SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! is about a Haitian master of Voodoo in search of the American Dream. He brings a crop of zombies to America and sells them as slaves to the local "American Supermarket" (think Walmart on steroids) for a percentage of the store's earnings. The superstore's profits skyrocket with the help of these new employees who are complacent with working long hours and for no pay, but it's not long before the zombies get hungry for brains and all the other employees start turning into brainless zombies!
But there's one skater-punk cashier named Jason Hawk who doesn't give his brain up so easily. After getting arrested for skating a totally rad (but private) pool, Jay's parents force him to give up his punk ways and get a mundane job at the local American Supermarket. Bummer!
At first, Jay's new job is boring as hell and painfully uneventful...that is, until some strange-looking new employees start working the front end and all the other employees gradually start turning into zombies. One morning, Jay arrives at work only to find that he is surrounded by an ENTIRE supermarket full of zombies! He tries to escape but they trap him in. Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
But Jason Hawk will be God-mother-friggin-damned if he's going to become a zombie himself. Nah-uh. No way! No how! If those zombies want a piece of his tasty brain, they're not going to get it without Jason putting up ONE...HELL...OF...A...FIGHT. Die zombie bastards! Skater punks live forever! Or will they???
Influenced by the five years I worked as a cashier at two different supermarkets, SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES! is a post-apocalyptic 'punk novel' that also integrates my love of skateboarding, punk rock and an overall Oi Oi Oi attitude!
Without further adieu, here are the first ten pages of the novel:
SUPERMARKET ZOMBIES!
by Matt Burns
PROLOGUE - Haiti. A couple hundred years ago...
“I think I may go and try me some of that cane,” said Luvens aloud to himself. The beads of sweat were squeezing out of his pores like condensation on a cold Coca Cola bottle.
The slave was accustomed to saying things like this out loud to himself. Years of working monotonous work - mostly alone - out there in that dense field forced him to talk aloud like this, lest his head burst from all the thoughts running through his mind. An objective observer would have, perhaps, called him a tad crazy - watching him mumble to himself all day - but the truth of the matter was that speaking out loud was the only way to prevent him from going crazy.
“Yes, how about some of that cane.”
Luvens had spent years and months and days and hours and minutes and seconds harvesting that ripe cane, but - after all that time - he never actually had the opportunity to taste the stuff. This was mostly out of fear, because the plantation owner - Monsignor Dupont - would probably have had his ass caned (no pun intended) if he were to taste some of that delicious cane. But, today, the slave was in an unusually rebellious mood. He figured that he’d been faithfully enslaved for years, so the least he deserved was a small taste of that delicious cane. Yes, that sweet little baby ripe cane.
“Gonna have me some of that cane.”
The bold slave knelt down to the dirty plantation floor and hacked off a four-inch piece of cane with his rusting machete. His mouth couldn't help but water from the thought of chomping on some of that delicious sugar. Of course, before he actually went through with with eating any of it, he wanted to be absolutely sure that nobody was around, especially that pesky brown-nosing slave-driver Radis who cared more about pleasing the white men than helping any of his fellow slaves out.
Luvens looked both ways and assured himself that, indeed, there was nobody in sight, especially Radis who undoubtedly would have reported Luvens in a heartbeat. Yes, there was nothing but extremely dense stalks of cane, and no sound but the buzzing from those heat bugs or whatever those darned insects were called. Luvens referred to them as “heat bugs” because they seemed to buzz the loudest when the sun was at its high noon position. The stronger the sun beat down on them, the louder those bugs seemed to buzz.
“Nobody’s gonna know if I’m havin’ some of this cane,” the slave assured himself.
And it was with this thought in mind that the slave gnawed off the stalk’s brown bark, spitting it to the dusty plantation floor. Once the bark was off, he went to work on the cane’s inner green skin, which was a kind of epidermis that needed to be removed before consumption. Soon, all that remained was nothing but that white stick of tasty goodness.
“Oh, yeah...this is gonna be some tasty cane.”
He sunk his teeth into the sweet stalk, chomped on the pulp and sucked out the goodness. The juices oozed out the corners of his mouth, dripped all the way down his leathery, black neck and eventually got absorbed into the denim of his overalls. The sweet, sticky nectar felt cool against his overheated body.
