GRANDMA? Part 1 (YA Zombie Serial Novel) by J.A. Konrath (i wanna iguana read aloud .TXT) 📕

"You had an accident, buddy. I can… um… get you some aloe vera for that."

"It don't hurt," Ralph said.

"It don't?"

"No. I feel… heck, I feel pretty gosh darn good."

Einstein smiled. "That's great, Ralph. Lemme tell you, I was really worried there for a minute."

"I… damn! Why am I covered with leeches?" Ralph began to slap them off his body. "I hate these damn things! Oh, in my pants too! One got ahold of my giblets! Get off my manly bits, you bloodsucker! Lord, the humanity! How'd this happen, Einstein?"

"Sorry 'bout that, friend. I used the leeches when I brought you back to life."

Ralph stopped plucking leeches off of hisself long enough to give Einstein a penetrating look. "You did?"

"You were dead as a rump roast, but my genius brought you back."

"I was… dead? Wait, did the flying chair work?"

"Sorta. The design needs some tweakin'."

"What's that smell?"

Einstein cleared his throat. "That's, um… that's you. You best stay away from stray dogs 'till you've had a shower."

"No, not me. It smells like fresh baked bread, apple dumplings, mashed taters with gravy—all my favorite foods rolled all up into one delicious stink."

Einstein sniffed. All he smelt was Ralph's burned flesh.

Ralph sat up suddenly.

"You should rest, Ralph." Einstein tried to push his friend back into a supine position. "You been through a lot."

But Ralph, a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound old fella who'd just been recently dead, was incredibly strong and didn't budge.

"It's you."

"Huh?"

"It's you who smells so good."

Ralph licked what was left of his lips. Einstein took a step back.

"Look, buddy, you smell good, too. But I don't like the look in your scary eyes. What you thinkin', Ralph?"

Ralph swung his legs off the table. "We're best friends, right, Einstein?"

"Best friends," Einstein agreed.

"For a long time, right?"

"Since we were kids. You're, how old now? Sixty-five. I'm sixty-four. So more than sixty years."

"And longtime friends do things for each other, right?"

"Of course. I just let you try out my flying chair, didn't I?"

"I need you to do something for me, old pal."

"Name it."

Ralph smiled. "Then let me chew on your leg for a bit."

Einstein continued to back away. "That's sorta testing the bounds of friendship, Ralph."

"Please. Just one bite."

"Ralph, you know you're my oldest, bestest friend," Einstein said. "But if you try to bite me, I'm gonna shoot you right between your mullet."

"Fair enough. Debra home?"

"You can't snack on my wife none, neither. What's got into you, Ralph?"

"Hunger, Einstein. Turble, turble hunger."

That's when Ralph jumped at Einstein and pinned him onto the floor, trying to bite him in the face. Ralph was strong, but Einstein had the power of genius on his side, and thinking quickly he yelled, "Look! It's Elsa Lanchester!"

Ralph had a big crush on Elsa Lanchester back in 1955.

When Ralph turned to see Elsa, smoothing down his hair to look presentable, Einstein shoved him off and crawled for his 12 gauge. He wasn't planning on killing Ralph again. Just shooting his leg off to slow him down, so he could tie him up and figure out what was wrong with his buddy.

But before Einstein could get off a shot, Ralph ran away, down the path in the woods.

The path that lead to The Mud Lake Nursing Home.

END OF PART ONE

Afterword by Jeff Strand

I suspect that Joe's foreword was inaccurate.

I wasn't there for the origin of GRANDMA?, thanks to our mutual restraining orders, but I'm sure it involved Joe bursting into Talon's bedroom, with a tearstained face, crazy eyes, and large patches of hair missing.

"It's all over!" Joe wailed. "I've got no ideas left! The well is dry, dry, dry! Oh, why did I burn bridges with all of my collaborators? I should never have had F. Paul Wilson killed!"

"Dad, calm down. We'll be fine."

"I spent millions of dollars on a Picasso painting, and then I peed on it, just so I could tell people that I was rich enough to pee on a Picasso!" (The YouTube video has not helped Talon get more dates.) "Now the museum won't buy it back! What are we going to do?"

"Dad, just take a deep breath, count to ten, and think of the baby panda bears. That's right, think of the baby panda bears..."

When Joe gets stressed out, the only thing to calm him down is to think about baby panda bears messily devouring baby dolphins.

"You don't understand!" Joe screamed. "That Picasso cost sixty-eight million dollars, and I only paid sixty-three up-front! I only have forty-eight hours to earn five million dollars before thugs break my fingers! Daddy doesn't want his fingers broken! You'll let Vinny and Axe-Face break your fingers in place of Daddy's, right? Right?!?"

"Ummmm..."

"My books will earn almost four million dollars in royalties by then, but that leaves us a million short! I need another book! I neeeeeeeed anooooooother boooooook!"

"Well..."

"Well? What well? What do you mean by well? Is that a good well? Oh, please let it be a good well! Please, Talon, let it be a good well!"

"I've been working on--"

"Yes!" Joe shouted, grabbing the pages out of his son's hand. "Yesssssss! You've saved us! I knew there was a better solution than letting thugs shoot you!"

"You said they were just going to break--"

"That's not important right now. Don't tell your mom. So, anyway, it's cool if we market this as a collaboration, right? I'll add a poop joke so they think I helped write it."

"Sure, Dad."

And the rest is history. Well, actually, most of it's the future, because this is a serial. I hoped you enjoyed the action-packed fun of GRANDMA? and in the spirit of serialized cliffhanger endings, I'll save the rest of this afterword for—

Jeff Stand

9/7/2013

Copyright © 2013 by Joe Konrath and Talon Konrath

Cover and art copyright © 2013 by Carl Graves

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in