For all the girls I’ve loved before…

…this one’s not for you.

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Table of Contents:
PICK YOUR POISON
Whimper
A STORY ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD
Where Werewolves Come From
NOT REALLY ABOUT WEREWOLVES
In Darkness I Waited
LOVECRAFTIAN CTHULHU FICTION
White In Its Brightness
A 1,000 WORDS CHALLENGE
A Chapter from Abandoned.
A NOVEL RELEASED IN JANUARY 2014
A Chapter from The End Of The World Is Nigh
THE BOOK LENGTH EXPANSIONOF WHIMPER
As Sean Douglas:
MY NOT SO SECRET PEN NAME
Braindead
ALTERNATE REALITY VERSION OF WHIMPER
The Introduction to R/T/M
TORTURE PORN NOVEL
Previously Unpublished:
MEANT FOR AN ANTHOLOGY
Till Death Do Us Part
SADDER THAN SATURDAY
WHIMPER
A story about the birds and the bees
and the end of the world as we know it.
[Originally written for and published in Forrest J Ackerman's The
Anthology of the Living Dead (2009).]

It was the year the bees died.

But first it was the bats.
But no one cared about the bats because they
dismissed the scientific evidence by ignorantly
indulging in the old analogy that bats are just rats
with wings.
Or maybe mice.
But first it was bats and then bees and then
birds.
But people only really started noticing when it
was the bees.
Although it’s true that bats devour tons, literally,
tons of insects every year, most people didn’t notice
when entire colonies of bats died off.
Because most people associate bats with
vampires and Halloween and maybe in their heart of
hearts they didn’t really feel that badly about the
dying of the bats.
I’m sure they would feel differently if it was cats,
but it was bats and they didn’t.
And those that did feel badly about the
disappearance of the bats watched helplessly.
 The year the bats died was the year before the
bees died, but people only really noticed when the
bees died.
You see, bees provide a service.
Aside from helping to weed out those few people
that are allergic to their stings, bees also play an
important part in the world.
Bees collect pollen to make honey and various
other bee byproducts, and while going about their
business they carry pollen from flower to flower
which cross-pollinates the flowers, which is how
flowers have sex as near as I can figure.
The bees and the flowers have developed a
delicate inter-dependence.
Without the bees, the flowers can’t have sex, and
there wouldn’t be any more flowers.
Or at least not nearly as many flowers.
Flowers might not seem very important in the
grand scheme of things, until you stop and think
about how almost every fruit begins as a flower on a
tree.
Apple blossoms. Orange blossoms. Cherry
blossoms.
You get the idea.
When the wild bees started to die, the few people
who made their living being beekeepers were very
busy.
Farmers paid the beekeepers to bring their bees
to their fields to collect pollen from their flowers,
thusly helping the flowers to have sex and make
fruit.
But there weren’t enough bees to go around.
So that year there wasn’t as much fruit as there
would usually be, and what little there was, was
scarce and went for inflated prices in accordance
with the rules of supply and demand.
All of this caused public outcry, and the people
looked towards the people that knew about such
things and demanded to know why the bees were
dying.
The people whose field of expertise was bees
mostly gave complicated answers, which, in layman’s
terms, basically meant that they didn’t know why the
bees were dying.
Every now and then one of them would compare
the dying of the bees to the death of the bats, but
that footage was edited together to make the person
seem eccentric.
People didn’t care about the bats, they cared
about the bees, and they didn’t want to be reminded
about the bats because they were already in a bad
mood because fruit was scarce and expensive and
someone, somewhere, had to have the answers.
And if it wasn’t bad enough about the bees, then
it was the birds.
Spring arrived as it does every year, but this year
when rosy-fingered dawn crept upon the horizon,
people didn’t hear the incessant chirping of chicks in
the trees outside their windows.
It felt like February long after the weather had
warmed, but still the days grew longer and the birds
were nowhere to be found.
There were no robins. There were no blue jays.
There were none of the miscellany of wild birds
whose real names only avid bird-watchers knew.
In the cities there were no pigeons, and the people
that lived in the cities didn’t really miss them, but
subconsciously they noticed, and they knew that
something wasn’t right.
Every night on the news, the talking heads would
talk about the absence of the birds and the bees,
because no one cared about the bats. Remember?
The birds and the bees and the flowers and the
fruit. But not the trees.
The gist of it was that the birds were sick and
dying or dead.
The shells of their eggs were too thin and most of
their eggs didn’t hatch and those that did hatch gave
forth chicks that were too weak and sickly to survive
so when the old birds died, there were no new birds
to replace them.
People started to get the notion that maybe
somehow we had accidentally done something very
bad and maybe we were being punished.
Around the world those that believed in God
thought that it was his doing.
Some of those that believed very strongly thought
that the man upstairs was sending us a message.
That it was a warning. That the end of times was
near. That the end was nigh.
And maybe it was a warning, but it doesn’t seem
fair to kill of all of the bats and birds and bees
because we had thoughtlessly taken everything for
granted.
So without the birds and the bees, the farmers
were out of work.
There was no fresh fruit. There were no fresh
vegetables.
Most people didn’t really notice.
 They were aware that there was a problem, but so
much of our food is artificial that the change for
most people wasn’t very drastic.
Except for those that had made it their habit to
eat mostly natural food.
And those people are generally viewed as
eccentric, so it’s fair to say that most people didn’t
notice.
The government knew that without the raw
ingredients used to make processed food that, in
time, even the processed food would run out.
People weren’t scared. Not yet. But they were
nervous, and people discussed the whole thing in
their daily conversations. Small talk when you
bumped into someone you knew in the hallway at
the office. Small talk with strangers while waiting
for the bus or the train or the plane. At least they
weren’t talking about sports, politics, or the weather.
Not that they weren’t talking about sports, politics,
and the weather, but they were talking about them
less now that they had something more important to
talk about. Maybe they were spending the time that
they used to spend talking about terrorism and
nuclear power and nuclear bombs and global
warming and worrying about the impending melting
of the polar icecaps and contemplating what the
world would look like when sea level rose ten feet in
one year, talking about the bees and the birds and
joking about what’s going to happen when all of the
food runs out.
Those that knew, made “Soilent Green” jokes and
felt smugly superior to those that didn’t get the
reference.
 The Department of Agriculture and the Food and
Drug Administration secretly knew that the problem
was much worse than the average person suspected,
but took great pains to not let on how much worse
things would get in order to not inspire the public to
panic and riot. Widespread civil disobedience and
martial law was something that the powers that be
would like to avoid if at all possible.
Scientists were collected and sworn to secrecy
and research was commenced and whenever
someone at the lab made a “Soilent Green” joke,
everyone got the reference, but as time went on, the
jokes stopped being funny.
They all knew that humans can survive on a
minimum of water, protein, and a small amount of
vitamins and minerals which can, for the most part,
be artificially synthesized.
But who would want to?
The supermarkets became more and more picked
over as time passed.
All of the good stuff was gone and even the stuff
that nobody usually wanted was becoming scarce.
But you weren’t worried.
When the bats all died, you were one of the people
that noticed and cared.
You’ve always had a place in your heart for bats
and vampires and Halloween.
The next year when you heard about the bees
dying, you knew that something was wrong and it
would only get worse and you wondered what would
be next and you weren’t surprised when you heard
about the birds.
You had seen a lot of movies about the end of the
world.
 Post-apocalyptic films in which, in the absence of
civil order, humanity devolved back into savagery.
You had seen “Soilent Green”.
You knew you didn’t want to have to get in line
and wait to be issued government rationed food stuff
that looked and tasted like play-doh.
So you stocked up before most people realized
that there was something wrong.
You bought dozens of cases of Chef Boyardee and
Ramen Noodles and stacked them up in your
basement.
You figured even if it wasn’t the end of the world,
it was a good idea to have them anyway, just in case,
and you’d get around to eating all of it eventually.
You had a friend that was in the Army Reserves
and one weekend you drove up to the barracks and
he helped you load a pallet of M.R.E.s onto the back
of your pick-up truck.
The military has a habit of overspending and no
one would probably notice, and even if they did
notice they wouldn’t care.
It’s not like it’s their money.
Well, it is, but it isn’t. It’s government money.
So who cares?
When the supermarkets ran out of stuff, they
closed and locked their doors.
All of the supermarket people were out of work
because they ran out of food to sell, and the truck
drivers were out of work, because there was nothing
to bring to the supermarket, because the farmers
were out of work, because there wasn’t any food to
farm, because there weren’t any bees to cross-
pollinate the crops.
The government instituted a program.
 Everyone received a ration card and were issued
rations.
Your ration cards were distributed according to
the last number of your social security number,
which, in turn, determined which day of the week
you were allowed to show up and wait in line to get
rations at the government appointed distribution
center.
The media was instructed to make it sound like
the rationing was universal and voluntary and
necessary.
The television announcers tried to sound upbeat
when they would read the teleprompter which fed
them a comparison to the rationing of the war effort
during the world wars but no matter how hard they
tried, the look in their eyes was most decidedly not
light-hearted.
They were just as scared as everyone else was,
but they didn’t want to criticize the government.
They didn’t want to bite the hand that fed them.
They comforted themselves at night by reassuring
themselves that they were doing their part to help,
and that unnecessarily panicking the public would
serve no purpose, and they thought about all of the
wonderful foods that were no longer available and
tried to pretend to themselves that they weren’t
scared that those wonderful foods would never be
available again, and eventually they fell asleep. Just
like everyone else.
But everyone knew that rich people still had
plenty of food.
Everyone knew that there was steak and lobster
to be had, but not by them, and everyone complained
about it but nobody did anything about it.
 Eventually, even the stockpiles of generically
packaged cheese and rice and macaroni and cheese
ran out, but the government knew that this would
happen and they were prepared.
An announcement was made that there was a
solution, and everyone was made aware of the fact
that humans can survive on a minimum of water,
protein, and a small amount of vitamins and
minerals, which can, for the most part, be artificially
synthesized.
A protein-based nutrient was being produced but
no one really thought too long or hard about where
the protein was coming from.
Except the people that researched and designed
it, and they were being taken care of by the
government and still had good food to eat, and didn’t
have to eat the protein-based nutrient and didn’t
want to risk their personal comfort by making too
much noise about it.
The birds may have all died and the cows had all
already been turned into food.
But there were still horses.
And cats and dogs and rats and mice and
elephants.
The pet shops and the animal shelters and the
zoos closed and then all of those people were out of
work too, but by then people were more worried
about food than work.
People were getting sick.
Those that were the most likely to have a
predisposition to illness weren’t receiving adequate
nutrition and they were getting sick.
Colds and flus became pneumonia.
If you cut yourself, it took much longer to heal.
 The social mechanisms designed to handle the
deceased were overwhelmed and conventional burial
was discontinued, replaced by a newly created
governmental system for the disposal of the dead.
The system had a few problems when it was
begun, but it quickly adapted to meet the new
demand, and no one really worried about where all of
the dead people were going if they weren’t being
buried, because they were too worried about their
own destiny and distracted by the constant growling
of their stomachs.
The protein-based nutrient continued to be
produced and distributed and those that didn’t die
from illnesses brought on by weakened immune
systems lived on as best they could.
The protein-based nutrient continued to be
produced and distributed even after all of the
animals were gone.
We really should have known better.
Wasn’t mad cow disease caused by cows that
were fed with food that contained ground up cows?
People started to act weird.
Surviving on protein-based nutrient and water
and an artificially synthesized nutritional
supplement of vitamins and minerals, everyone was
tired all of the time.
People didn’t have any energy, and although they
hadn’t lost the will to live, they lost their lust for life.
Then people started dying.
Sure it’s true that living on the brink of
starvation, everyone was in poor spirits and those
that were predisposed to depression and suicidal
thoughts were that much more likely to decide to end
their own lives, but that wasn’t the reason that
people started dying.
On the news, the announcers announced that
millions of people were dying, but they weren’t really
dying, they were just getting really sick and instead
of dying they just looked like they were dead.
And maybe they had died, but they were still
breathing and moving and if they were dead it was a
death unlike any we had ever known.
And they stopped showing up for their rations,
which didn’t worry the people that hadn’t died, but
not died, because there was precious little to go
around, and they figured since they hadn’t died it
wasn’t their problem.
Those that still had jobs, made jokes at work
about zombies, those that didn’t know who George
Romero was soon knew exactly who he was, but after
a while they stopped making jokes because it’s not
funny anymore when it happens to someone you
know or someone you love.
But you weren’t that upset, because your parents
had died before this whole thing happened, and
although you have a few friends, everyone was too
busy surviving to really worry about anyone else, and
the one person you ever truly loved decided that they
didn’t love you as much as you loved them, and they
went to college, and they moved away and married
someone else, last you heard.
You call that one person, “The One That Got
Away”, and every now and then you think about
them and you wonder how they are and you wonder
if they’re dead and that’s about the only time you
ever get a little sad, but you smoke another cigarette
and the sadness goes away.
 One day you get up and walk to work.
On the way to work, you realize how quiet it is
without the birds and planes flying overhead and
without cars and other vehicular traffic on the
streets.
Gas has been rationed like everything else, and
only governmental vehicles are allowed to use the
roadways and even those are heard less and less
frequently.
Those people that aren’t dead, or are dead but not
dead, are so malnourished and exhausted that they
spend most of their time in bed.
The sound of children playing is now something
you remember but do not hear.
You get to work and the doors are closed and no
one’s there.
No one called you to let you know not to bother
coming in and you almost let yourself think that
there wasn’t anyone left to call you but you stash
that thought into the back of your mind for some
later day because you don’t want to think those
thoughts.
Not yet.
The TV doesn’t have live shows anymore.
There are no studio audiences.
It’s just reruns of sitcoms and news updates and
even then the news updates aren’t delivered by
people anymore. It’s just a station identification
card with information scrolling across the bottom.
All of the production assistants are too sick, or
dead, to go to work.
There’s no one left to make TV.
 This doesn’t really bother you, because you never
really watched TV anyway, preferring instead to
watch movies from your collection.
You’re proud that you thought ahead and got lots
of food and cigarettes before the shit hit the fan and
since you eat fairly well you’re not as sick and tired
and dead as everybody else.
One night you’re watching a movie and the power
goes out.
All of the generators in the basements of the
stores kick in and the city is filled with the sound of
alarms, but you’re not worried.
The power has gone out before and you know
what to do.
Nothing.
Just hang tight and wait for the power to come
back on.
You go to bed early that night because it’s dark
and reading by candlelight makes you sleepy.
You wake up the next morning and the power
isn’t back on, but you can still hear the store alarms
going off in the distance and for a second you think
that maybe they’re still going off because there’s no
one that cares enough to go and reset them.
Or maybe there’s no one left to go and reset them.
And even though you’ve always said that you hate
people you feel a chill in the back of your neck and
you shudder, but you shake it off and open a can of
beefaroni for breakfast.
The power doesn’t come back on the next day.
Or the day after that.
You adapt.
Doing what you have to do by light during the day
or in the early evening by candlelight.
 Weeks go by and the store alarms die out, one by
one, retiring from the discordant chorus and when
you wake up one day and feel that something’s
missing and realize that what’s missing is that the
last store alarm has died out, you realize that your
cell phone hasn’t rung for weeks and you shrug and
make a non-committal face to yourself.
You wonder what happened, but you don’t want
to go into the city, because there’s smoke on the
horizon.
You imagine the city on fire, and for a minute
you’re excited and you’re almost overcome by the
urge to walk to the city and check it out.
But then you think of what a long walk it is, and
what a pain in the ass that would be.
But then you remember that you still have a car
and you probably have enough gas to get to the city
and back, but you check yourself, telling yourself
that maybe you’d better save that gas because maybe
someday you’ll need it.
When and for what you don’t think too hard
about.
Because that’s not the real reason you don’t want
to go and watch the city burn.
You know that somewhere out there, there are
millions of people that are dead, but not dead, and
you almost laugh when you think, “undead” because
that’s for zombies and vampires, right?
But the dead walk the earth, and they’ve got to be
surviving on something, and up till now, nobody
knows you’re out here, alone, with a lifetime supply
of food.
So you think that you’d be better off leaving well
enough alone.
 You spent so much of your life feeling
disappointed by other people and you really don’t
mind being alone and the quiet is quite relaxing.
In fact, you can’t remember when you’ve felt so
relaxed.
Maybe this is just what you needed.
Every now and then you miss what was, but it
passes and you think about it less and less as weeks
become months become years.
Then, one night, you realize that you haven’t been
keeping track of the time, and you’re reckoning the
passage of time by the passage of the seasons.
You furrow your brow and wonder if that seems
right.
Then you take a deep breath and let it out slow
and accept it.
Accept everything.
You think maybe this is what was meant to be.
You stop fighting.
You’ve been fighting all of your life and it feels
wonderful to finally let it all go.
You smile to yourself and close your eyes and
before you drift to sleep you remember.
A part of a poem that they forced you to read and
try to interpret in school.
You resented it at the time, but now that you’ve
accepted everything, even your resentment has faded
like the petals of a flower in the pages of a book on
the dust-laden shelves of an abandoned library.
Unattended. Unmourned. Unremembered.
You remember the fragment from the poem.
And in your mind you repeat the lines to yourself
as you fall asleep.
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
Where Werewolves Come From.
[Originally written for and published in Fracas: A Collection of Short
Friction. (2011).]

"It is not simply against future conspiracies of evil men

which we have to guard ourselves but it is against
ourselves, against our weaknesses and faults in our
own social order, in our own ways of living against
which we have to be on continual guard." - Donald
Ewen Cameron

Chapter One: Fireworks

“The best part of the fireworks display should be

the finale.”, she said and turned over to fumble
around in her cigarette pack perched precariously
half off of the edge of the bedside table.
He said, “I’m sorry. This usually doesn’t happen
like this.” and she declined to respond to his
response and clicked her lighter until the flame
caught and lit her face up briefly as she inhaled and
the tip of her cigarette caught fire.
“It’s okay.” she said and exhaled smoke, but he
could tell it wasn’t okay.
It’s just something people say when they don’t
know what else to say.
He laid on his back with his arms crossed behind
his head and stared at the ceiling in the late night
half light and thought about fireworks and
remembered the end of the Fourth of July fireworks
after the demolition derby at the speedway the next
county over. After all of the thoroughly demolished
vehicles were towed away from the track, the
fireworks were lit, and the redneck racetrack rats
would scurry around extinguishing the fires ignited
in the in-field grass by stomping on them, and he
always wondered what it would be like to watch one
of them get hit by the white hot sparks descending
from the sky and catch fire and run around like a
human flame trying to extinguish his burning hair by
punching himself in the head over and over again.
It never happened.
They used to sell severed rabbit feet at the
souvenir stand. They were available dyed in all of
the primary and secondary colors and some in
between and they came capped with a shiny metal
cap made of gold or silver looking metal crimped
around the amputated end of the severed limb and a
short beaded keychain. Each summer he’d buy a
rabbits foot for good luck and he’d carry it around in
his pocket as a lucky charm on his keychain until he
lost his keys, which happened at least once a year,
and he’d have to get a new set of keys made from the
spare set that his father kept on a hook in the garage
especially designated as the master set of keys that
each new set would be duped from after he inevitably
lost them, and each summer he’d buy another
rabbit’s foot until the summer before he turned
thirteen when he finally realized that he didn’t need
to have a rabbits foot and that it really wasn’t doing
much to bring him any noticeable upturn in his
fortunes.
Coincidentally, that was the same year that he
stopped losing his keys.
He never thought about what happened to the
rest of the rabbit when they took the rabbit’s feet.
He realized that maybe rabbit’s feet aren’t that lucky
if having four of them meant that you would be bred
in cages and slaughtered by rednecks so that your
feet could be cut off and dyed in all the colors of the
rainbow and sold to other rednecks at a racecar
track for less than a dollar a foot.
She inhaled and said , “What are you thinking
about?” and exhaled a plume of blue-gray smoke
toward the ceiling fan which was spinning slowly
around and around above them.
“I don’t know. Nothing. I think I’m going to go.”
He said and he sat up and swung his legs over the
edge of the bed, placing his feet on the floor, and as
he shifted his weight to get on his feet she
contemplated reaching out and touching him on his
naked back and asking him not to go by telling him
that it was alright, and that it always would be
alright, and that he didn’t have to go, but instead she
turned away and extended her arm and ashed her
cigarette into the empty can of soda sitting on the
corner of the bedside table and as the hot ash hit the
small amount of soda left in the bottom of the can
that you can never seem to sip hard enough to get, it
made a hiss as it extinguished and she sighed to
herself as he bent over to put on his shoes.

Chapter Two: Bottle Rockets

It was the summertime and it was hot, but it

wasn’t so much hot as it was humid which it always
was in the summer except in the evenings after it
rained and even then sometimes you’d stick to the
sheets unaffected by the cool night breeze.
It was the third of July because everyone has the
fourth of July off work, so the people that lived on or
near the coast planned their bonfires and revelry for
the night before the holiday so they could drink to
excess and spend the next day sleeping it off and
dealing with the consequences of the night before.
They went together but they weren’t together and
it made it awkward when he introduced her to the
people that he knew.
They spent a lot of time together in her apartment
in the basement, watching movies on her futon
which doubled as a couch and a bed but he never
had the chance to see it as a bed because he was
always politely ushered out while the bed was still a
couch and before she performed her evening routine
of removing her make-up and washing her face
which always left it more luminous than it was
before.
When they were watching movies, he would often
think about reaching across the distance politely
mutually left between them and touching her
somewhere in the hope that touching her would
inspire a passionate response, and maybe when they
were sitting in the darkened basement, illuminated
by the blue-white light of the television she hoped
that he would muster the courage to lean across the
void that separated them and maybe she wanted to
be touched but maybe she didn’t and he had no way
of knowing and it always complicates things even
when you agree in advance that you won’t let things
get complicated and you tell yourselves that you’re
both adults and that you can handle this, except
when you are finally old enough and have control of
your emotions enough and are responsible for your
actions and the results of your actions enough that
you are an adult and you can handle it and even
then things are always more awkward after than
before. They always are.
But he never did and she never did and whatever
unspoken thoughts they were thinking they dealt
with on their own terms on their own time and he
would watch the moon through the moon roof which
seemed to race across the sky on clear nights on the
ride home and wax romantically, breathing deeply,
filling himself with the cool night air, imagining what
their first kiss might feel like and imagine how soft a
clenched fist-full of her hair would feel, and she
would wince when she applied the astringent and
wonder if he was thinking the same thing that she
was thinking and that maybe someday she would sit
a little closer to him on the couch and maybe she
would lean over and rest her head on his shoulder
and they could sit in the darkness both
acknowledging the fact that they were touching each
other alone in the darkness, but then she’d splash
cool water on her face and sigh and dry her face with
the conveniently placed face towel and fold it in half,
then half again, and place it on the towel rod to dry,
turn away from the mirror and walk out of the
bathroom, making sure to turn off the bathroom
light, causing the little night-light plugged into the
outlet to turn itself on and glow in the shape of a
crescent moon.
He brought a case of Coronas. Not because he
planned on drinking a case of Coronas, but because
it seemed the hospitable thing to do in response to
being invited to the third of July events. He knew
there would be several people in attendance and
some may not have adequately prepared for the
amount of drinking that they were going to attempt
and he wanted to help the events of the evening
progress if he could and bringing more alcohol than
he planned on consuming seemed like as good a way
as any to accomplish his goal.
They were greeted and introduced and vain
attempts to memorize names were attempted and in
exchange for his offering he was offered bottle
rockets, of which he took one.
Exhilarated by the sense of impending adventure
he took out his lighter and lit the fuse, pinching the
end of the stick between his thumb and index finger
at the end of his outstretched arm. In his
imagination, it would be a grand gesture. He
thought that it would seem magical like a magic
missile, or a tiny comet flying upwards from his hand
into the night sky. A spectacular feat accomplished
with the assistance of cut-rate pyrotechnics. The
incendiary ignited surprisingly quickly and startled
by the sparks he released the pressure he was
applying with his fingers and the firework shot off
and did a three-sixty turn in mid-air and shot
directly into her chest hitting her in her exposed
neckline about an inch above the seam and bounced
off and rocketed down the street, exploding on the
ground with a weak popping sound.
There was a second of silence and then they
erupted in laughter, and he made sure that she was
alright, and, upon inspection, the bottle rocket had
left a little mark, a tiny crescent-shaped burn that
would take a little while to heal and would, in time,
fade away into forgotten memory.
They drank the Coronas which were warming up
in the evening air, and they talked about the weather
and music and movies, but they didn’t talk about
each other and the distance between. Everyone
forgot about the bonfire at the beach because last
year there was a stabbing and by the time everyone
was ready to go to the beach people were coming out
of the woods at the edges of the property lines saying
that the cops had showed up and instructed
everyone to leave immediately or there would be
arrests made and it seemed ill-advised to remain
when the authorities were exerting the influence of
their authority, so everyone left heading towards the
shelter and concealment of the relative darkness of
the tree line.
It was quiet on the ride home, each of them
travelling inside of their own minds and when they
arrived at her house he didn’t stop the car and she
got out and said good night and closed the door
behind her. She was wounded and he was
embarrassed but neither was a mortal wound and
they both went on to live their lives in their own way,
but not together and the next time each of them felt
like calling each other they second-guessed their
initial impulse.

