D.F. Noble's Blog
April 18, 2014
Beer Run of the Dead (excerpt)
Chapter 3
Chaos in Chronological Order
Jefferson, the only black man in the room, inserts a disc into the computer terminal. The gigantic screen taking up an entire wall of the command center flickers momentarily, its map display switching to a video feed from somewhere in Earth’s orbit.
“Gentlemen,” he begins, addressing the assembled generals, cabinet members, and even the President himself. “As you know, the U.S. government operates a black-ops bio-weapons lab deemed far too dangerous to operate here on Earth.”
General Warren Peters speaks up. “The Pale Horse project?”
“Correct,” Jefferson continues. “If just one of these viruses were to be released, gentlemen, we would be looking at millions, possibly billions of deaths. It would be Armageddon.”
“Jefferson,” the President says, holding his head in his hands. “Please get to the point.”
He nods, pressing play.
“Today, the Iranians made history by sending their first man to the moon. As some intelligence reports suggested, the operation was a total facade. What no one predicted, however, was that they’d be launching a full-scale attack against the Pale Horse Station. This is the last known transmission from the lab, which we were able to salvage before it went down.”
The video shows the Earth far below, slowly turning on its axis. Gradually, a tiny dot comes into view, an object escaping from the lower atmosphere. As the rocket approaches, a capsule detaches from its nose and heads straight for the camera.
When it gets close enough, the capsule breaks open, revealing a suicide bomber in a space suit. His chest is covered with thick bricks of C-4, his helmet is wrapped in a turban, and he is carrying a large portrait of Osama bin Laden in one hand and a small detonator in the other.
As he hurtles towards the screen, we can hear him ululating over his radio transmitter:
Ah la la la la la la la!
There’s a bright flash, followed by ominous static. The Secretary of Defense abruptly excuses himself, holding the seat of his pants.
“Jesus Christ...” breathes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Has the media gotten a hold of this yet?”
“We’re stalling them for now, claiming a collision of satellites. The impact was visible from space, and the resultant fallout is spreading rapidly across the Midwest as we speak. One part of the station landed in a heavily populated area of St. Louis. Apparently it clipped a passenger jet on its way down as well.”
“Some luck there,” the Vice President quips.
“Yes, but they might be luckier than those on the ground. It won’t be long before full-scale panic consumes the entire city. Several quarantine units have been mobilized to deal with the situation, but we fear it may already be too late. As of now, we are jamming all broadcasts from the Middle East in general and Iran in particular. Meanwhile, the IRINN has already declared victory.”
The room falls silent as the National Security Council members fidget in their seats, considering the implications.
“How much time do we have?”
“Hard to say, sir, but we must evacuate to the nearest bunker immediately. While we fully expect that most pathogens on board were either burned up during reentry or destroyed in the crash, there is one particular bug that is most concerning to us.”
The expression on General Peters’ face is even grimmer than the rest. “The Lazarus Virus...”
“Yes, sir,” Jefferson confirms, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Thus far, the space station scientists have found no way to kill it short of total nuclear annihilation. Once it hits the open air, it is predicted to replicate out of control. The resulting pandemic could very well—”
“Before we go,” the President interrupts, smashing his fist against the table, “let’s nuke the bastards! I want Iran so fucking irradiated, even their cockroaches lose their goddamn teeth!”
***
Ol’ Saint Louis. It’s starting to rain.
Somewhere in the ’burbs, Kip Evans is sleeping a deep, drug-induced sleep. His mother and her new boy toy are out on the town, presumably wining, dining, and engaged in other activities he thankfully doesn’t have to think about at the moment.
Meanwhile, an ambulance is pulling into the hospital downtown. Headlights cut through the rain, lighting up the ER entrance. Its sirens are off. With a white sheet draped over his body, the man in back is already stone dead—multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, so no rush.
The two paramedics are pulling the corpse out on a gurney when a big black guy in scrubs comes out to meet them. He’s got a thick, perfectly trimmed mustache and big, bushy sideburns.
“Hey Russ. Busy night?”
“Damn right. That’s the third one tonight. We got so many popsicles down there, we’re running out of room.”
“Want a hand with this one?”
“Nah, I got it. He don’t weigh shit.”
Russ had just begun to wheel the gurney away when suddenly the sky lights up behind them. The dark storm clouds above have begun to glow a hellish orange-red, getting brighter and brighter as the three men stop and stare. The visual phenomenon is accompanied by a high-pitched screeching noise, like an oncoming train.
Moments later, something massive breaks the cloud cover, streaking like giant fireball on its rapid descent to Earth. Striking the city in the distance with a great resounding BOOM, the impact is enough to shake the ground where they stand from miles away.
For a split second, the night turns bright as day, forcing them to shield their eyes.
“Fuckin’ Al Qaeda!” Russ screams.
The paramedics turn to look at him, but he’s already halfway back to the hospital entrance. Returning their attention to the horrible scene unfolding before them, they watch in awe as a great black mushroom cloud looms up from the flames on the horizon.
“Well, it doesn’t get much worse than that...”
Then, as if on cue, a 747 comes diving after it, missing a wing. It crashes much closer than the space station itself, but its effect is greatly diminished by the irony of the situation. The paramedics both look at each other.
“I fucking quit!” they say in unison.
Meanwhile, Russ is hauling ass through the hospital, skidding to stop at the nearest nurse’s station.
One of them asks, “What is it? Was that thunder we just heard?”
