Untitled Zombie Novel Excerpt: ZOO

"I thought you said it didn't affect animals!" Phil screamed as he held the doors shut against the headbutts of the beast. "That's what you said!"

Dr. Belaus was already scanning the gardening shed for weapons. "It never had before," she stated in her always calm voice that annoyed the fuck out of Phil. "Fascinating. It may be a new strain. I don't know. This changes a lot." Belaus found what she was looking for on the bottom shelf of a work bench in the back of the shed.

"You think?! Because those are god damn undead giraffes! Giraffes!" Phil put his back into the doors and tried to reach an arm out to a rake to put through the handles and hold them shut. "Some help, Doctor?" Right then the doors stopped thumping.

Phil took the opportunity to quickly lean forward, grab the rake and lock the doors. He stopped moving, listen through the thin wood walls of the shed. He could hear the clop clop of the long legs of the giraffes outside. He looked around the shed for weakness. Belaus's back was to him at the workbench, fiddling with something. Then he saw the shelving until up against the wall. It was not the unit that made him panic. It was the small dirt covered window behind it.

"Shit!" He ran to the shelves and tried to see outside. The window was seven feet up and only slim light was filter through the dust. He couldn't make anything out at first and stood on the bottom shelf to bring his head to the windows height. He could make out movement.

The glass suddenly shattered and Phil tumbled backward has the shelves toppled over on top of him. The rotting giraffe head pushed in on it's lanky rank neck. It tried to bend down and bit at him, snapping its narrow mouth and broad herbivore teeth. It couldn't quite get to him due to the angle of the window the shelves, but Phil was also trapped.

He tried to get a hand around to the large hunting knife on his belt, the the shelves were pinning his arm. "Belaus! Fuck! Help!"

He heard her almost mumble, "Yes, yes," and then heard two chokes of a small motor attempting to start. Then the loud roar and the buzz of a chainsaw. The doctor had a small chainsaw in her hands.

"Yes! Kill this fucker!" Phil yelled as viscera of the giraffe's mouth and rotting face dripped into his face,

"I can't get a good angle on the head. It's moving too much and I worry and hurting you. Mmmm."

"Do something!"

Belaus moved long the neck, at seven feet of which stretched into the room and up to the window. With a surgeons precision she maneuvered the whirring chainsaw through the neck. It fell free from the body and from the window. Phil shoved the shelves up and rolled out from underneath them. The neck was still moving, like a mad stiff snake, still trying to get at Phil.

"Ah," declared Belaus. "Perhaps I should have but cut so low."

"You fucking think?!" Phil grabbed the first thing he could get to: a ten pound sledge hammer. He slammed his foot on the neck just below the head to hold it still and raised the sledge above his head. He brough it down with al his force, splattering his legs with giraffe skull and flesh.

Belaus was looking out the window. "Phillip, we may have a problem." Over the noise of the chainsaw Phil heard it: a wet trumpet-like roar, unmistakably the angry cry of an elephant.