POW! (Book 1): The Zombie Days

By

Peter Oliver Wonder

Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA): 3724 Cowpens Pacolet Rd., Spartanburg, SC 29307

This edition published in 2016 by Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA)

Copyright © Peter Oliver Wonder 2016

Cover Art © Loraine Van Tonder 2016

Editing © Donna Marie West 2016

 Lyrics in Use © HedPE “The Meadows” 2000

All rights reserved.

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Chapter One

It's the title of this story. It's the initials of your protagonist. That’s me; I’m Peter Oliver Wonder. It's also the sound a zombie makes after being shot in the stomach with an incendiary round. You see, the flesh they eat still gets digested just like any meal in the stomach of a normal, living person. Except, in a zombie, its own insides are being digested in addition to all the bits of shit that it devours throughout an average day. This excessive digestive process produces quite a bit of methane. Way more methane, in fact, than the average digestion process of a living person produces. This methane is, of course, highly flammable, and when it is fired at with an incendiary round it results in quite an explosion. POW!

Seeing as how most of the zombie-fucks have died by now, it would be foolish of you to think that this is a book about zombies. I wouldn't really even say we had an apocalypse. I mean yeah, there was some horrible shit that went down. People died . . . Many people . . . We lost power, so most of our cooking is done via open flame. Oil is no longer refined into gas to make our cars run. Ugly truths were brought to the surface. The government turned into a big puddle of wet turds . . . But this tale isn't about all that. When you sit and think about it, what's really changed after everything? People are still douchebags for the most part.

This is the story of how my life has continued after the dead rose up and fucked up a bunch of our shit. There are still towns and stores and friends and herpes. You know—same old, same old. Things are just a bit different now. For example, you see people walking around with rifles and shotguns just ready to blow a motherfucker’s head off. I'm one of those guys. I walk around town with my .22 bolt action rifle that I got when I was a kid. It doesn’t have much power behind it, but it’ll destroy a zombie brain just as well as anything else will. There's still law, of course. In our town, we have a sheriff who deals with what few laws we do still have in place. You still can't kill one of us that haven’t already died and you can't steal shit; the usual stuff you might expect. We mostly trade. It works. I don't know why we ever invented money in the first place.

So why don’t we get started by me telling you a little bit about myself? You know, back before the shit hit the fan I was an average dude. The only thing special about me then was that I was a reservist in the United States Marine. I was a Corporal, with four Marines directly under me, and three more that I wasn't in charge of, but they looked to me for information and guidance because their leaders sucked at life in general. I had deployed to Iraq once, but never saw combat. Other than that, I'm just a single guy. I used to have a job where I stared at a screen for hours on end while occasionally slapping a mouse across my desk. I won’t bore you with the details, but while I sat at my desk I basically just drew triangles all day. Or I was supposed to be doing so, anyway. In truth, I spent a bunch of time surfing the internet on my Smartphone or reading e-books. Yeah, I guess you could say I was a bit of a nerd. I was never really much for social interaction, either. I didn't have a lot of friends, but I liked it that way.

I live in northern California, up in the hills in a nicely forested area. It's a really nice place . . . or at least it was when you didn't have to think about the possibility of a flesh eating douchebag behind each and every fucking tree you see. Other than that, it's beautiful. You could hardly even tell that I lived in a trailer park. The home I live in looked like a haunted house when I first bought it about a year before the zombies first appeared but, thanks to the place I worked for, I got a bunch of siding and lumber for free. The place looks really decent now and I got it for a steal. In the community, we have a creek in one direction and there's a pond in the other. You can pull fish out of either one. That was a big help when things got really bad. I've only just recently begun to go around exploring the rest of this place. You can grow pretty much anything up here, too. We have a lot of apples and berries, so ya know . . . pie. There's lots of pie now that things are getting a bit easier to cope with. It was cool at first, but now I think that the women just do it to keep their minds off of the scary things. I, for one, am sick of pie. There are probably better things to be made in a wood-burning oven but, for some reason, they love to bake their pies.