Gasping for air, Russ begins to babble. “Fucking... bombed the city... fucking Al Qaeda! Run, bitches! Run for your goddamn lives!”
The nurses turn to each other, each of them cocking an eyebrow, but by the time they turn back to Russ, he’s already gone, flying like a bat out of hell for the elevators at the end of the hall.
Ding!
The elevator opens. An old man and woman are standing inside, smiling nicely at the giant, raging African American in front of them. Russ grabs them both by the collar and chucks them out into the hall, taking their place on the lift.
“Run!” he yells as the doors slide shut between them. “Save your old white asses!”
Ding!
The doors open once again and Russ barrels through them, running past a sign reading MORGUE.
He bursts into the cold, low-lit room. “Doc! Yo, Doc! Where the fuck you at?”
There are at least a dozen bodies arranged on gurneys all around him, some of them covered in white sheets, others zipped up in black vinyl bags. Walking briskly past them, he heads straight for the office in back.
Suddenly a hand clasps his shoulder from behind.
Russ screams at the top of his lungs, spins around, and assumes his best Bruce Lee stance.
“Jesus, Doc! You just gave me a muthafuckin’ heart attack...”
A plump, pink-skinned man with kinky white hair stands before him, calmly munching a sandwich. He’s wearing the same headphones and blood-stained smock he wears every day at work.
“What did I tell you about smoking that grass?” Doc mumbles through a mouthful of ham on rye. “Makes you paranoid.”
“I ain’t smoking no grass!” Russ hollers at him. “The city just got bombed! Didn’t you hear that shit?! We gotta get the fuck out of here, man!”
“What do you mean the city was bombed?” Doc replies, pulling out his earbuds. “You saw this?”
“Yeah, it fucking fell right out the sky, like a comet! Get your shit man, c’mon!”
“Well, if it’s as bad as you say, let’s check the TV then, shall we?”
“All you gotta do is look outside! I ain’t making this shit up!”
Unperturbed, Doc walks over to a small TV set in the corner, turns it on. Nothing but static on the screen.
“That’s strange...”
Just as the words leave Doc’s mouth, he’s distracted by a faint rustling sound behind him. Russ hears it too. Both men turn around, befuddled looks upon their faces.
One of the body bags has begun to twitch, as if inhabited by a mouse, or a squirrel—anything but an inert human body. When the surrounding bags start to twitch as well, Doc’s first thought is that they clearly need to call an exterminator.
When the corpse on the nearest gurney slowly sits up, the white sheet covering it slowly slides down, revealing the Y-shaped autopsy cut in its chest. Hollow, cloudy eyes focus on Doc and Russ as its mouth drops open, issuing forth a rasping, guttural moan.
“Aw, fuck this!” Russ squeals, promptly fleeing the room.
The corpses have begun falling from their tables left and right, spilling guts and severed limbs across the floor. While the less constrained amongst them slowly stagger to their feet, those zipped up in bags claw against the vinyl. The drawers in the opposite wall begin to pound and rattle violently.
With typical white man confidence/stupidity, Doc steps up to the reanimated dead man closest to him.
“That’s impossible,” he says, poking it in the chest. “You’re dead.”
The corpse responds by grabbing Doc’s wrist, pulling his hand up to its mouth, and chomping off two fingers in one ravenous bite.
“Aaaargh!”
Doc stumbles back, holding his bloody hand, screaming as the zombies close in around him. He turns to run, but his exit is blocked by a nude female cadaver, her body a mess of road rash. Left tit scraped completely off. She grabs him by the neck and they topple to the gut-strewn floor. Her thumbs, like ice-cold daggers, slowly work their way up to his eyes, sinking in.
Through his blurred vision, Doc can still see the bare legs of the dead shuffling towards him. He struggles against them as they pile on, but it’s no use. Their hands rend his flesh as easily as play-doh, wriggling their fingers deep inside, pulling out his innards. Gurgling blood, he watches as his own intestines are shared amongst the eager, hungry mouths.
His eyes are finally popped out of his head, and he screams.
Screams until the very end.
***
A news van sits parked near the edge of the inferno, an explosion having destroyed several city blocks. The buildings at its epicenter have collapsed into burning rubble, and a good portion on the perimeter are not far behind. A thick wall of smoke rolls steadily down the street, panicking crowds of people scattering in every direction.
“Get the cameras rolling!”
The reporter is blonde, large breasted, and totally in control. She runs her fingers nervously through her hair. This is it, the day her career takes a giant leap forward. A promotion, talk show appearances, maybe a book deal, even. She can feel it in her bones.
“Cameras are rolling, but we’re not getting a signal!”
“Why the fuck not?!”
“I don’t know! How the fuck should I know!”
“That doesn’t make sense! Vince, makeup now! Keep those cameras on—we’ll record and broadcast just as soon as we have signal!”
Meanwhile, something has begun to stir beneath the rubble off camera.
“How does my hair look?”
***
Mile away, a hefty guy in a Cardinals t-shirt is sitting in the drive-thru of one of those fast food chains that serves breakfast all day. Moments ago, something big and bright had passed overhead with a thunderous roar, sending tremors down the street. Dude was not the least bit concerned; all he could think about at the moment was his growling belly, and how pissed he was getting having to wait.
Finally, the voice of the minimum wage employee comes over the speaker.
“Welcome to (something unintelligible), may I take your order?”
“Yeah, I need two orders of biscuits and gravy, two hash browns, a cinnamon twist, and a large Diet Coke.”
“Is Pepsi all right?”
“What? No, I won’t drink that shit. Give me a Sprite instead.”
