Your Thirteenth Literary Gift of My 25 Gifts to you. Hi! I’m author Andy Zach and today’s your lucky day!
It’s not just lucky for you, but also for Sam Melvin, who barely survives his adventures in Zombie Detective. Your free excerpt is below.
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Your Thirteenth Gift: Zombie Detective – Sam’s First Case
An elderly but spry man entered.
“Mr. Haagen?”
“That’s my name—don’t wear it out. Or you can call me Steve. You are . . .”
“Sam Melvin, private investigator. I heard you had some zombie animal here.”
“Or something. You saw my cows as you came in?”
“Sure.”
“Every night for the past week something has been breaking through my fence, and my cows have been escaping.”
“Wow. Could it simply be your cows getting out?”
“Nope. The fence is broken from outside.”
“Um, try a bigger fence?”
“It’s electrified. I amped up the voltage. Nothing. I put steel fencing behind the wire. Down it came. I even tried cinderblocks behind the steel fencing. Everything was smashed.”
“I guess I’ll have to watch it overnight.”
“Yeah, I thought of that, and then I thought of you, the famous zombie turkey reporter. I didn’t want to try this without your expertise.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“So you’re working as a detective now? A zombie detective?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, detect.”
Sam Melvin Detects
Sam went to the broken fence with Steve. A hundred yards of electric fence wire lay on the ground, pointing toward the barn. The steel fencing was bowed and flattened. The cinderblocks were scattered about like cereal pieces from a toddler’s high chair.
“Whoa, there was some real force used here.”
“I’m glad it’s you who’s investigating.”
“Uh, yeah. What are these tracks all over the ground?”
“My cows. When the fence goes down, they go out. They come back in the same way.”
“They return?”
“Sure. They know where the food is.”
“What’s on the other side of the fence? Who’s property is it?
“It’s my neighbor’s wood lot. We’ve gone through it together, but we haven’t found anything.”
“I hope you were armed.”
“Yup. We read about the zombie turkeys. We had shotguns and flamethrowers. Zombie Burners brand from Amazon.”
“That’ll do it. I’m not sure the shotguns would help. They only slow them down while they regenerate.”
“Heh. I’ve been reading up on zombie turkeys. They’re loaded with rock salt.”
“That’s a new one. I know salt water works on zombie turkeys to kill the bacteria, but I never thought of rock salt.”
“You put a load of rock salt into a zombie turkey and what do you get when it dissolves? Salt water.”
“That might work.”
“We’ll find out tonight.”
That evening, Sam enjoyed a hearty barbecue steak dinner with Steve and his wife, Abby, around their dinner table. They filled in the cracks with corn on the cob and homemade French fries.
“That was a great meal, Steve, Abby. Thanks.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, Sam. Seems we always have plenty of beef around here,” Abby said.
“Sun’s down, Sam. Let’s go on our ‘steakout.’”
Your Thirteenth Literary Gift – The ‘Steak-out’
“Ha! Did you get the fence back up?”
“Yup. The boys are getting pretty fast at repairing that baby. I even had them mix up a bag of concrete and pour it over the cinderblocks.”
“Would it set that fast?”
“So happens we were laying a new driveway and I got this concrete admixture that hardens it faster. Plus, I had some rebar lying around, and I put that in too.”
“Let’s see if that slows down this thing, whatever it is.”
“You don’t think it was those zombie turkeys?”
“No, there’d be turkey feathers everywhere, and they’d attack your cows.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m afraid some other animal has gone zombie.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes. I hope you have your flamethrower.”
“Yep. I’ve got the big one I use to protect the house. I hooked an old well pump to a fifty-five-gallon barrel of napalm. I read about that in the Midley Beacon.”
“Yes, that was from one of the turkey farmers who survived.”
As they settled down in a duck blind to watch the fence from fifty yards away, Sam asked, “Steve, did you have any zombie turkeys out here?”
“Yeah, we got one flock come through before Thanksgiving, but the flamethrower did the trick. I’d say I owe you one, Sam.”
The Attack
They watched the fence in the light of the setting half-moon. Out of the woods galloped a huge shape. Its eyes glowed red. It accelerated and hit the fence head-down. Sparks flew as the electric fence wires snapped. The steel fence slammed into the reinforced cinderblocks. The blocks and the concrete cracked and bent but didn’t break. The steel rebar held.
“What is that?” Sam cried “It’s a zombie something.”
“I think—” Steve was cut off as the thing slammed into the fence again and again, like a horizontal jackhammer. With each blow, chips of concrete and cinder blocks flew yards from the back of the fence, hitting the blind like shrapnel.
“I think it’s going to break through!” Sam said.
The rebar bowed more and more as the concrete and cinderblocks crumbled beneath the massive blows. Then like a spring, a whole section popped out of the gravel that once was solid. The creature followed with a snort and a bellow.
“It’s a bull!”
“A zombie bull!”
Simultaneously, they sprayed the huge bovine with their flamethrowers.
Crazed, dazzled, and maddened by the flames, the bull ran in circles and then fled back to the woods. They could trace its path by the burning underbrush in its wake.
“OK, it’s time to see if this salt buckshot works.” Sam checked the magazine of the shotgun Steve had given him. He found it full and trailed the bull’s fiery tracks, carrying the shotgun.
“It worked on the zombie turkeys, but I don’t know about this bull.”
“There’s only one way to find out. Try it. Maybe we’ll find it sleeping.”
Here Ends Your Thirteenth Literary Gift
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