Persephone: Goddess of the Not So Undead: Persephone, #1
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About this ebook
The first book in the Persephone series.
They're not quite zombies. They're not quite human. And they're definitely not how Seffy Schmidt wants to spend her Tuesday.
Persephone has always lived in the shadow of her practically-flawless stepsister Iris, even more so after accidentally shooting Miss Perfect in the chest during a misguided and wine-cooler-soaked turkey hunt. Now the cutting-edge treatment that saved her stepsister's life -- while somehow making her even more disgustingly amazing -- might be responsible for an outbreak that's turning the entire population of the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Area into oddly-human zombies.
Read more from Regan Wolfrom
After The Fires Went Out
Related to Persephone
Titles in the series (2)
Persephone: Goddess of the Not So Undead: Persephone, #1 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Iris: Queen of the Partially Redeemed: Persephone, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for Persephone
11 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have to say, this book was a pleasant surprise! I signed up for the Member Giveaways just to see how it worked and this was my first win. Wolfrom does a remarkable job of keeping the attention of the reader. The characters are likable and surprisingly easy to relate to. I personally related to the relationship between Seffy (a bit surprised at this choice of nickname--but I got used to it)and Iris as I have been in a similar situation with step-siblings. Oh--and the fact that this is a ZOMBIE book is fantastic! Humor and dry wit help get through some of the sticky situations and may be a good reference for how to think quick on your feed should a zombie-apocalypse happen. Over all a great read and I am looking forward to Wolfrom's future works.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I received an Early Review copy from LibraryThing.It's an interesting concept, but it lacked in plot depth. I found it difficult to follow the narration because different characters kept popping up in one go, and also there was too much going on. On the plus side, it was humorous, the obviously jealous-yet not so jealous- sister dynamic had me amused. A part two seems needed. I felt there was more to it than that ending.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I won this book from Library Things in exchange for an honest review.The author made an amateurish attempt at writing a zombie novel. The plot was confusing as was the dialogue. Characters were flat and overall the story seemed rushed. I want to say there was a good plot here that just didn't flourish under Regan Wolfrom's hands, but I'm not even sure what the plot was. Were they zombies or not? Not one of the better zombie books out there.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was given the opportunity to read this for free in exchange for an honest review from librarything.com.First, let me say that I am BIG on the zombie genre. This story had a unique and funny twist to it. I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and hope to get the chance to read the next story. It flows very well and is smart, without being too bogged down with details.A very enjoyable read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The story had humor, but the narration was difficult to follow. The concept was original and had much promise.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A funny and different book. You can't help but cheer on Persephone and her cohorts as they endeavor to keep from being infected and I’d be happy to read more of “whatever that was”.
Book preview
Persephone - Regan Wolfrom
Persephone: Goddess of the Not So Undead
Copyright © 2013 by Regan Wolfrom
Cover Art by Christa Holland of Paper & Sage Design
What the hurr is this? (in case you've forgotten why you clicked that button)
They're not quite zombies. They're not quite human. And they're definitely not how Seffy Schmidt wants to spend her Tuesday.
Persephone has always lived in the shadow of her practically-flawless stepsister Iris, even more so after accidentally shooting Miss Perfect in the chest during a misguided and wine-cooler-soaked turkey hunt. Now the cutting-edge treatment that saved her stepsister’s life -- while somehow making her even more disgustingly amazing -- might be responsible for an outbreak that’s turning the entire population of the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Area into oddly-human zombies.
Armed with nothing more than her wits, a shovel, and memories of her past glory in the realm of high school science fairs, Seffy realizes that she might hold the key to saving her family, her hometown, and maybe even the world.
1
The Blurstest Day Ever
October 14th, 2023 was both the best and worst day of my life. You know, so far.
That was the day my step sister and I finally started getting along; it was also the day I accidentally shot an arrow through her lung.
I’m sure Dad would have rather just had his new and improved daughter along for the hunt, but his new wife had invited me to come out for the weekend, so when Dad had loaded up his gear and Fender the less-than-stellar hunting dog, he had two fifteen-year-old girls climbing into the truck, both of us awkwardly pretending that we knew something about killing things.