“Is Sierra Mist okay?”
“Are you fucking serious? What is this shit?”
“So, a Sierra Mist?”
“No, I said are you seri—“
“One Sierra Mist, got it. So we have two biscuits and gravy, two hash—“
“I don’t want a goddamn Sierra Mist! Listen, jackass, I want—“
This time, it isn’t the pimple-faced kid on the other side of the speaker distracting the Cardinals fan, but an ambulance that comes wailing down the street from out of nowhere. Weaving in and out of traffic, the thing is all over the road, hopping the curb before finally nailing a car at the intersection. Glass shatters, metal buckles, and the car does a near three-sixty before colliding with oncoming traffic.
“Frikkin’ shit!” the Cardinals fan exclaims.
“Sorry sir, we don’t carry Mr. Pibb.”
Despite coming to a complete stop, the ambulance continues bouncing around. Suddenly its doors burst open and a paramedic tumbles out, some crazy naked guy on his back. Bright red blood drips down his pale neck and chest as he tears a chunk of flesh from the medic’s neck.
Passing cars begin to stop and people get out to help. The ambulance driver exits his totaled vehicle as well, holding his head as he stumbles in a daze. Tripping over a stray fender, he falls headlong into traffic and is struck by a speeding truck. Cartwheeling through the air, his flailing body hits the sharp edge of a stop sign, splitting him in half and splattering his intestines all over the sidewalk.
Several men are trying to pull the naked guy off of the other paramedic, but the fucker keeps biting them, kicking and scratching like a wild animal.
“What the fuck is going on...” the Cardinals fan softly moans, from the relative safety of his car.
“Excuse me, sir, did you say foot-long hot dog?”
***
At the amphitheater, Rock and Steady are laying their best game on some drunk chick bent over a railing, puking her guts out. On stage in the distance, a cover band is going into a Sammy Hagar song. The crowd begins to cheer.
“Hey, baby,” Steady says with a slight slur, “soon’s you’re done with that, we got some beer to wash the taste out your mouth.”
She holds up a middle finger for them.
“Damn, girl!” says Rock, nudging Steady. “That’s exactly what we were thinking. Think you can handle two studs at once?”
She laughs scornfully through her vomit.
“Dude, she sounds just like Chewbacca!”
Just then, a high-pitched drone erupts from the sky above, loud enough to drown out the music completely. Rock and Steady look up just in time to see the 747 before it hits the stage. A massive fireball erupts on impact, instantly destroying the far end of the amphitheater, blasting a wave of heat and shrapnel over the other half.
A jagged piece of aluminum flies right between Rock and Steady with a sudden WHOOSH. Next comes a sickening SNIP, and they turn to find the drunk chick split clean in half. Somehow, her upper portion still hasn’t finished puking yet.
“Holy shit!”
Rock and Steady high five each other, then proceed to run like hell. While everyone else tramples each other in their rush for the exits, however, they decide to stop at an abandoned beer kiosk, snagging a nearly full keg on their way out.
“Go! Go! Go!”
***
Dan is stuck on 270, traffic backed up all the way into God’s bright, shiny rainbow asshole. It’s starting to storm outside, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be moving anytime soon. Suddenly the sky lights up above.
His son, Charlie, is strapped into the car seat in back. He asks his dad what it was.
“Just lightning, kiddo.”
“Dad, can I ride Uncle George’s four wheeler?” Charlie says uncle like untle, George like dorge. Cute kid.
“Well, we’re gonna have to ask mom about that, buddy.” Dan drums his fingers upon the steering wheel, takes a sip from his travel mug.
“Mom’s a cunt.”
Dan spits his coffee out across the windshield, turns back to Charlie. “Who taught you that word?”
“Uncle George said mom’s a cunt!” Charlie giggles.
“Charlie, don’t you ever, ever say that word! Do you hear—”
Dan stops in mid sentence. On one side of the road, a large group of deer suddenly erupt from the tree line. A dog, several cats, a rabbit and some squirrels follow close behind.
“Oooooh, look, dad! Deers!”
But that’s not all. Dan rubs his eyes, certain that he’s seeing things.
Are those naked people? What in God’s name…
It seems clear that they’d been chasing the animals, but just as soon as they emerge from the woods, the nude, blood-spattered figures all stop at once. Having apparently forgotten all about their quarry, the mob of them charges for the traffic jam instead.
Dan finds himself rolling up the windows, locking the doors.
“Dad, that man has no pants. I can see his weenie!” Charlie giggles.
“Charlie, cover your eyes!”
“Dad, booooobies!”
Dan glances frantically about. The jam is so tight, he can’t back up or pull forward at all—literal bumper to bumper gridlock. Ten or so bloody, naked freaks are rapidly coming up on the shoulder, some of them completely nude, some still wearing the remnants of hospital gowns. Dan blinks his eyes in disbelief once again.
Is this some kind of joke?
When a pale, blue-veined woman with sunken eyes charges their car, slapping her tube sock tits against Dan’s window, he decides that this is not a joke. Not a joke at all.
“Charlie, hold on!”
Dan throws the car into reverse, punches the gas, and rams the car behind them, giving him just enough room to pull off onto the shoulder. Instantly his ears are filled with the sound of angry honking, and they’re not all directed at him. There are more freaks now, dozens of them swarming cars, beating on windows. Even with all the horns and alarms blaring, he can still hear their awful wailing and moaning through the glass.
Dan guns it, and Charlie starts to squeal. He can’t tell whether it’s terror or excitement the boy is feeling; all he knows is that they need to get far, far away from whatever the fuck is happening here.
