Please welcome Rusty to Books For Company. He has been very kind and provided us with a great deleted scene from Zombie's Don't Cry, an exclusive!
This has definitely made me put the book onto my wishlist. So much character comes through within this one scene!
Don’t Forget the Dew!
A “Deleted Scene” from Zombies Don’t Cry
By Rusty Fischer, author of Zombies Don’t Cry
So, I always love writing these “deleted scenes” from Zombies Don’t Cry. It’s been a few years since I wrote it, and it’s always neat to go back and try to sneak something new in with these scenes “from the cutting room floor”.
So, in honor of the book’s UK release in October, here is a scene that happens just before the book’s Prologue, while Maddy, the book’s main character, is doing a little last minute shopping before here “Zombie Picnic.”
I’m pretty excited about this deleted scene, and very grateful to Jodie for allowing me to debut it here, and only here, on the Books for Company blog. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it:
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I shut the passenger door and Dane leans over, hands bone white and clutching the steering wheel. “You’ve got the list?” he asks, gooey black zombie blood -- though it’s not really blood -- smeared on his chin.
“Yes, I have the list!” Sheesh, he’s only asked me a dozen times since we pulled away from the dance.
“Okay, just checking.” He seems antsy, and I guess I can’t blame him. I take one step away from the truck and he pokes his head out one last time: “Don’t forget the Dew! It’s really important he has a little refreshment, you know, for when he wakes up.”
I look down at the list, scribbled onto the back of my Fall Formal invitation. “Yeah, it’s on here, I got it…”
I’m still grumbling when I walk into the Stop ‘N Go store on Lumpfish Lane. It’s not exactly a 7-11, if you know what I mean, which Dane thought would be best considering the fact that we’re now, officially, on the run.
An electronic “ding-dong-ding” chimes when I walk in and a sleepy cashier, a few years older than me, looks up from some magazine he’s reading on the sales counter.
He starts to nod. You can tell it’s something automatic he does every time he looks up to see somebody new, but about mid-nod he stops and his eyes get big. Like, real big; like, cartoon as big as saucers big.
“Uh… hi,” he mumbles, watching me grab a metal basket from a stack by the door.
“Hi yourself.” I don’t even know why I say it. It’s so stupid and corny, but it just blurts out, dry and husky in my new zombie voice.
I can tell he thinks it’s clownish, too, but he still watches me, eyes big with a capital “B,” as I shuffle around the store tossing items in my basket. You know, all the zombie reanimation essentials, like… plastic knives and forks, some plastic plates and paper napkins and, from the hardware section, a small hatchet, just in case.
I grab the Mountain Dew last, two six packs even though Dane said one would be plenty, but I’m thirsty and I know he will be, too. They’re cold in my hands, but not much colder than my skin.
I shuffle over to the counter and unload it all on top of the guy’s muscle car magazine. He frowns but, so what? His fault for not moving it faster. I mean, if he hadn’t been gawking at me the whole way over to the cash register, he could have moved it in plenty of time.
“Are you… okay?” he asks, not even trying to ring any of my stuff up yet. I shift my eyes to the left and see Dane’s face, white as a volleyball above the steering wheel, dark eyes glaring at me to hurry up from the parking lot.
“Who, me?” Another stupid croak out of my stupid mouth. Why am I suddenly talking like some stupid commercial for Match.com?
He smirks. He’s tall and thin, with red hair cropped short and a Star Wars shirt (of course it’s a Star Wars shirt), under his green and red Stop ‘N Go cashier apron.
He’s still not moving. “Why do you ask?”
“Why? Have you… have you seen yourself lately?”
I gasp, and suddenly, it all makes sense; his round eyes, his gaping jaw, his inability to move or ring up a single can of Mountain Dew.
I. Must. Look. Like. Complete. Ass!
I look down to see my torn prom dress, thick Zerker goo under my maroon nail polish, left pinky WAY out of joint and God, I can only imagine what my hair looks like!
Is he looking? At my hair? Oh God, he is. He is absolutely STARING at my hair! It must be flatter than one of Dad’s pancakes those rare Sunday mornings when he gets home early enough to fix me breakfast.
“I… well… I…” I have nothing to say. What should I say? That I’ve been so busy trying to save Barracuda Bay High School from a zombie infestation that I just didn’t have time to freshen up before running out for a little Mountain Dew?
“Let me guess,” he says, leaning in and throwing a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Dane’s truck parked outside. “You and your boyfriend out there got in a little tussle and now you’re gonna whip him up something fancy to make up for it, am I right?”
The little TV on top of the rotating pretzel stand behind him flickers and a newscaster breaks into his mud wrestling program. The volume’s on low but with my new zombie hearing, the newscaster might as well be shouting as he says, “We interrupt the previously scheduled broadcast to bring you this special announcement. Reports are starting to filter in of a potential situation at tonight’s Fall Formal at one local high school, where for the last hour parents have been unable to reach their...”
I look down at the sales counter, frantic. Paper plates, a hatchet and soda pop? That’s this guy’s idea of a romantic makeup dinner?
“Yes, yes, absolutely. You must be psychic or something.” He smiles unironically, despite the irony dripping in my admittedly harsh voice.
He finally starts reaching for things, covering up the sound of the newscast with the ringing of the cash register and thank goodness the TV is behind him as they start showing photos of Barracuda Bay High, smoldering in the night.
I told Dane we should have waited until the funeral to grab this stuff, but he said we’d have to lay low for the next day or so and couldn’t chance it. Now, here I am, in my prom dress torn to shreds, strolling through the Stop ‘N Go like something straight out of a… a… zombie movie.
He rings up the soda, finally, and shoves everything in a big red and green bag, smiling. “Funny,” he says, leaving it out there, dangling, so I have to ask, “What is?”
“I drink this stuff when I have the flu, too.”
Then he looks at my face, pale and gray like wet cement, and smiles. I pay him with a rolled up twenty from my pretty clam shell prom purse and storm out the door, wondering how long it will be before they start showing my high school yearbook photo on the news and he thinks, “Hey, wasn’t that chick just in my store?!?!”
So there you have it, a scene that never made it into the book and that you can only find here, on the Books for Company blog!
Thanks, Jodie, for hosting me and thanks to all of you for reading this. And I hope it will add to your enjoyment of the book if you ever get to read Zombies Don’t Cry!
Yours in YA,
Rusty
About the Author
Rusty Fischer is the author of Zombies Don’t Cry, as well as several other popular zombie books, including Panty Raid at Zombie High, Detention of the Living Dead and the Reanimated Readz series of 99-cent living dead shorts.
Rusty runs the popular website Zombies Don’t Blog @ www.zombiesdontblog.blogspot.com. At Zombies Don’t Blog you can read more about Rusty’s work, view his upcoming book covers and read – or download – completely FREE books & stories about… zombies!
Find Rusty
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Thankyou for the comp. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway, Jodie :) xx
ReplyDeletegreat prize.thanks for giving us the chance to win it.good luck and merry christmas to everyone.xx
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway, very kind of you!
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