My story begins in the woods with me doing what I do. I had the hood of my jacket up and was wearing my sunglasses while standing completely still, holding my rifle in one hand, and staring at something in the distance—in deep thought, surrounded by the beauty of nature and complete silence. That was when my best friend, Kyle, strolled up. We served in the same unit back in the day when we were both in the Marine Corps. We're more like brothers than friends, really.

"Hey, Pete!" He shouted again as he worked his way closer. “Pete?”

Because I wasn't responding, Kyle apparently thought it was a good idea to poke me in the cheek with the muzzle

of his rifle.

"Dude, what the fuck?!" I shouted, slapping the barrel away from my face.

"Sorry, man. I thought you might be turning into one of them."

"No, man. Do you see any chunks of flesh missing? I was just spacing out. HARD. Remember that one show,
Family Guy
?"

"Yeah, why?" Kyle asked.

"I was daydreaming about sitting on a nice couch with an ice cold beer in my hand and I was watching it."

“Nice . . . Anyway, we got a horde of zombies, down the hill a little ways, headed towards the town. I brought you a slice of pie to get you ready."

"You mean to tell me there's a horde of zombies heading this way and you stopped for a couple slices of pie?"

"It's a small horde . . ."

I took the pie from him and looked it over in the palm of my hand for a solid fifteen seconds before chucking it at the nearest tree.

"Kyle, you know I'm sick of pie. Come on, let's go get these fuckers."

As we were rushing down the hill, Kyle shouted, "Look out!" Of course, this made me look at him to see what I should be looking out for. I totally missed the root sticking out of the ground and went flying, landing with my face in something wet, warm, and sticky.

"Is this . . . pie?" I asked in disgust, plucking myself out of the mess.

Kyle was laughing his ass off. "Dude, I tossed that pie out when I was headed up to find you. What are the odds that you would end up face down in it?" he belted out between gasps for air.

"Why the hell did you do throw it out?"

"Because it was apple, homie. You know I hate apple."

"Awesome. Well, that’s just my luck, isn’t it?"

"You okay, man?" Kyle asked, still grinning at my misfortune.

"Yeah, I’m just dandy. Let's just keep going, bro." I wiped the dirty pie from my face with my forearm. Once I scooped up my rifle, we continued down the hill.

"At least we're almost there. He's just right up here."

"Whoa, wait, did you just say he? I thought you said there was an entire horde?"

"Man, I've told you—any number of zombies is considered a

horde. One zombie is a small horde."

"Damn it, Kyle! A horde is like fifty zombies or more. Could you quit it with these false alar-"

"There's the horde!" Kyle pointed his muzzle in the direction of a single zombie that was looking off in the distance. It didn’t appear to be in a position to do any harm to anyone, but there’s no sense in waiting until they eat someone to put them down. This was probably exactly what I looked like when Kyle found me.

"You're such a moron. Why did you even bother to come find me for this shit?" I muttered under my breath.

I took a knee, raised my rifle, took aim, and—just as I was about to squeeze off a round into the skull of walking death—we heard, "WAAAIIIT!!"

Simultaneously, Kyle and I said, "What the fuck?!"

"What the hell are you boys doing out here?" the unknown lady demanded.

Looking toward a small clearing off to the right, I saw the cute girl and said, "Well, there's a zombie over there and I imagine everyone wants it to stop eating people . . . as they tend to do. So I was going to shoot it in the head."

She seemed none too thrilled by my response. "That
'zombie'
used to be a person just like you and me. He has rights, too!"

Yes. Evidently, we have politically correct people even after we ran out of room in hell. "Look, chick, we-"

"Chick?!
I have a name you know!"

"Oh shit," Kyle and I murmured in unison.

"It's Evelyn," said the cute chick.

"Well, congratulations. Now, do you mind?" I asked, gesturing towards the creature that had become aware of our presence.

Kyle chuckled. "You guys should just bone already and get it over with."

