Month: December 2022

Your Twenty-First Literary Gift of 25 Gifts to Christmas. Just in time for Christmas, I have a zombie turkey apocalypse. This excerpt is from my first book, Zombie Turkeys. This excerpt is the first news conference after the plague breaks out.

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My past gifts to you are here:

• 25 Days to Christmas – 25 Literary Gifts for You
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• Your Fifth Literary Gift! – 20 Gifts Until Christmas
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Your Twenty-First Literary Gift: From Zombie Turkeys

At the press conference, in the city council chamber, General Bagley motioned he would begin.

“At approximately seven p.m. last night, over a hundred thousand zombie turkeys attacked Joliet. They caused widespread death and destruction. The current number of victims is twelve hundred and seventy-three, with another eight hundred missing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is assisting with recovery, notification of the next of kin, and finding lost people.” General Bagley spoke somberly to the assembled press.

“The first question to be answered is, how did the turkeys escape our military cordon? The turkeys boarded a string of barges in Hennepin and got off south of Joliet. From there, they went to Farm Fresh Turkey Farm, the largest turkey farm in Illinois, killed the workers there, and infected the seventy thousand turkeys.

“Simultaneously with this barge movement, a parallel attack of a flock of about two thousand zombie turkeys tried to escape the cordon by Spring Bay. They were eliminated by our troops. However, this simultaneous attack probably caused us to not detect the barge moving upstream.

“In response, we are suspending all barge traffic for the duration of this crisis. This zombie outbreak will not happen again,” the general asserted firmly.

“The next questions to be answered are, where are the turkeys now, and where will they attack next? Before I address this, let me reintroduce Dr. Edwin Galloway of the Poultry Research Institute in Northwestern University. Dr. Galloway.”

The Turkey Institute

“General Bagley invited me here today to share some of our latest findings on this turkey disease, which leads to the condition popularly called ‘zombie turkeys.’

“We’ve managed to induce zombiism in several varieties of turkey. We have also cured the disease in these turkeys, using salt water in various quantities and using various techniques: injection, mist, and bath.

“We have a small flock of zombie turkeys at the Poultry Institute and have tested exactly how much damage they can sustain and still revive. As we already know, chopping a turkey in half, or in smaller pieces, will defeat the regeneration process, as will burning them. However, merely burning their skin is not sufficient. Skin and feathers will grow back within hours, and both will be much tougher than normal—enough to stop buckshot smaller than 00. The turkey must be burnt until all the bacteria in it have been sterilized.

“Likewise, chopping off their heads, legs, wings, et cetera, will only cause them to regenerate much stronger than before. Most turkey farms cut off spurs and beaks to prevent damage to the turkeys. When the Farm Fresh turkeys were infected, the beaks and spurs grew back in the hour’s journey to Joliet. Even freshly killed turkeys in stores, that have not been frozen, when infected with the bacterium will revive within an hour, growing an entire set of organs. The armed forces are already going through the dead turkeys and chopping each carcass to ensure complete death and prevent resurrection.

The Most Important Fact

“But the most important fact we have discovered is that after feeding, zombie turkeys go into a catatonic state for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They burrow down in leaf mold or under bushes and twigs while they sleep off their meal. Their body temperature drops, and they are not detectable by infrared detectors. This explains the military’s difficulty in tracking them after these attacks. I now turn this conference back over to General Bagley.”

 “Let me first express my gratitude towards Dr. Galloway and his team at the Poultry Institute. These findings have given us the advantage over our turkey foes. They led directly to the victory at the battle of Spring Bay, and they have given us help in finding the turkeys after the Joliet disaster.

“We are currently tracking the turkeys to their catatonic nests using dogs. We expect to neutralize a majority of these zombie turkeys over the next forty-eight hours. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, the floor is now open to questions.”

The Press Questions

“Dr. Galloway, what are you doing to prevent future infections of turkeys, wild and domestic? I understand several organic, free-range turkey farms have become infected with zombiism, and all present were lost,” asked Jill Holcomb of ABC News.

“At present, the only means of prevention is to daily mist your turkeys with a five percent saline solution. We have not found an effective antibiotic yet. We have informed the Turkey Growers Association of Illinois of this approach,” Dr. Galloway said,

“General Bagley, at the last press conference, you said the zombie turkeys wouldn’t escape the cordon and had no strategy. Yet they did, and you said the two groups of turkeys moved in tandem, causing you to miss the larger group. Wasn’t that a strategy?” asked Ed Fitzgerald of the Wall Street Journal.

“No. We discussed the possibility of increased intelligence in the zombie turkeys with Dr. Galloway. He has tested them, and they are not smarter than normal turkeys. However, they do travel in cohesive flocks, larger than natural turkey flocks. We believe that when the turkeys got on the barges, there wasn’t enough room for them all, and the flock split. The two flocks still followed the general direction upriver toward the east. What looked like a strategy was just unfortunate happenstance.”

Your Twenty-First Literary Gift Concludes

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