📖First Chapter: Hi De Ho, Infecterino! The Come Up by Andrew Marc Rowe #FirstChapter

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Title: Hi De Ho, Infecterino! The Come Up: The Parasol Files Book One
Author: Andrew Marc Rowe
Publisher: Sophic Press
Publication Date: January 28, 2025
Pages: 202
Genre: Zombie Horror Comedy

BOOK BLURB:

Larry Evans was on the brink of his big break. As the lead singer of a rising rock band in 1980s London, his dream of leaving behind his small-time drug-dealing days seemed within reach. But fate—or more accurately, a freak fire and a faceful of experimental fungal spores—had other plans. Transformed into patient zero of a flesh-eating zombie outbreak, Larry unwittingly becomes ground zero for a pandemic that’s more psychedelic than apocalyptic.

The culprit? De Longeuil, a hallucinogenic fungal infection created by the brilliant but socially awkward scientist Hester. As the infection spreads, it alters not just bodies but minds, creating a hive mind of infected individuals who crave brains and challenge the limits of human evolution. Meanwhile, global leaders weigh the nuclear option, threatening to obliterate Great Britain in a desperate bid to contain the outbreak.

Enter an unlikely alliance: Larry, fighting to maintain his humanity; Starseed, the newly sentient fungal hive mind; and a ragtag crew of survivors, including Willy, an adult bookstore clerk battling his own addictions, and Ralph, whose experimental fluconazole offers a glimmer of hope but at a strange cost to her own humanity. Together, they must find a way to prove to the world that the infected aren’t mindless monsters, all while dodging fallout—both literal and figurative.

Across the Atlantic, Subject #30452—a crow gifted with sapience thanks to Parasol Industries’ sinister experiments—embarks on his own odyssey. From revenge to psychedelic enlightenment, his journey takes him to a New Jersey arcade run by a hippie named Zane, where unexpected connections begin to reshape his worldview.

Hi De Ho, Infecterino! is the first explosive installment of The Parasol Files, a mind-bending trilogy that blends apocalyptic chaos with dark humor, wild characters, and a sharp, satirical edge. Equal parts zany adventure, raunchy comedy, and biting commentary, this is a story of survival, evolution, and the absurdity of it all. Buckle up for a trippy, laugh-out-loud ride into the end of the world—and the strange possibilities it might bring.

Hi De Ho, Infecterino! The Come Up is available at Amazon.

First Chapter:

For British Eyes Only

“Carter?”

The line went dead as soon as the man sitting in the darkened office uttered the name. In the dusky light filtering in through gaudy Venetian blinds, a barely-visible haze of blue smoke wreathed the speaker’s head. He replaced the phone in its cradle, sighing as he did so. Then he pulled another draw on the cigarette. His face glowed a faint orange in the gloom.

White-haired, fat, well past the prime of his life, he had given everything he could to his career as a lawyer. At least, that was the party line he fed to others. In truth, he had given his life to himself, or at least tried to. In addition to the pounds of adipose tissue, he had the pounds Sterling to prove it – and to lose. Every single jiggling part of him had cringed before he picked up the phone to make the call to that bottom-feeding reporter, the one who had been dogging him for weeks.

Humphrey Carter: even the reporter’s name sounded made up, to go with his well-coiffed hair and plastic grin that he wore whenever he delivered his latest on the nightly news spot reserved for ‘hard-hitting investigative journalism.’ Carter was the guy who exposed an Anglican priest as a diddler with several child victims over the decades, a scandal at a pulp and paper mill involving glory holes, buggery, and married mill workers, and a former Labour MP’s connections with the Californian porn industry, among other sordid tales of perversion.

Carter might very well have been a lech himself, because all he ever did was shine a light on the dirty secrets of the local heavyweights. His latest scoop? He had discovered that Rufus Duhaim, one of the managing partners of London’s biggest corporate law firms, was living a double life, splitting his time as a family man with the 2.3 kids and fancy apartment whilst also maintaining a loving relationship with a transgender prostitute from Germany named Greta. Or, as Duhaim’s starched-collar colleagues at the firm liked to call women like Greta, ‘tranny whore.’

The whole blackmail exchange with Carter was not surprising. For every Father Terry unmasked for the vicarious titillation of the masses, there must have been a dozen perverts still working their ‘magic’ in the closet of the various churches and freak havens like Buckingham Palace and the House of Lords. It was clear that Carter was earning well beyond the pay grade of an investigative journalist, what with the Bugatti sports car and the Italian suits that only men like Duhaim could afford. It stood to reason that Carter’s silence was for sale, and the price for said silence was a handsome one indeed.

Considered in that light, the line going dead was no surprise. Duhaim knew more than a little about his top-billed client, Parasol Industries. And he knew that Parasol had a P.I. network that would make Carter’s operation seem like a child playing hardboiled Yankee detective with his mates in the woods. As soon as Duhaim heard from Carter, he knew that his life was forfeit, whether on national television or at the end of a silenced pistol wielded by one of Parasol’s operatives.

