The Snacking Dead Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by D. B. Walker

  Photographs copyright © 2013 by Evan Sung

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers,

  an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of

  Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  www.clarksonpotter.com

  CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Walker, D. B.

  The snacking dead: a parody in a cookbook / D.B. Walker.—First edition.

  Includes index.

  1. Snack foods. 2. Walking dead—Parodies, imitations, etc. I. Title.

  TX740.W233 2013

  641.5′3—dc23 2013032908

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-0-7704-3544-8

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-8516-5

  Book design by Stephonne Hordework

  Jacket design by Jim Massey

  Jacket and text photographs by Evan Sung

  v3.1

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  ONE Appetizers for an Apocalypse

  TWO Eating on the Run

  THREE Messy Bites for the Newly Dead

  EPILOGUE Last Call

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  FOR GEORGE A. ROMERO,

  CHEF DE CUISINE OF THE LIVING DEAD

  ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT

  Velveeta? What good was processed cheese against the living dead?

  Pam choked back a sob so her kids, searching in the next aisle, wouldn’t think she was losing it. She never would have allowed Velveeta into her house before. But right now she needed foods that never expired. Undead cheese was better than no cheese at all.

  All that mattered now was how you lived and how you ate. The survivors who had tried to make it on Diet Pepsi and Funyuns had quickly been run down and bitten, had risen up again, and now fed mindlessly on the living. So in some ways, not a lot had changed.

  She had to get what they needed and get them out of this supermarket. She didn’t know what else might be here. She took some of the deathless cheese. Since the outbreak she had done her best to keep her family fed. But in a world ruled by the hungry dead, it was snack or be snacked on.

  Food was her connection to people. When she was still just a scruffy redneck girl in the Georgia mountains, she’d tried to impress a shy boy named Daryl with cheese sandwiches. He’d shown her how to butcher a squirrel with a hatchet. “First you chop the head,” he’d said, guiding her hand on the hatchet with his. She started making him lunch every day after that, just wanting to touch his hand again. Where there were snacks there was hope.

  She froze. There was that sucking sound, like a stuck drain, or the last slurp of milkshake through a straw. The sound they made right before they bit you. She drew a butcher’s cleaver from her purse and listened as the noise came again, closer this time.

  “Stahhhhp!” came a boy’s whine. “Mom, Ronnie’s not cooperating!”

  She stomped into the next aisle.

  “God damn it, Veronica!” she said, gesturing. “You scare your little brother like that one more time, so help me I’m gonna leave you on the highway. And, Earl—”

  She stopped herself. She was brandishing the cleaver at her own teenage daughter and eight-year-old son. She lowered the blade slowly.

  The girl rolled her eyes at Pam and made the sucking sound again, sending the boy off howling.

  “You help me find him,” Pam hissed at the expressionless teen. “Anything happens to him, it’s on you, you hear me?”

  Veronica rolled her eyes again and sauntered indifferently in the direction Earl had fled.

  How had her darling princess become such a monster? Pam wondered how she’d made it this far, wrangling two bored kids with rocketing hormones and plummeting blood sugar.

  Damn it, where was Earl?

  Rushing past the condiments she heard the slurping again. She drew a breath for another telling-off when she collided with a teenage boy in a crumpled paper hat, knocking him into a bin of moldy produce.

  As she instinctively reared back, she corrected herself: a former teenage boy. His skin was dark gray, all the color bled from his eyes, and he was missing most of his left cheek. A stockboy’s apron caked with dried entrails hung loose from his neck. He champed at her viciously with broken teeth loosely tinseled with wrecked braces.

  Now she understood why no one had gotten the Velveeta.

  Before the dead boy could find his balance, she swung her cleaver sidelong at the base of his skull, just as Daryl had taught her to butcher the squirrel. A crunch like celery, and his head lolled with a sickening gush of dark fluid. The fallen head continued to slurp and roll its eyes at her.

  Damn thing’s still a teen, she thought.

  She raised the cleaver over her head with both hands, and split the surly face like a pumpkin.

  Sorry, kid. This had once been a boy Ronnie’s age, with parents, friends, and involuntary boners. Now he was cleanup in aisle 6, and no one to mop it up. That was just the hand they’d been dealt.

  The apocalypse ain’t no picnic.

  A

  BRUNCH

  IN THE GUT

  The morning before the world ended, Pam Beaumont found herself with her back pressed hard against someone else’s kitchen door, heart racing like a squirrel’s. A dozen ravenous guests had already infested the living room. A freaking swarm, she thought. And they’re early.

  She could hear them through the door. All she had to fend them off was a platter of stuffed mushrooms.

  Brunch always meant trouble, but she had only agreed to cater her friend Stacy’s birthday because Pam loved to cook. She had discovered her passion one summer making sandwiches for Daryl, the biggest crush she’d ever had: food could bring you closer to people you couldn’t even talk to. It was her connection to humanity.

  The birthday guests were drawn to the irresistible smell of bacon. All except for Penny Morton, who looked pale, gray even, and stumbled oddly around the gift table. Drunk at this hour. Good lord. Pam set the platter down on the coffee table and retreated to the kitchen.

