Those of you Zombie Guide readers of a certain age may recall that in the olden days before piracy…er, I mean, legitimate downloading…folks used to watch movies at home on things called Digital Video Discs or “DVDs.” (Don’t even ask Grandpa’s about “Ye Olde Video Home System.” He’ll just get off on a long diatribe about how music was better when the kids all wore flannel, unlike today.)

Anyway, these “DVDs” used to have special features, like theatrical trailers, director commentaries (which no one ever found self-indulgent), and sometimes even deleted scenes. You see, sometimes scenes were too expensive to complete, or maybe they added nothing to the story, or perhaps the movie was just too long and something had to be cut. In any case, it was interesting to see what ended up on the cutting room floor.

Did you know that books sometimes have deleted scenes, too? There is, in fact, a scene that was excised from my debut novel, BRAINEATER JONES. Sadly, we had used up the entire special effects budget building an animatronic fetus puppet, so another scene just had to be cut. Luckily, I did preserve this scene in a very rudimentary form. So for the first time anywhere ever I am presenting to you, the readers of Zombie Guide, this exclusive deleted scene from BRAINEATER JONES.

Let me set the stage for you a little bit. A zombie wakes from the dead facedown in a swimming pool with total amnesia. Gawkers on the street jeer and call him a “braineater.” Then he signs into a hotel under the semi-anonymous name “Jones.” The newly dubbed Braineater Jones vows to find out who killed him and why. Jones sets up shop in the undead ghetto, which is called the Welcome Mat, and his partner is a severed head called Alcibé. In this scene, they’re tracking down a clue in gang territory and Alcibé worries that Jones isn’t being cautious enough.

So, without further ado, I give you the BRAINEATER JONES deleted scene:

“Hey, I’m trying to figure out this job as I go along!”

“I can tell. You’re making a terrible muck of it.”

“A muck?”

“That’s what I said.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means you’re an idiot. You’re not taking any precautions. Have you even thought this through?”

Precautions. Precautions. I looked around the street. A worker was spot-welding a lamp post. Of course, this being the Welcome Mat, that wasn’t the whole story. When there weren’t any peds around, he turned back to his real task: cutting bike chains from a rack. I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, buddy.”

Kneeling over his “work,” the man flipped over on his back, startled, when I tapped him. The blowtorch clattered to the ground and went out, hissing as its gas continued to pump. He crabwalked deftly out from under my shadow.

“Hey…” I repeated.

The man flipped his welding mask off and revealed himself to be a dame and a breather, too. Why not? In coveralls and a mask, everybody looks alike. Times must be tough when a breather’s down in the Mat stealing our crap.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “I didn’t mean to do it!”

“Sure, whatever. Look, I just want to see if I can borrow—”

She leapt to her feet and beat pavement away from me. Luckily, the mask caught the wind and somersaulted back off her head, and it landed with a clatter at my feet. I bent down, wiped the dust off of it, and stuck it on my own melon.

“There’s your precaution,” I told the head.

“Another robbery boldly foiled by the Braineater Jones Detective Agency,” Alcibé said. “Or should I say, ‘committed by’?”

“Clam up.”

We pounded the few blocks to Infected territory.

***

Exciting stuff, huh? Really whets your appetite to find out what happens next, doesn’t it? If you already own the book, this scene takes place on p. 126 of the paperback or location 2191 of the e-book. And if you DON’T own the book yet, you can purchase it from any of these fine retailers:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

iTunes