Zombie Dude, Don’t Eat Me Bro: I Hate Zombies, #1

By Shantnu Tiwari

In Which Our Hero Fights Evil Zombies While Trying To Pick Up Pizzas And Girls

 

Blue remembers the first time he saw a dead person rise from the grave.

 

He was at a party, trying to get some hot food and some hot girls, when Kenny's dead grandmother turned up. Uninvited.

 

Soon, half his friends were dead. To make it worse, the government covered the whole thing up.

 

Now, with no one (alive) believing them, it's up to Blue and his friends to stop a Secret Government Agency(TM) from using his tiny little town as a zombie experiment lab.

 

A horror comedy.

 

Interview with the author

 

Q: What's the book about?

A: You know how all these horror stories/movies have these brave people fighting demons? Well, I thought, what if the heroes were two stoned losers who struggled to find a job or a girlfriend? And so the idea of a horror comedy was born.

 

Q: Where did you get the inspiration from?

A: I read this great book, John Dies at the End by David Wong. And later I saw its movie version which I also loved. And I thought, why are there not more books like this? Since no one else was writing them, I decided to write the book.

 

Q: Is this a traditional zombie book?

A: Heck no! It's more a parody of the genre. More Shaun of the Dead than Night of the Living Dead.

 

(Previously published as I Hate Zombies)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shantnu Tiwari
• Release date: Feb 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507071717

Book preview

1

You know what I hate?

Those damn zombies.

There I was, sitting in the public park, trying to eat my sandwiches. Sharing my breadcrumbs with any stray pigeon who came along with a sad face.

You know, like us genteel folk are apt to do?

Well, so there I was, eating my sandwiches, slyly looking up women’s boobs and legs (thank you, sunglasses!), again as us gentlemen are apt to do.

It’s a nice sunny day, birds are singing, flowers are blooming, a pigeon gets sexually excited when I throw it a whole piece of bread instead of the tiny pieces of morsels it normally gets.

The girls are happy ‘cause a handsome man like me is sitting in their midst, though they express their pleasure by making a face and walking away (for reasons I don’t entirely understand).

Everyone is happy.

And then the fucking zombie turns up.

Jeez.

And I’m like, dude, at least let me finish my sandwich. I paid like, two pounds seventy pence for that. Money doesn’t grow on trees, boy.

Go away, I said to the zombie, trying to sound as cross as I could. It was the tone my mother took with me, and it always worked.

The zombie, like every rude bastard zombie I’ve had the misfortune of meeting, ignored my tone and kept walking towards us.

I wondered what would happen if I put my mom on the phone.

Mom, there is a zombie chasing me.

What’s a zombie, dear?

The undead, mom. They rise from the graveyard and harass me.

Don’t be silly, dear. Have you found a girl yet? You aren’t getting younger, you know. You don’t want to end up like old Uncle Ned, fifty years old and not a woman to share his life.

Mom!

I would hang up by this time.

Yeah, bad idea.

The rude son of bitch zombie scared all the hot girls away. They ran away screaming.

I never understood girls. They were okay with people pouring hot wax on their legs and having someone they just met rip their hair out from the roots. But a small matter of a zombie scared them.

Yeah, I have no girlfriend. Thanks for asking. Jerk.

The zombie was almost upon us.

It was Shake’s time to kill them.

Shake was busy chatting up a leggy blond. Her legs were so long and so thin, it looked like someone took extra long match sticks and attached them to a head. It didn’t help she was wearing tiny denim shorts.

If it was me talking to her, I’d never be able to take my eyes off her legs.

Which may have been the reason hot girls avoided me. I’m sure if there was a Hot Girl Weekly, they would list me as the type of person to avoid. Put my photo on the cover page with the title, Avoid this guy.

She was lapping up what Shake was saying, though. He had a way with hot girls. He could have them eating out of the palms of his hands. When I asked him for his secret, he said the secret was to be natural, not treat girls like sex objects. Listen to them, show them respect.

Lying bastard.

I knew he had done a two-week course in hypnotism. Must be something to do with that. I had tried asking him, but he wouldn’t tell me. I’d have to get him drunk someday and get his secret that way.

The leggy blond saw the zombie and ran away screaming. Shake turned to me in irritation.

You were supposed to stop that.

Me? Me? I got up in anger. It’s your turn.

Yeah. Maybe. But I was talking to a lady. As my wingman, it’s your job to watch my back.

I’m always watching your back.

