If my zombie character, Amanda, loves anything it’s a quick bite before hooking up with some swarthy werewolf.  So this week’s Snippet Saturday was a cinch.  Here’s a clip from the upcoming BATTLE OF THE NETWORK ZOMBIES (March 2010).  Enjoy…

The kid nodded and shuffled off in the direction I indicated. When not racing like a madman across a moderately busy freeway, he expressed a slight limp, favoring his right leg explicitly. He lugged the left behind him with a spare hop at the end of each step.

I wish I hadn’t seen it.

Those kind of things make me wish I didn’t have to feed the way I do. The thoughts are always fleeting and always my own fault, a hazard of being too observant. Noticing little details of my victims—and they were definitely that, no matter how hard I rationalized— was not helpful. Not. Helpful.

In those moments, when food becomes human, identifiable, I’m more likely to walk away than any other.

Occasionally.

The boy’s scent trailed in his wake, dense and meaty . There were sweet hints of maple, smoky bacon. The hustler was a breakfast fan. A lot of street people were, cheap meals done quick and from places that usually kept waitresses long after their expiration date, long after they gave a shit about a kid dining and dashing. Either that or hired them so green they didn’t know what to look for.

A quick refresher—if you’re late getting on and trying to catch up—when a zombie catches the scent of its prey, it’s over. Reason goes out the window, for the most part, and the hunger kicks in like autopilot. When I first turned (after a run-in with a breather and later a misplaced donut box—damn if slick cardboard and concrete don’t equal flat on your back dead in a parking garage, at least for a little bit), I had absolutely no control over the process. I’d catch a scent and the next thing I knew I was spitting out a retainer (not mine and not necessarily a kid’s either ).

Anyway.

He stalled at the far corner of the Hooch and Cooch, settling into a spot on a rickety picnic table, whose purpose seemed to be only to hold up a massive bloom of cigarette butts sticking out of a spent can of Yuban. He jutted his chin forward, again, lips screwed up in a sneer, in that defiant way one does when there’s nothing to lose or live for. He probably figured if he put that tough face on, I’d be attracted—some women apparently go for the thug-type.

He was right. I was definitely into him.

After a quick glance behind me, I shoved my arm through the handles of the Mcqueen and shrugged it over my shoulder like a pack (shielding it from the spatter, if you must know).

“So whaddup? You getting’ on this?” he asked.

I could barely conceal my glee.

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