“Oh, that’s some good cane.”
He kept chomping on all the pulp and sucked out all the juices.
“Yeah, that’s some sweet little cane.”
It may have sounded ridiculous, but Luvens couldn’t help but feel extremely guilty for indulging himself in such a manner. He wasn’t used to doing something like this. All his life he had been conditioned into thinking he was inferior to the white man, that God placed him on earth - not as a human being - but as an assistant to the white man’s progress. In other words, it was his sole purpose on earth to help the white man be all he could be, but it wasn’t his purpose to be all HE could be. He was basically a means to an end, the end essentially being the white man’s success. This is what he was led to believe, anyway, and - for the most part - he believed it, even though another voice inside of him - call it instinct, maybe - told him it was nonsense.
So, yes - conditioned as he was - Luvens perceived something as simple as eating (just a tad) of sweet little cane as an act that only got in the way of the white man’s progress. It was also something that he interpreted as a sin against God, since God placed him on earth in order to assist (not get in the way of) the white man’s progress. But, again, the slave was feeling rebellious on this particular day, so - goddammit - God send a lightning bolt his way if he couldn’t just take a moment to savor some of the delicious cane that he had personally worked so hard on harvesting.
Luvens sucked in the last of the cane’s juices and was relieved that he didn't hear the crash of any lightning bolt anywhere around him. But he DID hear something else. It was a noise, kind of like a dull murmuring sound that seemed to be going: “Uuuuuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
'What was that?!' Luvens wondered. He thought that somebody had snuck up without him being aware of it, so he quickly hid the remaining cane in his overall pocket and gave his cheeks a swipe to hide the juices. But there was nobody there. He could have SWORE that he heard that groaning sound coming from not too far away. Was it his stomach maybe? Or did he unconsciously groan in pleasure while chewing on the sweet pulp? God knows he liked that delicious cane, but did he like it so much that he would involuntarily make a groan as loud as what he just heard?!
“Oooooooohhhhhhhh.”
No, the groan didn't come from him after all. The noises were coming from further away - perhaps a few rows of cane over. Or perhaps it was all in the slave’s head. Yes, Luvens ultimately concluded that the sounds were all a product of his borderline hallucinatory mind. With all the intense heat and sun and consequent dehydration that he usually experienced, it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d heard/seen things that weren’t there.
Chalking up the moans to hallucinations, the slave took the cane back out of his pocket and proceeded to take another chomp out of it, squeezing out the juices and pleasuring his taste buds in ways that he hadn’t had the privilege to experience in a very long time. But, then...
“Aaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
There was a piercing scream in the not-too-far distance. The scream was so loud that it frightened Luvens half to death and he spit all the tasty cane onto the plantation floor. Now, he was pretty darn sure he didn’t hallucinate THAT scream! The moans and groans? Maybe he imagined those things...but that scream?! No way! He didn’t hallucinate that scream! Oh, no. That scream! Not that!!!
The slave stumbled to his feet and crept his way through one or two or three rows of cane. The air from a light zephyr dried the juices on Luvens’ face and he could feel his skin getting sticky, from his face all the way down to his chest. The sugar plantation was so dense and thick with green. He couldn’t see five or maybe not even three feet in front of him. There was nothing but green stalks of sweet-smelling sugar cane.
Machete in hand, Luvens chopped his way through a dozen or so rows of cane, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he heard some more noises. He stood in silence for a moment and listened carefully. It was like lip-smacking or chomping, or like somebody was feasting on some chicken thys or something of a pastier consistency. And then...
“Ooooooooooooh.”
Jesus, it was another groan coming from close by.
“Radis?! That you?!” shouted Luvens, thinking that it could be that wannabe white man munching on a snack he undoubtedly earned for sticking his nose far up Monsignor Dupont's bottocks. But there was no answer - not even a sound, except for more lip smacking and some crunching and maybe even some finger-licking.
