Only Dead on the Inside E-Book

James Breakwell

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Raising kids can sometimes feel like society has ended, so why not go one further, and actually plan for it? From James Breakwell, who BuzzFeed called 'the funniest dad on Twitter', this hilarious book will help you through the rise of the undead, with helpful hints and tips on raising healthy, entirely human, offspring. So, hunker down, stock up on supplies (alcohol, primarily) and get ready for the long haul. Or alternatively, take the more proactive approach. Ransack your kid's toy chest/weapons locker for zombie lacerating objects, bear arms with a terrorising lightweight buggy, or (not recommended) use your baby as a human missile. With kids and with zombies, the possibilities are truly endless. And with parenting in a zombie apocalypse, the rules change. Bursting with twisted logic, questionable data, badly drawn cartoons and frank parenting advice, this is the witty book that everyone will be talking about this year. And who knows? It may even help you survive everyday life as well. Reviews for James Breakwell Hilarious! - The Sun VERY funny Twitter feed - The Daily Mail The most hilarious man on Twitter - The Telegraph The funniest dad on Twitter - BuzzFeed

Leseprobe

To my wife and kids, for letting me tell the truth. And countless lies.

To everyone who ever read my jokes on the internet, this is all your fault.

Welcome to the End

CHAPTER 1:The Best Bad Day of Your Life

CHAPTER 2:Kamikaze Kids

CHAPTER 3:Eat or Be Eaten

CHAPTER 4:What’s Yours Is Mine

CHAPTER 5:Going the Distance

CHAPTER 6:Hide and Weep

CHAPTER 7:Pacify This

CHAPTER 8:Pushing for Trouble

CHAPTER 9:The Home Front

CHAPTER 10:You Are the Law

CHAPTER 11:So You Have to Cut Off Your Arm

CHAPTER 12:Driving Off into the Sunset

The End of the End

Acknowledgments

About the Author

If you’re reading this, congratulations: You’re still alive. Only uninfected humans can read. Illiteracy is one of the worst side effects of zombieism, second only to the insatiable hunger for human flesh. In those places where school is still in session, the undead will have a devastating effect on standardized test scores. If you’re a zombie, you’re no doubt looking at this page with confused disinterest. Perhaps you’ll bite it in the fleeting hope it might be edible, only to be disappointed. If it makes you feel better, people who read it will have the same reaction. Letting people down is what I do best. I’m a dad.

It’s not easy being a parent these days. There are bills to pay, children to feed, and hordes of undead monsters to keep at bay. How a person juggles these duties separates a good provider from a dead one. Make no mistake: The zombie apocalypse is real. If it hasn’t reached you yet, it’s on its way as surely as autumn follows summer or regret follows vodka. As the unstoppable masses of undead march forward, national governments will crumble and local leaders will flee. Only the basic family unit will survive. In the anarchy of the post-apocalyptic world, parents will be the highest-ranking authority figures by default. That thought is more terrifying than any walking corpse. Once the zombie apocalypse begins in earnest, the fate of the world will rest on your spit-up-covered shoulders. Now is a good time to panic.

That’s why this book matters. There are lots of guides out there about how to survive when the dead walk the earth. All of them assume readers are young, fit, and unencumbered by miniature versions of themselves. According to that scenario, the only humans left will be smug, outdoorsy Millennials. Even without the zombies, that’s the textbook definition of hell on earth.

But contrary to what Generation Y will tell you, children are kind of important. Without them, the human race will go extinct. Homo sapiens have passed their genes from one generation to the next through eons of ice ages, plagues, and wars. It seems ungrateful to throw in the towel now because of one measly zombie apocalypse.

For the human race to survive, children must survive. And for them to make it, mums and dads have to up their game.

They don’t have to be the best parents in the world. They just have to be slightly less crappy parents than normal. Quite frankly, that still might be asking too much. Even in the best of times, most of us barely get by. Modern mums and dads wear many hats, mostly to hide our stress-induced hair loss. Parents are breadwinners, chauffeurs, maintenance workers, playmates, enforcers, and coaches. Throw in a worldwide epidemic that makes people eat each other, and there’s very little chance anyone will make it to soccer practice on time. None of these jobs will get easier after the world ends – except maybe coaching. A win is a win, even when the other team forfeits because it was eaten by zombies.