Soon he’s doing forty, then fifty in the grass beside the highway. He checks the rearview mirror, sees other cars following his lead, sees Charlie with both hands in the air like he’s riding a goddamn roller coaster. What Dan doesn’t see is the truck pull off the road right in front of him.
Dan hits that truck going sixty miles per hour. His windshield shatters as the front end buckles, the impact lifting his ass end off the ground. The airbag hits Dan in the face, and despite this sudden blow, he distinctly hears something fly past the right side of his head.
Weeeeeeeeeeeee!
It’s his son, Charlie, catapulted from his defective car seat, flying through the hole where the windshield used to be. Like a miniature superman, he flies hands first, clipping the cab of the truck with a thump before somersaulting over the top of it.
“Charlieeeeeeeeeeee!”
All this happens within the span of a second.
Charlie enjoys the ride while it lasts, but the fun comes to an abrupt end when someone catches him in their arms. He looks up into the face of his rescuer and smiles.
At first Dan is jubilant, feeling nothing but eternal gratitude for this stranger who showed up at just the right place at the right time, saving his baby boy. His mood quickly changes, however, as Charlie is ripped to pieces right in front of him. Ripped to pieces like a fucking piece of meat by a pack of wild dogs.
***
Weezy didn’t take no shit, that was for damn sure. And the punk-ass bitch he’d just popped in the heart should’ve known that too. Knew it now, at least. Punk Ass, yellow motherfucker had his chance. Fool had enough blow, he could’ve been somebody. But nope, Punk Ass snorted and smoked that shit right up. Every last ounce of it.
All he had to do was move some weight. Now that’s all he was: just some dead-ass weight.
Weezy is just about to bounce from Punk Ass’s apartment, but before he can hit the door, he hears Punk Ass moaning on the floor.
Aw sheeit, Weezy thinks to himself, gonna have ta stomp this muthafucka’s brains in, I guess.
Weezy turns around and there’s Punk Ass sitting up, looking him right in the eye. Punk Ass should really know better by now.
Weezy raises his pistol, shoots Punk Ass in the chest for the fourth time today. Punk Ass takes the bullet, jolted by the .38 slug, but that don’t stop him looking at Weezy. He don’t stop trying to get up, either.
Muthafucka must be high as shit...
Weezy don’t have time for this. Weezy unloads the remainder of his clip into Punk Ass’s chest. The gunshots are so loud in that tiny-ass apartment, Weezy is 100% certain that he’s now got permanent hearing loss. And here’s Punk Ass rising to his feet.
Weezy knows a high-ass muthafucka can take some punishment, but this is some bullshit. Weezy also knows he’s done spent too much time here as it is, wasted too many bullets fo sho, but he’s still gotta take this motherfucker out.
Dead men don’t talk, but a half-dead Punk Ass just might.
And look at this, Punk Ass wants to fight. He be shamblin’ right at Weezy.
“Oh, you wanna fight, bitch?”
Punk Ass takes a punch square in the mouth, his teeth cutting deep into Weezy’s knuckles.
***
The city’s on fire and everyone’s on patrol, living and dead alike.
A man in a red jacket hollers “go Cards!” and bunts a bloody freak in the face. A man in a blue jacket sneaks up behind him, kicks him in the balls and yells “go Cubs!” He then proceeds to rob him of his shoes and his wallet, cackling like the crackhead he is as he runs back into the shadows.
Two cops are just down the street, wrestling with a musclebound perp on the sidewalk. The recently turned and the about-to-be turned are running to and fro in the rain. A young guy stops, glances at the occupied cops, jumps in their car and takes off.
“Sonofabitch!”
One of the cops pulls his pistol and lets loose on the trigger. 9mm rounds streak through the panicked crowd, a lucky shot piercing the rear window and hitting the carjacker in the back of the head. Blood and teeth and portion of his nose spray across the windshield and he jerks the wheel violently, crashing into a group of young Asian kids outside a comic shop. The Crown Vic explodes into a fireball shaped like Pikachu.
High above this chaos, on the top floor of a nearby hotel, a woman is standing on a balcony. A group of deranged cannibals are slowly but surely beating her door down. One of them happens to be her husband. He’d gone out into the hall to check on a commotion they’d heard, only to find an elderly woman crouched over a bleeding bellhop. Being the Samaritan that he was, he’d tried to pull her off the poor bastard clutching his neck, convulsing on the floor.
“Susan!” he yelled from down the hall. “Call security!”
But she couldn’t move. She had never seen so much blood before in her entire life, never saw anyone die.
“Susan!”
By the time she’d got the phone and found the line busy, the bellhop was sharing a meal of her husband with the crazy old lady who’d just killed him.
Cowering in the doorway, Susan watched her husband screaming, half his face torn off. He was viciously punching the old lady in the face, trying to kick the bellhop off of him at the same time.
Through mangled lips he managed to yell, “Susan, get back inside and lock the fucking door!”
She did as she was told. And now she’s standing on the balcony, looking four stories down, wondering which would be worse: getting eaten alive, or being forced to jump to her own death?
Susan climbs up onto the ledge. Behind her, the door shatters. The wind pulls at her auburn hair, cinders and ash fluttering in the darkness around her. She hears their footsteps, hears their moans. Closing her eyes, she takes the leap.
She screams all the way down, her dress fluttering above her head.
On the ground far below, a crackhead is running for his life with a stolen box of pizza, a ham and pineapple pizza.
