Hello and welcome to this Behind the Scene post here on Track of Words, where today I’m joined by one of my absolute favourite authors – Josh Reynolds – with an excerpt from the first chapter of his third Zombicide novel Do Or Die. I’ve covered a lot of Josh’s work here on Track of Words, and Zombicide as an IP really feels like an ideal fit for his style – that’s certainly the impression I got from his first novel in this setting, Last Resort. If you’re keen to get a sense of what to expect from Josh’s Zombicide work, this excerpt is exactly what you’re been looking for!
To make this extra special though, Josh has very kindly written an exclusive introduction to the excerpt, discussing why he chose to open the book in this way, and what he was thinking while writing this first chapter. It’s a fascinating insight into the thought process of an author, and adds a brilliant additional layer of detail to this story! So read on to check out Josh’s introduction and the opening chapter of Do Or Die – which is out now in ebook and US paperback from Aconyte Books, and coming in February 2024 as a UK paperback.
Josh Reynolds: Start how you mean to go on. I don’t have many writing rules, but that’s one of them. If the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter, isn’t right, everything that follows will be wrong. When it comes to an entry in a long-running series, be it a novel or a short story, that means you probably need to use that opening chapter not just to establish the tone and at least some of the characters, but also catch the reader up on all that’s come before, without an info-dump or writing something unwieldy – another rule of mine: chapters should always be slightly shorter than you think, because otherwise they’re probably too long for the average reader to get through in one sitting.
So how do you do that in a novel like Zombicide: Do or Die? First, you have to set the scene – in this case, a zombie-rat infested shopping mall in post-apocalyptic South Carolina. So far, so good. Then you choose your characters – who are you going to use to start the ball rolling? In my case, I chose the character with a built-in curiosity about the world and her surroundings: Kahwihta Trapper, our friendly neighbourhood zombologist.
Also, Attila the wonder-dog.
Using Kahwihta served a two-fold purpose – besides the aforementioned need to set the scene, she’s also a fan-favourite and thus guaranteed to grab the reader’s attention. If you have their attention, they’ll absorb the information you’re imparting more easily. You can be a little looser in structure, a little less matter-of-fact. You can let it come up organically, as the character observes and thinks about those observations. Kahwihta is a great one for this, because she’s an analytical character, more so than the rest of the book’s cast. She thinks about the world around her in ways that the other characters don’t or can’t.
As she traipses through the decaying shopping mall, her thoughts spiral off in unsettling directions; not just about the other characters, but the world itself. Through Kahwihta, we can get an idea of what this sort of scenario is like, and how it would impact someone. We see what she’s learned, and who she’s met. We get a look at the interpersonal relationships in her group, setting us up to meet them later. We get a nice, conversational rundown of all that has gone before. So far, so good.
The risk with this approach is, you’ll lose the high-octane reader. The ones who need to hit the ground running and never stop. So you thread in a brief surge of danger – a submerged zombie – and keep things simmering. There might be other zombies around, there’s trouble in the offing, a zombified teammate might have gone feral. Throw it all in the blender and hit frappe. Granted, that only works if the reader cares about the character in question.
A character like Kahwihta is good for that; Attila is, as well. A dog, any kind of pet, really, is a cheap shot of sorts or a trap that the average reader can’t avoid. People worry about animals in a way they don’t worry about people, even fictional animals. That might seem calculating – and it is! – but it does the job.
Everything’s fair in love and war…and novel-writing. You cut corners, you cheat and connive, all to keep the reader hooked and ready to follow the characters into the next chapter. That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. Just keeping folks reading. And a good first chapter is the easiest way to do that.
But hey – you be the judge!
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Kahwihta Trapper paused, head cocked, ears open. Listening to the soft shuffle of rotting ceiling tiles, the rustle of wall paper peeling away from cracked plaster as mold grew beneath it, the hum of flies. The ambient noise of the apocalypse. But beneath that was the other; the crash of something ungainly staggering into a display window, the scruff of feet on dusty tile, the querulous groan of a hungry corpse.
She didn’t hear any of that at the moment, thankfully. Just the sounds of the slow collapse of the shopping center. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Sound did strange things in places like this. It was a liminal space, halfway between life and death. She glanced down at her companion. “Anything?” she murmured.
Attila whuffed gently. The dog kept pace with her, rather than bounding ahead or wandering off. He knew better than that, or at least she liked to think so. Attila was a lean black and brown mongrel of indeterminate parentage but substantial size. Big enough to knock down most zombies and fast enough to get away when he couldn’t, he could smell them coming a mile away. He was as much an early warning system as a friend.
Kahwihta took his grumbling for a reply in the negative. “Good enough,” she said, giving him an affectionate thump between the ears. The dog’s tail wagged gently.
She started forward again, keeping her head on a swivel as Ramirez called it. Not that it made much sense; continually swiveling one’s head seemed to confer little benefit when it came to spotting zombies. Maybe it was an FBI thing. Or maybe it was just a Ramirez thing. The older woman had a lot of sayings like that.
