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June 13, 2003
A Zombie Novel for People (and Zombies) with Short Attention Spans
Chapter One
An overworked husband leaves his house wife to go drink on his own in the park and bemoan his life. He watches a truck come rumbling down the street, out of control, run over a small fence and tip over in the church's cemetary.
Chapter two
Two teenagers in a garage bitch about their jobs and one sells an unspecified drug to the other one for recreational use. A scientist with a clipboard comes out to the garage and orders the drug-buying teenager to deliver their important but unpatented barrels of chemicals to another facility to avoid a coming inspection tour.
Chapter three
Chapter two was actually the last thoughts of the dying teen driver on drugs as he lay behind shattered glass in the crashed truck on top of the cemetary. He regrets a bit more in this chapter while the drinking angry husband tries to save him, but fails, KABOOM.
Chapter four
The drinking husband's wife fumes at home and thinks about their kids, off with their own lives, and maybe they should divorce, but he's an all right lug. Some descriptions here of the lacy night clothes she's wearing and reminiscing about the spicy early days of marriage for the readers who might be getting bored.
Chapter five
Readers might still be bored, I know I am, marital difficulties and drugged kids-- who cares-- so this chapter will introduce a new character who makes his money with a stable of fighting cocks. This chapter will be full of bloody underground cock-fighting action with short fuses among the betting crowd and flicked open switchblades.
Chapter six
The cock-fighting guy collects his dough, washes off blood, stores his cocks, then visits the house wife. They go way back and have some spicy conversation, but the wife stays loyal... so far!
Chapter seven
The drinking husband comes back into consciousness in the cemetary by the blackened trunk, his survival some kind of miracle as the ground around him is scorched and a tire from the truck was launched up to the church roof. He looks around at the damage and at the end of his looking around, he notices a decomposing man standing upright leaning up against a tree and watching him.
Chapter eight
A dialogue between the drinking husband and zombie where the zombie acts confused, speaks with a lisp because of his half-rotted tongue, general amazement about his return to life and speculation that it's the chemicals in the truck. Then more zombies come up from the ground and they don't seem as friendly as the first guy
Chapter nine
Cockfight guy realizes he's getting nowhere tonight, so he leaves the housewife and notices smoke over by the cemetary. He goes to check it out but gets tackled by some zombies who were on the prowl and they eat him slowly.
Chapter ten
The husband and the first zombie end up on the run together, fighting malevolent zombies and finding a common ground. Not all zombies are enemies of man is the social message, which can be applied as a metaphor to other real-life situations should the book reviewers care to make the parallel.
Chapter eleven
How many chapters in a book, usually? Jeez... uhm, more zombie fighting this chapter, like maybe the first zombie and the husband hole up in the church and try and come up with a strategy.
Chapter twelve
The house wife finds her house is surrounded and panics. Also, the local news media, attracted by the smoke of the crash and the subsequent explosion, send a news crew, which gets eaten.
Chapter thirteen
Man, I dunno. Lemme get back to you.
Posted by Michael at June 13, 2003 12:29 PM