Hi! I’m Cerra and I am a Taurus! I love tomatoes and black-capped chickadees! OK, so none of that is actually true, I just lifted the words from a B-52s song. “Song for a Future Generation,” if you’re interested, but because you’re probably, like, twenty, you’re not. So, moving on, I am in fact Cerra, but all the rest is crap. Do you even know what a black-capped chickadee is? Me neither.

So let’s start at the beginning—except this is book two, so we’re really starting in the middle, and since you’re probably part of the “want it all now, digital natives, don’t have time to read the first book, everyone gets a prize” generation, I’ll be repeating things that the Old Fuckers from Generation X (i.e., in their forties and essentially walking dead already but took the time to actually read the first book) have already heard.

How about a description? Simmer down, Old Fuckers, we’ll get to the new stuff soon enough. So, I am actually Cerra, the one and only daughter of my deceased parents, with dark brown hair, pale skin, large puppy eyes, a wide (but not too wide) Latina nose, and big pouty lips. Yep, just like in your fantasies, you pervert.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, I turned sixteen just in time for the world to end and the dead to start walking. I’d like to blame the Republicans for this. In fact, I will blame the Republicans for this. They managed to fuck up everything else, so why not create a plague of walking dead to cap off their years of deficit spending, tax cuts for the rich, and a boot to the face for everyone else?

So yes, the Republicans started it all just in time for me to turn sixteen. After that, I spent a year surviving in the Great Wreck that was the L.A. (El Aye for the Latinos out there) Basin, until a big fat earthquake convinced me that I should move to a place where the world was not conspiring to bury me under mounds of rubble and I only had to worry about the dead.

So, after the Big One, I grabbed my shit and headed east just in time to turn seventeen.

Yay.

I am sixteen, going on seventeen, la, la-la-la, la! OK, I already turned seventeen, but there is no song that says—oh, wait! Yes, there is: she’s only seventeen (seventeen!)…daddy says she too young, but I’m a pedophile! Yeah, yeah!

OK, so maybe those aren’t the exact words to the song, but it sure is the meaning, right? Right.

So, on my seventeenth birthday, I walked out of the Great Wreck of Los Angeles and into the Big, Empty, and Broiling Hot Wreck that was the American Southwest. But you knew that, didn’t you? Or did you jump right into book two? Jesus, man! Learn a little patience. Go back and read book one. I’ll wait here with the Old Fuckers and Johnny/Jane Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder who read the first book.

Done? OK. So I turned seventeen and headed east, hoping to find Sandia Station. Yeah, I know, right? What nerd came up with that name? At least they didn’t name it Utopia Planitia or Galactica or Mos Eisley or something stupid like that.

Am I right, or am I right?

So, after singing myself a birthday tune (you did read the story all the way to the end, right?), I climbed down off that big old car wreck and started walking.

And walking.

And walking.

Good God, the Southwest is nothing but a big, hot, fat, stinking load of desert. After a week of walking through the unending furnace, I felt like a red lobster tail roasted on an open grill, or a charbroiled hamburger patty, or maybe even a fried and blackened cheese wiener.

Mmm, cheese wieners. And now I’m hungry. Fuck.

Since we’re on the subject of wieners, did you ever wonder why people wished to be Oscar Mayer wieners? You might think it was so everyone would be in love with them. Not so. Major studies showed that people who wished they were an Oscar Mayer wiener actually had a bite and/or an “eaten alive” fetish. And guess what? In the eyes of the dead, all the living were Oscar Mayer wieners, and the dead sure loved the living. So there’s that.

Back to the intro!

Why didn’t I get a bike, you might ask? The answer is: shut the hell up. I didn’t think about it until I was halfway through the big-ass, broiling-hot, motherfucking no-man’s-land called eastern California.

And did I mention I was only seventeen? With two whole songs dedicated to expressing that fact? I did. Did I mention in the first book that a teenage brain is not fully developed, nor is it good at thinking ahead? Did you even read the book?

Well, I did. (Mention it, that is. I didn’t need to read the book because I wrote it. Duh.)

I’d get one in Blythe.

So let me tell you about the sprawling metropolis that is Blythe. They call it the Jewel of the Desert, a mecca of civilization that draws millions of tourists to see its marvels. So many of the tourists are starstruck with its magnificence they decide to stay, making it the fastest-growing city in the United States.

