25 Literary Gifts for You! I’m author Andy Zach. For the next 25 days, I’ll give you 25 literary gifts of all shapes and sizes. Let’s get started!
From my book Zombie Turkeys, you get this section from the first chapter.
Bartonville
He felt different. More energetic, more alive. He bred with female after female in his flock without tiring. He stayed awake through the night. No predator scared him anymore.
Then a turkey hunter shot him.
The setting sun overlooked a crisp, clear evening in early November. South of Bartonville, Illinois, a farmer had leased his wood lot to two turkey hunters. Big and burly in their bulky camouflaged outfits, they had just bagged one.
“Good shot, Pete!”
“He’s a big ‘un!”
Pete and Bob walked up to the tom turkey, bleeding on the cold ground. The rest of the flock had scattered into the woods. He had exceptionally good plumage and weighed perhaps twenty pounds. Pete reached down and picked him up by the neck.
“He weighs at least twenty-five pounds!”
Then the turkey’s eyes opened—and gleamed red. He kicked with his spurs and pecked savagely at Pete’s arms and eyes. Dozens of his hens attacked the men from behind.
“Gobble! Gobble!”
He felt different. More energetic, more alive. He had no memory of being shot, but a certain turkey satisfaction at killing his killers. He also enjoyed pecking at their dead meat. This meat tasted better than the frogs he usually ate. He led his flock down the road, in search of more predators to eat.
The Next Scene
Bill Westcot, the coroner of Midley, Illinois (population 512), had seen his share of grisly deaths, but this one took the cake. Two hunters apparently pecked to death by turkeys. How could this be? Wild turkeys were normally shy and secretive, not even as aggressive as geese. Bill looked up as a man came in—average height, maybe five nine, medium build, not fat, not skinny, roundish face, hazel eyes, and brown hair. He would be hard to remember. But Bill had known him all his life.
Sam Melvin, the reporter for Midley Beacon, dropped in for his daily chat. Sam and Bill had been friends since elementary school, and they had both stayed around Midley all their lives. Bill, a short, stocky guy with blondish hair, had gone off to school and become a coroner.
Sam had stayed in Midley after high school, doing odd jobs, until he got on with the Midley Beacon. As a reporter and blogger for a small-town weekly paper, Sam wasn’t especially busy, and he liked to socialize.
When he saw what remained of the corpses on the mortuary slabs, Sam exclaimed, “Gowlurp! Gaawka-urop!” He ran to the bathroom and puked. After washing out his mouth, he returned, eyes averted.
“Who in the hell were those poor bastards?”
“Peter James and Robert Smithville, according to their drivers’ licenses and their shooting permits.”
“They look like someone went at them with a thousand pickaxes.”
“Yup. Pretty gruesome, even for me.”
“What in the world happened?”
Suspenseful Break in Literary Gifts
“As far as I can tell, they were pecked to death by a flock of wild turkeys.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that!”
“Yeah, that’s not really normal turkey behavior.”
“Could they be rabid?”
“Turkeys don’t get rabid, Sam.”
“They don’t attack hunters either. Is ‘death by wild turkey’ what you’ll put on their death certificates?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, that’s what I’ll put as my story headline then. It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper.”
“Make sure when you write it up, people know that ‘wild turkey’ is a bird and not liquor.”
“How can you joke when you have these poor fellows on the slab over there?”
“It’s a job. You get used to it.”
So What Do you Think of Day 1 of Literary Gifts?
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