“Seriously, Norm, let it go,” I say.
“Nuh-uh,” he says. “We are too close to blow it now. I let this one go and next thing you know it’s taking a bite out of my dick while I’m pissin in the woods. You stay here, keep the girls safe.”
I almost laugh. The girls don’t need protection as long as Abby is around. She has since become quite the killer of the dead. She no longer fears, and I think that’s the first step to surviving in this world.
Me, well, I’m constantly scared shitless. I just try not to show it, mainly for Darlene.
Norm points through the windshield. “There’s the son of a bitch,” he says. “I’ll be back before you can say bacon and eggs.”
“Bacon and eggs, asshole,” I say.
He glares at me. “Clever, Jack. Always clever.” He gets out.
I watch as the fog swallows him up, and thirty seconds later, I’m shaking Abby awake and handing her the Glock. “I’m going to cover Norm,” I say, then I pull the machete free from the bag, and smile. “Be back before you can say bacon and eggs.”
Afterword
I wrote Dead Haven in the summer of 2016 — well, I wrote about 35k words of it then. Originally, it was called Dead Weight because the bulk of the story takes place in the Woodhaven Recreation Center, but once I revisited the characters and uncovered just how fucked-up Jack Jupiter’s world had become, I decided to finish the book and give it series potential.
I’ve always wanted to write post-apocalyptic fiction. I mean who doesn’t want to hit the reset button? Who doesn’t want to see if they can survive and thrive in a world where there are no police around to protect us, no supermarkets to feed us, no doctors to heal us? Who doesn’t want to live in a world without rules?
Most sane people don’t, and that’s the beauty of fiction. We can live out all these crazy scenarios through the eyes of characters we love and characters we love to hate without consequence.
Essentially, that’s why I wrote Dead Haven and why I kept writing in Jack’s world, because I want to live out these scenarios with him and Abby and Darlene, and now Norm Jupiter, too.
I’ve just finished writing the sequel, Dead Hope, and it should be out within the next couple of months. This is where society really takes a turn for the worst and our heroes have to cross many lines to survive. I hope you’ll check it out when it’s published.
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Thanks for reading,
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F. M.
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February 7th, 2017
About the Author
Flint Maxwell was raised by wolves in the mountains of Antartica, where at the tender age of four he ate his first human heart -- no, just kidding. He doesn't have wolves. He has dogs. A whole bunch of dogs, like five or six...he doesn't know anymore. It's too many to count, really. Flint lives in the United States of America in a very cold and sometimes snowy state where the sports teams are consistently disappointing and the skies are never sunny.
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Get in touch with Flint at:
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Flint’s Author Page
or
Flint’s Facebook
Dead Haven (Jack Zombie Book 1) Page 20