Chapter Three: Witchcraft.

The worst part about being a witch was always

having to explain herself, she thought
absentmindedly as the woman that was talking at
her continued to make uninteresting noises with her
mouth.
She wore a pentagram necklace and had a tattoo
of the moon cycle on the back of her neck and she
often wore black although not exclusively.
But if you looked in her closet, it looked like a
study in black with a slight detour into the grayscale
on the outside edges ending in something singularly
white.
When asked why she wore black she was usually
at a loss for an explanation but when she thought
about it when she was alone and had time for
reflection, she thought it was because she liked the
way that the color black contrasted with the
whiteness of her skin.
She abhorred the sun, but not because it was
bright, but because it was often too warm and when
it shone on her skin it made her feel uncomfortably
aware that her skin was her outside boundary and
that it was alive and living as if it had its own
existence and her consciousness was just a
passenger in this flesh and blood machine that she
had a certain somewhat connected control of.
At night, sometimes, she’d lay awake and listen
for the sound of her pulse as her heart pumped her
blood through her ear canals and she’d imagine her
blood as a warm red river flowing through her body,
returning to her heart which she imagined as a
cavernous muscular machine and being pumped
back around, her breaths acting as the bellows that
powered the whole wet contraption as her chest rose
and fell expanding and contracting her torso.
She didn’t believe in spells. She didn’t have a
cauldron or a black cat but she did have an altar of
sorts. A small, black three-legged table that sat in
the corner of her favorite room. It was just under
waist height and she would often kneel and sit on
her feet when she sat before it and performed her
unique manner of worship. Sometimes she’d do so
until her feet went numb and when she stood up her
feet were shot with pins and needles as the blood
rushed back into her collapsed capillaries, but she
didn’t mind the pain because it reminded her that
she was alive.
On the altar was a decorative kerchief, midnight
blue with gold stars and moons scatter-shot across
it. On top of the cloth was a silver picture frame
with a picture of her mother in it. She had traced
the outside of the picture frame with lavender oil
because her mother had always loved the smell of
lavender and she had always loved her mother. Her
mother was dead. It was cancer. Her mother went
into work one day and told her co-worker that she
wasn’t feeling well. When she went to the hospital
the doctors told her that she was infested with
cancer and that the condition was inoperable. That
night she fell into a coma and two days later she was
dead. She went quietly, calmly, without any
awareness of her passing and there was at least that
to be thankful for but the pain of the loss was keen
and constant as if her daughter had lost a part of
herself and the lost limb was constantly itching but
unable to be scratched. The picture in the frame
was her daughter’s way to let her mother know that
she would never forget about her.
That was the summer that she realized that there
wasn’t a God. She knew this intuitively because if
there was a benevolent higher power that had their
hand on the wheel of the world that he would not, in
good conscience take from the world a woman who
had not intentionally offended anyone in her time on
this earth.
She struggled with herself unraveling her
conception of life and death and the afterlife and was
on the verge of deciding that there was no enduring
existence of the consciousness after the corruption of
the mortal form, but she had precognitive dreams.
It wasn’t anything like knowing what the lottery
numbers were, or knowing that there was going to be
a terrible accident, or hearing the voices of ghosts or
seeing apparitions appearing emerging from thin air
and gesturing meaningfully towards hidden treasure.
It was an all too common phenomenon. Sometimes
she would be listening to someone and she would
know a moment before it happened what the person
would say or a gesture that they would perform and
in her mind this was her way of knowing that she
was where she was supposed to be in the world and
on her life’s path whatever that meant.
It was disconcerting because with the exception of
that particular phenomenon she was willing to write
off the existence of anything paranormal or spiritual,
but her precognitive dreams continued despite her
natural inclination towards a certain stubborn
skepticism and she practiced magic.
It wasn’t as if she had a garden tending
monkshood and wolfsbane and morning glory and
mandrake root with the intention of harvesting them
to grind up with a mortar and pestle to put together
potions to use to try to change the world around her.
But she did have a stick of cinnamon on her alter
and a sprig of lavender and a dried red rose that she
had been given on a Valentine’s Day years ago,
although the gesture was better remembered than
the suitor. The rose was still here, while he was
long gone.
Dating was difficult since she was trying to create
and control the world according to her particular
perspective. The influence of others was often
distracting and although she always acknowledged
the admiration of those that admired her, she would
rarely pursue the prey or allow herself to be pursued.
Life was simpler and when the heat and pressure of
sexual desire welled up within her she found that
she was equally as able to satisfy the compulsion as
any suitor was able to if not better because she knew
what she liked and there wasn’t any need for
embarrassingly sticky fumblings in darkened rooms
trying to maneuver one’s way around a maze of
apparel and trying to manually manipulate the
foreign territory of another person’s body.
She liked living alone and she didn’t understand
how people were lonely without the company of
others. She had an active imagination and on
sleepless nights would spend hours laying on her
back, looking up at the ceiling of her room in the
dark exploring the labyrinthine passageways of her
mind amusing herself with the way that her mind
seemed to work on its own, deciding which way it
would turn like an unpredictable animal, warm in its
warren, taking her along as a passenger as it
synthesized experience from previous experiences.
Sometimes she would burn incense at her altar
and she would stare into the smoke and slow her
breathing down and try to lose herself and the
contact with her fretful animated body and its
consistent communication that it did indeed exist.
She would stare into the smoke and try to see if she
could see something in the smoke that would inspire
a revelation or at least some sort of expansive insight
but it never worked, although it was always calming
and helped her to find her center and she felt that
after those exercises she found herself to be more
herself although she’d find it difficult to explain it to
anyone else if they asked.
She has a crystal ball. It wasn’t crystal, but it
was clear glass and sat atop a black velvet cloth on a
decorative silver metal stand, and she tried staring
into it to lose herself but she always found herself
more fascinated with the way that the miniscule
lights in her room were captured and reflected within
the curvature of the ball, but she kept the ball on her
altar because it seemed like the proper place to keep
it.
She had read books on witches and witchcraft
and spellcraft and magic and she found them
fascinating reading but of little practical use. She
felt no compulsion to stand in the middle of a field in
the dark lit only by the light of a full moon and chant
incantations to try to affect a possible future for
herself. Instead she felt that she was better served
helping herself and that in the absence of her mother
that the world was a mean and generally selfish
place that didn’t really care whether any one lived or
died.
If she could kill a mosquito with the slap of her
hand, and deer were regularly destroyed by trucks,
then cancer could kill her any time it wanted to and
closing your eyes and thinking real hard and wishing
that the imaginary man that lived in the sky would
hear your thoughts and would think and in a blink
would change the world to make things go your way
was simple and she couldn’t in good conscience
throw in with anyone that believed in the power of
prayer.
But there were still the dreams. And she was
still predisposed to wearing black. And she didn’t
like the way that the sun felt on her skin. And she
liked the way that her silver necklace of a five-sided
star within a circle hanging from a soft black cord
rested in the center of her breastbone with its
comforting weight. And when she encountered a
Christian she listened patiently to their petitions all
the while knowing in her heart of hearts that what
she knew was true. And she felt no need to justify
herself when shone upon by the spotlight of the
judgmental gaze of another.
She knew in her heart that she was who she was
and that if someone wanted to call her a witch to be
able to comfortably incorporate her into their
worldview, then she would let them think that she
was a witch but that she would not endeavor to
explain herself to anyone anymore.

Chapter Four: God

She believed in Jesus.

She believed in God.
She liked to imagine that everything happened for
a reason and that there was a benevolent hand upon
the metaphorical wheel.
She went to church and when she closed her eyes
and listened to the words of the man at the altar
reverberate around inside the open architecture of
the church she felt at home inside herself.
She knew that the words in the book weren’t
magic spells that could conjure up the all-father but
she felt that when she closed her eyes and prayed
that her entire self became a beam of light shining
from her center and that the beam of light shot out
into space and that the beam connected to God,
wherever and whatever he was and that he
acknowledged her existence and that he knew what
he was doing and that everything would be alright.
But that didn’t keep her father from taking an
unhealthy interest in her at a young age.
She always wondered why it felt uncomfortable
kissing her father on the mouth.
It wasn’t just that his moustache tickled. It was
something else. Something that she couldn’t put
into words and that she only knew intuitively that
even if it was socially accepted it wasn’t something
that made her feel comfortable.
She always wondered how all of the other little
girls could climb all over their fathers as if they were
human jungle gyms and sit on their fathers knees
and be bounced up and down and make it look as
natural as the sunshine on a warm summer’s day.
Her mother was generally emotionally
unavailable. She was always present, but
disengaged like a television turned off in the corner
of the room. She would move of her own volition
and maintained herself of her own accord, but if her
mother ever had any interests she was unaware of
them. She knew that her mother liked tea with
cream and sugar and disliked cats and dogs and
most other animals, but the rest of the details
regarding her mother’s existence faded into the
background of her memory like the wallpaper pattern
of a room that one spends too much time in.
Her father liked camping and he would take her
with him. In the back of her mind she thought that
maybe he secretly wanted a son. He would take her
fishing. They would get into the boat and he would
row them out into the middle of the lake and he
would have a net bag that he would keep a six pack
of beer in and hang it off of the side of the boat so it
waded in the water so the water would keep it cool,
and he would sip from the can while the boat rocked
soothingly side to side and when they caught fish he
would clean them and he always took the time to
show her how to clean them properly, but he never
made her clean them, satisfied with the lesson alone.
They would stack stones in a circle and gather
twigs and cut down the dead branches that they had
gathered to a manageable length and they would
build a fire and if they didn’t catch any fish they
would jam hot-dogs onto the ends of sticks and roast
them over the fire until the outsides were blackened
and burst open and the insides were hot and a deep
rich pink and when they had eaten their fill of hot
dogs they would roast marshmallows until the
outsides were dark brown or black and the insides
were melted and sometimes they would catch fire
and fall off of the sticks into the fire, but that was
okay because there were always more to be found in
the bag.
They wouldn’t set up a tent because the bugs
were usually attracted to the embers of the fire and
although she had her own sleeping bag, she would
usually sleep with him in his because she would get
cold during the night and her father pushed off heat
like a wood-fire stove and she like the feeling of being
safe within the circle of his arms.
In the mornings he would wander off into the
woods to make water in the morning and although
he always turned his back to her she could hear the
splashing sound of the urine splashing into the
leaves and hear his sigh of relief coming up from a
deep place inside of him.
She was an only child and she didn’t think it
unusual and she spent a lot of time by herself inside
her head. She liked to read and her favorite book
was Black Beauty because she loved the idea of
horses and always wanted a horse, but a horse that
she could talk to like it was her friend so that she
could comb its coat and feed it apples and tell it
secrets but when she grew older she realized that
horses can’t talk, and that she didn’t have a lot of
secrets to share anyway.
She did well in school, but in an unspectacular
manner. She was bookish and quiet and being so
made the other children regard her with a certain
suspicion as if she was an alien or from a different
species that liked reading books and didn’t get
excited when it was time for recess and didn’t want
to jump rope or wear red ribbons in her hair. The
other girls were friendly. As friendly as can be
expected knowing that girls can be catty and
children can be cruel, but she wasn’t invited to the
birthday parties of the other girls and she only
received cards on the major holidays from the other
children because it was considered common courtesy
to do so and to intentionally disinclude anyone
would be impolite.
She received a scholarship to a Christian college
with relatively little ceremony and when she went
away her mother and father dropped her off at the
train station with a rolling luggage rack with most of
her worldly possessions inside rolling behind her.
When she paused to look behind her, her mother
was staring ahead through the windshield
impassively and her father was doing the same
except there were two tracks of tears glistening in the
channels running down the front of his face although
she could only see the left side of his face since he
was staring straight ahead and when she raised her
hand to wave goodbye he drove away without a sign
of acknowledging her farewell.
She was in class when the dean of students came
in and asked for her by name and asked her to come
out into the hallway where he informed her of what
had happened.
Her father had hanged himself from the rafters of
the garage and her mother was found sitting at the
kitchen table with an empty cup of tea in front of
her, sitting in a pool of her own waste, cold and
dead, staring ahead impassively out of the kitchen
window into the backyard as was her habit.
The only reason anyone knew anything was amiss
was that the paperboy noticed a pile of papers
accruing on the doorstep and decided to try to walk
around the house to see if he could see inside to
discover if the tenants had moved without informing
him and when he went around the side of the garage
he peered inside to see if there was a car inside and
there was, but there was also a pair of feet hanging
in mid-air with the right shoe on and the left shoe
off.
She took the news with surprising calmness and
assured the dean of students that she would be
alright and returned to class as if nothing had
happened.
She knew that her mother and father would be
alright in heaven with God and the souls of all of her
ancestors and although she had trouble imagining
what heaven was like she imagined her parents
continuing to exist in their happiest moments from
her memory. Her mother sipping tea and looking
out of the kitchen window into the backyard as the
early morning sunlight shone in, making square
patterns on the linoleum, and her father with a cool
beer with drops of condensation dripping down the
side in one hand and a fishing rod in the other,
quietly sipping as the boat rocked gently back and
forth to the rhythm of the current of the lake.
She became active in the Christian Coalition,
which was what the campus Christian activities club
called itself and although it was pleasant to find a
group of people that had the same beliefs as she did,
she found that the intentions of most of the male
members of the group were less than pious and that
in essence it served as a Christian singles club and
that after a few meetings she stopped attending the
meetings, deciding instead to keep her own company
and make her own peace between herself and her
God.
She woke up one morning and she knew it was
the last day.
She could clearly hear the voice of God telling her
that although the world was not going to end, her
role within the world was over and that it was okay
for her to go to heaven and meet him personally.
She knew this with the same kind of certainty
that she was alive and that the skin she was in was
her own.
She walked to the gas station and bought a five-
gallon container for gas and she filled it up with five
gallons of gas and bought a small pink plastic lighter
from the display of multi-colored lighters on the
counter at the gas station. She rode her bicycle to
the lake with the gas can in the basket mounted to
the front of it in front of the handlebars and carried
the red plastic container with her to the dock where
she untied the boat and rowed to the center of the
lake.
She undid the stopper for the can of gas and
lifted it over her head and poured the gas inside on
top of her head and it ran down her sides, soaking
her clothes and pooling in the bottom of the boat.
It was difficult to breathe and the fumes from the
gas stung her eyes, but with her eyes clenched
closed she reached into her pocket and took out the
little pink plastic lighter and pressed her thumb
against the ridged metal wheel with the flint lining
the center of it and moved her thumb towards
herself. The flint made a scratching sound as it
scratched against the steel, but the lighter failed to
ignite.
She took a deep breath, but the fumes from the
gas stung her sinuses and she sputtered but made a
concerted effort to press down harder on the child
protective hood of silver chromed metal arcing over
the flint-lined wheel and when she dragged her
thumb towards her the flint sparked the steel and
ignited the thin stream of butane that was released
by depressing the flipper in the front of the lighter
and it ignited the gas that she had poured all over
herself and she burst into flames and as she burned
she was happy even though it hurt because she
imagined herself as a solid beam of light projecting
from the center of herself into space and that the
beam connected to God, wherever and whatever he
was and that he acknowledged her existence and
smiled down at her and that he knew what he was
doing and that everything would be alright.

Chapter Five: I was on fire when they found me.

He was on fire when they finally got to him.

He hit the wall going around two hundred.
He was getting ready to press the brake a little to
ease the speed down a little to take the turn and
when he missed the brake with his foot he
accidentally hit the gas and harder than he intended
to since he was trying to hit the brake harder than
he would have if he had succeeded in hitting the
brake the first time around and he hit the reinforced
barrier wall going full-speed.
The inside of the car had been reinforced with a
precision custom-bent roll-cage and the fire-wall
plates were all installed where they were supposed to
be and the drivers harness absorbed most of the
energy of the impact and prevented the driver from
being snapped in half and having his top half
propelled through the windshield into the reinforced
barrier wall at slightly less than two-hundred miles
an hour.
But the impact ruptured the fuel tank and the
hot fuel shot into the interior of the car. The fuel
inside the gas tank was one-hundred and ten octane
and it blew up like a bomb, flashing fire throughout
the inside of the car and what was flammable caught
fire and what was inflammable also caught fire but
what was nonflammable did not.
Thankfully the helmet was fireproof and the
jumpsuit and the gloves and shoes he was wearing
were fire resistant. But the spaces in between the
suit and his gloves and shoes where his wrists and
ankles were not fire proof nor particularly fire
resistant and the flesh around his wrists and ankles
was cooked through to the bone almost
instantaneously.
The track medics reached him as fast as humanly
possible and doused him and the car with fire
suppressing foam that immediately extinguished the
flames and they ripped open the net and pulled him
out of the car and threw him onto a stretcher as
gently as the urgency of the situation would allow
and they rushed him into the waiting ambulance
which then rushed him to the hospital but the
damage had already been done.
His pulmonary system had been saved the
trauma of inhaling the caustic smoke from the
combustion of the interior of the car by the design of
his helmet, but the shock of the impact and the pain
of the incineration of the exposed parts of his body
caused him to weave in and out of consciousness as
the painkillers killed the pain and his body
recuperated from the trauma that he had
inadvertently inflicted upon it as a consequence of
his profession.
When he came to, he wasn’t able to move his
arms as they had been gently but securely secured to
the sides of the bed. He called out and when a
nurse arrived in response to his cries for help she
immediately left to summon a doctor and when she
returned with the doctor, they ignored his shouted
questions as they informed him that they were going
to give him a sedative to help to calm him down as
the shock of having to deal with all of the
consequences of his crash would be an unnecessarily
extreme shock to his already considerably weakened
system.
When the world was softened around the edges by
the warm embrace of the sedatives, they told him
what he needed to be told.
Over the next few days he learned that his hands
and feet had been removed since the burns on his
wrists and ankles had been so extreme that they had
been cooked through to the bone for the breadth of
the inch-wide areas that were exposed to the burning
fuel, and that anything on the other end of the
burns, on the other side away from the heart, had
died and being dead they swelled up, blackened and
plump like hot dogs cooked over a campfire and had
been removed as a precautionary measure to prevent
the resulting infections from spreading throughout
his system which would have surely killed him.
“Why didn’t you just let me die?” he asked,
sincerely.
“Preserving life is the primary goal of our
profession.” the doctor replied, equally sincerely, and
in the resulting silence you could hear the vertical
blinds click and clatter against each other as they
were pushed around by the room’s air-conditioning.
They gave him prosthetic hands and prosthetic
feet and although they were intended to take the
place of the missing members they were poor
replacements.
He managed to walk with the assistance of
crutches which were specially adapted with foam
padded cups to rest the stumps of his amputated
hands in while the cuffs of the crutches were
strapped around his forearms, and artificial feet
which had foam padded cups for him to rest the
amputated stumps of his legs in while the spine of
the prosthetic feet were strapped to the bottoms of
his legs, but although the amputated stumps had
been cauterized, theoretically killing the sensations
in the nerve ending of his amputated extremities, it
was always uncomfortable and there was a lingering
dull ache, and he would never again walk well, as
most people under-estimate the role that the bones
and musculature of the feet play in the seemingly
simple process of bipedal locomotion.
Although it was possible, in theory, for him to
drive if he was so predisposed and was to have a
custom-equipped vehicle that was equipped with
mechanisms that would accommodate his missing
extremities he was not so predisposed figuring that
the amputation of his hands and feet was as close a
warning shot as God was liable to give him regarding
his involvement with motor vehicles and he was
happy enough spending most of his time at home
inside watching car races on television or staggering
outside and down to the local park to sit on a bench
soaking in the sunshine and watching the birds fly
and the squirrels scurry and the people walk their
dogs and try to avoid the impulse to do a double-take
when they saw the man with the fake hands and feet
sitting on the bright green painted bench by the lake.
He had a nurse that visited him once a week to
help him take care of what needed taking care of and
to make sure that he was still alive and well, or as
well as he could be considering. The nurse was a
male nurse and when the agency asked him if he had
any objections to having a male nurse, he said that
he had no objections as he had a pretty clear idea of
what the nurse’s responsibilities were and he was
fairly certain that the nurse’s gender would have
relatively little impact on their ability to perform their
duties.
In time they grew accustomed to one another and
they allowed each other certain liberties.
The man’s food stamps could not be used to
purchase cigarettes or alcohol, but the nurse sold
the man’s painkillers to his fellow nurses at the
agency and bought the man cigarettes and alcohol
with the well-intentioned permission of the man and
a small percentage of the profit.
The man figured that the painkillers did little to
handle the constant dull ache other than make him
feel drunk and if he were to feel drunk he would
prefer to do so the honest way, so when the nurse
would come by each week he would have a carton of
Marlboro cigarettes, a carton of Camel cigarettes, a
handle of Jack Daniels and a handle of Southern
Comfort as the man, considering himself to be a true
patriotic American, preferred domestic cigarettes and
whiskey but also liked a little variety in his life.
The nurse would sit with the man and they would
sip whiskey and smoke cigarettes and play chess
while watching the race cars go around in circles on
television and sometimes the nurse won the game of
chess and sometimes the man did, but each thought
that the other one would let them win when they won
out of polite consideration but the truth of the matter
was that they were fairly well-matched when it came
to the game of chess.
At the end of the allotted time the nurse would
leave and they would agree to meet at the same time
the following week.
One week when the whiskey had gotten the better
of him, the nurse looked up at the man who was
seriously contemplating the chess pieces, plotting his
next series of moves, and when the man looked up
and met his gaze, the nurse took a breath and said,
“Do you ever miss them?”
“What? My hands and feet?” the man replied.
“Yeah.” The nurse said and hoped that he hadn’t
over-stepped the boundaries of polite conversation.
“I was on fire when they found me.” He said “And
I’m lucky to be alive. My wrists and ankles had
been cooked clean through to the bone and even if
they had let me keep them they would have rotted off
and killed me to boot. I may not have my hands and
feet anymore, but I’ll never have to work another day
in my life. My needs are simple and I find what
companionship I need between your visits and
watching the people and animals at the park with
the lake when the weather is fair. I miss the smell
of a woman, but I’ve had my fair share and more in
my time and there’s more to life than sex and I’ve
still got my memories and an active enough
imagination that I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on
that much all things considered and all cats are grey
in the dark. I may never be able to run again and
swimming is pretty much out of the question unless I
want to drown, but I was on fire when they found
me, and not many people will ever have the right to
say that sentence while telling the truth and I will
always have that no matter what. Everyone else can
have their hands and feet for all I care. I have what
I have and that’s enough for me. Life isn’t fair, but
it does have a sense of humor.”
Then the man took a drag from his cigarette,
took a sip from his glass of whiskey on the rocks,
exhaled a plume of blue-grey smoke that swirled the
cloud of smoke that hung under the unadorned bulb
hanging in the overhead lighting fixture, moved one
of his pawns forward two squares and said, “Your
move.”