That’s the thing about conspiracy theories: they’re meant to seem completely wild, a caricature of reality. After all, reality is all so much chaos and unpredictability. The notion that any corporation or secret cabal of oligarchs was really in command of the show was as ludicrous as the fashion sense of the typical conspiracy theorist. But Parasol didn’t need to be in command of any show – it just needed to know whether one of the lawyers in charge of its many pay-off schemes to the families of its victims was being blackmailed by some greaseball amateur.

Duhaim took another drag on his cigarette. Helen wouldn’t miss ‘her Rufus,’ and his kids barely knew him. A couple of them were grown and out of the house. His own grandchildren, of which he had four, had only met him a handful of times. During those ‘family times’ he was constantly using the phone or checking his pager or writing his latest extortion letter to some competitor of one of his clients. Greta would likely be saddened by the loss of her Rufus, but she was no dummy. She knew exactly what a well-connected London lawyer in the Year of Our Lord 1987 could offer a transgender woman: sweet fuck all aside from a weekly poke in a secret motel that changed locations every fortnight.

Nonetheless, Greta understood him. She got who and what Rufus Duhaim was. He had made his deal with his own Devil years before, while he was coming up through Oxford. Helen had no idea who she was married to, and both she and Duhaim enjoyed that state of affairs, especially in these later years. Helen had her own side action, some private yoga instructor who was half her age and who enjoyed playing his role as servile little goofball… whilst collecting a hefty paycheque out of Duhaim’s pocket for his ‘instruction,’ no less. Duhaim was simply being more honest with himself by paying Greta up-front for sex and company.

It didn’t matter, in the end. None of it mattered. Duhaim was going out the way he came up – totally in touch with his inner rascal whilst crossing ‘t’s and dotting ‘i’s. He had already put the docs in several safety deposit boxes and willed them to select journalists. No less than six well-trained law students were set to deliver up pages upon pages of paper of highly incriminating evidence regarding Parasol’s activities to six different news stations around town. It was clear that Carter could be bought, and there was no higher bidder than Parasol, so Duhaim had done his own research, found the scrupulous few reporters who seemed to give a damn about the fifth estate’s role in society. Duhaim envied that kind of naivety, his own innocence about the way of the world having been lost oh so many decades ago at the top university in the country.

And now, whether possessed of innocence or starkly lacking same, it was all coming to an end.

If Duhaim was going down, Parasol was coming with him. Hell, the whole world would come with him. He had decided to make his own way: if he was told to choose infamy or death, he would choose both.

It was the stupidest shite, in any event. This whole life thing. Duhaim wanted to see the world burn, and he wanted the world to know it was him who lit the fuse. Or, perhaps more appropriately, who had his finger on the button.

Duhaim pressed the device, which was wired to the aerosol machine holding Parasol’s latest little breakthrough in the basement of the office building, where the air exchanger was humming along. Then he heard the snick of the door being opened quietly behind him.

He took a final drag on his cigarette before the silenced bullet exited the assassin’s gun, pierced the back of his skull, and scrambled the grey matter inside.

About the Author:

Born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, Andrew Marc Rowe had no idea that the human psyche and the nature of reality were going to end up as his prime fascinations in life. Perhaps he had more than an inkling that he would not wake up one morning as a jock doing sports things, given his penchant for nerdiness like mythology and fantasy and science fiction, but matters of the spirit and philosophy were the furthest things from his mind as an adolescent. More his speed were the most puerile and juvenile expressions of toilet and sexual humour offered up on silver platters by stand-up comedians and nascent Internet peeps.

People grow up, though, or so Andrew has been told. His interests expanded, limited world views were shattered, horizons increased in scope. Mental health problems became intractable, psychedelic medicines and following one’s dreams were recognized for their curative powers. Atheism became raving pantheism became ‘wrong question, dude’ as Andrew found himself no longer young enough to know everything or believe anything. Instead, he finds himself writing characters who think they know everything.

If you really want to stroke Andrew’s ego, tell him you’ve never read anything like his work before. It makes his writing nearly impossible to market but at least I’ve got chicken, as young Leroy Jenkins once proclaimed to a bunch of nerds in the mid-aughts.

What’s that? You want bog-standard biographical info? Lawyer, father of one, man nearing middle age who gets his jollies pushing and bending and licking the literary envelope.

Happy?

Andrew Marc Rowe’s latest book is Hi De Ho, Infecterino! The Come Up.

Website & Social Media:

Website ➜ http://www.andrewmarcrowe.com

Facebook ➜ https://www.facebook.com/andrewmarcrowe

TikTok ➜ https://www.tiktok.com/@bawdybardwrites

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Question of the Day

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