Evelyn walked over and punched him in the arm. Hard. Then I hit him in the same spot, but not quite as hard as she had. Honestly, I was thinking the exact same thing; I just didn’t say it. This chick was bangin’ hot with piercing blue eyes and long blonde hair. Her skin was a beautiful shade of white . . .

"So, what's your suggestion, then?" I asked.

"You should detain him like you would any other murderer in our society."

"For real?"

"Yes," she said matter-of-factly.

"Fine, I’ve got a plan. Kyle, you wait here until I give you the signal. At that point you are going to distract that kind, dead citizen over there. Right now, I'm going to circle around behind him so you can cause a distraction. At that point, I'll run out from behind, tackle him, and hog tie him. You,

Evelyn, you wait here and observe a master of his craft."

"Is that right?" She smiled the smile of a beautiful demon.

"Man, what you wouldn't do for a pair of amazing tits," Kyle said under his breath. He was, of course, one hundred percent right. Those tits looked like God was giving me a thumbs up. It’d be rude of me not to try to show off at least a little bit.

This time she kicked him in the shin, but I just grinned like an idiot with my mind full of boobs for a moment.

"Your friend’s a pretty classy guy, isn't he?"

"Sorry about that. This is my boy Kyle, and I'm Pete. But people call me POW."

"People call you that?" she asked with a hint of disgust in her voice.

"Yeah . . . Well, some people do . . . sometimes."

"Bro, no one calls you POW. I told you that shit is super lame."

"Peter, Kyle . . . Don't you guys think you should get to work on Mr. Dead Guy?"

"She's right, Kyle. You know what to do?"

"Human bait? It's the job God made me for."

I nodded to Kyle and winked at Evelyn before heading around to the back side of the zombie, giving it a wide berth. When I got about half way around, I realized one of my boots was untied, so I stopped to tie it. The last thing you want while ambushing the living dead is to trip over your own shoelaces like a drunken four-year-old. That’s the kind of shit you learn on day one as a zombie removal professional. As I was finishing up with the laces, I heard a crack right next to me.

"God damn it."

And, just like that, the zombie was on top of me and I was just barely keeping it at arm’s length while I was fighting it off. As it was snapping its fierce jaws at me, all I could think of was that awesome rack. I was going to have to kill this thing or I'd never see that wonderful chest again. I pulled my knife from my belt and stuck it into the creature’s temple like a skewer through a cube of beef. This may well have been the first zombie brain kabob in existence.

"Really, Kyle? No warning at all?" I asked, slightly out of breath.

"Sorry bro. I was . . . distracted," he said in a fog, gazing at Evelyn’s ass as she ran over to hug me.

I saw her first
, I thought.

"Thank God you're okay," she said, wrapping her arms around me.

God damn, how do beautiful girls always manage to smell just like heaven
?

"Yeah, uh, sorry about your new friend over there," I said as I looked over to watch the goo dribble from its punctured temple into a puddle that was forming on the ground.

"Well, in a fight for your life it's expected that you do whatever you have to, silly," she said, smiling.

"What the hell are you doin' out here with these boys, Evelyn?" shouted another woman from the direction where Kyle and I had plotted our attack earlier. She was already heading in our direction.

"I was trying to save this guy from being another statistic, Mom," Evelyn shouted back.

"Great job," said the older woman, looking from the newly dead zombie over to me. Turning to Kyle, she asked, "Did you enjoy the pie, hon?"

"It was great! Thanks again, Carolina."

"You're welcome, sugar." She aimed a smile his way. "I got another one in the oven. Just thought I'd come see what all the noise was about. You kids stay safe out here." She turned and walked back to the house which was only about fifty yards away that I hadn't noticed earlier.

"Carolina is your mom?" I asked. "I didn't even know she had kids. Or that she would ever be able to find a mate. Honestly, I didn't even know she could reproduce . . ." Before everything happened, Carolina was the receptionist at my workplace. We had never gotten along very well.