Chapter Six: Zebras

She was born with a birthmark across her face

like a burn-mark.
A deep scarlet mark that played across her face
like a crippled hand with its fingers splayed. It was
as if she fell asleep in detention after school one
afternoon with her left eyebrow pressed against a
map of Australia drawn in magenta in reverse with
her left eyebrow resting on Tennant Creek in the
Northern Territory with a Philippines and New
Zealand flicked in, one on each side, for good
measure, and the map was permanently impressed
into her skin.
She used to be afraid of the sun. She used to
wear a thick layer of foundation, applying an
artificial pallor to conceal the strawberry stain.
Covering her birthmark with a thick layer of
foundation caused her skin to break out in acne,
which caused her to try to cover up the blemishes up
with more make-up. A vicious circularity that she
couldn’t seem to find a way around. Sometimes it’s
difficult to see the diameter that would be the
shortest distance between where you are and where
you want to be.
The blemishes became so bad that she was
advised to seek the advice of a dermatologist.
During the consultation the dermatologist told her
that there was nothing wrong with her skin except
that she used too much make-up which was causing
her to break out which was causing her to use too
much make-up. The dermatologist said that if she
stopped using so much make-up that her skin would
clear up and she wouldn’t have to use make up.
“What about my birthmark?”, she asked, and the
dermatologist replied, “What about it? There’s
nothing wrong with you. You’re beautiful. If
anyone has a problem with your birthmark, then
that’s their problem to deal with. You’re going to
have that birthmark for the rest of your life. You
might as well get used to it.” And the girl had nothing
to say in response, inadvertently letting the
dermatologist have the last word as he turned his
back and walked out of the room.
She took the summer off of everything and spent
a lot of time by herself. She spent as much time as
she could inside and when she went out she would
wear a black silk veil hanging from a broad-brimmed
hat. Not like a net, more like a sheer black shroud
she could swish around inside without anyone seeing
in. It was quiet inside or at least it seemed to be
quieter inside of the darkness of the veil.
When she came back to school she had clear
skin, and an unearthly pallor which served to
accentuate the presence of her birthmark. The
Spanish girls called her “bruja” which was Spanish
for witch, but they meant no harm in it. It’s just
what they called her instinctively reacting to what to
them was unusual. What they really meant was
“fantasma” which is Spanish for “ghost girl”.
Although she wasn’t really a ghost, but she might as
well have been considering the way she was able to
drift through the hallways at school without anyone
standing in her way.
One year in school she was in a class in which
the teacher offered extra credit if the students would
pretend to be handicapped for a week and she
decided to be deaf. In her spare time, she taught
herself sign-language and would often pretend she
was deaf when in public to hear what people would
say about her when they thought she couldn’t hear
what they were saying.
When she was in school she would draw
imaginary animals that were neither fish nor fowl.
That was when she wasn’t sleeping between classes.
She would often stay up late and read in her room.
She liked to imagine herself living like a God above
the people in the stories and managed to convince
herself that what was happening in the books was
more important than what was happening in real life.
When she finally decided what she wanted to do
she decided to be a veterinarian so that she could
work with the animals in the zoo and she decided
that she would ask everyone “Are zebras white with
black stripes or black with white stripes?” and when
she finally met the man that could answer her
question she would know that she had met the man
that she would want to marry.
Much to her surprise, becoming a veterinarian is
just as, if not more difficult, than becoming a doctor,
because unlike doctors, veterinarians have to be able
to know the inner workings of several different
species, but she persevered and she works with the
animals in the zoo and she always asks everyone if
zebras are white with black stripes or black with
white stripes, but no one ever seems to know the
answer to her question.

Chapter 7: Where Werewolves Come From

One time this girl told my friend that she fucked a

dog.
Let me back up a bit.
When she sat down next to him he said, “Just for
shits and giggles. Just for the sake of argument.
Let’s both play the devil’s advocate and say whatever
comes to mind. No judgment. No restraint. Would
you? Would you if I asked you to?”
It was part of this social experiment he was
playing with anyone he met where he would exercise
complete honesty in his interactions and see what he
got in return.
She said, “Yes.” And then she said, “I fucked a
dog once.”
“Pardon me,” he said, “But unless I’m mistaken
you just said that you fucked a dog.”
She smiled and said, “Yes. I did.”
He took a sip of his drink and looked her in the
eyes and said, “Continue.”
“I was watching a house for a friend and they had
this beautiful dog. It was a Rottweiler. It was
beautiful. I loved that dog.” She said, and paused
for emphasis. “One time I was over the house, and
it was hot and it was late and I was wearing shorts
and I bent over to pick something up and the dog
mounted me and started humping me. It was a big
dog so it knocked me to the floor, and I decided to go
with it. I wasn’t very popular in school. “ she said.
“So what was it like?” he said, maintaining his
composure, but screaming inside of his head.
 “It wasn’t bad.” She said. “He was really quite
gentle. It was like he was trying not to hurt me.”
“Weren’t you worried about getting pregnant?” he
asked.
“No.” she said “It’s not like I was going to get
pregnant with puppies. The dog had had all of its
shots and it’s not like it was rabid or anything. I
think it was just confused and lonely. I was kind of
lonely too, I guess.”
“Is that it?” he asked, and took another sip of his
drink.
“No.” she said “Whenever they’d leave town I’d
volunteer to watch their house. I might’ve seemed
like I was just a really helpful person, but I really
just missed that dog. I still miss that dog.” She said
and got up and smiled and walked away.
The next time my friend saw me he was excited
beyond belief and I thought something awful had
happened but he said that he couldn’t tell me what
he had to tell me until we were alone and when we
were finally alone and I asked him what it was that
was so important that he couldn’t wait to tell me he
began by saying that he was talking to this girl and
she told him something that I wouldn’t believe and I
immediately off-handedly replied, “What? Did she
fuck a dog or something?”
True story.
Although I might have disappointed my friend by
cock-blocking his story by thinking of the most
outlandishly unbelievable scenario that I could think
of at the moment, when all is said and done, I’m just
relieved that I finally think I know where werewolves
come from.
And in the Darkness I Waited by Scott Lefebvre

[Originally written for an unreleased anthology that became The

Call Of Lovecraft. (2012).]

I
It was dark.
And in the darkness I waited.
The darkness seemed infinite.
But the darkness was not complete.
Pinpricks of light from unknown aeons of
distance twinkled serenely in the aether.
I had a sense of how far away they were and that
due to the distance between them and I, that the
light that softly sparkled in the seemingly infinite
distance may have been the final dying ember from
the last moments of a star blinking into
nonexistence.
And in the cold and darkened silence I wondered,
“If a thing was never alive, then can its final
moments be called its death?”
Given an infinity, one has many moments to
ponder the mystery of life and death and to observe
the beauty of the cycle of beginning and ending and
to observe the laws of conservation of energy in effect
as stars and planets begin and end as the universe
instinctively revolves around its central point, the
singularity around which all of the children of the
great cosmic expansion revolve.
I, too, moved with the all.
I allowed that thought to recede for now. There
would be time for further contemplation.
 I chose instead to enjoy the calming presence of
the starlight as a reminder that although I was alone
I was not the only thing in existence.
Those that are that which I am are few and far
scattered in the seeming infinity of the universe and
although we always wander we are never lost.
The reason that we are restless, and being
restless, wander, is the pain that results from our
every interaction.
The pain of our awareness of our struggle for
birth and our first moments of consciousness that
we are the same as that which all of the universe is
made from, but also knowing that while we exist we
are a part of the universe which has given birth to us
and our existence which is the greatest gift that we
could have been given by the universe is the very
thing that keeps us from returning home to become
one with the universal essence forth from which we
sprang.
For us, the few, the first born, existence is eternal
without the possibility of self-deliverance.
We were the witnesses to the birth of all that is
and we shall be witness to the end of all that was.

II
Half-asleep, I drift, awash in the waves of the seas
of the stars, listening to the music of the spheres.
Did you know that the universe has a tide? Did
you know that it ebbs and flows?
Can you imagine how becalming it is to feel the
tidal waves of the universal ebb and flow whispering
across the nerves scattershot symmetrically
throughout your vestigial wings?
 To realize a waking dream in which you
contemplate for the infinitieth time that nature
seems self similar across scales. To wonder at the
way that the structure of the universe expanding
manifests itself in bodies which produce gravitational
forces attracting and repelling each other in a
delicately reciprocally counterbalanced synchronicity
which is similar, if not identical, with the exception
of scale, to the forces which compel electrons to
busily buzz about a nucleus of an atom.
Everything is diffusing across the infinite expanse
existing outside everything that is.
If everything was once one thing, a singularity
existing for a moment outside of time before the first
event horizon, immediately after the implosion of the
last degenerate star, then everything is still one thing
and can never become nothing and we are part of
this everything that can never become nothing.
After the universe has stretched itself to its
fullness it will fall in upon itself in the universal
version of the death of a star when the final flicker of
fire is extinguished and it collapses in upon itself.
An explosion indefinable from the perspective of
time because it is the frame that surrounds every
event which would occur within.
Does the life cycle of our universe seem
infinitesimally brief from a perspective outside of our
universe?
As infinitesimally brief as the life cycle of the
transitory particles of electromagnetic energy that
become and expire faster than our sensory organs
are able to perceive?
 Does the life cycle of those transitory particles
seem infinite to the particles themselves because
that is the entire range of their experience?
The concept of time is completely relative to the
perspective of the consciousness experiencing it.
Any single moment can be compressed or
expanded infinitely in each direction without
restraint.
Does this mean that the only moment of any
importance and the only time that can ever be
known with any certainty is now?
I allowed that thought to recede for now. There
would be time for further contemplation.
Given an infinity, one has many moments to
ponder the mystery of life and death and to observe
the beauty of the cycle of beginning and ending and
to observe the laws of conservation of energy in effect
as stars and planets begin and end as the universe
instinctively revolves around its central point, the
singularity around which all of the children of the
great cosmic expansion revolve.

III
In the distance, stars are born and die. Expand
and collapse.
They and I. We are the same.
We are all made from that which everything is
made.
We emerge from and return to the whole that was
once one thing and is now everything.
We emerge from energy and become matter until
the matter in which me manifest returns to energy.
The event is cyclical and only seems directional in
time because if one is unfortunate enough to
comprehend one’s existence, you are able to
remember that which has happened, but not able to
remember that which has not yet happened,
although everything that has happened and
everything that every will happen stretches seemingly
infinitely in every direction.
Do stars wonder why they exist?
Does a star wonder why it has begun and why it
ends?
Matter is only energy manifesting itself at a
slower wavelength.
Consciousness only a side effect arising from
energy manifesting itself as matter.
The stars and I are distant cousins.
Those that are that which I am.
We are known as The Elder Gods.
Devourers of worlds. The star spawn. The first
born of the universe.
The unknown knowers of all that can be known.
If only everything knew that one can never know
all that there is to be known.
There will always be questions that will remain
unanswered and unanswerable.
But the unanswerability of the questions does not
prohibit them from being asked.
A whisper faint as the susurrating vellication of
the celestial breezes murmuring amongst themselves
as they ebbed and flowed around my corporeal
manifestation.
The whisper growing stronger until the sound
reached me across unknown millennia and I
recognized the call.
“Cthulhu fhtagn!”
 I open the inner lids of my eyes and as they slide
open the universe brightens and I see a coruscating
glimmer.
The first stuttering light emanating from the birth
of a star.
The scintillation grows, pulsing brighter,
expanding, and as it expands the darkness seems to
become thin and translucent until it evaporates into
transparence and a tiny singularity of light pierces
the darkness.
The singularity expands imperceptibly becoming
larger in circumference, drawing me towards it.
The light creates a blinding point of light, burning
itself onto the rods and cones of my retina until my
eyes gradually became adjusted to the brightness.
I reach forth with the tentacular appendages
protruding from my face, reaching tentatively
towards this portal from which the light emanates,
sensing a calming warmth venting itself from this
alien environment into the surrounding emptiness.
Through this portal I hear my distant cousins
calling out to their celestial brethren and wanting to
know the answers to the questions of the infinite.
They chant, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R‘yleh
wgah‘nagl fhtagn.”
And I am drawn, drifting gently forward by the
movement of my vestigial wings.
The moment of my emerging through the portal
into this alien environment is comparatively sudden
and I am shocked by this unfamiliar place filled with
light and warmth and life and vibrant colors and the
whirling of the gaseous contents of their upper
atmosphere.
 And before I have the time to become acclimated
to my new surroundings I am assaulted by the
prying fingers of a foreign consciousness flittingly
fretfully trying to gain entrance into my
consciousness.
Buzzing busily, bumping buoyantly against me
seeking to commune with me.
This busily buzzing, fretfully flitting, buoyantly
bumping, consciousness was rapidly repeating the
same questions that all of my distant cousins ask
when they become self-aware and then become
aware that there are awarenesses outside of their
awareness of their self.
What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?
How old are you? Is the universe infinite? How old is
the universe? How far away is the place that you
are? Is there life after death? Is there a God? If there
is a God, what is his name and how do we speak
with him? What are the intentions of the creator of
the universe?
And I take a breath and allow the consciousness
to enter, intertwining into mine and I answer its
questions to the best of my limited ability.
I tell them that the meaning of life is survival and
replication, both of which existing solely as fruitless
gestures of the consciousness trying to perpetuate
itself indefinitely across time.
I tell them that asking why anything is, is a
selfish indulgence and that the only reason that
anything is, is because it is and that the end of any
inquiry will result in the realization that everything is
equal when compared against the infiniteness and
meaningless of the universe.
 I tell them that there is no creator. That the
universe created and continues to create itself from
and of itself and that the process is cyclical and
infinite and beyond the understanding of any entity
existing within any universal event because it is
impossible to know anything beyond the first and
last moments of any single universal cycle because
the universe manifesting itself contains everything
that is and ever will be.
The consciousness recoils from the answers I
answer in reply to its questions and I can feel the
aggressive assertion that there must be a reason for
its existence and that the manifestation of energy as
matter could not be mere happenstance and that
there has to be a reason a calm, sane, simple reason
for everything that is or was or ever will be and in
reply to this aggressive assertion I reply with silence.
Our consciousness intertwined, I am aware of the
thoughts of the consciousness which summoned me
as if they are my own and I can feel all of that which
it feels and sense all of that which it senses and
becoming aware of this I wince and recoil in response
to the emotions of the consciousness as I psychically
experience the horror that the being experiences
upon experiencing me.
The comparative immenseness of my looming
form lurking overhead with my writhing tentacular
protuberances and multi-lidded eyes blinking
wincingly against the light of their closest star
reflecting against the oceans and the atmosphere
surrounding their planet.
The awesome expanse of my vestigial wings slowly
flapping against the ebb and flow of the universal
tide the darkness of space expanding seemingly
infinitely into the darkness beyond.
The horror evoked by the shifting mottled green-
gray complexion of the covering that encompasses
my form.
The horror increases as he experiences my pain
and confusion in reaction to my experiencing his
horror, feeding upon itself in an exponentially
widening circle until the horror becomes
unendurable.
The pain becomes a white hot singularity forcing
me to lash out with my psychic energy and
extinguish the light of the consciousness which had
opened itself to mine, intertwining them inextricably.
For a split second at the end of the life in the
mind of the being that I destroy, I remember a
moment.
I am sitting in a chair in front of a desk in a room
in a house.
The desk is in front of a window and outside the
twilight is deepening and as the last of the sunlight
dies out the trees exhale and the smell of the
fragrances of the trees and flowers is intoxicating
and I have never felt more alive and I open the
drawer of the desk and take out a box of matches
and open the box of matches by pushing in one end
with the tip of my index finger and holding the sides
with my thumb and ring finger. I withdraw a match
and strike the match on the side of the box and light
a candle on the desk. I hold the match in front of me
and watch the flickering flame and watch the bright
yellow heat of the flame slowly crawl downwards,
consuming the wood of the matchstick before I shake
my hand rapidly back and forth, extinguishing the
flame and depositing the smoldering, blackened
splinter into an ashtray and by the light of the candle
I watch a tendril of smoke dance upwards into the
air disappearingly.
The sense memory fades as soon as it comes and
I shudder from the tips of my prehensile tentacular
appendages to the tips of my vestigial wings.
The form that had been the repository of the
consciousness which had summoned me collapses in
accordance with the laws of gravity and begins the
process of unmanifesting itself from matter to energy
to reunite with the universe.
With the consciousness that summoned me
extinguished and his energy dissipating back into
the universe in accordance with the laws of
thermodynamics, the gateway slowly collapses,
growing smaller each moment until I contract my
tentacles to avoid the narrowing of the aperture of
the gateway until the gateway itself becomes an
intactile space before me and then becomes the rest
of the universe stretching seemingly infinitely before
me.
I withdraw my consciousness inwards and close
one of the inner lids of my eyes to diminish the
amount of light inflicting itself upon my senses and I
retreat inwards to contemplate the events that had
just occurred.
Once again it was dark.
And the darkness was infinite.
And in the darkness I waited.
White In Its Brightness

[Originally written for an unreleased 1,000 Words anthology that

was never released.]

The sun hung high in the sky and white in its

brightness.
The air hummed with the heat and the ice in the
drink kept it cool and on the outside of the glass,
which was glass, not plastic, condensation formed
and made the outside of the glass damp and slick
and drops of water beaded up and trickled down the
side of the glass dropping off the thickness of the
base of the glass onto his skin.
“So,” the girl with the darker hair asked, “what’s
the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
He lifted the glass and took a sip of the drink inside
which was both sweet and sour and tasted of
alcohol.
“Well?” she asked.
He waited for a second, looking at her, then off
into the distance, then back at her, and he replied,
“I’m thinking.” and he set his glass onto the glass
tabletop of the table next to his lounge chair, setting
it almost on top of the ring of water that remained
from the last time that the drinking glass rested on
the glass tabletop.
He leaned back and raised his arms and
interlaced the fingers of his hands behind his head
and reclined and the visor of his white baseball hat
provided shade from the sun which hung seemingly
still in the sky.
He could sense the girl with the darker hair
sitting sideways on her lounge chair. Feel her looking
at him with her brown eyes, waiting, watching him,
waiting for his answer while her friend with the
lighter brown hair sat in the lounge on the other side
of her watching the people in and around the pool
from behind her oversized sunglasses.
The sound of the screams of the children as they
chased each other in circles in their swimsuits
seemed distant like the sound of television from a
closed room.
He tilted his head and looked into the sun,
squinting his eyes and receding into himself, trying
to think of all of the bad things he had done and
which of those might have been the worst and which
he would tell the girl with the dark brown hair that
was sitting in the chair next to his, watching him
and waiting for his answer.
He thought about the first time he kissed a girl.
He thought about when he had spent time in the
dark in the woods with Sal and Frank. Sal, who was
not quite retarded, but old enough that he could get
them pornography and beer. He drove a Monte
Carlo and he liked to get cats and drop manhole
covers on them, crushing them to death. If not
killing them after the first impact, then at least
stunning them, and surely killing them with the
second.
He thought about the time that he convinced the
neighbor girl to let him watch her pee because he
was curious about how girls pee and when they were
discovered by her mother and how he lied well
enough to convince her mother that it was the girl’s
idea and he could hear her cries of pain and sobs of
sadness as she was spanked behind the closed door
and he thought to himself, “I’m glad it’s her and not
me.”
He thought about when he used to tape action
figures to popsicle stick crucifixes and stab them into
the ground and spray them with a can of hair spray
he stole from his mother and how he would use the
small black pocket lighter he stole from his father to
light them on fire and how hypnotizing it was to
watch the fire and the features on their faces melt
from the heat as they burned.
He remembered the still summer evenings as the
sky turned orange and the smoke from the flaming
fields of marsh grass behind the school would writhe,
twisting skywards, joining with the scant clouds.
He thought about when he and three of his
friends, using stolen candles in the woods, had
invoked the names of demons attempting to conjure
Satan and how he had been scared that maybe they
would be successful and wondering if they were
successful, just what form Satan would manifest
himself as.
He remembered the funeral of his grandfather.
The wide open space contained within the arched
interior of the church and not being able to cry even
though he knew he should. And the service held
within the reception room of the crematorium where
a modest brushed-steel urn on a table in the center
of the room was resting as his grandfather’s
representative and he wondered how they managed
to fit a man so full of life and memory into such a
small container and felt bad for thinking such
things.
He blinked and breathed deeply, inhaling and
exhaling, and unlaced his fingers, removing his
hands from behind his head and sitting up, reaching
for the cool condensation dampened glass on the
glass-topped table beside him.
“Well?” she asked.
“I can’t think of anything.” He said, looking into
her eyes as he lied. “I guess I’ve led a pretty good
life.”
She looked him in the eyes and asked, “Really?”
He laughed and said, “Yeah.” and tilted his glass
back and the ice clinked as the last of the sweet and
sour drink poured from around the clinking cubes of
ice into his mouth.
He released the breath he was holding in as he
drank sharply.
“Really.”
He held up the glass, empty save for the
translucent cubes of ice and said, “I need another.”
She nodded and uncrossed her legs, slipping her feet
into her sandals and leaning over and talking to her
friend in words that were low and quiet enough for
him to be able to comfortably ignore and they stood
and they linked arms in a clumsy threesome, three
abreast, and walked towards the bar while overhead
the sun overlooked it all, high in the sky and white in
its brightness.
A chapter from Abandoned:
[Novelization of a screenplay that I wrote to sell but couldn’t sell.
I’m self-publishing in January 2014 unless it gets picked up by a
publisher and I get an advance for it… so I’m probably self-
publishing it.]