The shopping center was empty of human life. Plenty of birds and small animals, however. There were sparrows nesting in the air vents. Their song rose and fell like a more pleasant version of the tinned music that had once kept shoppers company.
At her feet, moss crept across the tiles like a spill of emerald oil. The roof had caved in, in places, creating impromptu waterfalls that carried life into the enclosed environment. Flowers and ferns had crept free from their stands, and the ornamental trees had become home to squirrels and birds. Here and there, the moss shrouded bones – whether human or animal, she couldn’t tell.
Zombies went after animals when humans were in short supply. Animals returned the favor, when they could, which brought its own set of problems. That there were so many animals here was a sure sign that there weren’t many walking corpses in the area.
Attila paused, growling softly. Kahwihta stopped. The birds had fallen silent. She reached down and unclipped the industrial cattle-prod from her belt. Zombies didn’t like electricity much. Their muscle tissue was still susceptible to sudden contractions, even if they didn’t really feel it. Just one of the useful things she’d learned over the past year and change since the apocalypse had rolled over the world.
It was hard to remember what it had been like, before. Intellectually, the memories were still there. But emotionally, she might as well have been reading a history book. She’d been in college when the curtain fell. She’d been up in the Adirondacks, studying the bio-diversity of the Saranac Lake area when it had all ended. She figured that was why she’d survived the initial outbreak. She hadn’t even realized that the world had ended until she’d hiked down to town and nearly gotten eaten by the locals.
She was still a student, but her focus had shifted somewhat these days. Zombies were the hot new environmental catastrophe, worse than global warming and carbon emissions. She’d taken her share of hungry corpses apart in the months since it had all gone wrong – dissecting them down to the marrow to try and get a handle on what had happened. She had no answers, unfortunately. Just a lot of questions.
Not that it mattered, really. Who was there to tell, after all?
Attila gave a sharp bark. Kahwihta followed his gaze and saw a section of moss a few feet away suddenly quiver and bulge. She took a step back and activated the cattle-prod. It snapped to life with a crackle of ozone. The moss ripped like carpet as something that was more bone and topsoil than meat hauled itself into view.
Zombies were remarkably durable. They could endure conditions that would cripple a living human with little degradation of their physical abilities. Shoot them, stab them, set them on fire, run them over, they’d just keep going unless you took out the brain or severed the spine. If there was no prey to hunt, they just… stopped. Went into hibernation were they were and waited for someone to wake them up. Of course, sometimes they rotted away to nothing while they waited, but that took a lot longer than most people thought.
This one was well on its way over the river, as her grandmother might have said. But that didn’t make it any less dangerous. It had enough muscle memory left to get it to its feet, and move it in her direction. Dirt slid from its wasted form as it took a staggering lurch towards her. Attila barked again and sidled away from her, drawing the dead thing’s attention. It didn’t have eyes anymore, or a nose. It was acting on sound alone. Maybe vibrations – had it felt her approach somehow?
She watched it move, noting the jerkiness, the lack of plasticity. A broken thing. It swayed in Attila’s direction, jaws falling open in a hiss. The dog backed away, still barking. The zombie took a step in pursuit.
Kahwihta lunged. The cattle-prod stabbed into the zombie’s exposed ribcage and a fat spark danced in the air. The zombie twitched, champing its jaws mindlessly. She yanked the cattle-prod out and jabbed the dead thing again. It was more resistant than she’d anticipated; maybe it didn’t have enough tissue left to contract.
Attila darted forward and clamped down on a wobbling leg. Swiftly, the dog yanked the zombie off its feet and retreated, dragging it away from her. Kahwihta followed, reaching into her satchel for her hammer. It was just a standard ball-pein hammer, with a rounded head, but it did the job well enough.
Attila let go as she approached. The zombie made to push itself to its feet, but too late. She caught it in the center of the head with her first swing. It went down like a sack of potatoes. She hit it again, just to be certain. When it didn’t move, she jabbed at it with the cattle-prod, inspecting the remains.
The radio clipped to her belt crackled to life. “Kahwihta?” a woman’s voice asked. Ramirez. She had the sort of voice that Kahwihta associated with people in charge – direct and authoritative.
Kahwihta thrust her hammer back into her satchel and unhooked the radio. “Here.”
“We heard barking. Everything OK?”
“Just a zombie. Well past its expiration date. What about you?”
“Nothing. Found him yet?”
“No. But I think we’re close. How’s Terry?”
“Shaken up, but in one piece.”
“Thanks to Westlake,” Kahwihta said.
Ramirez was quiet for a moment. Kahwihta could almost see her face. Finally, she said, “Are you sure?”
“Which one of us is the expert?” Kahwihta asked, with more confidence than she felt. “He hasn’t gone feral, boss. Trust me.”
“I do. And don’t call me boss.”
“You got it, boss.” Kahwihta broke the connection before Ramirez could reply. Long conversations could be dangerous outside of a designated safe zone. Not that they’d seen many zombies since they’d arrived at the airfield. A few here and there, but no big groups.