Did you buy any of that bullshit? Then you are a retard who needs to put down that Xbox controller and read more. Blythe is a wasteland desert community where hopes, dreams, and your grandparents go to die. In short, it is a shithole.

It does (or did, in the Old World) have an In-N-Out Burger, so that puts it ahead of Albuquerque at least. Fucking no In-N-Out in Albuquerque. What kind of city was that? A shitty city, that’s what kind.

So back to Blythe. I walk into this outpost of meth-heads and lost futures, thinking, Well, at least there will be only a few dead, right?

Wrong.

They must have been having a meth, old people, or lost dreams convention there when the Event kicked off because the dead were everywhere. Everywhere, I tell you!

And the first dead person I bump into on my quest to find a bike is Ms. Teenage California Dream, standing just inside the door of the bike shop I want to go in to. So I stop across the street, carefully checking out the surroundings in case the local natives start banging their drums. And by “local natives banging their drums,” I mean the dead coming to chew on my ass. Really, folks, I can only say zombie, walking dead, the dead, and the living dead so many times before people with ADHD lose interest, so pay attention to my funny descriptions and let’s keep up. Oh, I haven’t used the word reanimated yet! But that doesn’t really sound right, does it? It has more of a Frankenstein or Mummy feel to it.

Focus, focus, focus!

Man, was she hot. At least she was hot when she was alive. She must have been out on her daily run when the dead got her since she was dressed in the smallest, tightest, booty-squeezing shorts a girl could wear without violating some local indecency ordinance, crushing her pelvis, or rupturing the ass space-time continuum, a type of sports bra that apparently had antigravity properties since it practically levitated her tits up into your face, a pair of fancy, little white running shoes, and a pert ball cap. All of this (and more) painted on to a rock-solid (if slightly rotted) body. She had bright blond hair and what must have been, in the good old “alive” days, clear blue eyes. They were now dull and scratched up, since the dead don’t blink and have no operating tear ducts.

Sucks being dead.

Her face—OK, what was left of her face—was a picture straight out of Playboy before their collective penis fell off and they stopped printing naked lady pictures.

Let’s stop and imagine that for a second: Playboy. Staple of every American teenage male horn dog. No longer printing pictures of naked lady parts. The world had indeed come to an end.

So, this girl has your standard-issue pert nose, standard-issue full lips, standard-issue big old innocent eyes (now faded due to scratched-up corneas and shit as described above), clearly augmented and gravity-defying boobs, and an ass you could play bass on. Hot, right? You’d bang that all day long, wouldn’t you? Hit all four walls so hard she’d come back to life, right?

Right?

You fucking sicko! She’s dead! Lord only knows what she has crawling around in her crevices, cracks, and orifices! You’d catch like twenty different fungi, bacterial, and viral infections just by touching her. And a necro-venereal disease to boot. And her shit would probably fall off while you were doing it. Yuck. Did I mention that most of the lower right side of her face was gone? Doesn’t matter, does it? You are one sick dude. Imagine that as you’re doing your whack-a-mole job on her: skin tearing, gasses expelling, flaps flapping, and limbs falling off. Nice.

Moving on, man, moving on.

So, Miss Dead Teen U.S.A. is standing there between me and my prize, looking like every teenage male’s (and pedophile’s, pervert’s, and lawyer’s) fantasy. I carefully pull out one of my silenced pistols, take a bead on her forehead, and slowly pull the trigger.

Pfft!

That’s the sound of a silenced pistol depositing one single bullet in one single dead person’s head.

Crash! Shatter! Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! BANG! Crash! Shatter!

That’s the sound of Little Miss Dead falling backward into the bike shop’s window, hitting a massively long row of new bikes and causing them to cascade down onto one another like dominos (not the pizza), until they too crashed through another plate glass window and out onto the street.

Fuck this, fuck that, and fuck everything else, too.

The immense cacophony of noise carried all sorts of miles in the still desert air, and a block or two over, I heard the scream of an ever-loving sprinter. And the dead girl just lay there.

Bitch.

So, yep, I ran. Big surprise, right? Did you think I’d just stand there and look around wondering what was happening, discussing probable escape routes with myself, or trying to figure out which direction the now sprinting sprinter would come, like they do in all the zombie movies you’ve seen? Well, let me tell you, pal, this ain’t no movie.

So, I ran. Bang! Off in the direction opposite of the screaming dead.

See what I did there?

I ran away from the incoming dead. Away, not into.