Chapter 10

The road outside of the main entrance to the

abandoned and fenced off facility had been quiet for
the last half-hour.
The chain and padlock on the gate leading from
the main avenue in the facility was newer than the
ones on the side gate. The chain was still silvery
chrome, but scuffed from being thread across the
links of the fence at the beginning and end of each
night. The padlock locked relatively new and the
holes where the hasp met the body of the padlock
were faintly greasy with lubricant used to keep the
lock from rusting shut. Each night, the security
officer for the abandoned facility unlocked the
padlock with the small padlock key, one among
many on the keyring that he wore clipped to a small
gadget with an extendable length of twine that would
automatically retract, zipping the keys back to where
they were clipped to his belt when he released them.
And each night the security guard checked the lock
to see if it needed a spritz of WD-40 from the can
that he kept in his trunk for just that eventuality.
The security guard was nowhere in sight, but in
the shade of an overgrown tree, a late-model Crown-
Victoria sat, solid and still.
Inside the car, in the driver’s seat, Vince sat with
the seat kicked back two clicks, his black baseball
hat which had “Vietnam Veteran” embroidered
across the front, was pushed down over his eyes but
still allowing him to peer under the brim every now
and then when a car would pass by on the main
road.
Vince was the regular security officer for the
abandoned facility. He had been the regular guard
for ten years and had grown comfortable with the
job. Each night he’d brew a pot of coffee and pour it
into his Thermos while getting ready to head to work.
He worked twelve hours a night, 6pm till 6am which
was usually from dusk till dawn, except in the
summertime, but the hours didn’t change to match
the variations in the duration of the daylight as the
planet made its way around the sun.
There was a young buck that worked the
weekends, allowing Vince to go fishing during the
summer and to go to the casino and play the slots
with his wife whenever the whim came. He was
seventy-five years old and his vices were few and
affordable. He had retired at sixty-five after
spending most of his life working for a local company
that manufactured staples and staplers and other
office products that shut down and took their
business south to Mexico. Like most Vietnam
veterans, he had more than his fair share of
insomnia and needed to keep busy so he checked
with some of his friends in the local police
department and was given the job as night guard of
The Gate without having to do an interview. He
knew them and they knew him and that was all the
qualification that he needed.
Most nights were pretty uneventful. Every now
and then he’d get some high school kids pulling up
to the gate and trying to fuck with the padlock and
he’d flip on his headlights and they’d freeze in the
headlights like possums then pile back into their
vehicle and take off, slamming the doors as they
drove away. And that was fine by Vince.
He had a .38 revolver in a pancake holster in the
glove box that he kept clean and oiled but he’d never
had to take it out of the glove box. Everything had
been fine since he and the boys had come down to
clean out the shanty town that had grown in the
tunnels under the facility after the place was shut
down in the late eighties.
Someone had to do something, because you can’t
have a kid go missing and not be able to tell their
parents where they went. The local police force was
small, and competent at handling your usual drunk-
driving and domestic disputes and this wasn’t the
kind of town that you had to worry about bank
robbery and crack houses. Anyone showed up
trying to get into trouble usually found it and was
encouraged that maybe they’d like to settle in
somewhere else and if they didn’t take the hint, they
were hinted harder until they got the hint and moved
off to be some other town’s problem. They had their
fair share of residents that used their prescribed
medications a bit too liberally and sometimes people
had to be reminded to mow their lawns so that their
houses didn’t look abandoned, but the police force
was small and competent and managed to keep the
peace in their community.
But the police weren’t prepared to clear out the
tunnels on their own. So they made the rounds of
all of the good old boys and veterans that had fought
overseas in Korea and Vietnam and a few young
bucks that spent some time in the middle east. The
kind of men that were wrapped just a little too tight
and always would be. The chief cashed in a favor
with a friend of his at the local national guard
armory and a variety of rifles, ammunition and
phosphorous grenades were “decommissioned” and
“destroyed”.
Everyone rallied in the circle in front of the main
building one Saturday, car pooling in steady-looking
late-model sedans and pick-up trucks with rust
creeping up the side panels. Most of them brought
their own weapons from home. A random variety of
shotguns, handguns and hunting rifles. Some of
them showed up in camouflage, even though they
wouldn’t be hunting and the camouflage would do
them little good at hiding in the tunnels, but the
camouflage clothing was usually constructed to be
sturdy as a rule and would be perfect for clearing out
a shanty town that had grown in an underground
tunnel like a cancerous cyst in a bladder. No one
wanted to wear their nice clothes, because no one
knew what kind of shit they were going to get into
down there.
Vince’s friend Hank, who was the police chief
then and was still the police chief due to the gentle
kind of incumbency that holds sway in small
communities, walked up the front steps of the main
building and cleared his throat, the small mob that
had assembled quieting down to hear what he had to
say and Hank laid down the ground rules.
“Listen up everybody! I think you all know what
we’re here for, but I want you all to conduct
yourselves in as orderly and lawful a manner as
possible. We’re going to go in and clear these
buildings one by one, floor by floor. Each time will
have an officer assigned to them since we don’t have
enough radios to go around. I don’t have to remind
you all to keep the chatter to a minimum and keep it
to mission critical dispatches. We’re going to start
with the main building, then move through the
residence wing and the hospital wing, then go down
and check out the tunnels. I want to stress that I
don’t want anyone firing unless fired upon. We are
not at war and anyone in there is not V. C. Anyone
we find in here will be detained by the officers in
your team and then processed down at the station
for trespassing, breaking and entering, and whatever
else we think up on the way back and they’ll spend a
few years upstate so we won’t have to worry about
them for a while. Are we clear on what our mission
is here today?”
The small mob of men, some of them with their
hair ted back into neat ponytails, some of them bald
or with their hair cropped short into the high-and-
tight crew-cut from their military years all nodded or
mumbled a chorus of “Yes”, “Yeah”, and “Yup.” Half-
distracted by double-checking the action on their
weapons, making sure that there was a round in the
chamber, clicking flashlights on and off, looking into
the lens to make sure that they worked in the bright
sunlight of the clear sky day.
“Alright then. Let’s do this.”
Hank took out a keyring and unlocked the big,
heavy-looking padlock, locking it back onto the end
of the chain and dropped it to the ground, the weight
of it dragging the chain snakingly clanking out from
between the sturdy metal handles of the doors to the
main entrance. He opened the door wide and an
officer standing to his side held the door open as he
clicked on his flood beam flashlight and stepped
inside.
The main building was surprisingly vacant.
There was a fair amount of graffiti. Your usual LED
ZEP and ZOSO and the four symbols off of the “IV
album” spray-painted inexpertly on the walls with no
rhyme nor reason. Some pentagrams in circles, the
angles never accurate and your fair share of cartoon
penises and vaginas and big-titted women. But no
one had set up house in the main building, the
residential wing or the hospital wing. Everything
that could be broken had been broken and what
couldn’t be broken had been dragged around and
stacked unnaturally so that every now and then
there’d be an improvised set piece that looked like a
stoned poltergeist wanted their presence known.
But whoever had scrawled the graffiti and broken the
glass and stacked the furniture in quasi-pyramidal
piles hadn’t stuck around to take credit for their
work. There were empty pint bottles that still
smelled faintly of the alcohol they used to contain,
the occasional nudie mag and the even rarer used
condom littering the floor like the shed skin of a
small snake. Sometimes some worn down shoes or
a pile of dirty clothes or random food wrappers. But
each time they walked up the stairs to the next floor,
and walked down the hallways, going room by room,
making sure that no one was hiding under any of the
beds or in any of the closets, they were half-
disappointed and half-relieved that there was no one
to be found.
When the main building and the residential and
hospital and school wings were cleared, Hank
designated a guard for the entrances to the buildings
to make sure that no one snuck back in behind them
and he rallied the remaining men to check out the
tunnels that connected the buildings underground.
Hank led the crowd down the wide stairwell into
the vestibule leading to the tunnels.
Someone had spray-painted a white skull and
crossbones with a black outline over the double
doors leading down to the tunnels. The floor in
front of the door was filthy with countless footprints
tracking old mud and dirt. Hank turned around
before opening the door and addressed the crowd.
“Remember. No matter what we find down here, if
we find anyone, they’re people, and they have rights
just like you and I. Our goal is apprehension, not
termination and deadly force should only be used if
authorized. Am I clear?”
He was answered by an indeterminate rumble of
affirmation by the men who had spent the better part
of their Saturday climbing up flights of stairs and
dodging broken glass. To say that they were no
longer as gung-ho as they were when they started off
that morning and that they were all looking forward
to finishing the task at hand and having a tailgate
cook-out with burgers and hot dogs and beer out in
the circle in front of the main building would be an
understatement. Not that everyone who showed up
was excited about having the opportunity to dress up
and play soldier on their day off. But it was
something that had to be done and even the most
humble among them would have to begrudgingly
admit that they were proud that they were invited to
participate.
Hank gave the group a stern look and said, “Let’s
go.” opening the double doors to the underground
tunnel.
The blackness inside of the tunnel made the
dimness of the unlit interior of the main building
seem bright in comparison. Those with flashlights
clicked them on and shone them around inside the
tunnel. The walls of the tunnel were covered in
chaotic murals of spray paint, layer upon layer like a
weather-worn billboard. The group moved forward
gradually getting used to the darkness. None of the
men were afraid of the dark or particularly
claustrophobic, but the air in the tunnel was heavy
with stale smoke and felt thick and fetid.
The men moved ten yards down the tunnel, Hank
in the lead with a huge spotlight shining straight
ahead, disclosing a few more feet of the interior of
the tunnel for each few feet they advanced. The
beam revealed a waist-height round object looming
up out of the darkness. A few more steps revealed it
to be a fifty-five gallon metal drum and when the
group of men stopped their forward progress
somewhat simultaneously, a crackling from a fire
could be heard echoing around the tunnel. Hank
shone the beam of his floodlight around, revealing a
disorganized grouping of dirty mattresses with piles
of what could be human forms lying on top of them.
He cleared his throat.
“Attention! I am here as a representative of the
law in this county and you are all trespassing! I’m
going to need all of you to get up and proceed in an
orderly manner in this direction where
representatives of local law enforcement will take you
into custody!”
One of the men in the group pulled the pin on one
of the surplus phosphorous grenades from the case
that had been passed around and they rolled it down
the middle of the tunnel towards the improvised
encampment. The grenade sparked to life, the
sparks shooting from the top of the canister
blindingly white leaving behind a trail of stars. The
canister hit a warp in the floor and instead of rolling
into the center of the encampment as intended it
rolled towards one of the filthy mattresses, coming to
rest against the side of the mattress in a pile of dirty
clothes. The pile of clothes smoldered for a second,
then burst into flames, the flames crawling up the
pile of blankets on the bed. A human, whether man
or woman was hard to determine due to the high
pitch of their screams leapt out of the bed, slapping
at themselves, trying to put themselves out as they
staggered around on fire, the flames crawling up
their torso. The flaming form stumbled into a
wooden crate, knocking it over and scattering the
half-empty bottles of alcohol that had been left on
top of it. Some of the bottles smashed and their
contents spread out and caught fire igniting other
piles of dirty clothes and the piles of clothes ignited.
The light and heat and screaming woke up all of the
other inhabitants of the tunnel camp and they all sat
up shouting incoherent questions or jumped up,
startled and bleary eyed and started to run away
from the flashlights towards the darkness of the
further depths of the tunnel.
No one knows who opened fire first. But after
the first shot was fired, a symphony of gunfire
erupted in the tunnels, the sound of shotguns, rifles
and handguns deafening in the echo chamber of the
tunnel. The lead tore into the fleeing forms, felling
them, their clothes tenting out as the bullets exited
the other sides of their bodies, taking fist-sized
chunks of flesh and spattering the floor and walls of
the tunnel. Those that hadn’t had the time to get up
from their mattresses were lain back down by the
bullets punching into them.
The gunfire went on until some of the weapons
were exhausted and the group could finally hear
Hank yelling “Cease fire god damn it!”
Everyone ceased fire, everyone’s ears ringing and
the smell of expended gunpowder heavy in the air,
the smoke swirling in the beams of their flashlights.
“Well…” Hank said, taking a thin cigar from a
pack in the left breast pocket of his uniform shirt,
“we might as well finish what we started.”
The group moved forward, picking up the dead
and lining them up side by side in the center of the
circle of mattresses. There were twenty-three bodies
in all. Sixteen men and seven women as far as
anyone could reckon from what was left of them.
None of them were recognized by any of the men.
Just a bunch of nameless people that had fallen
under the wheels of society and whose absence
wouldn’t be missed.
When the work of gathering the bodies was over,
those that smoked broke out their cigarettes and lit
them, their smoke adding to the dissipating
gunsmoke thinning in the beams of their flashlights.
Hank turned to a man standing to his left with a
double-barreled shotgun resting on his hip, the
barrel pointing towards the ceiling.
“Bill… Do you think you could get some of your
boys to come down today and wall off the entrance to
this here tunnel?”
 Bill furrowed his brow slightly estimating the job
in his head before answering.
“Yeah. I think we can make that happen. Gonne
have to swing by my house and call the boys up and
then swing by and pick up the work truck and some
cement but I think we can get it done if everyone
stuck around and helped.”
“Alright then. That’s the plan. Everyone stays
until we get this done. I don’t think it’s necessary
for me to mention that we shouldn’t talk to anyone
that wasn’t here today about what happened down
here. It’s a small town, so anyone that talks about
it, the rest of us will find out about it pretty fast, you
can’t trust people with your secrets. Some things
you just have to keep to yourself and I think we can
all agree that this is one of those things.”
There was a generalized mumble of agreement
amongst the men.
“Well, let’s get this done. I’m sure you’re all
looking forward to getting back to your families.”
The group turned around, heading back the way
they came.
Outside in the circle in front of the main building
the men sat on the lowered tails of their pick up
trucks or leaned against their cars, smoking and
waiting for Bill and his crew to return. No one was
in the mood to break out the coolers and fire up the
grills and cook the hamburgers and hot dogs they
brought along to celebrate the end of the day.
Bill’s work truck arrived, filled with four pallets of
cinder blocks and a pallet’s worth of powdered
cement mix in eighty pound bags.
Everyone did their part to help mix the cement
and stack the cinder blocks in front of the entrance
to the tunnel and the exit on the other end, building
two new walls in the abandoned facility.
When the work was done, the police officers on
site talked amongst themselves and set up a duty
roster for the next week to make sure that no one
would trespass on the site until the walls had dried
and set while the rest of the men drove away to deal
with the events of the day in their own way and to
lock it away in the places in their hearts and minds
that they never share with anyone regardless of how
much they had drunk or how close they felt to the
other person. Some secrets should stay secret.
At the next city council meeting, a line item
allotting funds allocated towards constructing a
fence around the property and posting a guard at the
site from sunset to sunrise each night was quietly
passed in the interest of public safety. Bill’s crew
came out and constructed the barrier fence around
the perimeter to the property. During the day,
whichever officer was on duty would make it a point
to swing by and check out the locks on the gates and
the physical integrity of the fence. At night, the
guard would patrol the facility, using his flashlight to
make sure that none of the plywood coverings to any
of the doorways or ground floor windows.
They never did find the missing kids, and
probably never would, but the missing children
reports stopped after that day, aside from the usual
panicked parent calling in when their teenager
misses their curfew and order was restored in their
community.
Every now and then the night guard would
discover that the padlock on one of the gates had
been pried off and it wasn’t that hard to find the
unauthorized vehicle after that. The guard would
just call it in to the police station and wait next to
the vehicle until the owner returned with their
friends. It wasn’t worth trying to chase a bunch of
kids or stoners around the site, and unless they
wanted to leave their vehicle behind they’d be coming
back at some point so it was just a waiting game.
There was the occasional bloody nose or
dislocated shoulder if any of the kids got too mouthy
when they discovered they had been discovered, but
no one was hurt so badly that they needed to go to
the hospital. Just enough to instill a healthy fear of
the authority of the police or the authority of the
night guard which was about the same when
trespassing was concerned. Any drugs or alcohol
found on the trespassers was seized and poured out,
or if unopened, taken home as a little bonus for a job
well done.
In time, word got around that The Gate was no
longer a decent destination for teens looking for a
place to party and the patrols were cut back to just
dark, and Vince and the kid that worked the
weekend shifts did a decent job keeping an eye on
the place at night and scaring away any high school
kids that didn’t know any better.
Tonight was quiet, and Vince had the car radio on
low, listening to the country music station which
played old Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Sr.
songs for the most part with Kenny Rogers and Merle
Haggard thrown in to mix it up.
Vince had always been a light sleeper, and
whenever a car passed on the main road he’d thumb
the brim of his hat up and make sure the car didn’t
turn in and head towards the front gates.
 The last car had passed by at least fifteen
minutes ago and it didn’t slow down and turn into
the road up to the fence so Vince didn’t give a shit
about it and he pushed the brim of his hat down over
his eyes so he could still peer out from underneath it
if he had to, a police radio quietly, scratchily
burbling a few mostly inaudible beeps and short
indecipherable phrases, the crickets chirping in the
darkness of the treeline.
THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
[A sample chapter from The End Of The World Is Nigh I used as proof
of concept for the fund-raising campaign for the book.]

Sean narrowed his eyes into what was almost a

squint as the high thin clouds scuttled away from
under the sun making the glare from the sun even
brighter than it had been a moment before. He was
wearing cheap black plastic sunglasses over his
prescription glasses mended at the corner with a
bent and twisted staple where a tiny screw used to
be. The sunglasses were a luxury in these times
when the world required one's constant attention if
one wanted to live until the sun went down.
Darkening one's visual perspective with darkened
lenses was dangerous, but the headache caused by
eye stain from constantly squinting at the glare of
the sun as it reflects off of the road and the flickering
of the overgrown fields laid out as far as the horizon
to either side of the road, as far as anyone could see,
was also dangerous as the two-lane blacktop laid out
straight into the distance until the vanishing point
was always seemingly closing but never arriving like
an eternally postponed tomorrow, shimmering with
imaginary heat mirages that had the potential to lull
a person into a trance and that was the most
dangerous of all.
Sometimes there were traps set in the road and
sometimes the traps were warned of in advance with
signs painted on repurposed pieces of wood affixed to
lengths of pole or pieces of metal stuck into the
ground and skewed by the capricious intentions of
seasonal winds. Sometimes the warnings were
painted on the road itself in big block letters in
whatever color of paint was most conveniently readily
available at the time or in uneven spray-painted
letters. The messages usually read along the lines of
"TURN AROUND", or "DEAD AHEAD", or even simple
pictographs of child-like scrawlings of skulls and
crossbones but the message was always the same.
The message was always, "Abandon hope, all ye
who enter here." The message was "Your final
destination is ahead." The message was "Death
awaits."
The message was always "The living need not
apply." or "There's nothing for you up ahead, so you
might as well save yourself the gas and time and
effort and head back in the direction you came from."
but usually there was nothing in the direction you
came from or there was something but that
something was bad or dangerous and anything and
anywhere seemed better than what you had left
behind anyway so you went forward anyway hoping
that maybe the next stop would be better than the
last and sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't
but you never know unless you go and almost
anywhere is better than wherever you are except
when it's not.
The traps that were warned about in advance
were usually the less dangerous. Busses resting on
their axles across the road to prevent your progress.
Boxes of metal designed to move groups of people
rendered redundant since there was no reason to
move people from one point to another and
significantly fewer people to move even if they were of
a mind to do so. Intentionally parked across the
road and left to rust, the messages were usually
painted across the broad side graffiti style. "NO
MAN'S LAND AHEAD" and "TURN BACK WHILE YOU
CAN".
It was the traps that you weren't warned about in
advance that were dangerous. The bridges that had
been washed out by flash floods or were unable to
bear themselves up against the constant strain of
gravity and the gradual disintegration by the
oxidizing effect of rust which is what almost always
happens when most metals are left to the merciless
attentions of water and air. The monuments made
by man seemed so eternal when there were people
around to see to the needs of their buildings and
bridges. But as is often said, time destroys
everything and nothing is permanent.
Sean was fine with traveling alone by daylight
despite the risks because without any other people to
worry about there was less to worry about overall.
Sure it would have been nice to have someone along
for the ride to help to kill the seemingly endless time.
A woman or another man but preferably a woman
because of the other. Their softer voices and softer
skins. But companionship also means another
mouth to feed and another life to watch over and
another bladder to listen to the insistent demands of
on the road.
Worthwhile companions were in short supply
since the world ended. Hunger and fear and self-
interest usually worked against the human instinct
to operate as a social animal and in the absence of
this instinctual drive, the worse natures of humans
were brought to the fore as a constant character.
To survive in the world that was, now that the
world that used to be was over, everyone had to do
the opposite of what they had always been taught to
do unto each other as they would have done unto
themselves. Everyone that did not kill and steal and
covet the possessions of others would be killed and
stolen from by those that coveted what little they had
and would not survive.
The warning sign for this town was a green metal
sign posted about a mile outside of the town. The
sign was municipal government green with a white
pinstripe around the edge and it read "Welcome to
________ Pop. ___". At least that's what it used to
read. The population number had been spray-
painted over by a red zero and bolted onto the
bottom of the sign was a white metal sign that read,
"EVACUATED: Per order of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. No trespassing. Looters will
be shot on sight." in efficient black sans serif font,
and a big red "Biohazard" symbol stenciled behind
the text.
Anyone still moving around with intention on the
planet knew that the biohazard symbol was a
double-edged sword. Either it meant that the place
was legitimately dangerous and to enter into the
posted area was to take your life into your hands, or
it meant that someone had stenciled the symbol as a
scarecrow for humans. Either way the symbol was
more often ignored than heeded and exploration of
these areas was usually worth the time, effort, and
risk involved. Even if nothing worth scavenging was
found, it was still something to do, and the nagging
doubt that one had overlooked a hidden cache of
food or weapons was like an itch you couldn't
scratch in the back of your mind until the doubt
became unbearable and you would turn around just
to be sure and that was never a good idea since
although time was a bottomless well, fuel was scarce.
You should always either be standing still or moving
forward, but never going backwards. There's
nothing back there for you. There never was.
Sean slowed down and approached the town,
although even calling it a town was a flattering
exaggeration. More of a crossroads in the middle of
nowhere, where the bare necessities of goods and
services could be obtained. On one corner was a
Taco Bell, the windows intact but begrimed by the
dust and dirt of a decade of neglect. On the
opposite corner was a gas station, the glass door to
the office open and askew on its hinges. A sheet of
plywood lashed to the column in the center of the fill-
up awning read "NO GAS" in red spray-paint and the
nozzles of both of the pumps laid on the ground like
dead snakes. Across the street was a post office.
Not a modern post office made of glass and steel with
tasteful fluorescent lighting concealed in the ceiling,
but a solid old brick and mortar building with ceiling
fans that in the world that was would have been
constantly lazily stirring the air, and a transom over
the main entrance to be left open on fairer days.
Across the intersection from the post office was a
hardware store, another brick and mortar building
with granite cornerstones and red brick walls. The
glass smashed out of the front door, scattered on the
ground in the entryway mixed in with a layer of drift
dirt. The plate glass windows on either side cracked
but intact, scoured frosted by the sand scratched
across the surface by winsome winds.
Sean slowed to a stop in the center of the
intersection, leaving the engine idling, giving anyone
who had staked a claim on this ghost town the
chance to show themselves and let him know he was
not welcome. He waited in the jeep as the high sun
beat straight down and heat vapors rose from the
hood in an invisible wave.
No one came out of any of the buildings and none
of the shadows shifted in any of the windows or
doorways, the only indication that he wasn't looking
at a painted picture was the tattered sun-faded
American flag barely twisting listlessly in a lazy
breeze. Sean put the jeep in gear and crept across
the intersection into the drive-through driveway in
front of the gas station. He stopped in between the
pumps in the shade of the awning, put the jeep in
park and turned off the engine.
Sean took the keys out of the ignition, and tucked
them into his pocket. He reached over into the
passenger seat and put his hand through the
shoulder strap of his M-16, and opened the door to
the jeep halfway with his hand still on the handle,
standing with one foot on the ground and one foot on
the floor mat, half-in, half-out of the vehicle, slinging
the rifle over his shoulder and placing his hand on
the handle of the .45 holstered on his hip. If
anything was going to happen it would happen now.
Before he even heard the shot he'd be laying on the
ground with the contents of his head sprayed across
the windshield and his blood pumping out of the
newest hole in his head.
He cautiously looked around like a security
camera on a pivot, taking his time to look into every
shadow for the glint of a rifle barrel or a mounted
scope. The only sound was the whisper of the wind
and the scrunch of the loose gravel underfoot as he
pivoted on the foot that was on the asphalt. Nothing
moved. Sean took a deep breath and sighed,
shrugged, and said to himself, "Fuck it.". He
stepped the rest of the way out of the shelter of the
jeep.
Sean continued to look around across his field of
vision as he walked to the rear of the vehicle. He
turned around and looked in a circle slowly before
turning his back to the town and his attention to the
back hatch of the jeep. He took his keys out and
unlocked the door, swinging it up on its pneumatic
pumps. He reached in and took out a bucket with a
cylinder of twine attached to it and a crowbar.
Sean closed the back hatch and locked it, then
went around to the driver’s side and locked that too.
No point in leaving it unlocked when a few seconds of
time and a minor amount of effort could keep
someone from taking your few possessions. Sean
had modified the jeep, smashing out the windows
and replacing them with half inch sheets of plexiglas
lag-bolted into the frame with an inch of space to
permit air to stream through the jeep. It was
inconvenient in cold weather but a blessing in warm
weather and it beat having someone that was a
decent shot take you out from a distance or some
thief smashing your windows and dashing off with
your things while you were exploring an abandoned
looking building.
Sean walked over to the raised hubs of the gas
wells, grinding gravel into asphalt underfoot. At the
wells, he took a knee and used the crowbar to pry up
the thick metal lid. He slid the lid aside and laid the
crowbar on the ground, putting the bucket into the
black hole, unwinding the spool of twine, and
lowering the bucket. A couple minutes of time
passed until a dull, echoey clank of the bucket
hitting the bottom of the well drifted up from the
darkness. Sean took a deep breath and sighed. He
wound the twine back into the spool, bringing the
bucket back up from the depths of the well. He did
the same routine with the diesel well with the same
results. "NO GAS".
Sean slipped the crowbar into the straps of his
backpack and clipped the handle of the bucket onto
a metal clip hanging from the same pack, dropping
the roll of twine into the bucket, leaving the lids off of
the openings to the gas wells. Half in the interest of
conserving effort and half out of wanting to spare the
next person the effort of having to learn what he
already knew. "NO GAS".
Sean got to his feet and looked around again,
fairly certain that he was alone, but old habits die
hard and those without good habits died more often.
He walked towards the office and took the .45 from
its holster and stepped through the opening left by
the glass and metal door askew in its hinges.
Inside, the small office was empty, but not empty.
Inside all of the stickers and posters for Coca Cola
and Marlboro cigarettes were still in the windows
and on the walls but the racks for the cigarettes were
empty, and the coolers for the beverages were also
empty. The three short aisles had been stripped of
anything edible, leaving behind Bic pens and
pregnancy tests and condoms whose expiration dates
had long since expired.
The impulse item racks in front of the register
had been stripped of candy bars, leaving behind
chewing gum and breath mints. Sean opened an
empty canvas duffel bag and dumped the gum and
mints into the yawning opening of the bag. You
never knew what might come in handy for trade and
a mint every now and then helped to take the taste of
the dust of the road out of your mouth. There was
nothing else worth taking in the office. Sean made
his way over to the door to the garage. He opened
the door and half hid behind it waiting for the flash
and roar of a firearm. When that didn't happen he
stepped into the garage and waited for his eyes to
adjust to the relative darkness.
The dust motes in the air lent a weight to the
slivers of light that shone in through the cracks in
the roll-up doors for the double-bay garage. Sean
let his eyes adjust to the inside of the garage then
walked a short circuit around the inside. On a rack
he found a full case of oil and an open case with nine
loose bottles. Oil was always handy to have to burn
or for trade. In addition to the oil he found a couple
unopened bottles of windshield washer fluid and
other full or half-full bottles of lubricants and fluids
that were the life blood of the machines that used to
be the cogs that moved the world.
Sean stacked the half-empty case of oil on top of
the full one and put the two bottles of windshield
wiper fluid into the empty case. He holstered the
.45 and bent at the knees and lifted the cases,
bearing the brunt of the weight on his stomach and
chest. He knew it was a bad idea to walk out of the
place without his heat in his hands but it was a fair
risk and finding a dolly to carry out such a small
haul would take time. Time was an interesting
problem. There was all you could ever want and
never enough.
 Sean walked back through the doorway to the
office for the station and looked through the window
to see if there was any kind of ambush waiting out
there for him. Maybe some hard case and a few of
his friends hanging out between him and his jeep
waiting for him to come out of the gas station to ask
him to give them the keys to the jeep and everything
else he had and maybe if he was lucky they wouldn’t
kill, fuck and eat him, not necessarily in that order.
It seemed safe. At least there wasn’t any obvious
ambush laid out.
Sean stepped through the entrance to the office
into the daylight and quick-walked around the
pumps to the rear of the jeep, hefting the cases up
onto the roof. He paused and looked around.
Never can be too careful these days. He took the
keys out of his pocket and unlocked the rear hatch
easing it up. He slid the cases off of the roof and
slid them into the limited space in the back of the
jeep, closed the hatch and locked it again.
Sean took the .45 out of its hip holster and looked
around the intersection again.
The Taco Bell was pointless to bother trying to
scavenge anything from. Anything edible at fast
food places went off once the power grid went down
and the refrigerators stopped working. Refrigerators
quickly became shiny metal boxes filled with rotting
food and darkness, not worth opening unless you
needed a reminder that the world had changed and
you weren’t likely to be able to enjoy a frozen
popsicle on a hot summer’s day ever again in this
lifetime. The best you could hope to scavenge was a
few sundry bits from the first aid kit, some cleaning
supplies from the janitorial storage closet, maybe a
few sleeves of napkins and a case or three of mild,
hot, and fire sauce. Not even worth the walk across
the street.
The post-office was almost equally useless but he
figured he’d clear it out just to be thorough. Never
know what you find if you take the time to look. He
crossed the street to the left and walked up to the
front door. He reached out with his left hand and
tried the pull handle for the door. Locked. Of
course it was. He reached behind him and took out
the crowbar with his left hand, pulling out the
crowbar, and bringing the angled head down into the
plate glass, smashing it out with a crashing smash
that echoed around the empty intersection.
“Whelp,” he thought to himself, “if there’s anyone
around they definitely know I’m here now.” He
raked the crowbar around the door frame and the
stubborn bits of plate glass tinkled into the newly
made pile of broken plate glass at his feet. He
tucked the crowbar back into the loop of the pack
reserved for it. “A place for everything and
everything in its place.” as his mother used to say.
Sean crouched and shuffled under the metal
push-bar mid-height across the door. The inside of
the post office was shadowy, but lit well enough from
the light coming in from the windows that he didn’t
have to take out his mag-lite to see. The walls were
lined with posters and slot-wall with pegs sticking
out, stocked with packing supplies and impulse
merchandise. The posters read… _____________ and
____________ . Sean walked over to the wall of
merchandise and slid the peg full of packing tape off
of the hook and into his duffel bag. Tape was
always a useful commodity. Packing tape was more
versatile and durable than scotch tape. He walked
over to the counter and pushed himself up, sliding
over to the other side. He ignored the cash
registers. After the world ended, money was
reduced to being useless rectangles of colored paper
again. Books were more valuable for burning if
we’re talking volume of paper compared to effort to
obtain. Why spend the time to try to crack open a
register or break into a bank vault when any local
library or bookstore would provide much more fuel
for fire to cook your food and keep you warm at
night? Plus if you were the literary type you could
always read them.
Sean pushed open the door to the back room of
the post office. Another shadow-strewn room split
with shafts of daylight from the windows suffusing
the room with a gentle warm light. Plastic bins of
mail incoming and outgoing that would never be
delivered were slowly going to dry rot only useful now
for kindling. Sorting racks and tables with a layer of
undisturbed dust gently settled on their upmost
surfaces. A calendar on the wall from ten years ago
from back when they still printed calendars for
people to put on their walls so people could cross off
the days. A small break area for the employees to
eat their lunches. A coffee maker with a box of loose
sugar packets and a container of powdered creamer.
Nothing worth the effort of taking.