  When she returned, she found Penny bent double over Stacy, who lay still on the floor, her birthday crown rolling toward the door.

  Penny had her mouth clamped awkwardly on Stacy’s lower face. If that’s CPR, she’s doing it wrong, thought Pam, and she moved instinctively to push the woman aside.

  Penny’s shoulder was hot as an oven—and she was yanking tendons like wires from Stacy’s throat with her teeth.

  Brunches were just cursed.

  Everyone had fled the room, except a guest who was about to bring the platter of mushrooms down on the gray ghoul’s head. He missed and the platter flew to pieces around Pam’s skull.

  A deafening wind filled her head. She had just enough time to marvel at how wonderfully pink the birthday girl’s windpipe was, before the world flickered and blew out like a pilot light.

  Gutted Mushrooms with Bacon and Spinach

  GUTTED MUSHROOMS WITH BACON AND SPINACH

  makes 20 stuffed mushrooms

  6 strips bacon

  ½ red onion, diced

  2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

  20 large button mushrooms, stems removed

  1 (10-ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed

  ½ cup cream cheese, softened

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

  ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

  1 Preheat the oven to 400°F.

  2 In a large skillet, cook the bacon until browned and crisp. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate to cool.
Spoon off all but 1 tablespoon bacon fat from the pan. Add the onion and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and remove from the heat to cool completely.

  3 Wipe the mushroom caps clean. Crumble the bacon. Put the spinach in a sieve, set it over the sink, and using your hands and a death grip, squeeze out as much liquid as you can.

  4 In a large bowl, smash together the spinach, bacon, cream cheese, red onion mixture, salt, and pepper. Fill the mushroom caps with the mixture and set them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle the Parmesan on top.

  5 Bake until the cheese is golden brown, about 15 minutes. Serve warm.

  Walkers are attracted by sounds, bright light, and the smell of people, but they can’t smell bacon. Quickly sort biters from survivors with the powerful aroma of bacon.

  THE

  DEAD ’ZONE

  Pam woke in semi-darkness. Next to her, Penny Morton lay still and cold, her crushed head surrounded by plate shards and stale mushrooms. On the other side of her Pam could make out Stacy. Her friend’s belly had been torn open and oozed a thick, clotted pulp. She looked like a half-eaten calzone.

  Pam screamed and burst out of the house into the night, running dazed down the street. She had to get home to her kids.

  As she rounded the corner, a man in a seersucker suit slowly turned to glare at her with furious pale eyes. He made a stuck drain sound.

  Then he tried to bite her. “Asshole!” she yelled.

  Someone dashed out of a dark storefront across the street right as the gory molester fumbled for her. A metallic flash traced a wide arc in the moonlight, and the man’s head flew open with a wet slosh. A tall guy with a tattoo, stubble, and some kind of spade-like weapon helped her up.

  “Get up, lady, them walkers are everywhere,” he commanded. She followed in spite of herself. He was bossy and gruff like her ex-husband.

  Inside the storefront was a pizza joint. The windows had been covered with tablecloths and the only light came from candles on the counter.

  “Did you just kill that man with a pizza shovel?” she asked.

  He peered outside through a small hole in the tablecloth. “It’s a pizza peel,” he corrected. “And that guy was already dead. Biters, walkers, whatever you call them. You got to mash their brains.”

  The image of half-eaten Stacy, oozing juicily, came to her unbidden. “Oh my God,” she sobbed.

  “Don’t you know what’s been going on?” he said as he wiped the blood from the pizza peel with a sponge.

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, what they’re saying on the radio, but I can’t explain jack. I mean, power on and off, dead people waking up and going cannibal, government falling apart …”

  He thrust the peel into the large gas oven and pulled out a knot of dough. He held it out to her.

  “Anyhoo, we’re still cooking with gas here. Name’s Trey. Calzone?”

  Oozing Three-Cheese Calzone

  OOZING THREE-CHEESE CALZONE

  serves 2

  Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed

  ¾ cup fresh ricotta

  1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated (¼ cup)

  2 tablespoons chopped basil

  ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

  1 (8-ounce) ball pizza dough

  ⅓ cup tomato sauce

  2 ounces fresh mozzarella, grated (½ cup)

  1 Preheat the oven to 500°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and lightly oil.

  2 In a bowl, stir together ricotta, Parmesan, basil, and pepper.

  3 Lightly flour the dough and pull or roll it to a 12-inch round. Spread ricotta mixture on half the dough, leaving a half-inch border all around. Brush edges of dough with water and fold dough over filling; pinch to seal.

  4 Transfer the calzone to the prepared baking sheet. Brush the top of the dough with olive oil. Spoon tomato sauce over the calzone and sprinkle with mozzarella.

  5 Transfer pan to the oven and bake until crust is firm and cheese is golden, about 15 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.

  A long-handled metal pizza peel is an ideal weapon against the living dead. The aluminum blade can be sharpened on three sides. A strong forward thrust will decapitate at a safe distance from the wielder. Be sure to rinse well with bleach before using again with pizza.