Clever girl.

I ran as hard as I could push my legs, cursing that dead bitch with every step. I did not run left or right. I did not look back over my shoulder repeatedly to see if the dead were closing in on me. I did not scream and wail for someone to help me. I did not fall down and twist my ankle.

OK, so I did fall down. I took one teensy-weensy look back to see if the sprinter had locked on to me. Next thing I know, I’m ass over teakettle, sprawling across the pavement. I looked up to see that some dickhead had left a bike in the middle of the road. You might think that is ironic, since I was looking for a bike, and I think you may go and fuck yourself.

I guess the horror movies were right.

Let me tell you more about what I didn’t do. I didn’t sprain my ankle (yay for me). I didn’t look around to see where the danger might be coming from (I knew it was coming from behind me because I ran away from the zombies). I didn’t whimper and try to crawl away because I was too scared to get back up and start running (familiarity with zombies breeds contempt of zombies. Oh, hey! A new rule: Familiarity with zombies breeds contempt of zombies! That would be, let’s see now: five, six seven…Rule Number Nine!). And I didn’t scream.

Where are all the other rules, you ask? Go read the last book, man! They’re all there! OK, you can go to the end of this one. They’re all listed there, too, you lazy-ass, no-first-book-reading so-and-so.

OK, I did scream, because when I got rapidly back up on my feet, not one fish, two fish, red fish, or blue fish came running around the corner and zeroed in on me, but a whole fucking school of…fish? Dead cats in a hat? Um, green eggs and zombies? Shit. Dr. Seuss analogies fail me here, so fuck it. Dead sprinters came flying around the corner and spotted me.

Anger! Hatred! Rage! Grab! Devour! Taxes! Lawyers! Republicans! Eat!

At least that’s what I think they’re thinking. Well, maybe not about taxes, but I’m pretty sure about the rest. Especially the lawyers and Republicans.

And for any Republicans left alive and reading this, feel free to substitute “Democrat” whenever you read “Republican” if it makes you feel any better. For the lawyers out there? Too fucking bad, you all are weirdos and everyone hates you. Even the dead.

Now, the funny thing about sprinters is that you can’t outrun them. They are freaky fast, and once they see you, they do not stop until they get you or you get them. These flying fuckers were so close, there was no way I was going to be able to outrun them, so I unslung my fully automated, silenced, and loaded M-16, took aim on the leading edge, and just let them have it. Take that, Left 4 Dead! They might get to me before I cut them all down, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Oh, hey, another rule! Rule Number Ten: Don’t go down without a fight! Man, I’m on a roll. But back to the action.

Piffity, piffity, piffity, piff!

That’s the sound of a fully automated and silenced rifle performing my favorite but inefficient spray-and-pray mode of survival. I sprayed those motherfuckers down with so many bullets they must have thought they had stepped into a rainstorm. Of bullets. From my gun.

And I forgot to pray, goddamn it! Wait, “Goddamn it!” is a prayer, right? Right! The last sprinter dropped exactly three feet from me, just as it was about to leap.

And no, I didn’t measure the distance, smart-ass.

I did, however, stand there with my chest heaving, waiting for the mobs of shufflers and walkers that were surely headed my way. But I didn’t stand there for long, no, sir! (Rule Number Four: Keep moving!) I slung my rifle back over my shoulder and began to carefully, carefully run in the opposite direction from which the zombies must be coming.

And ran right smack-dab into a wall of shufflers and walkers doing their March of Dimes routine.

Goddamn it!

I turned right and ran down a clear street, past an In-N-Out (Double-Doubles! Love you, miss you!), and kept on going, making the occasional left and right until I lost them. I jogged to a stop and bent over with my hands on my knees, heaving and sweating in the ungodly heat and listening for the sound of approaching feet. After a few minutes of hearing nothing and my breathing returning to normal, I stood up and looked around to see where I was.

I was right back in front of the bike shop where Little Miss Dead started the whole event. And worse, she wasn’t even dead. Well, completely dead. You know what I mean. The bullet had only clipped the side of her forehead (leaving a big old trench in her skull, to be sure), knocking her into the window, and now she was getting to her feet, looking to piss me off again.

Mission accomplished, dead girl, mission accomplished. I pulled out my silenced pistol and put another bullet right between her eyes, blowing off the back of her head and spreading her brains all over three or four of the bikes she was lying on.

Bitch.

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