Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

When Odessa Mullen rounded a corner downtown and came face to face with a pack of the ravenous undead, the first thing she felt wasn’t fear–it was exhilaration.

Dessie Mullen had been preparing her entire life for this.

Granted, she began to feel a little frightened as she turned and ran with abominations in hot pursuit. But her room back home was lined with George Romero films, splatterpunk zom-coms, and a complete signed first edition run of the rare Zomcomix graphic novel. If anyone knew how to handle those horrors, it was her.

It was almost too easy, really. Dessie ran a serpentine pattern before ducking into an alleyway she knew well and doubling back, causing the zombies to lose sight and scent of her. Then she scaled the old fire escape to the low roof of Hannigan’s Hardware to survey the situation.

“Wow, those guys at the CDC weren’t kidding,” she said, whistling. “Zombies really will lead to the collapse of civilization pretty damn quick.”

Everything had been normal that morning, but now looking out over town Dessie saw that the place was destroyed–burnt-out buildings, wrecked cars, and roving packs of the undead visible here or there.

She cocked her head. Something wasn’t right. There were no fires burning, nobody fighting back or trying to escape. If the zompocalypse that she’d long awaited had actually happened, it couldn’t have gotten so far in two hours.

Her thought process was interrupted by a shout from the street. “Hey! What are you doing up there?” It was Kim Woodard, one of Dessie’s friends who worked at a downtown deli. “The cops will give you a ticket if they see you up there! Remember Halloween ’89?”

“Kim!” Dessie cried. “Come up here, quick! It’s the zombie apocalypse, but I’ve got a plan.”

“Very funny,” Kim said. “Now get down from there. I’m not bailing you out again and my smoke break is almost over.”

“Does this look like a joke?” said Dessie. She had intended to encompass the curiously advanced devastation with e a sweep of her arm…but there was no devastation to encompass.

The town was its normal un-apocalypsed self. Pedestrians, cars, intact storefronts, and roving groups of teenagers rather than zombies.

Dessie could only move her mouth, speechlessly, half relieved and half aghast, as Kim continued to give her a withering stare.

That was Dessie’s first slip into the zombieworld. And it wouldn’t be her last.

“They’re coming!” Jan shouted, panicked. “Hurry!” She’d gotten the storm shutters down over most of the windows.

“I can’t!” Chrissy cried from the front. The first undead was at the edge of the parking lot, with hundreds behind.

“Why not?”

Chrissy turned around, her eyes bloodshot from terror and tears. “It’s a Danny’s restaurant! Open 24/7! They didn’t put any locks on the doors!”

Jan armed herself with a fillet knife from the grill. “Sweet mother of mercy.”

“Is it true that there are actual voodoo zombies that are living but nevertheless enslaved?”

The late Mr. Crenshaw adjusted his tie and his lolling jaw. “That’s a reckless exaggeration. The so-called voodoo zombies are simply a combination of cultural belief, hypnosis, and narcotics. We true zombies argue that attaching the term to anyone still living is ignorant and divisive. I can take another question.”

“I’m still not clear on the whole ‘flesh of the living’ thing. Can you clarify?”

A noise that might have been a sigh escaped Crenshaw’s bloated lips and he rolled his bleary eyes. “For the last time: like any other creature, zombies require sustenance. Just like the living, we must eat that which was once alive to survive.”

“But does it stop being alive when you hunt it down and kill it, and is it people?”

“I thought we’d been over this. Look, most anything will satiate our hunger for flesh. There’s no danger if you’re smart about things, and there’s no need to fly off the hook. Come up here and I’ll show you.”

The persistent questioner, after a moment’s hesitation, climbed up onto the dais and approached Crenshaw. He held out a discolored hand for her to shake. She took it, and squealed in terror as Crenshaw’s iron grip brought her into his waiting jaws. A few people in the front rows were splattered with what could only be termed leftovers.

“In sum, there’s no danger if you’re smart about things,” Crenshaw continued between bites of coed. “I think we have time for one more from the audience.”