TAG-TEAMING THE APOCALYPSE

Raising children is a two-parent job, and that’s doubly true in the zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, most children don’t have four parents. Kids will have to get by with however many guardians they have left, which will usually be somewhere between zero and two. I’m not here to judge which type of living arrangement is best for kids. That leads to drama, which is noisy and gets people eaten. I try to keep casualties to a minimum.

It’s hard to define a modern family even when the dead aren’t walking the earth. For the purposes of this guide, a family is any group of individuals who band together to keep children alive. That can include any combination of mums, dads, stepparents, grandparents, sketchy people met on the road, wolves that find and raise babies, balls with bloody handprints on them, and talking smartphone interfaces. I envy anyone who gets to co-parent with Siri.

This diversity makes it impossible to address every type of family without leaving someone out. I don’t have time to rewrite every paragraph sixteen different ways to point out how a family with two dads might handle a situation differently than a family with a single mum and a volleyball. Unless my publisher decides to pay me by the word, in which case I’ll do exactly that. You’ll know I went that route if this book is twice as thick as the Bible.

But if this book is a reasonable thickness, I kept things simple and addressed my advice toward a family with one mum and one dad. If that doesn’t describe your household, swap the pronouns or number of parents in your head and it’ll still work. Or pay someone to go through the book with a marker and change it for you. There are a lot of starving editors on the streets. Help a few of them feed their children tonight.

REALITY CHECK

The old challenges of everyday life will vanish the instant zombies show up – but not one second sooner. That’s one of the biggest obstacles parents face that other survival guides overlook: Ordinary life will continue until the moment it ends for good. There won’t be a transition period when mums and dads can quit their jobs, cash out their kids’ university funds, and spend six months digging a bunker out in the desert. There will be bills to pay right up to the second civilization collapses and money loses all value forever. Then millions of greenbacks won’t be worth as much as a single serving of beans. That’s why you should toss a few extra tins in your trolley every time you go to the supermarket. Someday you’ll be the richest person in the world.

Until that time, however, vigilant parents will face skeptics who think preparing for the zombie apocalypse is wasteful at best and dangerous at worst. Don’t worry. Those naysayers will die in the first wave. There’s no sweeter revenge than natural selection.

There’s another reason why, as a parent, you can’t drop everything to get ready for zombies, no matter how sure you are that the end is near. You must maintain a semblance of normality to avoid scaring your children and destroying your marriage. While there are occasional exceptions, at least one spouse in every relationship is firmly against dipping into the family budget to pursue the paranoid delusions of a selfish man-child. That last part may or may not be a direct quote from my wife. When I slipped on that wedding ring, I got more than a partner for life; I gained a standing veto to all my best schemes. Marriage has a built-in system of checks and balances.

HOW THIS BOOK WORKS

This book guides parents through the unique child-rearing challenges of the zombie apocalypse. If you don’t believe in zombies, you might still find this book entertaining. It’ll help you pass the time until the undead eat you. Before you die, you might even pick up a tip or two on how to raise children when zombies aren’t around. That’s not my goal. Any normal parenting lessons you learn from this book are strictly accidental.

This guide uses several methods to teach parents about surviving the zombie apocalypse:

WORDS

In a novel approach no one ever thought of before, I converted thoughts from my head into strings of text on paper. By reading those words, you’ll download my ideas directly into your mind. I arrayed these brain codes as horizontal lines throughout this book. Read them left to right, moving down a line after completing each one. Blink as necessary. Don’t worry if my thoughts give you a headache. That happens all the time to my wife.

COMICS

These three-panel stories illustrate lessons about raising kids around zombies. Sometimes they pertain directly to the text of this book. Other times, well, they don’t. Give me a break. I had a lot of blank space to fill.

The art style of these comics is deliberately spartan. Beautiful, detailed images would be too distracting. I don’t want your eyes to linger on a stunning, emotionally complex image when a zombie could sneak up behind you at any moment. Also, I suck at drawing and this is legitimately the best I could do. I can’t believe people paid money for this book.