The last thing I wanted to do was kill an animal. I was way more interested in what the turkeys were thinking than what they might taste like. Iris was still a meat-eater back then, but I doubt she wanted to do any hunting, either.
But we both had an easily-distracted father to impress.
Daddy Schmidt traded up when Mom got sick, right after she’d lost her job at the hospital, when she’d started telling us that the parasites in the cat’s litter box were rewiring her brain. His new wife was pretty, and god was she young; she’d had Iris when she was eighteen, the babydaddy apparently long forgotten, and that made her a good ten years younger than my parents.
Not robbing the cradle… more like scoping out the middle school.
Iris and I are the same age, always have been. But Iris has always looked older than me, in a good way. Longer legs, less plump, bigger boobs… I used to console myself that one day she’d have some serious back problems. She has long blond hair with just a touch of curls, while my poop-colored hair -- matches my poop-colored eyes -- always swings violently between straight-and-sickly and a giant frizzy mess.
You know it’s a bad hair day when you look like there’s a giant squid nesting on your scalp.
My nose is a little bigger, too. You can see right up it if you’re a couple inches shorter than me. But don’t worry. Iris doesn’t have to see my snot since she’s always been taller… perfectly long legs, remember?
Iris was like the daughter Dad had always wanted, the two of them hitting it off like his time with me had been a terrible, terrible mistake. She even took his name, so he’d have a Schmidt girl that he could be proud of.
A Schmidt girl he’d actually tell his friends about…
Anyway… Dad had taken us down to Fort Ransom, right across the road from the empty field that, if you believe the sign, was once a military fort. There’s a bank of trees that Dad had named Turkey Shoot Forest, since… I guess there’s no need to really explain that.
Dad had slathered paint all over his face and was dressed head-to-pac-boot in camo. He always brought the orange vest just in case the game warden came around, but I’d never seen him put it on. Of course, he made both of his daughters wear theirs, to match the dog’s. I guess the hypocrisy is how you know he still loves you. As much as the mutt, at least.
Dad had two bows, his fancy overweighted one, and the slightly patronizing lady bow
that he’d bought for me, but passed on to Iris when they’d all moved in together. I clearly didn’t need a bow anymore, since I was stuck living with mom in that two-room apartment on South University, watching that kitty-poop brain rewiring in real-time.
So with one bow and two teenage girls, Iris and I would have to share, while Dad and Fender attended to the real hunt.
But it ended up being a lot of fun. Iris had snuck some malt coolers into the cart at Happy Harry’s without Dad noticing, against his solemn diktat that hunters should only drink beer. We didn’t get drunk, not because we’re way underage, but because we’re not idiots; we did have enough to drink that we’d started to feel a little more at ease with our clusterfuddle of a family life.
Iris told me some ridiculous stuff about her boyfriend-of-the-month, Sargent, like how he recounts lines from action movies in his sleep. I told her about Errol, even though we weren’t really together anymore by then, and how he insisted on holding the car door open for me and would lose his mind if I dared try and do it myself. Ah, passive sexism. So romantic.
And we talked about Dad and his ridiculous face paint, and the blind he’d set up that was the size of a minivan. He shushed us at least a dozen times as we chuckled like a couple of losers, reeking of cherry-flavoured sludge.
About two hours and no turkeys in, we decided to humor Dad a little. We shut up and knelt down in the blind, or at least I did, since despite the sheer size of the thing, there somehow still wasn’t enough room in there for all three of us.
Iris giggled as she picked up one of the decoys and kissed it on the beak, then took it with her to a stand of boxelder behind our blind, while I held the bow and waited.
I tried my best to stay quiet. That’s not easy for me.
"Gobble, gobble, motherlover," Iris called out from her place in the trees.
Please, Iris,
Dad said. Just give me ten minutes of peace.
Ask the turkey, Dad. No… beg the turkey…
Dang it, Iris.