The zombie was almost upon us. He tried to grab Shake’s arm.

Get lost, man, I said to the zombie. Come back later.

He just moaned like the dead idiot he was.

What were you talking about? I asked Shake.

The zombie tried to chew on his arm. Shake pushed him off.

Nothin’ important. She was telling me about this cool new place she found.

Oh yeah? You were talking to a hot girl and that’s all what you were talking about?

The zombie tried to chew Shake’s arm off again. These rise-from-the-grave types were really slow. Later on, we’d meet freshly created zombies. They were nasty fuckers. But these ones, while still dangerous, weren’t that fast or smart.

Shake pushed him off. Gimme a minute, man, he said to the zombie. He turned to me.

No, listen. I’m serious. This girl, she might know the source of the zombie infection.

When will you teach me how to pull girls using your secret hypnotic technique? I finally asked him.

He looked at me dumbfounded, like he didn’t believe me. I don’t have one.

You’re lying.

No man. I wouldn’t lie to you. You’re my bro.

He raised his hand for a high five. I had to give it to him. He was my bro. Had saved my back on quite a few occasions.

But that pig of a zombie had to interrupt our male bonding session.

I told you these bastards are real rude, didn’t I?

The zombie jumped in between us and tried to bite Shake’s face off.

This was too much. I pulled the zombie away and kicked him in the balls.

Nope, didn’t work.

Shake took out a bat and whacked the zombie in the head.

Through a hard and long process of experimentation, we had found out that the best way to kill these bastards was to destroy their brains.

Yeah, all that science finally came in useful. Mr Jackson, our science teacher, would have been so proud.

Wait, no.

We killed him last week.

Long story.

Yeah. Where was I?

Oh yeah. The zombie died. Usual. Brains splattered everywhere.

But before he died, he did one strange thing. Something these zombies had never done before.

He turned to me and spoke.

Blue. Blue. You think you are quite smart, aren’t you? You think killing these slow-moving zombies makes you tough, doesn’t it? His eyes popped out of his head, but he continued speaking. His voice went really deep, like he was speaking through the pit of his throat.

I am the Darkness. I’ll get your mother. And I’ll get you too, Blue. You are mine. Three days. See you then.

And the zombie’s head exploded. All by itself.

Shake was staring at me with an open mouth. Dude, that was freaky.

Totally was, dude.

Never seen them speak before.

Me neither.

And it knew your name.

I swallowed. Yes it did. And it knew about my mom.

Dude, something’s wrong. These things are increasing. And they are getting more violent.

We heard police sirens. But it was only Sergeant Pepper. He came running up to us, all out of breath.

How is it that whenever there is any trouble, you guys are around?

We are trouble magnets, said Shake.

No, I said. We love these things. We go hunting for them.

Pepper laughed. He didn’t realise I was serious.

‘Cause we had started hunting these things. They had already killed three of our friends, and damned if we would let them kill any more.

The government was useless. They wouldn’t even admit zombies existed. The local police, led by Sergeant Pepper, believed us, but being a tiny police station with, like, three cops, there wasn’t a lot they could do.

Except help clean up the mess.

How the hell had we gone from chip shop workers to zombie hunters? It all started a week ago. When they killed Kenny.

2

It was a dark and stormy night.

I know you aren’t supposed to start books like this. Some professor somewhere has decreed so.

Screw you. And screw your professor.

It’s my book. I’ll start it the damn way I want.

What, you don’t like my potty mouth?

Well, how about you spend a week in CocksShire, and let me know how you feel then?

CocksShire isn’t its real name, of course. But the five government agents who were holding a gun to my head told me never to reveal any identifying details about where all this happened. And my mom taught me never to argue with five armed gunmen holding a gun to your head, bless her.

So I’ll call the town CocksShire. Because everyone here is a cock. And I don’t mean male hen. I mean a dick, a sausage, a wiener. You get the idea.

Shake is standing behind me, telling me to get on with the story.

Well, it’s my story, so shut up. Go chat to some leggy blond about some yoga posture you learnt from a book. Loser.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Torrents of rain were falling, like the gods in the sky had decided to take a collective leak on us. Those bastards.

I had just finished my shift at the chip shop. For you Americans out there, chip means French fries. Or Freedom Fries. Call it what you want.

CocksShire is one of the poorest places in England. There are no jobs, except for at the takeaways. The unemployment is highest in the country. It is the place politicians point to when they want to blame other politicians, foreigners, banks, big government, anything they don’t like. It’s like, If you don’t follow my policies, you will end up like CocksShire.