Given the condition of the place, no one had expected any walkers to still be around. Zombies would travel hundreds of miles to stand on the wrong side of a chain-link fence, so long as there were human beings in sight. But take humans out of the equation, and zombies wandered off. It was something Kahwihta was still trying to puzzle out. How did they know when there were no more people in an area? The answer might well hold the key to building a true zombie-free zone. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a biological reason for it. At least none that she could determine.
The walker that had attacked Terry had been the first they’d seen in the mall. It had been waiting in one of the stores. Lurking in the employee washroom. Maybe it had been there since the beginning of the end. Locked in by someone, and left as a nasty surprise for the next person to come along. In this case, that had been Terry.
He was a new face; one of the Atlantic City crew. A scrawny kid, a few years her junior. He’d probably still been in high school when the world had ended. He didn’t talk much. None of the folks from Atlantic City talked much. Kahwihta didn’t blame them. What was there to talk about? Few people liked to swap survivor stories; most just wanted to keep their heads down and make it to the next day.
Another member of their group, Ptolemy, talked about it a lot. He called it generational trauma. Like the sort that affected the survivors of wars. People could only take so much, before they withdrew into themselves. Even the most boisterous or outgoing person could only keep it up for so long, under these conditions. Eventually, everything became muted; gray all day, every day.
Kahwihta felt like that sometimes, though she tried her best to keep her mind occupied. Animals had it easier. Every day was new, and exciting. Not enjoyable, perhaps, but exciting. She glanced down at Attila and smiled. He scratched himself, ignoring her. “Good dog,” she said, still thinking about Terry and the toilet-walker.
It had nearly taken the kid out, and had banged him up pretty bad. Most walkers weren’t very strong, but some could throw hands with the best of them. This one had tackled Terry to the ground while he scavenged toilet roll, and nearly had him until Westlake had intervened.
Things had gotten confusing pretty quick after that. Everyone had been surprised, even Attila. Kahwihta wondered about that too. Maybe something in the bathroom had masked the smell, or maybe he just hadn’t been paying attention. Dogs could be as inobservant as people.
Terry had gone down, the walker on top of him. No one had reacted in time, except Westlake. He’d swooped down on them and wrenched the zombie back, away from Terry and… and then what had happened, had happened.
“Damn it, Westlake,” Kahwihta said. He’d been doing so well, at least until they’d reached South Carolina. It had been weeks without an incident, without so much as a flicker of uncertainty. And now it was all over.
He’d ripped the walker’s throat out with his teeth. Just like an animal.
Just like a zombie.
Ramirez had almost put a bullet in him then and there. But Westlake was quicker, thankfully. He’d scrambled away, vanishing into the labyrinth of the mall. Kahwihta had gone after him without waiting for the others. To their credit, they hadn’t tried to stop her. They knew as well as she did, that they needed him in one piece, preferably with a working brain.
Westlake had been turned months ago. They’d thought he was dead, but he’d somehow wound up in Atlantic City, trapped in a makeshift arena fighting an oversized zombie wrestler, and hadn’t that been a surprise? Kahwihta still wasn’t sure just what kind of zombie Westlake was, and she’d seen a lot of them. She’d never known of one that retained its sentience after turning.
The problem was, it didn’t seem to be a permanent state of affairs. Westlake was still a corpse, albeit a talkative one. Like any corpse, like the zombies themselves, he was decaying. And his mind was getting worse. Soon, he might not be Westlake anymore. Maybe today was the day. But she hoped not. She liked him. Had liked him, since their first meeting in the Adirondacks.
She stooped and held a scrap of cloth, torn from Westlake’s shirt during his struggle with the walker, to Attila’s nose. “Find him, boy. Before he gets himself into any more trouble.”
***
How about that then? I definitely want to find out what happens next! If you’re keen to know more, here’s the full publisher’s synopsis – and you can check out the links below to order your copy and get reading!
Being undead isn’t anything new for Westlake – former thief and deteriorating Zombivor – until he realizes there’s not enough formaldehyde in the world to keep him together. He decides to embark on one last mission into the zombie apocalypse to find a long-lost drug cartel cache which will set his friends up for life. The hitch? It’s in Florida. By the time they land in the Everglades, not only is the wildlife a lot wilder and more murderous than usual, but a hurricane looms on the horizon, ready to wipe them from the face of the earth. For Westlake, there is no other choice but to DO OR DIE.
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Josh Reynolds is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories, including the wildly popular Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He grew up in South Carolina and now lives in Sheffield, UK.
Check out Josh’s website for more information.
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I’d like to say a massive thanks to Josh for writing such an interesting, insightful piece letting us in on his thought process for this scene, and also to Aconyte Books for agreeing to share the excerpt from Do Or Die! I’m actually a bit behind on my Zombicide reading – I loved Last Resort, but haven’t read All Or Nothing or Do Or Die yet, but I can’t wait to dig into both of them!
Check out my review of Last Resort
Do Or Die is out now from Aconyte Books in audiobook/ebook/US paperback, and coming in February 2024 in UK paperback – check out the links below to order* your copy:
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