Sean pushed the breaker bar on a door in the

back wall and squinted at the sunlight as he stepped
out into the fenced in parking lot. Two big boxy mail
trucks and a white pick-up truck with “U.S. Mail”
stenciled on the door panel on each side. He made a
mental note to come back and see if there was any
fuel in the gas tanks of the vehicles to siphon. He
stepped back through the door and walked across
the break room, through the dividing door and
vaulted back over the counter, walking across the
post office and ducking down to clear the push bar
hanging in the air across the empty space of the
front door.
Sean stood up and looked around again surveying
the intersection. Still empty. He looked towards
where he had parked the jeep and it was still there.
So far. So good. So what now?
Sean walked diagonally across the intersection to
the front of the hardware store. Someone had
already smashed out the front door so that saved
him the effort, which was nice, but it also meant that
the store had already been scavenged which could
make checking it out a waste of time. But, one
man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as they say,
and maybe the previous looters had left behind
something he could use or trade.
Sean stepped through the empty door frame that
used to contain a door-sized sheet of plate glass
which had been smashed out and ground underfoot,
mixed with drifted dust. That was something you
got used to seeing a lot of in the new word. Broken
glass and burned out buildings and burnt husks of
cars and charred piles of bones. Empty cans that
once held food and soft drinks and cellophane
sparkling in the breeze.
Inside the hardware store, it was an unsurprising
scene, the shelves of merchandise haphazardly
stripped of random merchandise. Merchandise
littered the aisles and clattered down the aisle when
unintentionally punted. Someone had cleaned out
the liquid adhesives. Either to use to stick one thing
to another thing, or to squirt into a plastic bag and
breathe the fumes from to get high, or to trade, but
for whatever reason they had cleared the section out
down to the pegs. Next to the adhesive section the
tape section was still relatively intact. He looked up
and saw that there was a case of duct tape on the
storage shelf over the merchandise rack and made a
mental note to come back for it. In the next aisle,
he ignored most of the tools. The whole concept of
consumption and consumerism had changed now
that there were more screwdrivers and ratchet sets
and measuring tapes than people alive to use them.
He stopped in front of the sharp tools section and
swept all of the replaceable razor blades and
linoleum knife blades into his duffel bag. You never
know when you’re going to need a fresh sharp edge.
In the next aisle the gallons of house paint were
mostly still in stock. The spray paint had been
pretty well scavenged but there were a few cans left
over so he tucked them into his duffel bag, the ball-
bearings within clanking mutedly inside the metal
cylinders as he did so.
Sean went back to the tape section and stripped
the shelved and pegged rolls of duct tape into his
duffel bag in singles and six packs, then holstered
the .45 and perched up on the balls of his feet to
ease down the case of duct tape from the overhead
shelf. The box was open, but only two rolls had
been removed so that made the trip into the
hardware store worth the time and effort of itself. “If
you can’t fix it, duck it. If you can’t duck it. Fuck
it.” He said aloud and sighed.
 Sean carried the case in his arms up to the front
counter and put the case down on the counter. He
looked down at the impulse item racks and, again,
all of the candy bars were gone, but the gum and
mints remained and he dumped the open case packs
into his duffel bag more out of habit than anything
else. He looked up at the pegs sticking out from the
pegboard behind the counter. Padlocks and bike
locks. The batteries were all gone but that was no
surprise. Batteries were worth more than gold. He
peeked behind the counter to see if there was a
shotgun or handgun stashed under the counter to
deter any thieves or shoplifters but if there had been
anything of the sort it was gone now.
Sean left the hardware store the same way he had
come in, grinding plate glass underfoot. He
squinted at the sunlight as he always did when
coming out of a building and looked around. The
intersection was still empty.
Sean walked across the intersection to the jeep
and put the case of duct tape on the roof. He took
the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the rear
hatch easing it up. He slid the case off of the roof
and slid it into the back of the jeep, next to the cases
of oil. He unshouldered the duffel bag dropped it on
top of the opened case of duct tape to be sorted
through later and closed the hatch and locked it
again.
Sean went around to the driver’s side and
unlocked the door and got in, locking the door
behind him, plugging the key into the ignition and
started up the engine. He pulled around to the gate
to the fenced in parking lot behind the post-office.
He put the jeep in park and turned the key, killing
the engine. He opened up the door and stepped out,
closing and locking the door behind him out of habit.
He went around to the back of the jeep and opened
up the rear hatch. He took out a bolt-cutter and
walked over to the gate. He lined up the blades of
the bolt-cutter over the hasp of the padlock holding
the chain keeping the gate closed. He squeezed the
handles of the bolt-cutter together, his forearms and
biceps tightening up until the blades cut through the
hasp with a snap. He turned the padlock on the
hasp, and snaked it out of the chain links it had
been holding together and dropped it to the ground
as the chain went slack on the fence. He pushed
the gate open wide enough for him to drive the jeep
through and walked around to the back of the jeep,
tossing the bolt-cutters back in and closed the hatch.
He unlocked and got into the jeep, started it up and
drove it up to behind where the three postal vehicles
were parked in a row facing the back wall of the post
office. He put the jeep in park and turned the
engine off, opening the door and getting out and
locking it behind him. He walked around to the
back of the jeep and unlocked and opened the rear
hatch. He took out a three-foot length of clear
plastic hose, with what looked like a fancy bike
pump attached to one end of it, and a five-gallon
rectangular gas can whose contents sloshed around
sounding about a quarter full. He went to each
vehicle in turn and popped the gas panel, removing
the cap and sliding the hose into the hole. The
siphon pump worked with a pull and a twist and
then a push back in, allowing air to be pulled out,
then the handle to be pushed back until the gas
crept up the clear plastic tube. Then you put the
spigot of the siphon into the mouth of the gas can
and pumped the gas out of the vehicle into the can.
A few foolish scavengers forgot that no matter how
cool it looks, you’re not supposed to pump gas while
smoking and had succumbed to death by, if not
spontaneous, then at least surprise combustion due
to their cigarette ember igniting the fumes coming off
of the gas they were siphoning. Just another
example of how smoking is bad for your health.
But Sean wasn’t as stupid or short-sighted as those
scavengers and knew that siphoning and smoking
were mutually exclusive activities. A small amount
of gas had evaporated due to heat and time and the
imperfect seal of the gas caps, but he was able to
siphon off enough to fill the first gas canister and
half of another. Not a bad haul.
Sean put the second canister into the back of the
jeep and shook out the hose and coiled it and put
that into the back of the jeep, closing and locking the
rear hatch. He went around to the driver’s side of
the jeep, unlocking the driver’s side door and getting
in, locking the door and starting up the jeep. He
turned a circle and left the post office parking lot and
pulled back around to the intersection taking the
road headed north by northwest out of town.
“Why the fuck am I in Texas?” he asked himself,
but he knew the answer.
It was all about a girl. For men it usually was.
He reached over and turned on the shortwave
radio receiver he had mounted on the dash and
plugged into a power adapter plugged into the dash
lighter port. The radio hissed and mumbled in
between channels. He turned the tuning knob and
found the channel that was steadily transmitting the
warning from the Texas State National Guard.
“This is an announcement from the Texas
Emergency Broadcast System. Please be aware that
the cities of Dallas, Austin, and Houston have been
evacuated and have been over-run by the dead. All
surviving occupants have been relocated to the
nearest regional relocation center and any
trespassers to those cities or outlying areas will be
apprehended and transported to the nearest regional
relocation center. Please keep your radio tuned to
this signal for updated news and information and a
list of regional relocation centers.”
Sean rolled his eyes and sighed and turned the
dial. The message had been the same since he had
crossed over into Texas coming in from the northern
corner of the neck of the state. It had been the
same all the way to the regional relocation centers.
It had been the same all the way to Austin and the
same all the way from Austin to Houston and the
same from Houston to here wherever here was. He
turned the dial until he found a bandwidth
broadcasting country and western music. Hank
Williams and Johnny Cash mostly, and mostly the
gospel tunes, but even Jumped-Up Hellfire Wrathful
Jesus music from either of those guys was better
than the never-ending silence and if some lone
lunatic with a gas-running generator and a
shortwave tower wanted to spread the fear of God by
way of their love for country music then that was fine
by him as long as he didn’t get on the air and start
proselytizing about the end of times because that’s
just about the last thing that anyone needed to hear
about while trying to survive in what was left of the
world.
To think that all of this was for a girl.
It wasn’t even his first choice, but his first choice
didn’t really work out that well, and he didn’t really
want to talk about it. At least not if you asked him
about it. But sometimes in his sleep he’d talk about
it anyway but usually it wasn’t as much talking as it
was screaming and it wasn’t very nice to hear.
As a second choice she was still a good one. Five
foot two and eyes of blue as the song used to go back
when there were songs and people were still in the
mood to sing them. Wit like a razor blade but twice
as sharp. She kissed like a bolt of lightning and
fucked like a tornado and was worth the drive. Sure
she had her downfalls but so did everyone else. She
had a wandering eye and airplanes made her fall to
pieces but she was good as far as girls go and there
weren’t many good girls left in the world.
Sean had started off in the northeast and driven
across half the country to be where he was. Using
secondary roads to avoid the major cities which were
mostly just smoking holes in the ground these days.
Tracing lines in the road atlas to figure out how to
avoid bridges and blockades. It wasn’t easy and he
had to kill a few people, but it was usually in self-
defense because if someone’s trying to kill you it only
seems right to return the favor. That wasn’t what
bothered his conscience. There were worse things
he had done to survive this long after the end of the
world and killing a few wild-eyed cannibals was a
day at the amusement park in comparison.
Sean had to double-back twice before he could
find a safe point to cross the Mississippi. The first
bridge was a wash-out, nothing left but pylons
sticking out of the middle of the river. The second
was a blockade manned by some heavy-looking ex-
military types. Good old country boys that brought
the war home with them. Good old boys gone bad
with plenty of southern discomfort and inhospitality
to share. Thankfully he had the presence of mind to
scout the crossing from a distance before trying to
make the cross-over. If he had just unexpectedly
pulled up on that blockade the jeep-mounted .50 cal
they had probably would have ended his adventure
much earlier than expected. But he didn’t and it
didn’t.
Sean had started picking up the warning from the
Texas State National Guard just before he crossed
the Texas state line. He figured the relocation
center was a good enough place as any to start
looking for her. His plan was to pull in five miles
away from the camp and then walk in with a
minimal amount of supplies in his back-up backpack
and a sidearm he could afford to give up when asked
to and the plan worked about as well as he had
hoped. He walked the line down the center of the
road approaching the camp when the sun had just
come up over the horizon in the east so he was
clearly visible, but the soldier in the sandbag bunker
with the bullhorn still told him to put his hands up
and approach slowly at about a hundred yards and
the pockmarks in the asphalt and the .50 cal gunner
in the watchtower gave him an idea of what might
happen if he didn’t raise his hands high and empty
and saunter in at a slow and casual pace.
The camp was just as bad as he thought it would
be. But it was also worse. He had expected it to be
bad. He had spent some time in one of the fortified
cities in the northeast and he knew how things
worked and how to get along and do what you’re told
to get to live another day. There was always the
world outside of the walls and if you decided that
following rules and working cooperatively wasn’t for
you, you were welcome to take your chances with the
dead and the cannibals.
Sean had decided that his first choice was worth
the risk, and then it wasn’t, but by then it was too
late and the only direction worth moving in was
forward.
As he had expected when he voluntarily became a
guest of the relocation center he had to surrender his
weapon, a cheap .22 with a rusted carriage that he
wouldn’t really miss.
“If you decide to leave you’ll get this back, but
until then we’ll just hold onto it for you.”
Sure. No problem.
The refugees were separated into two buildings by
gender to avoid the complications that sometimes
develop when you mix human animals of different
genders. Not that it stopped anyone determined to
find some time alone with someone else. Even in
the direst of situations love will find a way and if love
can’t find a way then lust will do. The bunk beds
were lined up in rows of fifty and twenty rows wide,
which is only a thousand bunks in each barrack for
those of you paying attention but everyone made do.
There was a separate smaller barrack with about a
hundred bunks for those few families to have
survived intact so that the younger children, the few
that remained, could be kept watch over by their
parents. It was easier not to have them underfoot
while all of the other adults went about their daily
duties and their parents were better able to tolerate
it when the children woke up screaming in terror two
or three times a night, wetting the bed and crying,
than the other adults in the general population. The
soldiers were also bunked separately to avoid
fraternization with the residents of the relocation
center, but sometimes that rule was quietly
secretively overlooked, especially in the case of an
attractive young female refugee who wasn’t against
trading some of her time for slightly better rations or
a less difficult work detail.
Although the relocation center wasn’t a
concentration camp, it was, but much in the same
way that concentration camp was a euphemism for
death camp, relocation camp was a euphemism for
concentration camp, except in this scenario the living
were gathered with the intention of trying to keep
them alive as a last ditch effort to keep the human
experiment going as a viable option.
The relocation camps didn’t have "Arbeit macht
frei" on the gates, but the officer in command of the
camp did adhere to the philosophy as originally
recorded in the Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle
translated as “He who does not work, will not eat.”.
In the early times of the end of the world, when
there was less food than there were people, if you
were sick enough to be bedridden you might as well
have just laid down in a pine box and asked someone
to tuck you in by nailing the cover shut. Everyone
was much too worried about their own survival to
worry about making sure sweet old aunt Agnes with
diabetes and dementia remembered to take her shots
on time. When you were running for your life, you
didn’t have time to help that really nice guy you
dormed with in college that made being in a
wheelchair actually seem kind of cool, or to pick up
and carry that co-ed girl that was kind of fuckable
despite the fact she had to use metal crutches with
arm braces to hobble around campus. If you
couldn’t run and fight and think harder and faster
than the other guy then maybe it would be you that
would die from an extreme case of getting mouthfuls
of yourself chewed off by the staggering dead. The
worst part of that scenario was that you didn’t die
right away. It wasn’t like someone flipped a switch
and turned you off like a light bulb. You died
screaming and struggling and bleeding all over the
place until your hands were all slippery with your
own blood and you can’t even find a purchase to
push away the clawing hands and biting teeth, and
unfortunately, in this scenario, death is only the
beginning.
The relocation camp had work details based on
the principle that hard work is healthy and working
together, people can accomplish more than any one
person working alone. There was a farm in the
camp dedicated to growing high-yield staple foods
such as corn and beans. There was a hospital
where the hurt were healed and the sick were
strapped down and monitored until they recovered or
didn’t recover and the logical conclusion occurred.
A broken arm or leg could be splinted, but a heart
attack was a terminal event regardless of whether or
not it killed you all at once. Once your heart
betrayed you, there was no knowing when it would
revolt again, and unexpected death was not a
welcome thing in these times. Even though a watch
was posted every night in the barracks, humans are
only human and sometimes they fall asleep at night
even when they’re supposed to stay awake and
although you may die peacefully in your sleep, you
didn’t rest long and things were decidedly less
peaceful when you awoke a few minutes later. Less
peaceful and more fatal, at least to anyone asleep in
any of the bunks around you.
The next morning Sean woke up early in what
was called “quarantine”, a row of two dozen old-style
iron-barred cages with a tarp spread over them to
keep the rain out if it’s falling straight down, but not
providing much privacy or protection from the
elements if the night was cold. Privacy was a
privilege in the camp, and the night in quarantine
was a precaution to monitor new arrivals to
determine if they were too sick or insane to be a
productive member of camp society. Sick or insane,
the solution was the same. An armed escort to the
special place at the back of the camp where you were
given a bullet to the back of the head as a goodbye
gift, and added to the pile of people stacked like
cordwood in the back of the corpse wagon as the
truck that delivered the truly dead to the burial
trench was somewhat affectionately called. Sean
had heard nine rifle reports echoing from the
perimeter during the night but gunfire no longer
awoke most survivors, instead inspiring memory-
fueled nightmares that burned even more terribly
than the usual ones.
Sean was keenly watched by two armed men in
desert camouflage that approached the door to his
cage. One of the soldiers, a compact wiry man with
a five-day beard and a flinty stare with a name-tag
that read “HUCK” stood slightly behind with a service
issue .45 pointed at the center of Sean’s chest as the
other soldier, a tall blonde man with ice-blue eyes
and clean shaven wearing a name tag that read
“GAMER” asked Sean “How are you feeling?”.
“Alright I guess.”
“Sleep okay?”
“Well enough.”
“You ready to walk over to secondary processing
and get assigned to a work detail?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Alright. I’m gonna unlock this door and you
move slow. No quick movements or Huck here will
put you down without a flinch. No warning shot.
Understood.”
“Understood.”
Lieutenant Gamer took a keyring off of a clip on
his hip and unlocked the lock to the cage and swung
the door open, stepping back to make room for Sean
to exit. Gamer nodded to a sign at the end of the
aisle of cages that read “SECONDARY PROCESSING”
spray-paint stenciled black on a piece of white-
painted wood. Sean walked down the aisle towards
the door to the right of the sign at an evenly
measured pace with no sudden movements.
Inside the doorway was a room with a plain
wooden table with a linoleum blotter on top of it.
On top of the blotter was a loose-leaf binder with a
sheaf of forms inside. There was also a laptop,
opened and powered on, the screen emitting a faint
glow, and a coffee cup with steaming black coffee.
Sean’s mouth watered when he saw the steam rising
from the coffee and tried to swallow the fresh spit
subtly. He figured that maybe the coffee was a test
and he intended on passing it and didn’t like being
tested anyway. Behind the desk sitting in a
straight-backed chair was a man. The man’s
uniform jacket looked like it had been freshly
laundered, starched, and ironed. On it, over the
heart was a name tag that read “___________”. On
his lapels and in the center of his hat were the
parallel bars of the Captain’s insignia. Under the
hat was close-cropped steel-grey hair and a face
bearing an expression of bored resignation to a duty
that had been done so often that it was routine.
“Take a seat.” The Captain said, and gestured
towards a straight-backed chair upholstered in
industrial green linoleum identical to the one the
Captain sat in.
Sean stepped forward and around the chair and
sat down.
“Name?”
“Sean Chapman.”, Sean lied.
The Captain tapped at the keys then asked,
“What brings you to our little community?”
“Tired of trying to fight it out on my own.
Looking for a friend.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“I’m looking for someone in particular.”
“Who in particular are you looking for?”
“My sister.” Sean lied again. “Her name is
Laura.”
“Same last name?”
Sean nodded.
The Captain tapped at the keys again then asked,
“Last known location?”
“Austin. Maybe Houston. Austin was where she
was living when the shit hit the fan. Houston’s
where her mother lived so maybe that’s where she
would have headed but I couldn’t get ahold of her
after the cell phones went down.”
“Her mother?” the Captain asked and raised an
eyebrow almost imperceptibly.
“Step-sister.” Sean said. “Same father.
Different mothers.”
The Captain didn’t totally believe the story and
Sean knew it, but the Captain didn’t care enough to
probe any further.
“You planning on staying at our camp?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I guess we’ll see.”
“I guess we will. You have any special skills?”
Sean did have some special skills. He had a
decent singing voice. He knew how to play every
song ever written by The Ramones on an electric
bass. He could play the moonlight sonata on a
piano. Not well, but he could stumble through till
the end. He could fold an origami crane out of a
square piece of paper while blindfolded. But he
didn’t think that any of those trivial facts were what
the Captain was looking for so he answered, “No.
Not really. Some landscaping. A bit of
construction. Some industrial painting. Some
roofing here and there.”
The Captain nodded and clacked at the keys.
“We’re going to start you off on the perimeter clean-
up detail. Lieutenant Gamer will show you where to
go.”
“What about my sister?” Sean asked.
The Captain took a slightly deeper breath in what
was his approximation of a sigh and said, “I’ll look
into it. I should be able to tell you by the end of the
day if she’s been through here. Check in with me
after dinner and I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Sean remained for a long second and the Captain
met his gaze with more of his bored resignation.
The sound of Lieutenant Gamer stepping up
behind Sean broke the silence and Sean stood up
and turned around, stepping around the chair.
Gamer let him go first through the doorway, followed
by Private First Class Huck a few steps behind with
the .45 pointing at the center of Sean’s back.
Huck walked behind Sean, directing him to a
flatbed truck. Around the flatbed truck were loosely
assembled five men in worn clothes, smoking small
hand-rolled cigarettes that smelled bitter and stale
from the smoke that lingered in the air.
There were two soldiers in desert camouflage that
had seen many washings and better days leaning
against the truck with M-16A2s slung over their
shoulders and nickel-plated standard issue .45s in
hip holsters.
“Fresh meat for the corpse train.” Huck said from
behind Sean.
The two soldiers and the four men chuckled
knowingly in a way that Sean didn’t like.
“He any good?” the taller soldier asked.
“Fucked if I know. He’s your problem now.”
Huck said and turned on his heel, holstering his .45
and headed back in the direction they came from.
The shorter of the two soldiers sized Sean up and
hawked and spit a gob of phlegm into the dirt,
looking down at the phlegm wad contemplatively.
He looked back at Sean and asked, “You
squeamish?”
“Is anybody anymore?”
 “Don’t crack wise. Answer the man.” the taller
soldier said flatly.
Sean looked from the taller soldier to the shorter
and said, “Not really. There’s no point in bragging
these days as I know everyone’s seen some heavy
shit, but I was in Atlanta when the walls were
breached so I guess that counts for something.”
“Bullshit.” said a tall lean black man with his hair
creeping back from his forehead in casebook male-
pattern baldness in mid-retreat. “I heard they
carpet-bombed Atlanta after the dead-heads took
over and that no one got out alive.”
Sean met the stare that the black man leveled at
him and said, “They did. Fucking flattened it. I got
out before they bombed it. You ever smell what a
hundred-thousand people burning to death at the
same time smells like? Because I have. It’s not the
kind of thing that’s easy to forget.”
The black man stared back at Sean and brought
the tail end of his hand-rolled cigarette to his mouth
and inhaled the last half inch, exhaling the smoke
slowly, tossing the nub of a butt on the ground
crushing it under the sole of his shoe.
“Break it up and get on the truck, boys. We’re
burning sunlight.” the taller soldier said, and walked
around to the driver’s side of the truck cab while the
shorter soldier opened up the passenger side and
stepped up into the cab closing the door behind him.
Sean and the five other men clambered up onto
the flatbed back of the truck. The taller soldier
started up the truck and headed towards the back
gates of the compound. The gates were a double-
layer of fence with a watch shack on either side,
concertina wire laid out in layers between the two
fences to either side. The truck pulled up to the
gate and the two soldiers posted one in each shack
with their rifles at the ready. The driver leaned out
and said, “Headed out for clean-up detail.” The
soldier in the shack nodded curtly and slung his rifle
over his shoulder, while walking over to open the
gate. The gate slid aside and the truck drove
through. The soldier closed the gate behind the
truck and unshouldered his rifle, watching the truck
drive off.
The truck drove along the perimeter until a
shapeless pile that might have been a person once
drew near, splayed across the row of concertina wire.
The truck slowed down then stopped and the
driver killed the engine and it died with a deep
cluttery coughing that kicked up runnels of dust on
either side. The shorter soldier got out of the
passenger side, slamming the door behind him and
shouted, “Saddle up, hombres. You know the drill.”
Sean didn’t know the drill so he just watched two
of the men open up a black bin bolted to the back of
the cab and take out a thick black plastic bag with
zippers down the sides. They also took out four
pairs of thick yellow industrial-waste handling gloves
and passed them to the first guy to their right who
passed them around to the other three men. The
other three men hopped off the truck and put the
gloves on while ambling toward whatever was caught
on the concertina wire. One of them looked back at
Sean and called, “Come on, Atlanta, you too.” Sean
hopped off the flatbed and joined the other three men
standing in a loose semi-circle looking disinterestedly
but somewhat apprehensively at the object on the
wire. At this distance Sean could see that the object
used to be a woman. Maybe she had been beautiful
once. Maybe she had loved and been loved and said
nice things to other people and knew how to make a
great grilled cheese. But that was long ago. It was
pretty obvious she had been dead for at least a
couple years. Not dead like people used to be dead
before the world changed, but dead like people got to
be now. She had been wearing a dark blue dress
with white flowers but the white flowers could barely
be seen due to the dirt and stains and rains that had
dyed the flowers almost as dark as the rest of the
dress. If the shoes had matched the dress no one
could tell because they were long gone and the soles
of her feet had been worn into thick calloused slabs.
The skin of her calves and shins had been scarred by
countless small nicks and a few deep ones that had
healed over and her legs were coated in a covering of
black hair that had been matted down by countless
trickles of excrement mindlessly expelled from her
excretory orifices that stained the bottom half of the
dress black. The front of her dress had been torn
open unevenly and had fallen off of one of her
shoulders, hanging bunched up halfway down her
arm. She hadn’t been wearing a bra, and one of her
breasts was exposed but the dirt-dyed bug-bite
speckled breast wasn’t the kind of thing that aroused
any of the men as none of them were necrophiles and
if they were they would have been kicked off of
perimeter clean-up detail. Her hair was thick and
black and infested with lice that busily raced around
in their home in her hair doing whatever errands
that lice do when they make their homes in human
hair. There was a blank expression of sadness and
a hint of surprise which was probably because of the
bullet-hole in the upper left part of her forehead that
had blown out the contents of her head across her
right shoulder and tiny gnats and shiny blue-bottle
flies were busily buzzing around the bits of brain and
skull sprayed out in an arc behind her.
The two men carrying the bag laid it out on the
ground and unzipped it, flipping the top side over
into the grass. One of the three men standing in the
loose semi-circle turned to look at Sean and smirked
without much enthusiasm behind it and asked, “You
want ankles or wrists?”
“Why can’t I be one of the guys that works the
bag?”
“You gotta work your way up to that. For now
you get to pick ankles or wrists or take whatever’s
left. You’re low man on the totem pole and shit rolls
