Rusty Fischer: A Deleted Scene

Stop ‘N Go, Go, GO! A Deleted Scene from Detention of the Living Dead

By Rusty Fischer, author of Detention of the Living Dead

Below please find a deleted scene from my new YA Paranormal, Detention of the Living Dead! In DOTLD, a group of kids are sitting in detention when a zombie shuffles in. Trapped, they all become zombies themselves; and that’s where the fun begins!!

But here, exclusively on the Storm Goddess Book Reviews Blog, is a “deleted” scene about what happens when our zombie heroes finally make it outside the Detention room and are “on the run” from a bunch of “zombie soldiers” called the Reapers; I hope you enjoy it:

The cashier is a skinny guy, but all kinds of creepy.

He looks backwoods even before I can get a good look at him; then, once I do, he looks really backwoods.

As in, bury you where they’ll never find you backwoods.

As in, dig you up later and show his friends backwoods.

As in, pickle your rotten body parts in mason jars and sell them out of some roadside stand backwoods.

It’s not just the greasy confederate ball cap cocked crookedly on his pointy shaved head or the stubbly red peach fuzz covering his gaunt, greasy chin or the close-set, beady, weasely eyes or the runny red pimple-covered nose or the ketchup-stained wife beater; it’s just his general blank-stared, slack-jawed expression.

I stop just to listen for banjos, I kid you not.

When I don’t hear any, I walk up to the counter as bravely as I can.

“Do you have anything to write on?” I ask calmly, trying not to sound like one of the living dead.

This kid, dumb as he looks, never misses a beat.

“You someone special, hon?” he asks in an almost silky drawl that doesn’t match his piggish, stupefied expression. “You signing autographs or something?”

Wow, that is just… I mean… really extreme.

In his mouth, the single word “autographs” turns out to have about 18 syllables: Ought-OH-Graph-SSSSSSS.

“No,” I say quietly, shaking my head. “I just, my friends and I, well, we’re writing down directions and I need a pad of paper and something to write with.”

He looks past me to the idling van, where three ghoulish faces sit pressed to the windows like third graders outside the new candy store.

“Big van like that ought to have some kind of paper products in the glove box, don’tcha think?” he asks rhetorically, obviously implying I’m too dumb – or too spoiled – to look.

I shake my head and say, “Yeah, we tried all that, nothing there.”

“Not even a sales receipt or empty candy bar wrapper or nothing?” he asks knowingly, giving me the business – and loving every minute of it. “You know sometimes you got’s to move the seat back a little, never know what you might find if you go to a little extra effort. This one time, my cousin Beaufort was about to sell his pickup truck to my Uncle Norton, and just before he headed out to close the deal he moved the seat back to make sure there wasn’t no spare change lying around and dang if he didn’t uncover a whole five dollar bill sittin’ there, curled up and looking lonely.”

“Awesome story,” I spurt, in my mind figuring the Reapers are closing in on our location any second. “Just, very rich in detail. Almost… too... rich, if you know what I mean. Listen I just, seriously, a scratch sheet of paper, that’s all I need. Help me out here?”

He shrugs noncommittally, unimpressed, not bothering to look behind the counter for something he might have on hand, for free.

“Over to the magazine rack up yonder,” he drawls, smacking his lips as if savoring a fine jug o’ moonshine, “we’ve got some crossword books and such; might be some blank pages at the end of one of them, you know, for scribblin’ notes or doodles and such like.”

I purse my lips and blink my eyes in a kind of “good suggestion” face, but it flies by him.

He spits something into a can as I walk away, finding a gaily-covered pink word search book that, just as he predicted, has about eight solid pages of blank paper in the back under the heading for each: “Notes.”

There are single packs of aspirin and cans of motor oil and girly mags and salt and vinegar chips and soda and beer and pickled alligator rind in homemade freezer bags, but not a single flippin’ pen hanging from a single flippin’ rack.

I walk back to the counter, none too eager to do so, and hand over the crumpled five dollar bill Proctor gave me in the van.

“Can I… do you… is there a pen back there?”

He smirks and slides over a coffee mug shaped like a woman’s breast (you really can’t make this stuff up, and you really, really have to see this for yourself) and with a guilty smile says, “Plenty of pens, miss; not a single one for sale.”

Then he looks at my snazzy used sweat suit – which I hadn’t noticed in the dim light of the thrift shop shed but in the bright light of this 24-hour convenience store the shimmery material isn’t so much gray as silver and… it… sparkles, I kid you not – and winks suggestively.

“Course, if you’re willing to trade,” he oozes seductively, or I suppose what passes for it in these parts, “I can give you all the pens your pretty little heart desires.”

I sigh.

“Don’t make me do this the hard way,” I say, my voice flat, my eyes hollow, my new zombie patience level way below “Empty.”

In my mind a fleet of Reapers is pulling up in the parking lot at this minute, maybe hundreds of them.

I flash a look at the van and, nope, it’s still there alone.

The question is… for how long?

“How’d you know?” he leers. “The hard way is just how I like it, darlin’.”

I lift my face to get a good look at his simpering, stupid-faced mug and plead, “Just one pen, please?”

He shakes his pointy head and wink-winks, nudge-nudges toward the open supply room door, which even from here I can see contains a sagging cot and a gooey green lava lamp splashing 1960 mood ring colors all over the half-naked beer posters covering the walls.

I look at the price on the puzzle book and say, “Here, this only costs 3 bucks. I’ll give you the 5, you give me the stubbiest, shortest, ugliest pencil in that mug and I’ll let you keep the change, huh?”

He stands back a little, now that I’ve given him the Full Monty and he can see in finer detail the hollow circles under my hollow eyes.

“Yikes, honey,” he points out, greasy upper lip curling in disgust. “You don’t look quite so purty, now that I’m getting a closer look at you. You got that pig flu or something?”

With a sly, piggish grin he slips the cup AND the crossword book out of reach and says, “Maybe I shouldn’t be selling you anything, dearie; sick as you look and all.”

That’s it; if I have to hear one more word out of his syrup-guzzling mouth I’m going to tear this place apart.

Instead, I slam the five dollar bill down on the glass countertop, shattering it into a dozen big slabs that fall into the lottery ticket case directly underneath.

“Hey, watch it!” he shouts, but before he can move I’ve yanked his arm over a particularly nasty shard of glass.

“You’ve got my money; give me the magazine AND a pen – scratch that, make it TWO pens you insufferable little creep – and maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you keep your swastika tattooed arm.”
Even with his limb in peril Mr. Redneck sticks with the ‘tude.

“Why don’t you come and get it?” he asks, but before he gets a chance to lick his lips leeringly one last time I yank his arm down and over the glass.

He shrieks like, well, like a stuck pig and while he’s shrieking I grab the word search and two or three pens and walk out the door without looking back.

By the time he comes running, waving a bloody arm and two very pointed fingers (I’ll let you figure out which ones), the van is chugging out of the lot and spitting gravel into his face.

So there you have it, a scene that never made it into the book and that you can only find here, on this very blog! Thanks for reading, and I hope it will add to your enjoyment of the book if you ever get to read Detention of the Living Dead, out this month from Decadent Books!

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!