No Mere Zombie is coming
I have good news for those who finished the first book and are cursing me for dropping that horrendous cliffhanger.
I’m in the middle of the last heavy content edit and should be done the first week of January. After that No Mere Zombie is off to beta readers. The goal is an April release, and I believe I can make that happen.
If you haven’t read No Such Thing As Werewolves I’d stop here, because spoilers lie ahead.
The ending was messed up, right? Of all the things that could have happened to Trevor. Jesus. So what happens to the poor guy? I’ve decided to give you a sneak peak at his fate. He plays a large role in Werewolves Versus Zombies. In fact, he’ll be on the cover.
Below you’ll find his first PoV chapter. Completely unedited. I hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 2- Nameless
The shambling corpse had lost his name. It hovered just out of reach, as distant as the stars. It bothered him, this lack of a name. Bothered him a great deal. Almost as much as his imprisonment, an unwilling passenger in a body that had its own agenda. His body shambled forward, weaving through the deserted street. He passed unfamiliar houses, odd structures set atop two-foot stilts. They were different than the houses the nameless corpse knew, with thinner walls and thatched roofs. It would have been interesting to inspect them more closely, but his body shambled forward with no regard for his wishes.
He staggered, tripping over a shape in the darkness. His body looked down at the obstruction. A corpse, or what remained of one. The flesh had been meticulously stripped clean. The bones cracked, already drained of marrow. The tide of hunger rose, threatening to overwhelm him as it had so many times over the last week. It never abated unless he was feeding, resuming the very instant he stopped chewing.
His body turned its gaze back to the town, studying the line of houses. The flickering light of a candle came from a window four houses down on the left. The darkness obscured any differences, making the house identical to its neighbors. His body shambled towards it, slow and awkward. That frustrated him too, though he didn’t know any other way of walking. It felt…wrong.
His leg shook violently as he raised a foot, but he avoided toppling as his body set it on the first step. It creaked loudly under his weight, but it held. He attempted the second. Then the third. A fourth step carried him to the door, faintly illuminated by the glow in the living room window. A gasp came from inside. The light winked out.
He listened. Breathing came from behind the door. There were heartbeats. Two of them. Both rapid. Should he be able to hear heartbeats? No, he was positive that was wrong. Different. New.
He raised a trembling hand to the door handle, wrapping a weak grip around it. It turned with a click, the door creaking open with a little urging. Shouldn’t they have locked the door? Or at least blocked it with a dresser or bed? Clearly these people had never seen a zombie movie.
His body staggered inside, gaze sweeping the room. It was gathered in darkness, except for the patch of bamboo planks in the pool of moonlight. The heartbeats were more frantic now, thundering from the corner of the room. He could just barely make out a pair of shapes huddled against the wall. One taller, sheltering the smaller one. A woman and child. Horror bloomed, giving way to panic. Every fiber of his being yearned to warn them, to scream that they should run. All that emerged was a low wail, the first time he’d been able to force his body to do anything.
It shambled across the room, moving towards the doomed family. Why didn’t they run? They could probably make it past him. He was slow, ungainly. Yet they cowered there, praying he wouldn’t notice them. His body crossed the gap in three awkward steps, then lunged at the larger figure. She flinched, but made no attempt to run. Instead she shoved the smaller figure forward. “Antonio, ejecuta!”
The little boy shot to his feet, bolting across the bamboo floor like a deer as he burst from the room into the night. His head turned to watch the boy’s flight, then turned back to his prey. He seized the woman’s arm, biting savagely into her shoulder. His weight bore her to the wooden floor with a hollow thump as he began to feed. At first she screamed and thrashed, but that grew weaker as he tore loose mouthful after mouthful. The hunger faded for the first time in days. In its place came clarity. He remembered.
There had been a pyramid, surrounded by bright lights. Men with guns. Werewolves. That couldn’t be right, could it? There was no such thing as werewolves.