Susan lands right on top of him, her big fat ass enveloping his head, pile-driving him into the sidewalk with enough force to break every bone in his body.
Rising to her feet, she finds that her ass and legs are quite sore, but miraculously she’s still alive. She pulls a slice of pizza from her crotch, takes a bite, and joins the rioting crowd.
A National Guard unit has set up a road block down the street. They fire indiscriminately into the thronging horde, unable to distinguish the living from those that just won’t die.
“Aim for the head, goddammit!”
A soldier unclips a grenade from his vest, pulls the pin and lobs it into the crowd. It bounces off the skull of a freak with a dull thunk, rolls beneath a car and explodes. The car lands upside-down, smashing several freaks underneath. Another swath of flesh-eaters are reduced to wet splats on the asphalt by a red-hot, smoking chaingun, mounted on the back of an Army jeep.
Still, no matter how much ordinance they dish out, the crowd will not disperse. Humans and freaks alike keep coming at them, providing a steady stream of cannon fodder, undeterred by bullets or bombs or pain.
***
A stripper named Candy is snorting coke off the back of a toilet. It’s been a long day already. Her back and feet are sore, and some perv had pinched her tit so hard earlier it had given her a knot. She still has four hours left to go on her shift, and she’s hoping that this big ol’ rail of blow will be enough to carry her through.
The cocaine (some good shit, hardly cut at all) enters her nose and hits her mucous membranes, sending a shudder of instant euphoria through her body. And then, just as quick as it hits, she finds she can hardly breathe. She clutches her chest and sinks to her knees on the dirty, sticky floor, not for the first time, but somehow already knowing it will be her last.
Several minutes later, another stripper, Danny, walks in. She finds Candy standing unsteadily in one corner, her shoulders severely slumped.
“Candy, baby,” she says, “what’s wrong?”
Candy slowly turns to face her, and Danny sees the blood dribbling from her nose, down her lips and chin. Candy moans, her lips pulling back in a vicious sneer.
“Damn, girl,” Danny says, “you all fucked up!”
Candy stumbles forward, hands outstretched before her. She grabs one of Danny’s big fake tits.
“Bitch,” Danny laughs, “you such a fucking freak!”
When Candy bites her nipple off, suddenly Danny isn’t laughing anymore.
***
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Chaos in Chronological Order
Jefferson, the only black man in the room, inserts a disc into the computer terminal. The gigantic screen taking up an entire wall of the command center flickers momentarily, its map display switching to a video feed from somewhere in Earth’s orbit.
“Gentlemen,” he begins, addressing the assembled generals, cabinet members, and even the President himself. “As you know, the U.S. government operates a black-ops bio-weapons lab deemed far too dangerous to operate here on Earth.”
General Warren Peters speaks up. “The Pale Horse project?”
“Correct,” Jefferson continues. “If just one of these viruses were to be released, gentlemen, we would be looking at millions, possibly billions of deaths. It would be Armageddon.”
“Jefferson,” the President says, holding his head in his hands. “Please get to the point.”
He nods, pressing play.
“Today, the Iranians made history by sending their first man to the moon. As some intelligence reports suggested, the operation was a total facade. What no one predicted, however, was that they’d be launching a full-scale attack against the Pale Horse Station. This is the last known transmission from the lab, which we were able to salvage before it went down.”
The video shows the Earth far below, slowly turning on its axis. Gradually, a tiny dot comes into view, an object escaping from the lower atmosphere. As the rocket approaches, a capsule detaches from its nose and heads straight for the camera.
When it gets close enough, the capsule breaks open, revealing a suicide bomber in a space suit. His chest is covered with thick bricks of C-4, his helmet is wrapped in a turban, and he is carrying a large portrait of Osama bin Laden in one hand and a small detonator in the other.
As he hurtles towards the screen, we can hear him ululating over his radio transmitter:
Ah la la la la la la la!
There’s a bright flash, followed by ominous static. The Secretary of Defense abruptly excuses himself, holding the seat of his pants.
“Jesus Christ...” breathes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Has the media gotten a hold of this yet?”
“We’re stalling them for now, claiming a collision of satellites. The impact was visible from space, and the resultant fallout is spreading rapidly across the Midwest as we speak. One part of the station landed in a heavily populated area of St. Louis. Apparently it clipped a passenger jet on its way down as well.”
“Some luck there,” the Vice President quips.
“Yes, but they might be luckier than those on the ground. It won’t be long before full-scale panic consumes the entire city. Several quarantine units have been mobilized to deal with the situation, but we fear it may already be too late. As of now, we are jamming all broadcasts from the Middle East in general and Iran in particular. Meanwhile, the IRINN has already declared victory.”
The room falls silent as the National Security Council members fidget in their seats, considering the implications.
“How much time do we have?”
“Hard to say, sir, but we must evacuate to the nearest bunker immediately. While we fully expect that most pathogens on board were either burned up during reentry or destroyed in the crash, there is one particular bug that is most concerning to us.”
The expression on General Peters’ face is even grimmer than the rest. “The Lazarus Virus...”
“Yes, sir,” Jefferson confirms, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Thus far, the space station scientists have found no way to kill it short of total nuclear annihilation. Once it hits the open air, it is predicted to replicate out of control. The resulting pandemic could very well—”
“Before we go,” the President interrupts, smashing his fist against the table, “let’s nuke the bastards! I want Iran so fucking irradiated, even their cockroaches lose their goddamn teeth!”
***
Ol’ Saint Louis. It’s starting to rain.