GRAPHS

Numbers are scary. Maths may not bite you and turn you into an undead monster, but it can ruin your chances of getting into medical school and turn you into a struggling humor writer for the rest of your life. Not that I’m bitter or anything. To make the data in this book more user-friendly, I broke it down into colorful charts and graphs. Each one offers in-depth statistical information I made up off the top of my head. But every bit of it is true because it’s published right here. You can’t lie in a book. I think it’s illegal.

DOS AND DON’TS

Despite being a straightforward concept, a zombie survival guide for parents is still a hard idea for some people to wrap their heads around. Just ask the dozens and dozens of people who gave me blank stares when I pitched this book. My ideas are the world’s leading cause of awkward silences.

To help everyone who still doesn’t get where I’m going with this, I’ve made a list of dos and don’ts to walk you through it. That’s right: There’s a guide for this zombie guide. If you fail to understand that, there is no guide for the guide for the guide. You’ll have to wing it.

Do reference this book when you need quick, concise information on how to survive a specific zombie situation.

Don’t read this book while being actively attacked by zombies. No book is worth dying for. Except the one that came down to us from a higher power. I’m talking, of course, about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J. K. Rowling be with you.

Do use this book to hit zombies, but only if there are no better weapons available AND you bought the special metal-plated edition. If you have the paperback, you’re out of luck.

Don’t eat this book. Food is scarce in the zombie apocalypse, but this published work has little nutritional value. Also, it might hurt when it comes back out, especially if you’re reading this on a tablet.

Do get a copy of this book you can keep. If you use it right, it’ll be covered in dirt and blood splatter by the end. The last thing you need in the apocalypse is a hefty library fine.

Don’t tell your friends about this book. You need every advantage you can get over the competition. It’s a person-eat-person world out there.

Do take this book literally. It’s about raising kids in the zombie apocalypse. Everything in here is obviously true. If there’s parenting advice you don’t like, get offended. Write an angry letter. If possible, light something on fire. That’s the only appropriate response to this very real threat to your parenting style. I don’t even know what sarcasm is. A zombie ate my dictionary.

FINAL WAIVER

It’s possible for you and your entire family to make it through the zombie apocalypse alive and well if you do precisely what I tell you. I’m perhaps the most qualified man on the planet to teach these lessons. I have four daughters, and as of today not a single one of them has died in a zombie attack. No one alive has faced more zombies than I have. Then again, no one has faced less. We’re all tied at zero.

Nonetheless, I stand behind my words. If you read this book, I guarantee you won’t die in a zombie attack. I’m not sure how you’ll collect the money if I’m wrong, but that’s not my problem. This isn’t a step-by-step guide for how zombies can sue unscrupulous authors. But with any luck, it won’t come to that.

Just as a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, a book of twelve chapters begins with one excessively wordy introduction. It’s going to be a wild ride. Buckle up, but only metaphorically. You shouldn’t ever read this book in a moving vehicle. You need to keep both eyes on the road to watch for zombies.

THE BEST BAD DAY OF YOUR LIFE

You can’t pick when and where zombies will attack. Even if you tried, the undead are notoriously bad at keeping appointments. That’s why you should be prepared at all times to fight for your life. This readiness should start well before civilization collapses. It’s easy to be on guard when the dead are already walking the earth, but it takes much more discipline to be vigilant when the biggest dangers in your life are being late for a parents’ evening meeting or burning a frozen pizza. For the record, the instructions were not as clear as they could have been, and the smoke damage was minimal. Remind me to send a gift basket to the fire department.

The zombie apocalypse won’t start everywhere at once. In some areas, it could be underway right now. It’s easy to mistake an undead assault for something else, like “civil unrest” or “boy-band concerts.” In other areas, zombie attacks could take months or even years to begin. Portland will be ground zero for the outbreak. (Shoreditch, for you British folk). People there do everything before it’s cool. San Francisco will be the last to fall. The undead can’t afford the rent, even for homes damaged by unexplained pizza fires.

