slow pace, he knew they hadn't fed.
Zombies
weren't Jesse Owens on the best of days, but they tended to move a
lot faster with a little brain in the old furnace.
If
Fred could breathe, he would have sighed. There'd be hundreds of
zombies, all ready to fight over eight brains and assorted bits. The
breathers would probably take out ten to twenty percent of the
attacking hoard before being overwhelmed. That left about ten zombies
per breather. With luck, by the time he got there he would still be
the brainiac of the pack.
Having
his wits about him gave a zombie an edge in the hunt. The effects of
the virus or whatever it was that put the mojo in their mortified
flesh varied from corpse to corpse. Most became textbook droolie
ghoulies, but some could reason and even remember who they were as
breathers. So far Fred hadn't come across any other thinkers, but he
doubted he was the only one.
By
mid-afternoon he found himself enjoying his walk down the turnpike.
Most of the fires had burned themselves out and although the air
still reeked of burning gasoline, the skies were more or less
smoke-free. He might be a walking corpse, but he appreciated a warm
spring day like this one. He pulled his lips up in what should have
been a grin.
Death,
ruin and destruction improved the New Jersey Turnpike.
Not
that there wasn't a black lining to be found around Fred's own little
rainbow of a life. Most of the zombies were a few hundred yardsdown
the road, but two lesser undead doggedly tagged alongside of him,
putting a bit of a damper on things. The virus left them as nothing
more than … well, nothing more than zombies. They were about as
interesting as slugs and moaned so much that, were Fred alive, he'd
be sporting a hell of a migraine.
All
in all, however, the day was turning out quite well. He almost
convinced himself being undead wasn't so bad. Sure, it was bad luck
that he was forty-five years old with a rather large potbelly when he
had been bitten by that damned clerk. Being cursed to wander the
earth in search of brains was bad enough, but why couldn't it have
happened when he was twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter?
He
was imagining wandering the earth in search of fresh brains as a
slimmer, sleeker and younger Fred, when the head of the zombie on his
left exploded.
Shit!
Thank you much for the hosting this promo stop. Much appreciated. Keep unliving!
ReplyDeleteAdam Sifre