Somewhere in the ’burbs, Kip Evans is sleeping a deep, drug-induced sleep. His mother and her new boy toy are out on the town, presumably wining, dining, and engaged in other activities he thankfully doesn’t have to think about at the moment.
Meanwhile, an ambulance is pulling into the hospital downtown. Headlights cut through the rain, lighting up the ER entrance. Its sirens are off. With a white sheet draped over his body, the man in back is already stone dead—multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, so no rush.
The two paramedics are pulling the corpse out on a gurney when a big black guy in scrubs comes out to meet them. He’s got a thick, perfectly trimmed mustache and big, bushy sideburns.
“Hey Russ. Busy night?”
“Damn right. That’s the third one tonight. We got so many popsicles down there, we’re running out of room.”
“Want a hand with this one?”
“Nah, I got it. He don’t weigh shit.”
Russ had just begun to wheel the gurney away when suddenly the sky lights up behind them. The dark storm clouds above have begun to glow a hellish orange-red, getting brighter and brighter as the three men stop and stare. The visual phenomenon is accompanied by a high-pitched screeching noise, like an oncoming train.
Moments later, something massive breaks the cloud cover, streaking like giant fireball on its rapid descent to Earth. Striking the city in the distance with a great resounding BOOM, the impact is enough to shake the ground where they stand from miles away.
For a split second, the night turns bright as day, forcing them to shield their eyes.
“Fuckin’ Al Qaeda!” Russ screams.
The paramedics turn to look at him, but he’s already halfway back to the hospital entrance. Returning their attention to the horrible scene unfolding before them, they watch in awe as a great black mushroom cloud looms up from the flames on the horizon.
“Well, it doesn’t get much worse than that...”
Then, as if on cue, a 747 comes diving after it, missing a wing. It crashes much closer than the space station itself, but its effect is greatly diminished by the irony of the situation. The paramedics both look at each other.
“I fucking quit!” they say in unison.
Meanwhile, Russ is hauling ass through the hospital, skidding to stop at the nearest nurse’s station.
One of them asks, “What is it? Was that thunder we just heard?”
Gasping for air, Russ begins to babble. “Fucking... bombed the city... fucking Al Qaeda! Run, bitches! Run for your goddamn lives!”
The nurses turn to each other, each of them cocking an eyebrow, but by the time they turn back to Russ, he’s already gone, flying like a bat out of hell for the elevators at the end of the hall.
Ding!
The elevator opens. An old man and woman are standing inside, smiling nicely at the giant, raging African American in front of them. Russ grabs them both by the collar and chucks them out into the hall, taking their place on the lift.
“Run!” he yells as the doors slide shut between them. “Save your old white asses!”
Ding!
The doors open once again and Russ barrels through them, running past a sign reading MORGUE.
He bursts into the cold, low-lit room. “Doc! Yo, Doc! Where the fuck you at?”
There are at least a dozen bodies arranged on gurneys all around him, some of them covered in white sheets, others zipped up in black vinyl bags. Walking briskly past them, he heads straight for the office in back.
Suddenly a hand clasps his shoulder from behind.
Russ screams at the top of his lungs, spins around, and assumes his best Bruce Lee stance.
“Jesus, Doc! You just gave me a muthafuckin’ heart attack...”
A plump, pink-skinned man with kinky white hair stands before him, calmly munching a sandwich. He’s wearing the same headphones and blood-stained smock he wears every day at work.
“What did I tell you about smoking that grass?” Doc mumbles through a mouthful of ham on rye. “Makes you paranoid.”
“I ain’t smoking no grass!” Russ hollers at him. “The city just got bombed! Didn’t you hear that shit?! We gotta get the fuck out of here, man!”
“What do you mean the city was bombed?” Doc replies, pulling out his earbuds. “You saw this?”
“Yeah, it fucking fell right out the sky, like a comet! Get your shit man, c’mon!”
“Well, if it’s as bad as you say, let’s check the TV then, shall we?”
“All you gotta do is look outside! I ain’t making this shit up!”
Unperturbed, Doc walks over to a small TV set in the corner, turns it on. Nothing but static on the screen.
“That’s strange...”
Just as the words leave Doc’s mouth, he’s distracted by a faint rustling sound behind him. Russ hears it too. Both men turn around, befuddled looks upon their faces.
One of the body bags has begun to twitch, as if inhabited by a mouse, or a squirrel—anything but an inert human body. When the surrounding bags start to twitch as well, Doc’s first thought is that they clearly need to call an exterminator.
When the corpse on the nearest gurney slowly sits up, the white sheet covering it slowly slides down, revealing the Y-shaped autopsy cut in its chest. Hollow, cloudy eyes focus on Doc and Russ as its mouth drops open, issuing forth a rasping, guttural moan.
“Aw, fuck this!” Russ squeals, promptly fleeing the room.
The corpses have begun falling from their tables left and right, spilling guts and severed limbs across the floor. While the less constrained amongst them slowly stagger to their feet, those zipped up in bags claw against the vinyl. The drawers in the opposite wall begin to pound and rattle violently.
With typical white man confidence/stupidity, Doc steps up to the reanimated dead man closest to him.
“That’s impossible,” he says, poking it in the chest. “You’re dead.”
The corpse responds by grabbing Doc’s wrist, pulling his hand up to its mouth, and chomping off two fingers in one ravenous bite.
“Aaaargh!”
