Kids on Fire: A Free Excerpt From The Zombie Hero Chronicles: Book One – Genesis

14 year old Dave Scott’s life sucks. You’d think coming from a broken home, living in a ghetto apartment, and having a bratty brother, nicknamed Little Girl, would be bad enough. Nope, not even close! After an infectious rat bites him, Dave is left in a strange state of limbo; he’s become part zombie! Dozens of these infectious vermin were released into the small town of Crown City by the sinister and enigmatic, Dr. Malis Amorum. But why? Was it really to bring about the dreaded zombie apocalypse? Will Dave ever transform into a full-blown zombie? And, if it is the zombie apocalypse, does anyone really need algebra? As they try to find the answers to these, and other questions, Dave and a loyal group of friends are forced to do battle with the zombies that are popping up all over town, like pimples on prom night. But events take an even darker turn when the one person who truly matters to Dave is brutally taken from him.

The Zombie Hero Chronicles: Book One- Genesis is an explosively funny and fast paced novel. It is the first in a series chronicling the not-so-average life of a teenage zombie doing battle with the forces of evil.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

PROLOGUE

Vampires, vampires, everywhere you look, it’s all about the vampires. Criminy, you’d think everyone would be stinking sick of vampires already. Ancient vampires, teenage vampires, vampires getting married, vampires breaking up, vampires who cheat on each other, vampires who don’t like the taste of blood, vampires with zits…Jeez, the list goes on and on and on…You can’t turn on the TV or log-on without another vampire “thing” totally taking over. I am so sick of the whole vampire empire, it makes me wanna’ hurl.  I mean come on, let’s be fair! What about all the other creepy creatures who stalk you and give you the heebie jeebies in the dead of night, huh? You know the Frankenstein’s, the Mummy’s, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Blob, the Werewolves of London, for crying out loud! What about the Zombies? They get a pretty bad rap, you know. You only ever see zombies as insanely focused brain suckers. They could be more than that. They just could be. I mean, I hope so. Because, you see, I am one.

Maybe I should just back up a minute. Up until two days ago I was like every other teenager out there. I was just tryin’ to get through each day with the minimal amount of chaos and acne. Becoming a zombie was the last thing I was expecting! I didn’t know much about zombies two days ago, criminy, I still don’t know jack. Zombies, at least in the movies that I’ve seen, are always portrayed as these lifeless, mindless humanoids with their arms all out front, grunting and always tryin’ to score some brain matter. Which, for the record, isn’t as easy as it looks. You can’t just walk into your local AM/PM and find some brains next to the Sno balls, or the Zingers, or whatever. And most people, for the obvious reasons, don’t want you slurping their brains out. So food options for a zombie can be tricky, especially if you still want to have friends and family. Not eating them is always a big plus.

Since we’re talking about food I want to say straight out I have discovered that I don’t have to eat brains. I know what a relief, right? How do I know that I don’t have to eat brains, you ask? I know this because of my mom’s cooking. She isn’t the best cook in the world. To be honest, that’s a huge understatement. She’s the worst cook to ever have walked the face of the planet! Every once in a while she’ll get a chicken on sale at the market and stick it in the oven. If we’re lucky she’ll remember to take out the nasty inside parts. And this chicken is never, ever cooked all the way through. She could leave that dang chicken in there for three days and it would still be raw in the middle. I guarantee you, my mom’s chicken always has some of that gross, stringy, bloody stuff that makes you want to either yak or become a vegetarian. Well, my mom made that same chicken just last night. Normally, I would’ve wanted to hurl all over my plate. Last night though I licked my plate clean. So not eating brains is a “no brainer” ha-ha. Salmonella? No sweat. Livin’ la vida zombie? Well, that’s a whole other story…

 

 

CHAPTER 1

Dave

Okay, so the whole thing started a couple of days ago. I’d spent the day at my best friend Tyler Park’s house. We were just chillin’, hangin’ out and watching TV I’d wanted to get out of our ghetto apartment because my mom was fully ragging on me and I was mad. Apparently, I didn’t rinse the dishes well enough after dinner the night before; when she opened the dishwasher that morning, there was still some crud on the plates and she freaked out. My mom’s nursing assistant shift at the nursing home starts at six a.m., so she has to leave pretty early. And my mom’s M.O. is that when she’s “disappointed” in me or when I haven’t “goose stepped” high enough, she’ll leave a note for me taped to the bathroom mirror. The note usually tells me what my crimes are, and how put out she is by my crimes. Then she’ll bring up a few past crimes to emphasize her point, which is that I’m a total loser. I have a dozen or so of these notes in an old shoe box, which I keep in my closet. I’m not really sure why I’m saving them. Probably for the day when I get hit by a bus or something and then, when she goes through my closet, she’ll find all the awful notes she wrote and then she’ll feel really bad. Or when I am forced into therapy because of severe personality disorders, I can give the notes to my therapist.

So this morning’s note reads, “Dave, you are so lazy. I work so hard to keep this family going and you can’t even do one thing that I ask properly. I slave away every day so that you can have food on the table, clothes to wear, and a roof over your head. It may not be much, but it’s all I can afford. The least you can do is rinse the dishes properly so that the food doesn’t stick to the plates. This is just like last week when you didn’t take out the garbage from the kitchen and the apartment smelled like rotten eggs for three days. Is it too much to ask that you do your chores and not slack off? Don’t I work hard enough?” Blah, blah, blah… There was more, but you get the gist. So I’m standing in the bathroom reading this stupid note and I hadn’t even had a chance to take a whiz yet! The note was kinda’ fluttering half-heartedly, as the fan tried its best to make our dingy ghetto apartment bathroom smell better.  I tore the note from the mirror, crumpled it up, and threw it in the toilet. Then I peed on it. It made me feel a tiny bit better.