It’s the turkey’s fault.
Maybe you should take the turkey on a hike,
I said. Show him the historic nothing of Fort Ransom.
Heh,
she said. Good idea. Fake turkeys love military history.
Make sure you’re wearing your vest,
Dad said.
Iris and her plastic tom set off for the road, gobbling most of the way.
Thanks, Seffy,
Dad said. He gave my shoulder a squeeze.
I was going to say something back… I just didn’t know what…
But Dad pulled out his gobble call and got down to it.
It didn’t take long before I sighted a jake heading toward our remaining two decoys. Fender had spotted it, too.
Too small?
I asked in a whisper.
I’ll take anything at this point. Well… you will.
You first, Dad.
"Ladies first, Seffy. You know the rules."
Yeah. Rule number one: don’t call me Seffy. My name is Persephone. You know, Iris and Persephone… remember how cute that was for a while? Greek mythology… so hot right now...
Pick up the bow, Seffy.
I took the bow. I loaded the arrow and I aimed. I drew back.
I heard a shriek.
I jerked to the right.
This fake turkey’s getting fresh with me!
Iris yelled.
I hadn’t realized what I’d just done. When I saw the arrow hit her, I didn’t realize where it had come from.
I’d forgotten I was even holding the bow.
I heard Dad scream oh my god
and I saw him run over to her.
And I… I just couldn’t move. If anything, I wanted to disappear into that blind. I wanted to slap on some of Dad’s face paint and stay perfectly quiet and still.
I didn’t want Iris to see me. I didn’t want her to know what I’d done.
I heard her gasping.
I didn’t want to hear it.
You shot me,
she said. Slowly and quietly. Seffy… you shot me.
I know,
I said. I’m sorry.
Down one daughter,
she said. She closed her eyes.
I started to cry.
Iris wasn’t the first person in the greater Fargo-Moorhead area to get the botshot. I remember watching the story about the anonymous seventy-year-old woman who’d paid over a million dollars to try and reverse her aging. The thing is, they did the story right after the injection, so no one knew if she was getting any younger. I don’t think they ever followed up on that.
But Iris didn’t need to look any younger. She needed a new lung and half a new trachea. Well, I guess the lung was optional, assuming she didn’t mind cutting back on her running, but the windpipe was pretty important. So when they transferred her to Sanford Federal, it wasn’t really a question of whether or not Dad and Beth wanted to get her the shot, or whether or not the government would approve the use of the experimental treatment on a non-vetted patient. She’d get it or she’d never be able to breathe on her own. That was considered enough of an emergency to bypass the FDA panel.
So my step sister Iris had thousands of little robots injected into her arm. And within a couple of days they’d multiplied to several million.
And Iris’ bots built her new lung and patched up the lower half of her trachea, and the bronchi thing and whatever. And I realized that my perfect step sister had gotten even more perfect.
Botshots don’t allow the existence of silly things like acne or dark circles under the eyes, and I doubt they’ll ever let you have boob and back problems. In fact, from what the doctor said, there was a strong chance that Iris wouldn’t even have problems with things like gaining weight or looking older, that the bots would actually work to keep her body in near-perfect shape. So already-perfect Iris would somehow be more perfect, or perfect forever, I guess.
I’d always thought she’d get everything she ever wanted in life, but with those bots it seems like she’s get it all and keep it all, until long after I’m dead and forgotten.
I’d felt like a piece of grot for shooting her with that arrow, and then I felt even worse that I was jealous of her for it.
The experimental surcharge
Dad and Beth had to pay ended up cancelling university for both of us daughters, and forced Dad to put off his retirement for at least another ten years. And it became clear not long after Iris got out of the hospital that he wasn’t planning on spending much of those ten years with the likes of me.
So I went back to the apartment on South University, to my lumpy sofa bed and my crazy-eyes mother, while Iris reached new heights of being perfection.
It’s like cutting the head off a cute blond hydra. With perfect teeth.