Doc stumbles back, holding his bloody hand, screaming as the zombies close in around him. He turns to run, but his exit is blocked by a nude female cadaver, her body a mess of road rash. Left tit scraped completely off. She grabs him by the neck and they topple to the gut-strewn floor. Her thumbs, like ice-cold daggers, slowly work their way up to his eyes, sinking in.
Through his blurred vision, Doc can still see the bare legs of the dead shuffling towards him. He struggles against them as they pile on, but it’s no use. Their hands rend his flesh as easily as play-doh, wriggling their fingers deep inside, pulling out his innards. Gurgling blood, he watches as his own intestines are shared amongst the eager, hungry mouths.
His eyes are finally popped out of his head, and he screams.
Screams until the very end.
***
A news van sits parked near the edge of the inferno, an explosion having destroyed several city blocks. The buildings at its epicenter have collapsed into burning rubble, and a good portion on the perimeter are not far behind. A thick wall of smoke rolls steadily down the street, panicking crowds of people scattering in every direction.
“Get the cameras rolling!”
The reporter is blonde, large breasted, and totally in control. She runs her fingers nervously through her hair. This is it, the day her career takes a giant leap forward. A promotion, talk show appearances, maybe a book deal, even. She can feel it in her bones.
“Cameras are rolling, but we’re not getting a signal!”
“Why the fuck not?!”
“I don’t know! How the fuck should I know!”
“That doesn’t make sense! Vince, makeup now! Keep those cameras on—we’ll record and broadcast just as soon as we have signal!”
Meanwhile, something has begun to stir beneath the rubble off camera.
“How does my hair look?”
***
Mile away, a hefty guy in a Cardinals t-shirt is sitting in the drive-thru of one of those fast food chains that serves breakfast all day. Moments ago, something big and bright had passed overhead with a thunderous roar, sending tremors down the street. Dude was not the least bit concerned; all he could think about at the moment was his growling belly, and how pissed he was getting having to wait.
Finally, the voice of the minimum wage employee comes over the speaker.
“Welcome to (something unintelligible), may I take your order?”
“Yeah, I need two orders of biscuits and gravy, two hash browns, a cinnamon twist, and a large Diet Coke.”
“Is Pepsi all right?”
“What? No, I won’t drink that shit. Give me a Sprite instead.”
“Is Sierra Mist okay?”
“Are you fucking serious? What is this shit?”
“So, a Sierra Mist?”
“No, I said are you seri—“
“One Sierra Mist, got it. So we have two biscuits and gravy, two hash—“
“I don’t want a goddamn Sierra Mist! Listen, jackass, I want—“
This time, it isn’t the pimple-faced kid on the other side of the speaker distracting the Cardinals fan, but an ambulance that comes wailing down the street from out of nowhere. Weaving in and out of traffic, the thing is all over the road, hopping the curb before finally nailing a car at the intersection. Glass shatters, metal buckles, and the car does a near three-sixty before colliding with oncoming traffic.
“Frikkin’ shit!” the Cardinals fan exclaims.
“Sorry sir, we don’t carry Mr. Pibb.”
Despite coming to a complete stop, the ambulance continues bouncing around. Suddenly its doors burst open and a paramedic tumbles out, some crazy naked guy on his back. Bright red blood drips down his pale neck and chest as he tears a chunk of flesh from the medic’s neck.
Passing cars begin to stop and people get out to help. The ambulance driver exits his totaled vehicle as well, holding his head as he stumbles in a daze. Tripping over a stray fender, he falls headlong into traffic and is struck by a speeding truck. Cartwheeling through the air, his flailing body hits the sharp edge of a stop sign, splitting him in half and splattering his intestines all over the sidewalk.
Several men are trying to pull the naked guy off of the other paramedic, but the fucker keeps biting them, kicking and scratching like a wild animal.
“What the fuck is going on...” the Cardinals fan softly moans, from the relative safety of his car.
“Excuse me, sir, did you say foot-long hot dog?”
***
At the amphitheater, Rock and Steady are laying their best game on some drunk chick bent over a railing, puking her guts out. On stage in the distance, a cover band is going into a Sammy Hagar song. The crowd begins to cheer.
“Hey, baby,” Steady says with a slight slur, “soon’s you’re done with that, we got some beer to wash the taste out your mouth.”
She holds up a middle finger for them.
“Damn, girl!” says Rock, nudging Steady. “That’s exactly what we were thinking. Think you can handle two studs at once?”
She laughs scornfully through her vomit.
“Dude, she sounds just like Chewbacca!”
Just then, a high-pitched drone erupts from the sky above, loud enough to drown out the music completely. Rock and Steady look up just in time to see the 747 before it hits the stage. A massive fireball erupts on impact, instantly destroying the far end of the amphitheater, blasting a wave of heat and shrapnel over the other half.
A jagged piece of aluminum flies right between Rock and Steady with a sudden WHOOSH. Next comes a sickening SNIP, and they turn to find the drunk chick split clean in half. Somehow, her upper portion still hasn’t finished puking yet.
“Holy shit!”
Rock and Steady high five each other, then proceed to run like hell. While everyone else tramples each other in their rush for the exits, however, they decide to stop at an abandoned beer kiosk, snagging a nearly full keg on their way out.
“Go! Go! Go!”
***
Dan is stuck on 270, traffic backed up all the way into God’s bright, shiny rainbow asshole. It’s starting to storm outside, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be moving anytime soon. Suddenly the sky lights up above.
His son, Charlie, is strapped into the car seat in back. He asks his dad what it was.
“Just lightning, kiddo.”