  THE

  CHIPS ARE DOWN

  She rushed headlong through her empty house.

  “Earl, honey? Ronnie!” Her gut churned at the silence. All she heard was a distant scraping.

  Best-case scenario, Earl’s babysitter had taken them someplace safe. “Lindsay, you here?”

  Worst-case …

  Earl’s SpongeBob backpack wasn’t in its usual place. Ronnie’s phone charger was gone, too. On the table was a half-eaten plate of the kale chips Lindsay made for the kids most afternoons. Kale chips! There was hope.

  A chair had been knocked against the pantry, and there was a pink Post-it on the door. She moved the chair to get a better look at the note: an O above an X in red crayon. Maybe a hurried good-bye note?

  Something brushed the other side of the door.

  Out from the pantry stumbled Lindsay, her outsized white teeth bared in rabid fury, her pretty blue eyes blanched to yellow. She shambled hungrily toward Pam.

  An O above an X. Skull and crossbones. Ronnie’s sense of humor. Good lord.

  Pam pulled a handle from her knife block, and threatened her kids’ babysitter with a meat cleaver. She gripped it like a hatchet.

  Lindsay gnashed her teeth at Pam. Pam remembered half-eaten Stacy and covered her neck with one hand, gripping her cleaver in the other. Lindsay gurgled and lunged for Pam’s belly.

  “That’s enough!” Pam aimed. You got to mash their brains.

  Pam had excellent knife skills. Lindsay staggered back, spilling kale chips across the floor. The scattered chips crunched as she collapsed on top of them.

  Pam fell to her knees, unable to breathe. Rage and frustration burned in her throat. She still had to find her kids. And where the hell was she going to find another sitter who could cook like that?

  DESICCATED CRISPY KALE CHIPS

  serves 6 to 8

  1 large bunch of kale, torn into bite-size pieces, washed and thoroughly dried

  ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

  ¾ teaspoon kosher salt

  Chili powder, for sprinkling

  1 Preheat the oven to 350°F.

  2 Make sure the kale is very dry; if not, it won’t get crisp in the oven. In a large bowl, toss kale pieces with olive oil and kosher salt—you may need to do this in 2 batches—to combine well. Massage the oil onto each kale piece until the oil is evenly distributed and the kale is shiny. Spread the kale out on two jelly roll pans (you will need to do this in 2 batches). Bake the kale chips for 12 to 16 minutes, checking on it after 12. If the leaves look crispy and crumble, the chips are ready—otherwise, bake for another 2 minutes and check again. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

  3 Toss the kale with the salt and the chili powder to taste.

  Carry snacks that won’t turn. Kale chips keep, and they will have you in fighting form for a long time.

  I SCREAM,

  YOU SCREAM

  The car was missing, and the spare key was gone from its hiding place. The thought of Ronnie driving Earl away was both a huge relief and terrifying. Ronnie wasn’t old enough to drive, no matter what her ex-husband thought.

  She knew they’d be hungry. She filled a duffel bag with kitchen tools and food that would keep, tucked the cleaver in her belt, then watched and waited. Once the biter herd in the street thinned, she crept with her cargo from the door to her neighbor’s driveway.

  She tried her neighbor’s blue minivan. The car alarm made her jump and she dropped the bag. The biters swerved to follow the noise. She’d have to come back for it.

  A biter in running shorts stood slurping between her and a truck across the street. As she made for the truck t
he walker struggled to keep up. He shambled far too slowly to stay with her.

  As a girl Pam had run free all over the mountains near her home. That’s how she met Daryl, out shooting squirrel for his dinner. He had been going to eat the thing raw. She had thought with a little effort she could make it better. She’d asked him to show her how to butcher the critter. He’d put her hand at the bottom of the hatchet handle so she could get leverage. She had found she liked butchering it.

  It wasn’t that different with the cleaver. The biter in running gear slowly hobbled toward her.

  She held the cleaver like a hatchet, waited until he got close, then calmly plunged it into his frontal lobe. Runners annoyed her.

  She managed to open the truck door, twisted the key in the ignition, and yelped as an insipid jingle blared from a loudspeaker on top of the truck.

  Attracted by the ear-piercing racket, biters stumbled out from all around and began clawing and thumping at the sides of the vehicle.

  She had commandeered an ice cream truck.

  Cold-Blooded Ice Cream Bread Sandwiches

  COLD-BLOODED ICE CREAM BREAD SANDWICHES

  serves 8

  1 pint premium ice cream, in any flavor you like, softened

  1½ cups self-rising flour (or use 1½ cups all-purpose flour mixed with 2 teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt)

  1 pint premium ice cream, in any flavor complementary to your first flavor (vanilla goes with everything), slightly softened

  1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8- or 9-inch loaf pan and line with parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper.

  2 In a large bowl, whisk the softened ice cream until smooth. Stir in the flour until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let pan cool on a wire rack for 10 to 15 minutes, unmold the loaf from the pan, and then let cool completely on the rack.