Sometimes I think the worst part of what happened is that she still wants me in her life. She wants us to be sisters, and has no idea that half the time we’re together I get so jealous and so sick of myself that I just want to find my way back to that hunting blind and disappear for frickin ever.
2
The Parking Ticket That Effed and/or Saved My Life
It’s been three years since I mistook my stepsister for an overly loud turkey. And in true dramatic style, her life’s gotten better as mine’s gotten grottier. She makes enough tips at the Radisson lounge to start NDSU next year in mechanical engineering, while my education plan is that I have no plan. I read articles and I’ve memorized everything written by the biggest experts in ethology, but that’s where it all comes to a screeching halt.
You can’t get a PhD based on blind hope.
Iris tried to support me, coming up with stupid experiments
we could do together, reanimating a rat, messing with Iris’ bots, but she couldn’t change where my life was headed. I guess I deserve my plodding descent into forgotten dreams, having been the girl holding the compound bow.
If you’d told me when I was fifteen that winning the 9th grade science fair with cloned cockroaches would be the high point of my biology career...
Mom had her rTMS appointment this morning, and since she lost her license with that whole overriding the autonav and trying to run over her neighbour incident, it was my job to take her in; her car won’t budge now without a valid card to read.
The perfect day already. And in the bathroom mirror I found a nice chin zit to add to my enjoyment.
I called Errol and let him know that I’d be late. I don’t like putting him in that position, but he’s the barely legal toolbag who decided to hire me. And it’s not like you really need a full time dispatcher for a plumbing company with two trucks.
Sometimes minimum wage is just too damn high.
They don’t do rTMS at Sanford Federal itself, at least, not for outpatient stuff. I think that’s better for Mom, since she doesn’t have to go back to where she used to work, where people she knows still work and say hello with that tinge of pity in their voice.
Instead of Sanford they opened up a little office on 3rd Avenue North, with mood lighting and abstract art and no indication from the street that they’re strapping people to gurneys and zapping them. Well, okay… it’s not really like that, but when Mom had first told me about the treatment, I couldn’t help but think of that shock therapy bunk they used to do, where they’d stick a rubber ball or something in your mouth and go to town.
It just seems like a strange thing to do in the age of over-the-counter gene therapy, and 3D-printed antivirals, and of botshots moving from experimental to everyday. And rTMS and bots definitely don’t mix. I read the pamphlet at the outpatient clinic… those electrical shocks or whatever can murder millions of those little guys. Although I do wonder what that would really do; it’s not like pulses in your head is going to reach down and get bots swimming in your intestines.
But still, if Iris somehow lost those bots… it’d suck, probably worse than having never had them. Her whole lifestyle’s changed now, not just because she’s bothot now, but because she’s gotten a little bit reckless.
I remember watching her climb a quarter of the way up a radio tower. Sometimes I wish I could be that fearless.
If they’d issue them for acne maybe I’d already have gotten my shot. And I’d be more than just me, even if they have started putting restrictions on just what those bots are allowed to do.
You see, you can’t just have what Iris has been having. They spend more time in the lab now designing what those bots aren’t allowed to do. They’ve basically closed the door on her kind of bothot perfection. But anything’s better than nothing.
To be honest, I think that old-fashioned rTMS treatment is working, even if it’s just placebo. Mom gets out of bed most mornings now, and I didn’t have to do anything to get her into the car today.
She’d still been a little jittery about a news story from yesterday, about a couple of civil engineering students disappearing just west of town, leaving their truck and equipment behind. Mom had told me with complete conviction that the rapture had begun. I don’t know why she thinks it will come in stages, like it’d start off with a dress rehearsal or something.
The nurse practitioner had said that soon they’d start reducing the visits to one every two months, and that the eventual goal was to eliminate them completely, that in a year or two they’ll have rewired whatever part of her brain it was that made my mother think that Satan lives in our toilet bowl.
So I guess it’s working, which is good, obviously, even if it is about six or seven years too late.
It’s not like Mom getting better can undo everything else that’s happened to our family.