downhill.”
Sean and the other three men walked up to the
body of the woman wordlessly lining up two on each
side. The man in front of Sean leaned over and
gingerly, grabbed onto the woman’s left wrist, leaving
Sean the left ankle. The other men grabbed the
other wrist and ankle.
“Jesus Fuck!” the man that had grabbed her right
wrist hissed when he leaned over to get a hold of her
wrist.
The man who had grabbed her left wrist said
across her body, “If you’re going to puke, do it off to
the side. It’s bad enough dealing with this shit
without having to wash your breakfast off my boots
when it’s done.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just can’t get used to this
shit. Fuck!”
 “You’re not supposed to get used to it, asshole, so
shut up and let’s do this, on three. One. Two.”
The man said “Three!” and all four men leaned back
trying to pull the woman off of the concertina wire
she had managed to get herself tangled up in. The
men failed to keep her limbs taut and her bloated
belly hung low. A concertina wire razor caught on
the bottom edge of her stomach. As they pulled her
back from the wire the razor opened up her
distended stomach like a zipper, dumping her
swollen blackened entrails out and they hit the
ground with a sound like a wet wad of paper towel
hitting a tiled bathroom wall.
The smell hit them all at the same time like a fist
in the face. The man holding the right wrist turned
his head to the right and vomited his breakfast over
his right shoulder out of his mouth and nose at the
same time. Before the smell of his bile and
breakfast could hit the rest of them, Jonesy, who had
grabbed the right ankle yelled, “Just get the bitch in
the bag!”
The four men staggered sideways, crab-walking
the corpse over to over the body bag and they let go
of their appendage of choice and the woman
collapsed into the body bag with a damp slap, her
arms and legs arranged at uncomfortable looking
angles.
The men on either side of the body bag arranged
her arms and legs so they ran alongside her body
and zipped her into the bag. If they felt anything
about doing this you couldn’t tell by looking at the
expressions on their faces. Aside from tired they
didn’t look like they felt much of anything anymore.
The men grabbed the thick black handles on either
side of the body bag and carried the bag back to the
truck between them and tossed the bag up onto the
flatbed of the truck.
The man that had puked was using the elbows of
his long-sleeved shirt to wipe the vomit from his face.
“Aw, fuck! Now I’m going to smell like puke for the
rest of the day! Hell damn shit fuck!”
The man who had the left wrist and warned him
about not having his shoes puked on just looked at
the other and said, “Well, next time just don’t puke.”
“I can’t fucking help it! You know that! Don’t
fuck with me! A person’s not supposed to have to
deal with this shit! I swear to Christ one of these
days I’m going to fucking fuck off and try my chances
out there!”
“No one’s stopping you, Butch. You can leave
anytime you want to, just like everybody else.” The
man paused and poked a thin-hand-rolled cigarette
between his lips. “But you might want to sleep on
it, son, because as bad as this might seem now it’s
fucking Disneyland compared to what’s in store for
you out there.” He used a pink plastic lighter to
ignite the tip of the cigarette and took a deep drag,
held it, and tilted his head back exhaling the smoke
in a plume, watching the smoke stolen away by the
wind.
The shorter soldier barked, “Let’s go, boys.
We’ve got more guests to welcome to the party.
Mount up.”
The men clambered onto the back of the truck.
The driver started the engine and it awoke like an
angry rhinoceros making the cab buck like a
mechanical bull but the action leveled out and the
driver put it into gear and drove further along the
perimeter.
Sean reached over the side of the flatbed and
picked a sheaf of the long grass and tucked it into
his mouth chewing at it contemplatively. Sean’s
eyes lit up and he grinned. Then he chuckled.
Jonesy who was sitting diagonally across from
Sean scowled at Sean. “What’s so god-damn funny,
motherfucker?”
Sean sighed, “Nothing.”
“Spit it out, motherfucker.”
Sean grinned a wry grin and said, “And I thought
they smelled bad on the outside.”
At first the back of the truck was a chorus of
disbelieving sideways glances. But then one of the
other men started to chuckle, then another, and
soon the laughter caught like fire and everyone but
Jonesy was laughing hysterically, wiping the tears
from their cheeks with the shoulders of their shirts.
The laughter died down to sighs but everyone but
Jonesy seemed a little less tense and tired.
Jonesy glared at Sean. “That’s not funny
motherfucker.”
Sean shrugged and chewed his blade of grass.
“I don’t think Jonesy likes you.” the squinty white
boy with the deep-south accent sitting to the right of
Sean said noncommittally.
“I don’t give a fuck what Jonesy likes or doesn’t
like.” Sean said and looked up to see Jonesy staring
at him with his best version of a heavy stare. Sean
gave Jonesy a smile that was more smirk than smile
and took the grass stem he had been chewing on and
threw it over the side of the truck. He wasn’t
worried. Sean had been relatively well-fed and well-
rested before he came to the camp and was fit to
fight. Jonesy had been surviving on what they
served as excuses for meals in the camp for who
knows how long and had been worked like a dog
every day and was half the man he could’ve been if
he could have gotten regular meals and a decent
piece of ass to take the edge off. Sean wasn’t
worried at all.
The truck made eight more stops that day and
Sean seemed to remember hearing rifle fire in the
night, or at least dreaming that he did.
After clearing the perimeter, the truck drove on a
rough wheel-rut path towards an orange-yellow
shovel truck parked next to a big pile of dirt.
The truck stopped at the lip of a deep trench dug
out of the ground like a scar.
The two men that had handled the zipping of the
bodies of the dead into the bags stood on the edge of
the truck. The other men formed a bucket brigade
and handed over the body bags one at a time. The
men at the edge of the truck bed would unzip the
side of the bag and the corpse would slide out of the
opening and tumble down the side of the trench in
impossible drunken cartwheels and somersaults,
rolling down to rest among a blackened pile of vague
forms that could have once been human. Then the
men at the edge of the truck would pass back the
empty body bag and be passed another full bag and
they would repeat, dumping the body into the air to
improvise acrobatics in a practical demonstration of
the effect of gravity on the dead.
Under his breath, Sean asked the squinty-eyed
man to his right, “Why do we keep the body bags?
Why don’t we just throw the bodies in still in the
bags?”
The squinty-eyed man looked at him like he was
at least stupid if not retarded. “They ain’t making
these things anymore. Can’t afford to be just
throwing ‘em out like there’s no tomorrow. We just
wash ‘em out and use them again tomorrow.”
Sean sighed and shrugged, then rubbed his
forearms with his hands because he had broken out
in goosebumps. It had been a long day and now
that the evening was approaching the day was
starting to cool down.
The two men at the edge of the truck got down off
the edge and one of the men on the flatbed handed
them down two Hudson sprayers. The men primed
the pumps and pulled the triggers spraying the
bodies with whatever was in the reservoirs and the
smell of gasoline or kerosene or some other kind of
flammable fluid that probably rhymes with gasoline
and kerosene rose up into the air.
One of the men on the truck took a stake with an
oil-soaked rag wrapped around the end of it and took
a zippo lighter out of his shirt pocket and lit the
torch, letting it catch, and then tossed it into the
trench, igniting the fluid that had been sprayed over
the freshly deposited bodies and it burned with a
bright, hot yellow flame that could be felt by the men
still standing up on the flatbed.
“Why do we burn the bodies?” Sean asked no one
in particular.
The squinty-eyed man answered, “If we don’t
burn them, they rot and they draw wild dogs and
other carrion animals and more of the dead. If we
do burn them, it does the same thing but not for as
long. Think of it as a barbecue instead of a buffet
left out all day on a hot summer day. Which one
you think is gonna draw more flies?”
Sean nodded as much to himself as to the
squinty-eyed man.
The truck engine roared back to life and the men
all sat down so as not to fall off the back when the
truck started moving.
Back at the compound, the perimeter clean-up
crew were given the chance to have a five minute
cold-water shower to wash of the smell of the day
and the dead. Sean changed into a spare set of
clothes he had brought with him in his back-up
backpack. He wanted to burn the clothes he had
just discarded but he knew it was a bad idea. Even
though they smelled like left-over death they could
be washed and re-used if he let them air out enough.
“Waste not, want not.” as his mother had always
said.
Dinner was served in the auditorium, which also
served as a cafeteria and anything else that
necessitated gathering everyone at the camp in the
same place at the same time.
Sean picked up a plate and waited in line and
was ladled out a big pile of corn chowder, two sweet
potatoes, and a cup of what looked like vegetable
soup in beef broth. There wasn’t any bread or
butter or a tall cool glass of milk to drink as cows
were hard to come by, but there was plenty of salt
and pepper and Tabasco sauce for those that liked
their food to taste like something other than what it
was.
After the events of the day, Sean wasn’t feeling
very hungry so he offered his share to the men from
the perimeter clean-up squad. To their credit, they
asked him if he was sure, which was kind of them
because although there was enough food to go
around, it had taken a long time to reach that point
and many people had gone to bed with cramped and
growling stomachs for many years and there still
wasn’t any such thing as “seconds”, so when he said
he was sure the perimeter clean-up crew gratefully
divvied up the extra food except for Jonesy who
turned it down out of spite preferring to be stubborn
and hungry than forgiving and a bit fuller.
Instead of eating Sean worked his way around the
room asking anyone if they knew anyone from Austin
or Houston. Many people did, but their stories
weren’t very encouraging. Mostly it sounded like
someone trying to describe a Hieronymus Bosch
painting to a blind person. There was lots of rape
and murder and nightmares and death and fire and
people eating anything they could buy borrow, beg
for, or kill, including each other.
Although Sean heard enough horror stories to fill
a dozen libraries he didn’t hear anything about the
one person he was looking for. Instead all he
walked away with was his stomach full of knotted
millipedes and a bag full of bad dreams.
What if Laura had been raped or killed and eaten
or all of the above?
Well, if she had he figured he’d deal with it when
he was sure.
But he had to know one way or another because
she was the only reason he was in this not exactly a
concentration camp but close enough for government
work in this godforsaken state. God bless America
indeed. If this was God’s idea of a blessing he’d hate
to see what would happen if America somehow
managed to piss the big guy off. Maybe all those
sign-waving homophobic Christian nutjobs from the
time before the world ended were right. Maybe God
really did hate fags and didn’t want doctors to
perform abortions. Maybe he had a certain quota of
homosexuals and abortions he was going to let us
get away with and he really did speak directly to
crazy Christian cultists, and he would wake them up
in the middle of the night with a thunderous voice
that was nowhere and everywhere at once, saying,
“Hey! You! Yes! You! Don’t look around! I’m
God! I’m everywhere and nowhere at once! Just sit
there and listen! I hate fags and I don’t want people
performing abortions anymore! Yes, you heard me
correctly, I said I hate fags and it’s not a choice, it’s a
child. What? Why don’t I just turn all of the
homosexuals into pillars of salt or just make them
not gay anymore? And if I don’t want people
performing abortions why don’t I just kill all of the
abortion doctors? Listen, it’s complicated. But
watching two dudes make out gives me the running
shivers and I can’t not watch because I’m everywhere
at once. And I can’t keep putting miracles into
women’s wombs just to have some smart-ass scrape
them out a week after the woman figures out she’s
pregnant. What’s that? Well, yes, I know I gave
you smart little monkeys free will but you’re using it
wrong and you’re doing things that are against my
will and if you don’t make a big sign and go
downtown and stand on a street corner and yell at
people and tell them how much I hate fags you’ll be
sorry. What am I going to do if men keep on falling
in love with other men? Oh, just you wait and see!”
 Maybe he just got sick of everybody taking His
name in vain.
Sean shook his head to clear it.
This is what happens when he got overwhelmed
by reality.
His brain takes over the wheel and drives him as
fast and far away as it can until he realizes what’s
happening and takes control of his train of thought.
Focus.
What’s the next step?
Move forward. Always forward.
Sean left the dining center/auditorium/town hall
and stopped at the male barracks to grab his pack,
checking inside to make sure the contents were
relatively intact, then walked over to the Secondary
Processing area in the darkening twilight.
Sean walked through the doorway to the building.
The Captain was sitting behind his plain wooden
desk like he was this morning and for a second Sean
imagined that the Captain never left that chair.
The Captain was clacking away on his laptop and
the green-glass shaded desk lamp was shining an
oblong of warm yellow light on the green linoleum
blotter.
Sean stepped around the chair in front of the
desk, unshouldered his pack, dropping it on the floor
at his feet and sat in the chair.
The Captain acknowledged him without
acknowledging him and tapped out eight fast taps on
the keyboard. He ceased tapping and looked at the
screen, presumably reading back what he had
written in his head to make sure it came out the way
he wanted it to and made the commute from his
brain through his fingertips by way of the keys into
the electronic brain of the computer.
The Captain turned to Sean like a manual
typewriter carriage returning to start a new
paragraph.
“How was your first day?”
“I’ve had worse days.”
“Didn’t like perimeter clean-up duty?”
“Was I supposed to?”
The Captain’s jaw tightened a bit. “I don’t think
anyone is supposed to like it, son, but it’s something
that needs to be done. If we leave them on the wire,
then it will draw more of them, and pretty soon
there’d be a crowd, and then a mob, and then before
we knew it we’d be over-run and that’s something I
can’t allow.”
“I understand. I’m not complaining. You asked
me if I liked it. I didn’t.”
“Fair enough.” The Captain sipped his coffee to
cleanse his pallet of the exchange. “So what can we
do for you tonight?”
“You said you’d look to see if my sister had been
through here.”
The Captain’s eyes widened a bit, remembering.
“I did. She hadn’t. I’m sorry.”
Sean took a second to take that in and think
about what to do next.
He got up out of the chair, shouldering his pack.
“Thank you for looking.”, he said, and turned around
and walked towards the door.
“Are you leaving us?” the Captain called as he
walked away.
Sean stopped, but did not turn. “Yeah.”
 “Sure you want to do that? Anyplace is better
than no place, son, and this place is better than
most. We’ve got food, shelter, protection, the
companionship of other people.”
“I know. I get it.”
“I’m not just asking for you. We could use some
good people. There’s not a lot of good people left in
this world. Hell, there’s not a lot of people left in
general. I could take you off of perimeter patrol and
maybe find you something that suits your
temperament a bit more. How does that sound?”
Sean turned and looked at the Captain across the
distance he had walked towards the exit and said, “I
have to know. I just have to know for sure.”
The Captain sighed, the first human thing that
Sean had witnessed him do and took another sip of
coffee from his coffee mug. “I understand.”
Sean turned to take the last few steps to the exit
and as he did the Captain said his parting words to
Sean, “If you ever change your mind, we’ll save a
place for you here if we’re still here, God willing.”
Sean thought, “God’s got nothing to do with it.”
But didn’t think it would be wise to say.
Sean left the building and headed towards the
main gate.
The main gate was relatively well lit with a big
flood-light on either side plugged into gas-powered
generators chugging steadily.
The guards at the gate were a lot less
apprehensive about his approach to the gate from
the inside since everyone in the camp had been
disarmed and the real danger was out there in the
dark.
 Sean walked over to the right side shack where he
had checked in when he arrived.
The guard didn’t turn around, having no
intention of taking his eyes away from the darkness
outside of the compound. “You heading out?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure about that? It’s a rough world out there.”
“I’m sure.”
The guard whistled a sharp thin whistle and
another guard that had been sitting in the relative
darkness of the corner of the shack came to life,
standing up and stretching, then walked over.
“Name?”
Sean told the guard his name and the guard
walked over to a corrugated metal shed, unlocked
the padlock to the door, opened the door, clicking the
padlock onto the hasp, took out a flashlight, clicked
it on and went into the shed.
The flashlight shone around inside and a shot
echoed across the compound from the other side of
the compound as a sniper one-shot one-killed a
walker tangled in the concertina wire. The guard
emerged with a canvas bag with a small cardboard
tag tied to the handle.
The guard walked back and opened up the bag
and took out the .22 pistol. He looked at the rust on
the body of the gun and tsk’ed to himself then held it
up for Sean to see.
“This yours?”
“That’s the one.”
The guard handed over the pistol and dug into
the bag taking out a hunting knife in a thick leather
scabbard, a push-button switchblade, and a machete
in a thick leather sheath with a shoulder strap,
handing them over to Sean. The guard felt around
in the bag, and when he determined it was empty, he
tugged the tag off and crumpled it, putting it into his
pocket.
The guard said, “Good luck” and walked back
towards the shed to return the canvas bag.
Sean put the .22 in his pocket, slung the machete
over his shoulder so it hung across his back, out of
the way of his arms, but the handle easy to access in
case he needed it. He unbuckled his belt and
unthreaded the belt from the first loop on the right
and threaded the belt through the loop sewn into the
back of the knife, threading the belt back through
the denim loop and buckling it.
Sean shrugged to settle the shoulder strap of the
machete and walked through the gates into the
dwindling lights of the floodlights.
Another rifle crack echoed from the south side of
the camp. Another errand for the perimeter clean-
up team tomorrow. Sean shuddered to himself
remembering how the first woman’s stomach had
zipped open spilling all of her insides out and he
shook his head like one would do with an etch-a-
sketch to try to erase the image and focus on the
future while following his shadow into the night.
Sean headed southwest towards the hills behind
which he had stashed his jeep a couple miles off of
the road. Maybe the jeep had been discovered and
stolen or emptied out and burned but that wasn’t
worth thinking about. It had only been a day and if
it was gone or burned he’d figure out what to do.
Sean strode up the rise of the third hill and when
he made it to the top he could see the opening to the
box canyon he had left the jeep in. He went down
the other side of the hill, slowing his descent by
digging the heels of his boots into the loose dirt
sending down little avalanches of loose dirt and
rocks down the hill where they clattered at the
bottom.
The night was dark the moon was waning and hid
behind a cover of clouds and the box canyon was
darker still, the hills concealing the canyon from the
light pollution of the camp three hills away.
Sean took a knee and unshouldered his back-up
backpack, unzipping one of the smaller pouches and
fishing around until he found the smooth shape of a
mini-mag in the pouch. He stood up and zipped the
pouch, shouldering the bag and turned the head of
the flashlight, shining it into the canyon towards
where he left the jeep.
The jeep was still there and he let out the breath
he didn’t realize he had been holding.
A shadow crossed between the beam of the
flashlight and the winking red reflection from the
taillight.
Sean turned the flashlight off and stuffed it into
his pocket, grabbing the handle of the machete and
pulling it out of its holster.
“Shit!” he said to himself in a hissing whisper.
Sean closed his eyes and listened with all of his
focused attention.
The small shuffling and rattling breaths didn’t
seem to be drawing any nearer so he had time to let
his eyes adjust to the darkness.
This was going to be difficult.
Not the hardest thing he had ever done.
Not by a long shot.
But, still, it was going to be difficult.
 Sean’s left hand drifted to the handle of the .22
and he almost pulled it half-instinctively, but he
checked that instinct. Too loud. Might attract
more zombies.
Zombies. Fuck. He hated that word, but
sometimes it slipped out.
Sean took two deep breaths and let them out
slowly then he opened his eyes.
Closing his eyes had helped give him back his
night vision and he could see four or five or six
figures moving around the jeep.
At least five, possibly six.
Sean moved forward, slowly but steadily, putting
the weight of his body on the front of his feet. As he
grew closer he could smell them. A warm dark
miasma combining all of the effusions that human
beings produce when left to their own devices. Body
odor and hair grease and piss and shit and blood.
He crept up behind what he guessed was once a
woman because it looked like it might have been
wearing a skirt. He quietly raised the machete over
his shoulder and brought it down with a whistling
motion into the back of her head. It made a sound
like smashing a pumpkin on a manhole cover,
burying itself halfway down her skull. The thing
went slack against the back right corner of the jeep
and he used the body sliding down to help work the
machete out of her head, planting a foot in the
middle of its back and leaning back to pull it the rest
of the way out.
The sound and motion attracted the attention of
the thing to his right pawing at the rear window on
the right side of the jeep. It turned towards him
with what could be interpreted as a look of mild
curiosity if you didn’t know that the lights were on
but no one was home. Another came around the left
side of the jeep raising its arms towards him, forming
its fingers into claws.
Sean swung around, swinging the machete,
spraying an arc of shiny black blood droplets from
the first kill into the air aiming for the neck of the
young dead man with the clawed fingers lunging
towards him and the machete didn’t slacken much
as it went clear through the stem of the young dead
man’s neck and the thing’s head toppled off sideways
bouncing off the rear of the jeep before thumping to
the ground. The body, still in motion, fell towards
Sean, the freshly severed stump of the neck trickling
freshets of blood. Sean side-stepped letting the dead
weight hit the ground and swung the machete at the
one he decided to nickname “the startled man” and
swung the machete high and down into the left side
of the startled man’s head, burying it deep enough
diagonally that the blade ended almost cleaving the
man’s nose in half. Sean lifted his right foot and put
it into the man’s mid-section, grabbing the handle of
the machete with both hands and pulling it loose as
he extended his leg, pushing the body away. The
body crumpled to the ground. In a jumbled pile and
two forms shambled out from in front of the truck.
One was a middle-aged woman with medium-length
hair and a pair of eyeglasses askew on her face. The
other an older man, but not quite elderly, with a
relatively conservative haircut matted flat to his head
with years of dirt and grease not that it mattered.
Sean grabbed the handle of the machete with
both hands again, resetting his grip and brought the
blade down towards the woman’s neck. The woman
crouched a bit, preparing to lunge and the blade
caught her across the jawline, lodging in the middle
of her mouth. Sean saw the lights go out in her
eyes, but she was heavy and he still had both hands
on the blade which threw his balance off.
He lost his footing, falling backwards, still holding
the handle of the machete with both hands, the dead
weight of the woman’s body landing on him and the
cleft in her face dripping droplets of blood into his
face.
Sean let go of the handle of the machete and
grabbed the body of the woman by the shoulders of
her shirt, clenching two fistfuls of weather worn
fabric and twisted, rolling the woman off of him into
the dirt on his right. The man with what was once a
conservative haircut crouched and launched himself
at Sean. Sean rolled to the left, almost under the
jeep, and the man landed in the dirt where Sean had
been half-a-second ago hands first kicking up a
cloud of dust.
Sean turned onto his right side and pushed
himself up, getting his legs underneath him and
used the side of the jeep to push off of to regain his
feet.
The man in the dirt was trying to push himself up
and Sean stomped on the man’s right fore-arm
snapping it like a dry stick. The man tried to snap
at Sean’s leg with his teeth, but Sean was too fast
and stepped back, accidentally hitting the side of the
jeep.
The man tried to push himself up out of the dirt
with his left arm and the shattered useless wreck of
the right but was too weak to make much of a go of
it.
 Sean stepped over to the body of the woman and
bent over, grabbing the handle of the machete with
both hands and bracing his left foot against the cup
where her neck connected her head to her body and
leaned back, sliding the blade out of the pocket it
had carved into her face.
Sean took a deep breath and stepped over to the
man floundering futilely in the dirt.
Sean straddled the man’s back and raised the
machete over his head with both arms and brought
the blade down, burying it in the center of the back
of the man’s once conservative haircut splitting the
head down to the base of the skull, like an ax
splitting a length of firewood.
Sean picked up his left foot and placed it on the
back of the man’s neck, grinding the man’s dead face
into the dry dust which was dampening with the
wetness that used to be within. He tugged the blade
out with a quick clenching of his arms and upper
body.
Sean looked around and did the math.
Five, maybe six.
Maybe six?
Sean heard a shuffling from the driver’s side of
the jeep and then a scrabbling sound, and then a
clunking sound.
Sean shook the blood off of the machete, holding
it in his right hand and whipping it into the dirt in a
dark black line, and held the blade out diagonally to
his right hand side as he crept around the front of
the jeep, ready to swing the blade into whatever he
found.
In what would have been the shadow of the jeep if
the moon had decided to show its face, a kid was
scrabbling at the door handle to the jeep, and lifting
it to try to open it, its fingers slipping off and the
handle snapping back down with a clunk.
Fuck.
Sean squinted his eyes and could see it was a boy
that had been about ten years of age at one time, his
face smeared with what looked like dried chocolate
syrup in the darkness.
Sean hated killing children. He didn’t really
know why because he hated kids and never really
wanted any of his own because, well, because. In
his opinion, the world was already a fucked up place
even before the diarrhea hit the drapes. If anyone
ever asked him and he ever stopped and thought
about it he’d probably say he hated to think about all
of the wasted potential when you see a dead kid
staggering around with a blank expression on their
face. But that was the way of the world and if there
was a God it was part of his divine plan and Sean
was just an instrument in His hands.
Bullshit.
Sean spread his feet shoulder-length wide and
dug his boots in, putting both hands on the handle
of the machete, raising it behind his right shoulder
like a baseball player at home plate, and he clicked
twice with his mouth to get the attention of the dead
boy.
That didn’t work, so Sean said, “Hey! Kid!” which
worked, and the dead kid turned his attention away
from the door handle to Sean. The dead kid’s lips
parted in a sneering snarl and he stumbled towards
Sean. Sean waited till the kid was close enough and
swung the machete, cleanly cutting of the kid’s head
which spun off into the air to the right and hit the
dirt as the rest of the dead kid’s body fell to its
knees, then fell over to the left.
Six.
Sean dropped the machete into the dirt and
grabbed the waist of his shirt, pulling it over his
head and found a relatively clean patch, using it to
wipe the spots of blood off of his face and then his
forearms and hands. He picked the machete up out
of the dirt and used the shirt to wipe off the blade
and dropped the shirt into the dirt making a mental
note to clean the machete properly later.
Sean walked around to the back of the jeep and
opened up the rear hatch. He dragged out a duffel
bag and unzipped it, pulling out a fresh t-shirt and
rolled it up, poking his head through the hole for his
head and shrugging into it, rolling the rest of it down
over his torso.
He zipped the duffel bag back up and put it back
into its designated place.
“A place for everything and everything in its
place.” his mother used to say.
He closed the rear hatch and locked it. He
walked over to the driver’s side door and used his
keys to unlock the door and climbed into the driver’s
seat with a groan which ended in a sigh.
He slid the key into the ignition and turned the key
and the engine kicked to life, settling into a
comfortable rumble. Sean reached up and pressed
the switch to turn on the overhead light and reached
over to the seat of the passenger side and opened up
a courier bag, taking out a dog-eared road atlas. He
turned to the Texas section, indicated by a sheet of
yellow legal paper he used as a bookmark and traced
out a route from where he was to Austin and
memorized the first three turns. He dropped the
atlas onto the courier bag and reached up and
turned off the interior light.
He put the jeep in gear, turning the wheel and
making a half-circle in reverse, the bodies small
speed-bumps as he did his three-point turn and
drove out of the mouth of the box canyon headed
towards the road.
He headed towards Austin.
And if he didn’t find her there he’d go to Houston.
But that’s a story for another time.