Anyway, so I was hiding out at Tyler’s. After getting a note like that what else can you do? Tyler’s crib is definitely not ghetto. He lives in this really nice house about seven or eight blocks up the hill from our apartment building. In our town, you can go from nice to ghetto pretty fast. His house is filled with all kinds of cool stuff, but the coolest thing is this huge iron sword that hangs on the wall in their dining room. Every time I come into their house I touch the sword for luck. So far, I haven’t won the lottery or anything. Tyler’s been my best friend since like, the dawn of time. He’s kinda’ puny and he’s super smart. He doesn’t try to make you feel stupid, not on purpose anyway; it’s just sometimes that kinda’ thing happens. So he needs a bodyguard friend and that’s where I come in. I’m tall so when Tyler gets picked on for being a super smart shorty, I’m there to protect him. Then he helps me with my math, so it all works out. His mom doesn’t work and his dad is a geneticist at Mendel University. I’m not totally sure what that is, but I guess you could say his dad is a super smart shorty too. Dr. Park probably doesn’t get picked on for it, though.

Tyler and I were watching the tube on their 60- inch plasma. Sweet! We were flipping channels, eating some excellent Korean chicken, which his mom made. Unlike my own mother, Mrs. Park is an awesome cook. Thank God, or I’d starve to death. We were looking for something good to watch, something like “Cops” or “MythBusters.” Gloria sat between us with her dolls and her blanket.

“I wanna’ watch Dora!” Gloria whined. Gloria is Tyler’s little sister. She always wants to watch “Dora the Explorer.”

“Dora is stupid,” Tyler said, only half listening. Gloria’s eyes filled with tears and her short, four- year- old body began to swell with indignation.

“Dora is not stupid!” she said with a shriek. Her cheeks were puffed out and her eyes were so wide, she looked like a teeny alien creature ready to explode. I wanted to tell her to chill, but I didn’t want a 4- year- old alien explosion all over me. I glanced over at Tyler, who was ignoring her.

“Dora isn’t on right now,” I soothed. I was totally lying to her because Dora is always on. I held my breath for a second as I waited to see if she was gonna’ cover me in alien napalm. She slowly started to deflate. I breathed a sigh of relief. Jeez, it’s just a T.V. show!  My younger brother, who I call, Little Girl, gets that way about his TV shows, too. He’s Little Girl- Danny- Crybaby, or whatever you want to call him. But I don’t care if he explodes.

Tyler was still flipping when he suddenly stopped on the Channel 4 news. The reporter guy on the screen was holding a microphone and standing in a very familiar looking cemetery. With a jolt, I realized the cemetery is the one next to my apartment building.

“Hey, that’s Sunshine Cemetery! It’s the one down the street, right?” Tyler asked. Sunshine Cemetery. Is that the stupidest name for a cemetery or what? It isn’t like you are going to be fooled into thinking it’s someplace great like Disneyland or whatever.  Like the word “sunshine” is going to make the fact that you’re dead any more cheerful or happy.

“Hey, yeah it is! Turn it up!” I said.

Tyler turned up the volume and we caught just the last bit of the report.

“The phrase ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ has been bandied about with increasing frequency the last few years. Even government agencies, like the Center for Disease Control (CDC), have jokingly dispensed advice on how to prepare for the ‘Zombie Apocalypse.’ Although some movies, video games, and television shows center on an apocalyptic zombie event, no attacks on humans by zombies have ever been reported; and for most of us, the term ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ is a phrase that you only hear on TV However, if you find a zombie in your area, you may call the CDC because apparently they know what to do.” The reporter gave the camera a wink and a smarmy reporter smile.

“We missed what they were talking about! Did they see a zombie in the cemetery?” I wondered.

“Dunno, maybe they did.”

“How can they talk about zombies in our cemetery? They aren’t even real. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as zombies,” I added.

“Everybody knows there are such things as zombies! If zombies aren’t real, then why is the news talking about zombies in our cemetery? Somebody saw one, or something.” He paused for a minute. “Eeew, it’s creepy. There are zombies in our cemetery?” Tyler questioned.

“I dunno, Tyler, I think they’re made up like,” I whispered, “Like Santa Clause.”

I glanced over at Gloria to make sure that she didn’t hear me.

“Dude, if it was on the news, then it’s real. They wouldn’t put stuff on the news if it wasn’t true. There’s tons of crazy stuff going on in the world right now. And if they said there was a zombie at the graveyard, then there was one at the graveyard,” Tyler said.

It was the end of the discussion. Tyler went back to flipping channels in a huff.

I picked at my teeth, searching for leftovers. “They didn’t say they found a zombie at the cemetery. We don’t know what they were talking about. I just don’t think I believe in zombies is all I’m saying. You don’t have to get so ticked. I mean, aren’t they just a figment of George Romero’s imagination, or something like that?” Tyler ignored me and settled on an episode of “How It’s Made.”

Could there really be zombies? I mean real brain-sucking zombies lurching through my hometown waiting for the next human Happy Meal? I didn’t know. I hoped not. I mean the world sucks enough without the living dead trying to suck the life right out of you. Wasn’t acne bad enough?

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