The Zombie Driven Life

By David Wood and David Debord

High school nobody Kenan is doing just fine in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, thank you very much, but when his dream girl Katy comes stumbling around the corner, she turns his world upside-down as they embark on a nightmarish road trip that leads to the very source of the plague of the walking dead. An action-packed horror tale laced with dark humor.

"Well-written and highly entertaining. Great dollops of black humour and some wonderful characterisation round out this extremely enjoyable romp. Definitely one to add to the private library." Necroscope

"The Zombie Driven Life is a fast-paced, zombie story that manages to be thoughtful, humorous, and surprising while giving zombie fans everything they love about the genre—gore, desperate situations, and a big body count. The perfect book to devour in a single day." Jeremy Bishop, author of Torment

"Wood paints a horrific scenario of a world in ruin and a few survivors struggling to find safe havens and a reason to carry on. Powerful and disturbing by turns, with plenty of black humour along the way. The Zombie-Driven Life is a great read." Alan Baxter, author of the Alex Caine series

"Give The Zombie-Driven Life a try - it may just set you on the road to obsession!" The Aussie Zombie

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gryphonwood Press
• Release date: May 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386893998

David Wood

David A. Wood has more than forty years of international gas, oil, and broader energy experience since gaining his Ph.D. in geosciences from Imperial College London in the 1970s. His expertise covers multiple fields including subsurface geoscience and engineering relating to oil and gas exploration and production, energy supply chain technologies, and efficiencies. For the past two decades, David has worked as an independent international consultant, researcher, training provider, and expert witness. He has published an extensive body of work on geoscience, engineering, energy, and machine learning topics. He currently consults and conducts research on a variety of technical and commercial aspects of energy and environmental issues through his consultancy, DWA Energy Limited. He has extensive editorial experience as a founding editor of Elsevier’s Journal of Natural Gas Science & Engineering in 2008/9 then serving as Editor-in-Chief from 2013 to 2016. He is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Geo-Energy Research.

Book preview

The Zombie Driven Life

High school nobody Kenan is doing just fine in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, thank you very much, but when his dream girl Katy comes stumbling around the corner, she turns his world upside-down as they embark on a nightmarish road trip that leads to the very source of the plague of the walking dead. An action-packed horror tale laced with dark humor.

Well-written and highly entertaining. Great dollops of black humour and some wonderful characterisation round out this extremely enjoyable romp. Definitely one to add to the private library. Necroscope

The Zombie Driven Life is a fast-paced, zombie story that manages to be thoughtful, humorous, and surprising while giving zombie fans everything they love about the genre—gore, desperate situations, and a big body count. The perfect book to devour in a single day. Jeremy Bishop, author of Torment

Wood paints a horrific scenario of a world in ruin and a few survivors struggling to find safe havens and a reason to carry on. Powerful and disturbing by turns, with plenty of black humour along the way. The Zombie-Driven Life is a great read. Alan Baxter, author of RealmShift and MageSign

Give The Zombie-Driven Life a try - it may just set you on the road to obsession! The Aussie Zombie

The Zombie Driven Life

Published June, 2011 by Gryphonwood Press

Copyright 2011 by David Wood. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons is entirely coincidental.

1- What on Earth Am I Here For?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked that very question. I sit, hunkered down behind the rusted-out shell of what was once a candy apple red Mustang GT, and gaze at the throng of once-humanity that shuffles past. A shot to the temple would drop any one of them in an instant, but what would be the point? The rest would turn and come right after me. I’m a good shot, but not good enough to get all of them before they get me. I could outrun them, but again, why bother? Assuming the shot didn’t draw more of them (the living dead are too stupid to avoid the sound of gunfire—to them it’s a dinner bell), I’d run for a while, find a new place to hide, and it would start all over again. Like I said, there’s no point to any of it.

My life has no purpose.

I used to believe in God. I’m not a freak or anything. I never put on a white button-up shirt and black slacks and rode around on a bicycle trying to talk people into marrying their own cousins. I never stopped anyone on the street and asked them, If you died tonight, do you know for sure that you’d go to Heaven? I never joined a cult or a Young Life group. I just figured that somewhere up there, God was hanging out, occasionally taking time out of His busy day to see what was happening down here, and maybe lending us a hand every so often. Now I’m not so sure.