Sean was driving north by northwest, diagonally

away from the sun setting in the rearview painting
the sky in indescribable tones of violet and blue.
The shortwave radio played the end of Hank
Williams singing “Nobody’s Lonesome For Me” and
started playing Johnny Cash singing “I Still Miss
Someone”.
Sean sighed and reached over and turned the
knob, turning the shortwave off. He was already
way too lonesome and low to have to listen to that
song while thinking about her. Next stop was
Indianapolis to try to find his third choice. Maybe
the third time’s a charm. Isn’t that what they say?
Braindead by Sean Douglas

[Originally written for and published in Forrest J Ackerman's The

Anthology of the Living Dead (2009).]

It’s not like you see in movies.

The walking dead aren’t all slow and shambly and
half-rotten and hungry for flesh. It’s more of a
braindead thing. Like the dysfunctional robots of
Westworld.
Not that I mind. I’ve seen a lot of movies and
from what I can tell from watching movies a real
zombie apocalypse would suck. Hordes of festering
gore-spattered corpses with their entrails hanging
down like coat-tails or dress-trains. Fast zombies,
slow zombies, who cares when there are hundreds of
them sniffing you out. Chasing you down. Keeping
you up at night with their insistent moaning and
shambling and clawing and banging on the walls.
Maybe I’m skipping ahead here.
It all came from drinking the water. But I wasn’t
drinking the water. You see, I was on this energy
drink kick. I was playing a lot of video games and I
wanted to stay up all the time so I started buying
energy drinks when I’d go to the convenience store
for cigarettes. I figured I’d get all jazzed up on
caffeine and taurine and guanine and I’d lose weight
while playing video games. So I tried out different
brands and flavors. My favorite is Sobe Gold which
is kind of citrusy. Nos is also kind of citrusy but not
as good. Rockstar Punched tastes like spiked fruit
punch. Full Throttle Fury tastes like orange soda.
Most everything else tastes like dogpiss. Not that
I’ve done the Pepsi challenge, blindfolded, a cup of
warm dogpiss for comparison, but you get the point.
 So I was playing a lot of video games, so I wasn’t
watching the news. We were on alert level orange or
whatever, but I didn’t give a fuck, because what are
they going to do? There’s no way that those pissed-
off middle-eastern countries have the capability to
lob inter-continental-ballistic-missiles at our asses.
With the way we’ve got the world wired? No fucking
way? We’d know about those bitches the second
they left the ground. We’d know about them before
they even got made. We were watching the air, but
no one was watching the water.
Some asshole figured out how to make a nerve
agent with shit you can buy at the supermarket and
terrorist cells all across America mixed up batches in
their basements and dumped them into all of the
reservoirs at the same time then went home and
hugged the Koran and shot themselves in the
mouths without leaving notes.
At least that’s what I figured. I’m still around
and I wasn’t drinking the water and I’m not going to.
All of the fish went belly up but no one noticed until
it was too late. Which meant that no one noticed at
all because everyone woke up and made their
morning coffee or brushed their teeth or had a nice
cold glass of water or whatever and, bang, there it
was. This shit was like acid, it was so strong that a
millionth of a part of it would do the job. I didn’t get
hit because I was too busy smoking and drinking
energy drinks and playing video games to brush my
teeth or drink a nice cold glass of water.
The next time I go out to the convenience store at
the end of my street to get more cigarettes and
energy drinks and Hostess cherry fruit pies the place
is wide open and there’s no one there. I get my
drinks and stand there and wait for, like, five
minutes. I yell, “Hello!”, and look around and when
no one comes out I go around the counter to see if
the guy’s sleeping behind the counter or lying on the
floor with his head half off from being shot in the
face during a robbery. But there’s no one fucking
there and when I look around there aren’t any
cameras so I shrug and figure, “Fuck it.”, I grabbed a
couple packs of smokes and stuffed them in a bag
and backed out of the store. I felt a little guilty, like
I was being watched, but it wasn’t like I never stole
anything before, and if I got caught I figured I’d just
say that I fully intended on paying for what I took
and talk my way out of it.
On the walk back home there were some old folks
standing around in their yard but I didn’t pay them
any attention because there are always old folks
standing around in their yards looking up into the
sky or down at their lawns or whatever.
So I go back to the video gaming and smoking
and drinking of energy drinks and all was well with
the world.
The next time I go out for more smokes and
energy drinks there are some more people out and
about and I figure something’s up. I think maybe I
stayed up for too long or I spent too many hours
playing Dead Rising or whatever but there are people
sort of all over the place. And it’s not like they’re all
fucked up and moaning and shambling and
staggering towards me, arms outstretched with a
hungry look in their eyes. They’re just sort of slack-
jawed and half-dressed and taking baby steps in no
particular direction. Just sort of drifting in
whatever direction the wind blows them with a blank
unfocused look in their eyes. It’s not like they’re
bumping into shit or causing havoc. It’s like the
whole world has become an Alzheimer’s unit. There
in the streets and in the yards and on the sidewalks.
And it’s not like they’re all mobbed up. But every
half a block or so you’ll see someone staring up into
the sun or down at the ground or off into the
distance. And I’m no idiot. I know what happened.
It’s the zombie apocalypse and I figure that pretty
soon they’re going to figure out that I’m not dead and
it’ll be running buffet time. But like I said, they’re
not all fucked up and dead and staggering towards
me with outstretched arms. It’s more of a braindead
thing. At first it was a little disconcerting and I gave
them a wide berth when I passed. But after passing
two or three I figured they didn’t want to eat my
brains and I just made my merry way to the
convenience store and got a bag full of energy drinks
and a bag full of cartons of cigarettes and went back
home figuring I’d hole up and play video games and
wait until the proper authorities came around
canvassing the neighborhood for survivors.
Then it occurs to me.
Maybe I’d better flip the TV on and see what the
news has to say about the matter. Maybe there are
some important advisories or whatever. Flip the
cable box on. Nothing. Not that the cable’s out.
There’s just nothing on. Well, not nothing. The TV
GUIDE channel keeps scrolling upwards into infinity,
but half the channels are black or color bars or
static. There are no grim-faced reporters reading off
of teleprompters.
That’s when I realized there was something
seriously fucked going on. But what am I gonna do,
save the world? I barely got out of high school and
I’m supposed to come up with some big fucking
plan?
I instantly give up and crash down in bed and fire
up the X-Box and get ready to kill some zombies and
I have a revelation. Maybe the best and biggest idea
I’ve ever had.
I go out the back door into the bright sunshine
and look over the backyard fence into the yard next
door. The old cunt next door is out there in her
housedress staring at the wind chimes hanging from
her back door awning. I hated those wind chimes
and I hated her. This old bitch was always peeking
out the blinds and spying on the neighborhood like it
was her job and she’d always call the cops whenever
I had a few people over and we had a few beers and
someone ended up passed out in the backyard. Or
when I played my bass through my kick-ass half cab
after 9:00 p.m. Like it was any of her business.
And those wind chimes and the birds chirping
always kept me up when I was trying to sleep during
the day. Not like I could do anything about the
birds chirping.
I walk around and undo the gate and walk over to
her and say, “Hey, you old bitch!” and her head sort
of lolls around in my direction but there’s no real
recognition. She’s still all slack-jawed and dead-
eyed and whatever.
I yell into her left ear, “Fuck you! You desiccated
old bag of horse shit!” and still nothing. I smile,
satisfied at my experiment and walk over to her
backyard garden shed. The shovel has a nice long
wooden handle and I swing it like a baseball bat.
“WHANG!” Right into her fucking face. Her face
makes a squishy cracking sound and she falls over.
She lays there for a second making squishy breathy
sounds and then rolls over onto her hands and
knees like she’s trying to get up. I haul back and
kick her in her ribs with all I’ve got and she goes
down again. She tries to get back up and I use the
shovel to pound her head into pudding. If it was
anyone I cared about I’d feel sick, but I hated this
bitch and doing what I did just felt right. Now that’s
justice!
I stabbed the head of the shovel into the earth
and reached into my pocket and took out my
cigarettes and took out a cigarette and lit it and that
first pull felt better than most. I exhaled into the
sunlit air and realized I had some work to do.
I made a list. You know how most people say,
“You made my shit list.”? Well now I actually had
one. I went online. Facebook was still working.
So was YellowPages.com. I looked up the names of
everyone I could ever think of that ever pissed me off
or did me wrong. It took the better part of a day.
Maybe I’ve got a longer list than most people, but
fuck it.
Then I made another list.
-Guns
-Bullets
-Shotguns
-Shells
-Booze
-Cigarettes
I went out and got into my car. Driving was kind
of a pain in the ass in the suburbs and the city.
What with people wandering around all braindead
and whatnot. It’s not as awesome as you might
think. You might think it would be cool to run
people over all day long but I’m a little smarter than
that. I hit a deer with a friend’s car I was driving
once and it fucked up his front end, so I figured if I
wanted to keep moving I’d have to not hit anyone.
At least not hard. All I had to do was drive at a
moderate speed and drive around the human
obstacles. At least the highways were pretty clear
because no one had enough time to get into their
cars and onto the highways before the shit hit the
fan.
Stopped at the gun store. Stopped at the liquor
store. Followed the navigator’s directions to the first
house on the list. Kicking in the front door was kind
of a pain in the ass, but it was so worth it. Shooting
the kid used to be my friend but ended up stealing
my girlfriend in high school right in the side of the
head was incredibly cathartic. It was all up close
and there was the smell of burnt hair and skin in the
air and he dropped like a duffel bag full of bowling
balls. Satisfying. She was the first girl I ever loved
and I never forgave either of them for that. I mean,
she was just as guilty, but I blamed him. Took out
my black Sharpie marker and crossed him off the
list. It was relaxing to have that weight off of my
shoulders.
Got back into the car and sipped off the fifth of
whiskey I stole from the liquor store on the ride.
Actually the case of Johnny Walker Gold Label. It
was free. Why cheat myself? Made a detour to the
big box store and got a twenty-five pound
sledgehammer and a crossbow and a sickle and an
aluminum baseball bat and a golf club. Everything
in the aisles took on a different light when I was
trying to gather up some cool shit to kill people with.
Went to the next address on the list. Hit the
door near the latch with the sledge and it popped
open. Fat fuck was still at the kitchen table in his
pajama pants. Who even fucking wears pajama
pants? Hauled back and nailed him in the back of
the head with the sledgehammer. “Whammo!”
Then I kicked him over and shattered every last bone
in his body to splinters with the aluminum baseball
bat.
So on and so on.
Ex-roommate who ripped me off and sold my stuff
to buy heroin? Shot two crossbow bolts into his
head. One into each eye. Then cut his hands off at
the wrists with a machete and watched him spurt
blood from the stumps until he fell over and stopped
moving, then pissed on him.
I’ve always believed that variety was the spice of
life so I tried to keep things original.
High school bully that was now a cop? Filled his
bathtub with him in it and dropped a television in
with him.
Skinny smart-ass who got me fired because he
ratted me out to the boss? Dragged him out into his
own backyard and poured gasoline all over him,
flipped a match and burned him alive.
That guy who I thought was my friend, but I later
found out that he used to talk shit about me when I
wasn’t around? Stabbed him in the throat and
watched him choke on his own blood. It was
glorious.
That bitch that fired me for no apparent reason?
And then my girlfriend broke up with me because
she thought I was useless? Knocked her over and
put a shotgun in her crotch and pulled the trigger
and watched the blood pour out from the hole where
her precious little cunt used to be and watched the
color drain from her face and the lights in her eyes
go out.
That high school teacher that used to yell in my
face with the whole class watching and made me feel
stupid and told me that reading comic books and
playing video games was no way to live my life?
Disemboweled him with the sickle and watched him
die writhing around in his own entrails on his
kitchen floor.
My step-father who always told me I was
worthless and I’d never amount to anything? My
shoulders were sore the nest day from stabbing him
in the face and torso about a hundred times.
I’d like to say it was a busy day. But really it was
a busy week.
Well maybe a couple of weeks. It’s not like I
really had to keep track of what day it was and I
have to admit that I was pretty fucking wasted for
most of those couple of weeks. Driving around
drunk and just killing the fuck out of people then
crossing them off the list.
Believe it or not eventually I ran out of people. I
didn’t want to kill random strangers. They hadn’t
done anything to me and it’s not like I was some kill
crazy asshole. I just had some axes to grind and
bones to pick and it was the end of the world and the
final judgment was at hand and I was judge, jury,
and executioner.
When I crossed off the last name on my shit list I
got to thinking about all of those girls that I never got
to fuck. High school. Co-workers. That hot girl at
the video store. That hot girl at the video game
store. I made another list.
Going through that list was a little bit different.
It took a little longer. It was really fascinating to
find out about each and every one. Check out their
CD and DVD collections. Try to figure out what
their lives were like by the stuff they had around
their homes. It’s not like we could really have a
conversation and catch up or get to know each other.
After a while it almost got boring. The women
weren’t exactly responsive. Kind of gives new
meaning to the expression “dead fuck”. And once
you got their clothes off it was a pain in the ass to
get them into anything else, so it’s not like I got to
play fancy lingerie dress-up party or whatever. And
with a lot of them, finally getting what I’d always
wanted was sort of sad and disappointing. I could
do whatever I wanted to them but this serving of
revenge was definitely not better served cold. I
hadn’t made a habit of taking advantage of chicks
when they got drunk and passed out and this felt a
lot like that but I went ahead anyway and spent
about a half a day with each of them kind of hanging
out and getting it out of my system.
After a while people started dying from
dehydration and exposure and whatnot. Like the
senile, these folks weren’t feeding or watering
themselves and eventually they just fell over and
died. Nobody got back up and shambled around
and to be honest it was a little disappointing. I
guess I had seen too many movies. But now I’ve got
all the time in the world to watch all of the movies I
always wanted to watch and play all of the video
games I wanted to play and drink and smoke as
much as I want. The whole world is mine or at least
that’s how it feels. It’s a little boring sometimes and
a little lonely and it’s kind of freaky watching the
crows peck at the eyes of the people all dead in the
streets and in their yards and on the sidewalks but
it’s not like I have to go out much. I’ve got
everything I need right here.
And if you happen to be reading this, then
chances are I’m already dead. Maybe from old age
and maybe from boredom.
Maybe some astronauts or an exploratory
expedition from Canada or whatever.
I don’t know how to work those big fancy
international radios. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even
know one if I saw one. And my cell phone doesn’t
have international calling and I don’t know how to go
about setting that up either. And I don’t know that
if I did if I’d even want to try to get ahold of anyone
because I’m doing just fine.
So if you’re reading this, fuck you, I apologize for
nothing.
FOREWORD

[Foreword from R/T/M published Halloween night. 2013.]

This was not submitted to me anonymously,

although I present it here as anonymous, as it was
intended to be presented, if at all.
The book contained herein was given to me by a
friend.
The kind of friend that you don’t want to have
over the house.
The kind you don’t introduce to your girlfriend.
The kind of friend you wish you had never met.
He wasn’t my friend first. He was a friend of a
friend.
My friend thought that we’d get along so he got us
together and then he was my friend too.
We got to know each other over time and when I
began to realize what a fucking nut-job he was I told
him he should write a book.
People say that shit all the time.
“You should write a book.” or “I should write a
book.”
It’s like saying, “How are you?”.
It’s just something people say.
They don’t really want to know how you’re doing.
The people that work at the places you go. They
got enough of their own problems.
They don’t need to hear about the petty drama of
your banal little lives.
They’re living lives of boring desperation too.
Most people couldn’t write a book if they wanted
to, which is good, because no one wants to read your
stupid fucking life story anyway.
 Unless you’re Helen Keller or Anne Frank you’ve
got no business writing books about your boring ass
life.
But my friend took me seriously and a week later
he shows up with a manila folder full of copy paper.
He held it out towards me and said it was the
book I told him he should write.