Luvens carefully weaved his way in and out of another stalk of cane or two or three, his heart rapping harder and harder against the bone of his chest-plate. Logic told him that there was nothing he should be afraid of...but his instincts told him the complete opposite. To his tragic misfortune, he decided to listen to logic instead of instinct. Big mistake.
Luvens pushed one last stalk of cane to the side with his blade and peeked his head around its frayed greens. ‘Strange,’ he thought. There appeared to be an area where much of the cane had been broken and, in many parts, matted down to the plantation floor. It appeared as though something rather chaotic had recently taken place (a scuffle or fight, maybe) and it disturbed Luvens in a rattling way. He knew that something wasn’t right. Something definitely wasn't right.
The slave reluctantly took a step into the clearing and immediately sensed movement in his periphery. He turned his head towards the movement and saw something that - at first - seemed too disturbing to be real. But it was real all right.
“Oooooooooooh. Brains. Oooooooooooh.”
Why, it was three of his fellow slaves - Robens, Asperen and Sylvester. But they weren’t...um, themselves. Robens, in particular, was on the ground not looking too...er...healthy, while Asperen and Sylvester were kneeling beside him, eating what appeared to be his...BRAINS!!!
“Braaaaaains...” the two slaves moaned. “Braaaaaaaaaains.”
As you may have surmised, describing Robens as being ‘unhealthy’ was a bit of an understatement. He was dead. Very dead. And his brains were being feasted upon in the most terrible and hideous ways.
A chill ran down Luvens’ spine and knocked him into a momentary state of paralysis. He had heard rumors of “zombies” in the past, but he always brushed them off as being a bunch of superstitious humdrum that bore itself out of the Haitian Voodoo culture. But now he was starting to think that maybe these rumors weren’t rumors after all...and such a thought scared the wits out of him. In fact, he was so scared that his eyeballs popped out from their sockets, almost like they were being sucked out by a powerful vacuum.
“ZOMBIES!!!” he screamed.
The two brain-eating slaves heard Luvens’ shout and looked up from their tasty victim. Their faces were paled with chalkiness and their eyes lacked spirit and soul. If there was one overall word Luvens would have used to describe the way his former friends looked, it would be ‘despair', sheer and utter despair. The corners of their mouth dripped with blood and oozed with brain matter. Indeed, these two slaves looked like they COULD be ‘zombies’.
“Zombies!” yelled Luvens again, and he ran the hell out of there, hacking away with his machete at any cane that stood in his path.
But the zombies weren’t about to let Luvens get away, lest they miss out on another delicious meal with tasty brains as its main course. They stumbled up from the ground and chased after Luvens. Their motor skills seemed out of whack so they weren't very fast, but they didn't need to be. With so much cane in Luvens' way, he could only run at about a third of his highest speed. He was lucky if he was able to keep more than five feet between him and those disgusting zombies.
Luvens clutched his machete as tight as he could to be sure he wouldn't drop it and he plowed his way through endless layers and layers of sweet-smelling cane. He couldn’t help but wonder if what was happening now was some sort of punishment that God sent his way for eating some of the white man’s cane. Yes, maybe this was the lightning bolt, after all. Maybe it really WAS true that the black man was on earth to serve the white man and once the black man rebelled against this role, God did something to punish him. Oh why?! Why did he have to go and eat that cane?!
Luvens ran about 100 feet or so through more dense cane and stopped dead in his tracks, hoping like hell that those damned zombies decided to stop following him. All he heard was the heat bugs and, of course, his heart, which was beating so hard against his chest that he had to bend over into a forty-five degree angle to alleviate some of the pressure. But, suddenly...
“Oooooooooooooh. Brains.”
There was rustling behind him. Moans. And groans. And also ‘uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggghhhhhhhs’.
“Zombies!!!” shouted Luvens and he ran it the hell out of there, like a Cheetah on amphetamines.
The zombies followed him, not by means of eyesight, but by means of scent; yes, it was the smell of fresh-tasting brains that guided their way. They were like blood-hounds, only the more precise term would be brain-hounds.
Luvens ran and chopped and tripped and burped and also vomited up some of that delicious pulp he was feasting on earlier. What a waste of tasty cane! And it was at this point that Luvens started to consider the possibility that God had no part of this and he was the victim of some rotten hex. Yes, certainly he was hexed right now from some horrible evil force. What else could have made him burp up that cane and put all that goodness to waste. Hexes!