You would think the people of CocksShire would be mighty offended by all this, but half of them can’t read. The other half are too drunk to care. The only paper that sells is the tabloid, the one with the topless girls on Page 3. If Miss Big Boobs But Small Brain ever made a political statement, the whole of CocksShire would listen. Unfortunately, the big-titted model never chastises us about our sorry state of affairs, so we never listen.

What a tragedy.

Shake is back again, asking me to get on with the story. I guess I better do it, if just to shut him up.

So there I was, drenched to my underwear, my one of three underwear, two of which were in the washing machine. I cursed at the rain gods. I’d have to come to work in dirty underwear or commando. Neither of which options I liked. Not to mention I hadn’t cooked anything and would have to eat Pot Noodles. Again.

That’s when Shake turned up.

I still don’t know why his parents named him Shakespeare. Man, that’s one weird name. No one calls him that. Except for policemen who stop him (far too often, it seems) for riding his bicycle while drunk. Mr Shakespeare, you know that you should not be riding that thing in your state.

They use the word your state like he is a pregnant cow driving a drag racer. It’s just a bike, dude. Though they would not be amused if they would out he wasn’t drunk. But high on DELETED BY SHAKE.

Shake is telling me not to mention his bad habits, in case some police officer reads this. I assure him the government agents threatening us will never let that happen, as we are going to vanish into some secret government lab.

Yeah. So Shake stopped. You gotta come to this party, dude. It’s gonna be wild.

Shake likes to talk like an American movie star. His American accent is as authentic as Dick Van Dyke’s English accent in Mary Poppins. Which is to say, shit. But it impresses the girls. They are all like, Oh my God, he’s so exotic. But then the local girls are like cows. Many of them think chicken curry is exotic. I bet if Shake went to America and tried his fake accent there, they would slap him. Or shoot him. Or shoot him while gun slapping him, if such a thing is possible.

So, coming back to that night, I really didn’t want to go to that party. I knew what would happen. Loud music, girls in slutty clothes who would sleep with every nerd for five hundred miles but not me, people getting drunk on cheap booze and throwing up all over my shoes.

No thanks.

They’ll have food. Shake knew just how to press my buttons.

How come?

It’s Kenny’s parents’ anniversary.

And they invited his friends for a drunk party?

No, listen. The anniversary party was in the afternoon. His parents have gone on a second honeymoon. They ordered too much food for the party, and most of it’s left over. Kenny is going to heat it up and serve it, but you just know no one will eat it. They will be getting drunk, like they haven’t seen a beer can for twenty years.

Yeah, the pigs. So the food table will be empty?

It is. I just checked. I’ll eat with you. And then we find some chicks.

Shake worked at the same chip shop as me, though he was doing the morning shift today.

Fine. Let’s go. Let’s hope we get some hot girls and not the ugly local ones, most of whom look like a drunk hippo fell on them.

We’ll have out-of-town college girls. High class babes. I’m sure they are into lowly employed and broke young men who have to go to parties so they can eat regularly.

Of course they are. Let’s go.

And that’s how I found myself at that party.

Where it all started. The zombies, the flying cows, the alien who wasn’t an alien. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

3

At first, it was just a normal party.

Most of us had seen those American movies. You know, the ones where twenty-seven-year -old men and women pretend to be sixteen and then have this party? Where they all get drunk, have wild sex, the police show up and instead of shooting them dead (isn’t that what American police do? I don’t know. That’s what I learnt from movies. All the local police does is give parking tickets and tell us off for drinking in public. Yeah, they’re as bad as my mom). Anyway, this TV American police burst the party, and our wild thirty-somethings pretending to be teenagers go home, where they are either killed by psychos carrying an axe or they end up in a haunted mansion where they get to have two minutes of PG sex before the monster of the week kills them.

What I’m trying to say is the life of American teenagers seems a lot more exciting than the average teenager in CocksShire. Over here, we just stand around the corner street and try to finish off our beer before our mothers or the police come to tell us off.

But everyone’s seen those American movies, and in places like CocksShire where there is no entertainment (the nearest cinema is twenty-seven miles away), there isn’t a lot to do. And everyone tries to act like those American movies, thinking our party will also be full of hot babes in short shorts who were just the right amount of drunk (that is, enough not to notice the pimples on your face, but not enough to colour your shoes yellow with vomit).

But this being CocksShire, we see the same