The zombie apocalypse won’t start with fireworks and a laser light show. The undead are more understated than that, and besides, they don’t have the budget. Instead, it’ll be up to parents to look for subtle signs the dead are walking the earth. In some places, this will be easy to spot. In Canada, where the crime rate is zero and no one has said a swear word since 1982, even one zombie could throw the whole country into chaos. In other places, zombies could destroy everything and nobody would notice the difference.

As a parent, it’s crucial that you time your response exactly right. If you quit your job and pull your kids out of school too early, you’ll starve to death before the zombie apocalypse even starts. But if you wait too long, everyone you love could be eaten by zombies, which would make for an awkward family newsletter. Making the right decision requires maturity, vision, and excellent judgment. Too bad it’s up to you.

There are simple steps you can take every day to ensure you catch the end of the world right at the start. The first thing you should do when you wake up is look out the window. As a kid, I checked if there was enough snow to cancel school; now I check if there are enough zombies to cancel work. Most days, I’m disappointed. Never get your hopes up when it comes to Mother Nature or the damned.

Remember to always do a visual check. Zombies, like weather, are local. Just because the entire region is expecting a big storm doesn’t mean your house will get a drop of rain. In the same way, just because nobody else has seen a zombie yet doesn’t mean the very first one isn’t lurking in your bushes. Cut down all hedges as a precaution. At the very least, you won’t have to trim them every year.

Next, check the news. That term is misleading. As anyone who has ever watched or read it knows, there’s very little news in the news. If important stories get covered, it’s strictly by accident. Reporters are mainly interested in celebrities, sex scandals, and sensational crimes. Sure, they might mention a politician every now and then, but only if they’re involved in the sexy murder of someone famous. Even the most obscure legislator can make international headlines if his mistress dies in a sex swing accident at a petting zoo. That’s how “sexident” and “zooscrew” made their way into the dictionary.

Carefully screen any news story that sounds vaguely zombie-related. There are a lot of false positives. Stampedes and mass groups of panicked people killing each other aren’t proof of anything. Look at any Black Friday sale. If you won’t bite off someone’s ear to get a discounted TV, you don’t deserve it. The same goes for riots. Chaos in the streets proves the existence of a local football team, not zombies. Nothing shows civic pride quite like torching your own city.

IF IT’S ALL CLEAR

If there are no zombies outside your window or in the news, prepare for the worst: real life. The most awful moment on any morning is when you realize the world isn’t going to end and you have to go to work. Until humanity reverts to a post-apocalyptic barter economy, you have to earn a salary. I look forward to the day when I can pay for my daughters’ braces with a bag of pinecones.

The area might be zombie-free when you walk out the front door, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way all day. A good parent needs to be ready for all hell to break loose at a moment’s notice. Undead swarms seldom call ahead. My wife and I both work, and it’s my job to drop off the kids at school and nursery. Parents still have a duty to protect their partners and children, even if they have to do it from a distance. If my family gets eaten, I won’t get another one. I beat the odds when I found one woman willing to reproduce with me. I will never, ever be that lucky again. Most other dads find themselves in the same situation. In a way, families with bumbling losers for fathers are the fortunate ones. Our wives and kids know we have to protect them because we don’t have a plan B.

To keep your children safe, carefully vet their nursery provider. This means daily, not just once a year. Shockingly, many parents refuse to take an extra five minutes before dropping their kids off to verify their nursery isn’t overrun by zombies. Children in that age range are unlikely to defend themselves effectively against the undead. For unknown reasons, the government discourages firearms training for toddlers.

The chances of a zombie outbreak beginning in a nursery are alarmingly high. Toddlers are walking Petri dishes. Every major illness starts with them. They are so contagious that NATO’s current germ warfare policy is to parachute toddlers into enemy countries. A single runny nose could wipe out North Korea. Little kids have undeveloped immune systems and love to eat food off the floor. To diseases, they’re Disneyland. Put twelve toddlers in a room together and you’ll have the deadliest germ laboratory in the world. Everyone knows the bubonic plague started in a nursery. I don’t see why the first case of zombieism will be any different.