I started reading the book.

I couldn’t seem to get away from it.
I put it down when I had to go to work or go to
sleep, but other than that the book was what I did
for the next day or so.
I read so much my eyes would get dry and itchy
and my ass would go numb and I’d lose track of the
time.
It wasn’t that it was too good to put down.
Actually it was the opposite.

He came by the house a couple days later.

He asked me what I thought.
I asked him if he was fucking kidding me.
He just looked me in the eyes like he was trying to
read my mind.
Trying to look right through me.
Trying to figure something out about me.
He asked me if I had read it through to the end
yet.
I said I hadn’t gotten to the end yet.
I’m not a quick reader.
He said I should.
The more I read, the more uneasy I felt.
Then I finished his book and I read his little
message.
 The next time the guy called me, I saw his
number on the caller i.d. and I didn’t answer and he
didn’t leave a message.
That same day I went out and tried to buy a gun.
Just to have around the house.
Maybe on the bedside table or under my pillow
while I slept.
You know, for protection.
The gun shop guy told me there was a seven day
waiting period.
I told him I needed a gun today.
The guy gave me a look and asked me why I
needed a gun so bad that day.
If I told him, he’d think I was fucking crazy, so I
said nevermind and left.
I’m lucky he didn’t call the cops or make a
citizen’s arrest right then and there.
Not that I had anything to be guilty about.
I just wanted some protection.
My “friend” called a couple more times, and when
he figured out I was avoiding his calls he left a voice
message.
“I presume, since you’re avoiding my calls, that
you’ve finished reading my book. In case you were
still wondering, it’s all true. I meant everything I
said, including the little post-script I left for your
eyes only. Hope our paths won’t have to cross
again. It’s in your hands now. I’ll let you figure it
out on your own. Have a nice life.”
I will never forget that message.
I had read the whole thing.
I knew what he meant about the post-script.
I packed up what I needed and got the fuck out of
my apartment.
 I broke my lease.
Who cares? It beats the alternative.
What I didn’t think I absolutely needed I threw
out or left behind. It’s just stuff.
I checked into a motel under a fake name, paying
for the room for a week in advance with cash.
I didn’t sleep that night, despite the fact that I
took the biggest fucking knife from my kitchen with
me and kept it on the bedside table where I could get
at it quick.
I kept the light on so I could see, and the TV off
so I could hear, and kept checking to make sure that
I could get to the knife quick if I needed to.
Reaching out and touching the handle.
Not that it would help.
I didn’t go to work the next day.
I had a little money in the bank.
I never went back to that place.
I figured he could find me there too easily.
Not that I didn’t think he couldn’t find me if he
wanted to badly enough.
I just didn’t want to have to look that guy in the
eyes again if I didn’t have to.
Instead I went to the Attorney General’s office and
got my background check done.
I went to a different gun store and let the owner
help me pick out a good gun.
An automatic is easier to reload than a revolver.
Not that I’d need that many bullets.
I put in my order and waited seven days.
Those were the longest seven days of my life.
As soon as I got the gun I left town.
 I moved back to the city I grew up in, where I still
knew most of the people or knew people who knew
them.
I don’t think I ever told my “friend” where I came
from.
At least I didn’t think I did.
I stayed with a friend from high school for a
month and got a job, and when I got the money up I
got my own place.
I kept the stack of printed pages.
Manila folder and all.
I kept them where no one would accidentally pick
it up and start leafing through them.
It was a dirty little secret we shared.
My friend and I.
The kind of thing that you don’t tell anyone.
Anyone.
But you can’t just isolate yourself and hope that
everything will be alright.
I didn’t read the papers or watch the news, but
you can’t help but hear things.
It was neverending.
I’d hear about something and wonder if it was my
“friend”.
Out there. Doing his thing.
Nothing really helped.
Now I just don’t care.
It’s been so long.
Maybe he’s out there doing his thing.
Maybe he’s not.
But knowing what I know, I felt guilty.
Like I was part of his fucked up plan.
So here it is.
It’s all I got.
 I’m not telling you anything more.
I don’t have to.
I know my rights.
I’ve already done too much by passing this on.
Maybe now I can sleep at night without waking
up at every little sound.
Maybe he’ll come for me.
Maybe he won’t.
There’s no use worrying about it anymore.
I’m done with worrying.
It’s just not worth it.
It makes life not worth living.
So just kill me already.
In my mind I’ve died a thousand indescribable
deaths.
I think that’s enough deaths for anyone.
There’s nothing that could happen now that
would surprise me.
At least I hope there’s not.
You can believe me or not.
I don’t fucking care.
It’s not my responsibility anymore.
Here it is.
You’ll either read it or you won’t.
You‘ll believe me or you won’t.
You do what you do and then you move on.
Till Death Do Us Part

[Originally written for an unpublished anthology that was supposed

to be called Quixotic.]

You broke up with me the week before

Valentine’s Day. It would have been different if I had
seen it coming. But it was like lightning from a clear
blue sky. You texted me with, “We have to talk”,
which is never a good sign.
The week before, I had come to visit you, and
we hugged and kissed and fucked like we usually do.
I said I loved you, and you said that you loved me
too. When I left, I said that I’d miss you and I was
excited to see you the next Sunday when you were
supposed to come and visit me. You said that you’d
miss me too. I left you in the darkness, curled up
under the covers with just your face peeking out, and
it made my heart hurt to leave, but I had many miles
to drive and deadlines to meet that day.
On the way out of town, in the darkness of the
pre-dawn morning, with the snow racing down
across the windshield, I received a text saying that
you already missed me and you couldn’t stop
thinking about me. It made me smile and made my
heart swell to know I had such an awesome girlfriend
who missed me and couldn’t stop thinking about me,
even when I wasn’t around.
Two days later, you texted me and said we had
to talk. It all went downhill from there.
 You said that you wanted an open
relationship. I was understandably less than excited
about the whole idea. I asked if it was someone else,
and you said it wasn’t. I asked why you wanted an
open relationship then, and you explained that you
felt claustrophobic. It felt like you couldn’t do any of
the things you wanted to do, and you were sick of
trying to live up to someone else’s standards.
My reply was that the only thing I was ever
against you doing was drinking till you vomited or
passed out, especially around guys. It wasn’t that I
didn’t trust you. It was that I didn’t trust their
intentions. I am a man, and I know that not every
man respects women as much as they should.
Sometimes bad things happen to drunk girls, and I
didn’t want you to become a cautionary tale.
The only other thing I was against you doing
was hooking up with another guy, because that is
the exact opposite of what being in a relationship is
about. Plus, I didn’t think you were interested in
anyone else, because the only girl I was interested in
was you. I thought you felt the same way, because
you said you loved me and I thought that was what it
meant to be in love with someone. Apparently, these
two guidelines were too constricting for you and you
had a different idea about what it meant when you
told someone you loved them.
The conversation we had was heartbreaking.
You said “I don’t know” a lot, and I thought that
meant that you weren’t sure and that maybe you
needed some time. I told you to take a week to think
about it before you did anything drastic. I told you
that I loved you, but you didn’t say that you loved
me. It was a Saturday, and a week later it was
Saturday again... the day before Valentine’s Day.
You said that you had made your mind up.
You were sure: it was over. I asked if this meant that
you weren’t coming down to visit the next day for
Valentine’s Day. I asked ironically, because I knew
that you weren’t, but your answer surprised me. You
said that you had plans. More specifically, you had a
date. I can’t explain the way that made me feel. There
aren’t words sad enough to describe how completely
it destroyed me. So much for it not being someone
else.
I started smoking again and I didn’t eat for a
week. When I did eat, it wasn't much. I lost weight
and people at work kept asking me if I was okay, and
I said I didn’t want to talk about it.
We were still talking via text messages, but
things were starting to go sour. You didn’t miss me
as much as I missed you, and you weren’t coming
back anytime soon. You blocked me on Facebook.
Then on AIM. I deleted your number from my phone
so I wouldn’t send you text messages in the middle of
the night telling you that I miss you when your
absence became too much to bear. I couldn’t handle
the thought of texting you and you reaching over and
reading my message, then deleting it and turning
your phone off while laying in bed next to your new
boyfriend, and when he asked you what the text was
you’d say, “Nothing” and turn back and press your
body against his.
I joined a gym and I pushed myself until it
hurt, imagining myself breaking your new boyfriend
into little pieces, but it didn’t do anything to help
siphon the anger out of me. It just made me bigger
and meaner.
I got some new tattoos. I got a heart with
china plate breaks down the center with a banner
over it that said “NEVER AGAIN” in old school tattoo
lettering over my heart to remind myself to never tell
another woman that I loved her, because I would
always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I kept going to work, but I didn’t see the point
of doing anything. Everything I did reminded me of
you. It made my life painful and worthless.
I did a painting for you. A Bride of
Frankenstein because I knew that you would love it.
It came out beautifully and I was going to send it to
you as a surprise, but then we got into an argument
via text messages and you said that you wouldn’t be
able to text me anymore because it was making your
new boyfriend upset.
Then I didn’t hear from you again. Every time
my phone rang or vibrated with an incoming text
message I would pick it up hoping that it was you—
that you had broken up with your new boyfriend and
realized the mistake you had made, and that you
really did love me and wanted to know if I could find
it in my heart to forgive you so we could be together
forever, till death do us part. But the phone call
never came.
Now I have the painting in my living room.
Every time I come home, it sits there and the bride
looks at me and her eyes follow me around the room,
reminding me of what a failure I am. I decided that if
you weren’t going to talk to me anymore I wouldn’t
send you the painting because it wouldn’t mean
anything to you.
 I was hoping that by having it up on your wall,
you would see it each day and it would remind you of
me and when things stopped working out between
you and your new boyfriend you would see the
painting and remember me and remember the way
you used to feel. But if you wouldn’t even talk to me
because it was bothering your new boyfriend, I
figured that was pretty unlikely, so I kept it.
At first I thought I’d just give it to the next girl
I fucked out of spite, but I wasn’t really interested in
meeting anyone else. I was still in love with you, and
other women were just a distraction. I kept living out
of stubborn resentment, not wanting you to think
that I would kill myself over you, and that—even if I
did—you wouldn’t know or care. It would only make
the people who really cared about me upset, blaming
themselves for not doing enough to try to help me,
not realizing that there wasn’t anything they could
do to help.
There was only one thing I wanted in the
world, and that was you, in love with me. If I couldn’t
have that, then I didn’t want anything, because
everything else was worthless in comparison.
So I just kept going to work and going to the gym
and feeding and watering myself like a pet.
I became my own science project. Just how much
sadness can the human heart bear before it stops
working? Let’s wait and see.

It was the cure for the common cold, they

said. You could get the shot at all of the local
pharmacies. It was relatively inexpensive, and often
they would run out of the shots each week. No one
wanted to get the flu that year. Especially not the old
or the young. People didn’t like to get sick.
I was always skeptical of getting immunized. I
had received enough immunizations to last me a
lifetime when I went through processing for the
armed services. I figured if it was just a matter of
getting the sniffles, I could tough it out, because who
knows what kind of fucked up ingredients they put
into those shots.
Maybe my skepticism was what saved me.
Winter came, and the cold compromised the immune
systems of the old and weak. They ended up getting
the flu despite the fact that they had been
immunized against it.

This flu was different.

The lungs would fill with fluid, and people

would stop breathing, but their heart would continue
to beat, functioning in an anaerobic manner, and the
oxygen deprivation caused spontaneous degradation
of mental capacity. The only urges that remained
were to move and eat. People were determined not to
use the word “zombies”, but it was really the closest
comparison.
I wasn’t surprised when it happened, and I
kind of didn’t care. I had been thinking about killing
myself for so long that something like this was
almost a blessing. Even then, I didn’t go out of my
way to avoid infection. It was easy. After the
outbreak, all you had to do was not allow any of the
virulent matter excreted by the victims of the
epidemic to get past your immunity barrier. It wasn’t
airborne. It was a combination of the airborne flu
and the immunization that activated the disease, and
active carriers could pass the disease to others
through their bodily fluids.
The government was slow to react, but ended
up setting up quarantine zones for uninfected
individuals to live in. All of the uninfected survivors
were herded into these areas of relative safety, and
although the world was under martial law, there was
still law and order, and there was food and water,
and there was soap and hot water for showers, and
people tried to persevere despite the fact that the
bottom had dropped out of their world.
There was work to be done, and since over
three-quarters of the species had become less than
alive, it was up to those left living to do it. Those that
would not work did not eat, and that kind of
motivation inspired everyone to do their part in
helping to build and reinforce the walls surrounding
the safe zones. If you didn’t like living in the
quarantine zones, there was always the outside
world. A world where armed groups of people lived
liked savages and raped and pillaged like pirates. If
you didn’t have anything they could use, they would
fuck you and kill you and leave you to rot. Some day
these enclaves of outlaws would be addressed by the
government when it was time to reclaim the rest of
the world, but for the time being it was enough to
keep them away from the quarantine areas to go
about their evil business.
The government said that the disease would
recede when all of the people who were infected ran
out of food, since they lacked the coordination to
prepare food that wasn’t readily available. The
infected would starve and die, and as long as no one
was stupid enough to let the virus compromise their
immune system’s defense barrier, then we could be
relatively sure that nothing like this would happen
ever again. Unless we forgot about the lesson there
was to be learned from all of this. Or if the virus ever
mutated and became airborne. But there were more
important things to worry about, like food and water
and soap and hot water for showers and building
and reinforcing the walls around the quarantine
areas.

I asked to leave the quarantine area. They said

I was free to go. They warned me that I might
encounter roaming bands of killers that would hunt
me down like a dog then do awful things to me. They
warned me that if I left they might not let me back in
if I ever managed to make it back in one piece. I said
I didn’t care.
It had been a year, and it was the week before
Valentine’s Day, and all I could think about was you.
Every minute of every day I wondered where you
were and if you had survived. I wondered if you were
thinking about me and worried if I had survived. It
was unbearable, and I dealt with it as long as I could
until I couldn’t sleep anymore and I had to go.
I walked back to where my old apartment was.
It was a long walk, but I didn’t care, and I spent the
walk thinking about what I was going to do. I wasn’t
scared as I walked. I had accepted my fate.
Sometimes there was smoke on the horizon from the
cities that were still smoldering, but for the most part
it was quiet and still.
When I got home, my van was still parked on
the street outside of my apartment. I got in and
started it up. I drove north towards the place where
you lived. The roads were relatively clear since most
people were too sick to be driving. I didn’t have to
pay any tolls, but I slowed down at the toll plazas
anyway. Old habits die hard.
I went to your house. I remembered where it
was, up on the hill among the trees. I’m sorry for
killing your parents, but I’m sure you understand. I
don’t think it’s a crime if they were already infected,
although it was an awkward way to meet them for
the first time. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m here
to pick up your daughter.”
You were in your room in the basement.
Someone had been eating the dogs. When you
noticed I was there, you tried to attack me, but I
stepped aside and tripped you. You went sprawling
on the floor, and I wrestled a canvas laundry bag
over the top half of your body.
I picked up your glasses and put them in my
pocket and helped you get on your feet. You pretty
much went in whichever direction I walked you,
taking little baby steps. I guided you out of the house
and to the side door of my van and turned you to
face me and pushed you back so that you sat down.
Then I lifted up your legs and put them inside the
van and closed the door.
I went back inside and found the chain that I
had given you once. It was my old wallet chain, and
when I got a new wallet you said you wanted the
chain for a choker, so I gave it to you, then you put a
padlock on it and sent me the key. When I asked
what the key meant, you said that it was the key to
your heart and you were giving it to me, because
there was only one key and you wanted me to have
it.
When we broke up, taking that key off of my
keychain almost killed me. It was the worst thing I
ever had to do in this life before the epidemic began.
The chain was on your desk, and the key was
in the lock. I scooped it up and dropped it into my
pocket.

On the ride home, I winced with each bump in

the road because I hoped that it wasn’t hurting you,
trapped in the back inside of that bag. I tried not to
drive too fast and to avoid any potholes or rough
spots in the road.
When I got back to my apartment, I opened
the door to the side of the van and walked you in and
locked you inside. Then I went out to get provisions. I
went to the mall and picked up some handcuffs from
the novelty store and loaded up a bag full of dried
goods because you were a vegetarian and I thought
you would want them.
When I got home and untied the knots to the
rope around your waist and took the canvas bag off,
you tried to attack me again, but I stepped aside and
tripped you again and you went sprawling. I quickly
came from behind and grabbed one of your arms and
got one of the handcuffs around your left wrist, then
flipped you over and when you clawed at me with the
right hand I grabbed it around the forearm and
clicked the other handcuff around your right wrist.
You scrambled onto your feet and I hoped that the
handcuffs weren’t hurting your wrists, but they
didn’t stop you from charging after me again and
again.
I went into the other room and closed the door
and leaned against it. After a while, the sound of you
thumping yourself against the door, trying to use
yourself as a battering ram, died down and I could
hear you making another sound, like a disappointed
sobbing while you staggered around in the next room
knocking things over. I put on headphones and
listened to music for hours until I finally fell asleep.
The following day when I opened the door to
the next room you were sitting on the floor, looking
down at your handcuffed wrists, but when you saw
the door open, you scrambled back up onto your feet
and staggered towards me again. I grabbed you
around the waist, and turned you around and
pushed you in front of me while your head was arced
back, taking bites out of the air. Your hands clawed
at me over your shoulder.
I managed to get you into the shower stall,
and I turned on the water, checking to make sure
that it wasn’t too hot before closing the shower door
and leaning against it. When I picked you up you
were spattered with blood and mucus and dirt and
dog hair, and I had no way of knowing which of the
blood spatters was yours, so I had to try to get some
of it off of you.
I laughed when I remembered that time that
you drank too much and vomited in the back yard
and I threw you in the bathtub and turned on the
shower to try to sober you up but all it managed to
do was make you cold, wet, and angry. It wasn’t as
funny anymore.
I opened the shower door and got in behind
you and did the best I could to use the soap to wash
off the accumulated gore, gristle and grime without
being bitten or scratched or getting anything into my
eyes or mouth. It was difficult, and when I was done
my clothes were soaked and soapy and so were
yours, but at least your skin was clean.
I could see your veins clearly through your
skin and the whites of your eyes had yellowed.
Symptoms of the disease. I tried to dry you off with a
towel, but you still kept trying to bite me, so I had to
leave you damp because all of this struggling was
getting me exhausted.
I pushed you back into the living room. You
only thrust yourself against the door a few times
before you quieted down to whatever thoughts are
entertained by the dead.

The next day when I woke up, you were curled

into a ball on the couch with your wrists between
your legs. You were adorable until you woke up, sat
up, and tried to claw my eyes out and bite them out
of my head.
I held your wrists in front of me and sat down
hard. We were both sitting down with our arms
between us, and every time you would growl and try
to bite me I would squeeze your arms and push you
down on the floor. Then I would loosen my grip and
let you sit up again and you would try to bite me
again. It took the better part of the day before you
finally figured out that each time you tried to bite
me, you would end up sitting on the floor again.
Finally you surrendered. A disappointed expression
came across your face, and you made a sad
whimpering sound.
I stood up and backed away from you slowly
and went into the kitchen. You watched me, but you
didn’t try to scramble up and attack me again. I
reached into the cupboard and took out a bag of
dried tangerine slices and sat down across from you
on the floor. I opened up the bag and dumped half of
it onto the floor between us. You watched my hands
do this with rapt fascination. I took a dried tangerine
slice from the top of the pile and put it into my
mouth, chewed it and said, “See?” pointing to my
mouth, then the pile of tangerine slices, then your
mouth.
You followed my gestures and pouted, then
reached out and took a tangerine slice and brought
both of your hands—joined at the wrist still by the
handcuffs—up to your nose. You sniffed the
tangerine slice and made a sour milk face. I
gestured that you should put it into your mouth, and
you put it in half-heartedly, chewed it a couple times
before working it towards the edge of your mouth
and spitting it onto the floor.
I wanted to respect the fact that you had been
a vegetarian, but everyone knows what the undead
crave. I broke out a bag of beef jerky and put a
couple strips on the floor in front of you, and you
picked one up and jammed it up into your mouth
and gnawed on it with a contented look. I suppose
that one’s moral imperatives from life do not
necessarily carry over to the other side of death.
 I spent the day getting you used to having me
around without trying to bite me and at the end of
the day when I started to get exhausted, I went into
the other room and closed the door, and you didn’t
try to break it down. All I heard were the quiet
sounds you were making to yourself.

The next day when you woke up, your first

instinct was not to attack me. You sat up and
watched me go over to the kitchen. I opened up
another bag of beef jerky and gave you two strips for
breakfast, and you gnawed at them contentedly,
making little nonsense sounds while you chewed.
I poured a cup of water, and when I put my
hands under your chin to lift it up and pour water
into your mouth, you watched my hands out of the
corner of your eyes, but you didn’t try to bite me...
although I would have to be insane to believe that
you weren’t thinking about it. You took the water in
and swallowed, and I poured more into your mouth
and you swallowed that and then gasped.
You sat on the couch watching me as I walked
around the room. I pulled your glasses out of my
pocket and put them on the bridge of your nose, then
slipped the ear bows down over your ears and
adjusted them. You wrinkled your nose, then blinked
and looked around. I took out a comb and I combed
your bangs, because I remember how particular you
were about your bangs being in the right place.
Finally, I took out the chain with the padlock on it,
and when I leaned forward to put it around your
neck you stared me in the eyes. Our eyes stayed
locked while I put it around your neck. Then you
watched my wrists as my hands fastened the lock.

There.

But it wasn’t the same. It was just sad. You

still had a beautiful face and an admirable bone
structure underneath, but there was something
missing from inside your eyes. A comprehension that
would never return.
I left you on the couch and flipped open my
laptop and opened up my media player and queued
up the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack,
because I remembered you used to love to listen to it
while you were alive. Halfway through the first song
you were sort of swaying along and started making
happy burbling noises that sounded like you were
trying to sing along with it and it was heartbreaking.
I left the laptop on and left the apartment, locking
the door behind me to go for a walk so I could get
some fresh air.
While I was out walking I thought back to the
time that we used to spend together and how I would
tell you that I loved you and how you would say that
you loved me too. I thought about New Years Eve
when we were having sex while the ball dropped and
I kept saying, “I love you SO MUCH” because it was
the only way I could think of to express the way that
I felt about you at that moment, as if I were to say it
enough times that it would engrave itself into your
skin and you would know it forever.
 When I came back to the house, you were still
sitting on the couch listening to the music and
making happy noises to yourself. I thought about
Jack and Sally and what a tragic couple they made,
and I thought maybe that was the reason you had
liked the movie.
I thought about Frankenstein and his Bride,
both returned from the dead, then returned to the
dead. I looked at the picture that I had painted for
you of the Bride up on my wall. I remembered you
drew me a picture once. You drew it in red ink. It
was a picture of a couple standing outside of a
Tunnel of Love and they were both spattered with
blood and were dead and were holding hands. In a
creepy-looking font you wrote, “Till Death Do Us
Part” underneath it all and while you were talking
about the picture, you said that the couple in the
picture was supposed to be us and that you could
see us being married someday, and I believed you.
That night I unlocked your handcuffs and
massaged your wrists. When I went into the other
room, I didn’t close the door. I turned the light off
and in the darkness I heard you enter and felt the
pressure as you put the weight of both hands, then
one knee, then the other onto the end of the bed. I
felt the weight shift as you crawled up the mattress.
I don’t care what happens next. I can feel you
leaning over me, your knees on either side of me, like
how we often positioned ourselves during sex, with
your sweat dripping down onto my stomach. But
you’re too cold to be sweating tonight, and I can
smell your sour breath as you lean down towards
me.
 If living means not being with you, then I
would rather be dead.

Till death do us part again.

Scott Lefebvre has no discernible scars or marks and where he
live is none of your business.
If you want to contact him, slit the throat and drink the blood of
a displacer beast under a full moon on the winter solstice and
he will appear.

Or you can send him an e-mail at Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com