A Cook's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Chapter 1 (Finished)

Right as the word “practice” left her mouth, Mona heard a rasping, gasping noise over the whir of the oven and exhaust system. When she looked up from her master recipe book – smudged on various pages with splatters of cake batter and drips of butter and olive oil – she saw a ravaged face with deep-set dark eyes staring at her through the latched screen door. The face was unlike any man’s she had ever seen, and yet she clearly knew this was a man’s face as his visage was backlit by the motion security light in the alley behind the Buttery Biscuit. His salt-and-pepper hair was askew, the deep lines of his stubbled jaw and crow’s feet were encased with dirt and dried blood, and his mouth was open, asymmetrical, with his jaw diagonal, almost dislocated, from his top lip like a sugar bowl whose dainty top had been slammed on crooked.

A Cook's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse - Chapter 1 (Continued) - Quiche Recipe Included!

            The storefront of The Buttery Biscuit sported huge glass windows, a pale yellow and black striped awning, and a neon sign with a fluffy buttermilk biscuit and a bright yellow pat of melting butter dripping down the sides of the carbtastic sign. Every time Mona pulled up to her shop she had to pinch herself. Was this really happening? Had she really left her law firm partnership to wake up in the earliest parts of the morning to play with pastry dough and fondle room-temperature European butter?

            “I don’t miss that life,” Mona said to herself quietly as she parallel parked between the back alley and the side street bordering her bakery. She listened to the last eerie note of “She’s Not There,” and turned the ignition off. 

A Cook's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Chapter 1 (Continued)

“Seriously, Gigi, that’s terrifying,” Mona stammered. “What ever happened to the homeless guy?”
“After Gregoire and I got the photo shoot set-up, we went to breakfast and had the best chocolate croissants I’ve ever eaten. The homeless man ate five and as he ate he told Gregoire how he came to be running near the Barriere d’Enfer city gate. Like I said, my French is horrible, but the man’s body language told me that whatever it was that was chasing him was relentless and fast.”
“What did Gregoire translate the man’s story as?”
“That was the semi-weird part of an entirely weird morning,” Gigi said. “Gregoire would only say that the man, whose name was Adolphe, found his attacker near Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu.”
“Adolphe,” Gigi said, continuing, “actually wasn’t homeless. Gregoire said he was an infectious diseases doctor at the hospital.”

A Cook's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: Chapter 1 - Updated

This is what I wrote this morning from 6am-7am Central and on my lunch break from 12:30-1pm for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I will write again tonight so I can meet my 1,700 words a day goal. Also, all of the content here and every single day in November is protected by a Creative Commons' license. You can share this with others, but there are to be no derivatives or commercial use of my emerging culinary arts-zombie story (grins).

Chapter 1

Mona Swicegood let Chainsaw and Zelda outside like she normally did when she first woke up in the morning. It was 2:30 a.m. in Austin, Texas in the Cesar Chavez neighborhood – a place with sunny little bungalows, herds of cyclists who swished through the roads at night with tinny bicycle bells and strobe-light-esque headlights, and an occasional bag lady or man, wandering the road with bags of essentials – flannel shirts, eggs, and a dog named Bandit. Mona’s bungalow was painted a sunny yellow like her favorite breakfast – a poached egg atop a freshly baked English muffin and served with chamomile tea and clover honey. Mona loved food almost as much as she loved her oddly named cats. Chainsaw was a plump little beast – short and squat with a belly that swayed back and forth when he walked. Zelda was lithe, a feral cat until Mona adopted her at two months. Zelda’s green-gold eyes and tortoiseshell coat made her blend in perfectly with her central Texas surroundings. Like most cats, Zelda and Chainsaw were serial killers of birds. It wasn’t unlikely to find a blue warbler or migrating cardinal at the foot of Mona’s yolk-colored home.