I don’t have a problem with bad things happening in life. I mean... well, I do have a problem with it, but I never blamed it on God. Bad stuff happens, and you can’t be protected all the time. I remember the emo kids at school whining about how a loving God would never permit so much suffering. I thought about suggesting they sell their iPods and send the money to charity if suffering bothered them so much, but I’m not the kind of guy that even the emo’s notice. I get plenty of notice nowadays, though. From the buggers. Of course, they look at me the way I used to look at bacon.

Where was I? Oh yeah, suffering. Anyhow, I’ve tried to imagine a world in which God didn’t permit suffering, and I didn’t like the picture that came to my mind. It would be sort of like this kid I knew, Andy McMillan. His house sat on a busy corner, and his mother couldn’t bear the thought of him accidentally getting hit by a car, so put him in one of those harnesses people use to keep from losing their kid at the mall, tied a rope to it, and staked him down in center of their front yard.

While the rest of us ran around having fun, Andy ran in circles. Sometimes we’d try to include him in our games, but mostly we just threw stuff at him. His life sucked. He never got to take a chance, or try something risky and enjoy the reward. He just...existed. That’s how I imagine a world where God protects us from suffering. Like Andy, we’d be safe, but not free. So that’s not why I don’t believe.

The reason I stopped believing in God is simple. There is no longer a purpose to being alive. I, and anyone else left with a heartbeat and a consciousness, spends all our time in an unending quest for food, shelter, and safety. We eat. We hide, or fight, if we have to. We sleep. The next day, it starts all over again. Do our lives have any more purpose than those of the mindless freaks that meander through each day, doing nothing more or less than searching for their next meal?

Why are there people at all? Is this all God intended for us? If there’s a God out there, why didn’t He put a stop to the bug back when it first started? Would it have been too much trouble to give just one scientist a light bulb moment, and put a halt to this thing? Is this really all there is? If there is a God, and this is His purpose for our lives, He’s being a real douche.

What’s that? What happened to Andy? His life had a happy ending of sorts. One day, he finally summoned up the courage to defy his mom. It was the ice cream truck that did it. We could all hear the bell ringing from two blocks away, and we dashed to the corner, our mouths watering for Bomb Pops and Banana Fudgesicles. Andy had two dollars in his pocket, and he’d already missed out twice that week. He tugged, twisted, and wrestled the fastener until it finally snapped. Liberated from the bondage of his harness for the first time in his life, he dashed after us, ready for his first ice cream as a free man. Problem was, the ice cream man, thinking we were all safely on the curb, didn’t see Andy trailing behind us.

No one wanted a Bomb Pop that day—the red looked too much like the goo pooling around the truck’s front tire—so we all went for Banana Fudge instead. How is that a happy ending? At least he didn’t live long enough to see the human race, if there’s anyone left besides me, reduced to this purposeless existence.

Some life, huh?

2- It All Starts With Zombies

That’s right. It’s all about the zombies, or buggers, as they have come to be known, and has been ever since the outbreak of the bug. I hear it started somewhere to the west, or to the north, others say, and it spread like wildfire. Ever since then, it’s been all about the zombies. Don’t let them see, smell, or hear you- they’ll try to bite you. Don’t let them bite you- you might get the bug. Don’t let them eat you. (Do I really need to explain that one?) And somewhere during your day of zombie-dodging, try to eat something, and maybe get a little sleep. But while you’re doing those things, always be on the lookout for more buggers.

One of them sees me! Crap! I turn and dash down a nearby alley. I’ve already scouted it out and it’s a dead-end. I slow my pace to make sure the bugger is close behind me. They aren’t very fast, but they can occasionally turn on the jets for a short distance. I hear its moan just behind me, a sound of hunger and longing, and I leap.

Buggers are stupid, and a trip line fools them every time. At the sound of decaying flesh on asphalt, I stop, pivot, and train my Taurus PT92 on its skull. I hope you aren’t expecting some fancy description of my gun and what it can do. I only know two things about it: its name, because the pawn shop I stole it from had it labeled; and the fact that it can plow a trench through a bugger’s skull.

I’m taking careful aim when the thing looks up at me and my stomach drops to my feet. It’s Ms. Krasnicki, the