And even though she is getting better, I wasn’t about to just drop her off in front. I had to get the car to park somewhere and then I’d have to walk her in, and I’d have to sit with her in the tastefully-appointed waiting room until they called her name. After the session she’d be Aunt Callie’s problem to pick up, but until she went in she was mine. And naturally, we waited there for forever.
And that’s how I got another grotty parking ticket.
They give you three days now to pay it, or else they double the fine. I don’t know why they ever put the meters on third anyway, since they’ve been broken for over a month and no one’s bothered to come and fix it. And why the hurr do they still use parking meters? Even frickin Grand Forks has it automatic.
There was no way I was paying sixty five dollars for a broken parking meter. I mean, I’m practically a starving college student… well, you know, without the college part.
So I called Errol yet again and told him I’d be a little later than late, since I had some justice to pursue.
He laughed. I think he knows the whole job is a joke. Sometimes I wonder if it’s pity that brings that paycheck, or if it’s something distinctly creepier, like hidden cameras, or stray hairs and skin flakes collected and stored in some locked toolbox in the back of the shop.
It’s possible Errol takes after his Uncle Pat…
Errol used to be that edgy kid with the dark clothes and the purple nail polish, the one you could date not just to rebel but because he was kinda hot.
Now he’s just getting kinda weird. Buzzcut hair, perpetually wearing those stupid aviator sunglasses, even when it’s cloudy and miserable, like it’s been since Halloween and will probably remain until long past Thanksgiving… I guess he thinks that’s the look women want. Maybe he thinks that’s the look I want.
First rule of women: we don’t know what the heck we want. Not until we see it, and even then…
I told the car to drive to our gray and charmless city hall, with my photographic evidence and best look of righteous anger to contest the ticket. The woman at the desk took care of it pretty quickly; I wonder sometimes if other girls see my chin zit and diarrhea-brown tentacle hair and take pity on me. I wonder if Iris gets treated worse by other women, because she’s just so… Iris.
I know that doesn’t happen. Women don’t think like that. I don’t think like that. Sometimes Iris makes me want to set up camp in a bottle of ill-gotten Jack, but it’s not like I ever want to smash that bottle over her perfectly-shaped head.
I love my sister.
A fat stack more than I love myself.
I decided that since it was already 11:15, I might as well call it a half day. I called Errol yet again, and he agreed, asking me if I had plans for lunch.
That was the last thing I wanted to do today. Or any day. Quit living in the past, Errol.
But... if you don’t play nice, people tend to realize that you’re not providing any real value. And then you have to go back to folding shirts at Herberger’s. Which doesn’t get you as many hours, and puts you in close proximity to people a buttload harder to deal with than Errol and his weird Uncle Pat.
He asked me to meet him at Cafe Manon, at 11:30. I think I mentioned once in middle school, like well over five years ago now, that I like French food, and since then Errol always wants to take me out for beef bourguignon and escargots, conveniently forgetting that I’ve been a vegetarian since before we ever knew each other.
But I do love the cheese...
I was a few minutes early, so I waited in my car. I tried some concealer on the pimple on my chin, but it didn’t really help. It was less the redness and more the terrain change that was making that stupid thing stand out.
I checked my feeds; there were a few photos Iris posted of our last ride down to visit her new boyfriend. I only get to see her once or twice a month, so getting out on horseback with her happens even less.
I made a few stupid comments about the horses and that way Iris puts her heels up when she rides, then I closed the gallery once it got to pics of Iris and David… canoodling. I’m not jealous… I’m just… uh… uninterested?
Errol never showed up.
And didn’t answer when I called him.
Prick.
It seemed like a strange way to tell someone they’d been fired. At least buy me a frickin cheese plate.
After around fifteen minutes I grabbed a takeout veggie wrap from a much cheaper restaurant and headed toward the shop, eating as the nav drove me.
That’s when things got weird.
I ran into a backed up fudgefest of bad driving coming up on University Drive, right before the tracks, a white tanker truck turned near ninety degrees, blocking both lanes of traffic and hugging the side of a