After several hundreds of yards of nothing but cane, Luvens finally got spat out of the sugar field and tripped his way onto a blanket of weedy, unkempt grass.
“Umph!” he grunted as he landed face-first into the ground. Luvens peeled his face out of the grass and heard more rustling from the field behind him. God, how was it that those zombies were gaining on him so fast?!
“Ohhhhhh. Braaaaaaaaains.”
Luvens didn’t know where the hell he could run to. He looked every which way for the wisest escape-route and that was when he spotted the sugar mill about a couple hundred yards across the grass. Surely this was the only place he could find some safety from those hexed creatures that trailed his scent of brains!
He made a run for the mill, peeking over his shoulder every few seconds or so. The zombies tore their way out of the sugar field by this point and they were stuck on the scent of Luvens’ brains.
“Braaaaaaaaains.”
Luvens ran up to the mill's entrance and immediately noticed a black ‘X’ painted on the wooden door.
"Voodoo!" he shouted.
Yes, it was the mark of Voodoo! Surely somebody at this plantation had been dabbling in the arts of something rotten. Nothing good had ever came out of such practices. The superstitious folks believed voodoo - especially when practiced in an abusive manner - had the ability to open up a portal to a dark, dark world with some dark, dark spirits. Maybe that could explain what was happening here.
Either way, if Luvens had only known that there was an X painted on the door to the mill he wouldn’t have headed in this direction. He would have stayed far, far away from that hexed mill and escaped elsewhere. Hexes! But now he had no other choice. The zombies were only yards behind him. He had to go through the ominous door. He had no choice.
He gripped a rusty metal ring and pulled the heavy wooden door open with all his might - the thing must have weighed a good hundred pounds - and he jumped inside, slamming the door back shut behind him. Then, he shackled the cursed thing with three different locks.
Thump! Thump! Thump! The zombies started throwing their bodies into and slamming their heads against the door. “Oooooooooh. Brains!”
Phew. Luvens was safe from those cursed creatures...for the moment. He let out a long exhale and turned into the main belly of the mill, which reeked from the overwhelming sweet smell of sugar. The entire place was extremely dark, or at least it appeared to be. Luvens’ pupils still hadn’t readjusted themselves from the harsh sunlight outdoors. But along with the darkness, the air also seemed thick and opaque. It gave Luvens the sensation that something oppressive - an energy of some sort - was pressing down on his chest.
Gradually, his eyes adjusted...and adjusted...and adjusted to the new light. The thick darkness became thinner and thinner and thinner. Luvens began to see the outline of what-appeared-to-be a person standing in front of him. And then another outline of what-appeared-to-be a person.
His eyes adjusted some more and the ‘outlines’ became full-out silhouettes...of not just one or two or three people, but maybe five or six.
“Uuuuuuuugggghhhhhhhhhhhh,” moaned one of the silhouettes.
Luvens’ eyes bugged out of his face like a goldfish. “Zombies!” he yelled.
By now, his pupils had fully adjusted to the darkness and faces appeared within the creepy silhouettes. Hexes! Yes, they were zombies...all with chalky faces and pinkish eyes and jellied brain matter smeared all over their faces. Luvens immediately identified all these particular zombies as more of his fellow slaves. Why, it was Evens! And Rodner! And even the brown-nosed slave-driver Radis who perhaps finally got what was coming to him. Oh, the hexes that have been placed upon these slaves! What evil force had done this?!
But there was another zombie that stood out from the others, mainly because his skin was whiter than the rest...a little too white...maybe because he WAS white. Indeed, this was no slave. It was the slave...master!
“Monsignor Dupont!” yelled Luvens.
But Dupont couldn’t get any words out of his mouth except for those of a vegetable. In other words, he dropped his jaw and said...
“Uuuuuugggghhhhhhhhh.”
...yes, that’s all he could get out of his mouth. Oh, except for one more word:
“Braaaaaaaaaaaains.”
Luvens was about to turn right the hell around and get the hell out of there, but there was a noise that made him stay put for just one more moment. It was the sound of footsteps against the mill's wooden floor.
Cluck. Cluck. They were coming closer and closer...and closer.
Cluck. Cluck. Cluck
Cluck. Cluck.
Cluck.
The lineup of horrible zombies started to part in the middle and a black-rimmed hat appeared in the shadows behind them. The silhouetted outline of a mysterious man gradually manifested itself within the darkness, almost like out of thin air. At first, it was just a head that formed, but then there was a torso and legs and, then, every other appendage that a body possessed.
This mysterious, shadowy figure took three steps forward and overshadowed the line of zombies with his presence. His face became much more discernible and the first thing Luvens noticed was that he had very wiry eyebrows with dashingly blue eyes that seemed to emit their own light, like a prince in some fairytale novel.
Luvens couldn’t help but be hypnotized by the gaze of this shady man. And for a moment it felt like he had lost all control of his body’s motor controls. He didn’t really know how else to describe what he felt except that it was like losing a grip on his soul and he wanted to be as far away from this man as possible.
“Who are you?!” Luvens yelled, trying to regain control of his body.
But the man with the black hat said nothing in response. All he did was allow a subtle Cheshire grin to crawl up his face, a grin that was so eerie, Luvens was convinced he was standing face-to-face with the devil himself.
“Agh!” shrieked Luvens as he ran towards the door, momentarily forgetting that there was a very good reason he came into the mill to begin with. He unshackled the door's locks and pulled it open. Bright daylight flooded into the room, blinding Luvens’ eyes that had only just recently adjusted themselves to the darkness. But as soon as he opened the door...
“Oooooooooooh. Brains!”
That’s right! How could he have forgotten?! There were zombies out there! Luvens was so rattled by the presence of the man with the black hat that he completely forgot those miserable-sounding zombies were waiting for him outside!
“Zombies!!!” he screamed.
He turned back into the mill and caught another glimpse of the zombie slaves, Monseigneur Dupont and that shady man with the black hat, that specter-like man with his mesmerizing blue eyes. That wizard! That sorcerer! Prince of darkness! Whoever he was!
“Pleeease!” shouted Luvens. “Who are you?!”
The man with the black hat had no response for Luvens. But he DID start to fold his hands together, which appeared to be some sort of command for the zombies. Because as soon as his fingers became interwoven with each other, the zombies were no longer stationary! They were on the move, stumbling closer...and closer...and closer to poor Luvens. They were coming right for him!
“Zombies!!!” yelled Luvens.
He pivoted back towards the door.
“Zombies!!!”
Yes, poor Luvens was surrounded by zombies on all sides. He had nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. All he could do was grip his machete and hold it out in front of him and be ready for anything. He didn't have it in his heart to take a slash at either Evens or Rodner, but Radis was another story. Without another moment of hesitation - Waaack! - he slashed Radis' chest with the rusting machete blade but it didn't seem to phase the former slavedriver-turned-zombie one bit, and the strange thing is that the resulting wound didn't seem to bleed at all; all it did was spew out some chunky, clotted goo. Waaack! Waaack! He slashed at Radis again, and then at the other zombies, but, still, nothing happened, just a few scratches with that hideous clotted goo. In other words, it didn't look like Luvens and his machete were going to be any match against these doomed zombies. All poor Luvens could do was kneel to the ground and pray to God that he would be saved from the horrible situation that he was in.
But God didn’t show him any mercy. Maybe God was still angry at Luvens about the sugar cane. Maybe God's lightning bolt finally came...in the form of the zombies pouncing on poor Luvens.
“Aaaaaaaagggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!” screamed Luvens. Within seconds, he was covered with zombies like maggots on a piece of meat.
And then there was silence. But then some tongue-licking. And some snacking. And some lip-smacking. And some finger-licking. And then...
“Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.”
Luvens was no longer Luvens. He was just a hollow piece of flesh lacking spirit and soul. The hinges of his jaw shook a moment and then his mouth drooped down to his neck.
"Oooooooooooooooooooh," he groaned.
Luvens had turned into one of THEM.