“Dad, can I ride Uncle George’s four wheeler?” Charlie says uncle like untle, George like dorge. Cute kid.
“Well, we’re gonna have to ask mom about that, buddy.” Dan drums his fingers upon the steering wheel, takes a sip from his travel mug.
“Mom’s a cunt.”
Dan spits his coffee out across the windshield, turns back to Charlie. “Who taught you that word?”
“Uncle George said mom’s a cunt!” Charlie giggles.
“Charlie, don’t you ever, ever say that word! Do you hear—”
Dan stops in mid sentence. On one side of the road, a large group of deer suddenly erupt from the tree line. A dog, several cats, a rabbit and some squirrels follow close behind.
“Oooooh, look, dad! Deers!”
But that’s not all. Dan rubs his eyes, certain that he’s seeing things.
Are those naked people? What in God’s name…
It seems clear that they’d been chasing the animals, but just as soon as they emerge from the woods, the nude, blood-spattered figures all stop at once. Having apparently forgotten all about their quarry, the mob of them charges for the traffic jam instead.
Dan finds himself rolling up the windows, locking the doors.
“Dad, that man has no pants. I can see his weenie!” Charlie giggles.
“Charlie, cover your eyes!”
“Dad, booooobies!”
Dan glances frantically about. The jam is so tight, he can’t back up or pull forward at all—literal bumper to bumper gridlock. Ten or so bloody, naked freaks are rapidly coming up on the shoulder, some of them completely nude, some still wearing the remnants of hospital gowns. Dan blinks his eyes in disbelief once again.
Is this some kind of joke?
When a pale, blue-veined woman with sunken eyes charges their car, slapping her tube sock tits against Dan’s window, he decides that this is not a joke. Not a joke at all.
“Charlie, hold on!”
Dan throws the car into reverse, punches the gas, and rams the car behind them, giving him just enough room to pull off onto the shoulder. Instantly his ears are filled with the sound of angry honking, and they’re not all directed at him. There are more freaks now, dozens of them swarming cars, beating on windows. Even with all the horns and alarms blaring, he can still hear their awful wailing and moaning through the glass.
Dan guns it, and Charlie starts to squeal. He can’t tell whether it’s terror or excitement the boy is feeling; all he knows is that they need to get far, far away from whatever the fuck is happening here.
Soon he’s doing forty, then fifty in the grass beside the highway. He checks the rearview mirror, sees other cars following his lead, sees Charlie with both hands in the air like he’s riding a goddamn roller coaster. What Dan doesn’t see is the truck pull off the road right in front of him.
Dan hits that truck going sixty miles per hour. His windshield shatters as the front end buckles, the impact lifting his ass end off the ground. The airbag hits Dan in the face, and despite this sudden blow, he distinctly hears something fly past the right side of his head.
Weeeeeeeeeeeee!
It’s his son, Charlie, catapulted from his defective car seat, flying through the hole where the windshield used to be. Like a miniature superman, he flies hands first, clipping the cab of the truck with a thump before somersaulting over the top of it.
“Charlieeeeeeeeeeee!”
All this happens within the span of a second.
Charlie enjoys the ride while it lasts, but the fun comes to an abrupt end when someone catches him in their arms. He looks up into the face of his rescuer and smiles.
At first Dan is jubilant, feeling nothing but eternal gratitude for this stranger who showed up at just the right place at the right time, saving his baby boy. His mood quickly changes, however, as Charlie is ripped to pieces right in front of him. Ripped to pieces like a fucking piece of meat by a pack of wild dogs.
***
Weezy didn’t take no shit, that was for damn sure. And the punk-ass bitch he’d just popped in the heart should’ve known that too. Knew it now, at least. Punk Ass, yellow motherfucker had his chance. Fool had enough blow, he could’ve been somebody. But nope, Punk Ass snorted and smoked that shit right up. Every last ounce of it.
All he had to do was move some weight. Now that’s all he was: just some dead-ass weight.
Weezy is just about to bounce from Punk Ass’s apartment, but before he can hit the door, he hears Punk Ass moaning on the floor.
Aw sheeit, Weezy thinks to himself, gonna have ta stomp this muthafucka’s brains in, I guess.
Weezy turns around and there’s Punk Ass sitting up, looking him right in the eye. Punk Ass should really know better by now.
Weezy raises his pistol, shoots Punk Ass in the chest for the fourth time today. Punk Ass takes the bullet, jolted by the .38 slug, but that don’t stop him looking at Weezy. He don’t stop trying to get up, either.
Muthafucka must be high as shit...
Weezy don’t have time for this. Weezy unloads the remainder of his clip into Punk Ass’s chest. The gunshots are so loud in that tiny-ass apartment, Weezy is 100% certain that he’s now got permanent hearing loss. And here’s Punk Ass rising to his feet.
Weezy knows a high-ass muthafucka can take some punishment, but this is some bullshit. Weezy also knows he’s done spent too much time here as it is, wasted too many bullets fo sho, but he’s still gotta take this motherfucker out.
Dead men don’t talk, but a half-dead Punk Ass just might.
And look at this, Punk Ass wants to fight. He be shamblin’ right at Weezy.
“Oh, you wanna fight, bitch?”
Punk Ass takes a punch square in the mouth, his teeth cutting deep into Weezy’s knuckles.
***
The city’s on fire and everyone’s on patrol, living and dead alike.
A man in a red jacket hollers “go Cards!” and bunts a bloody freak in the face. A man in a blue jacket sneaks up behind him, kicks him in the balls and yells “go Cubs!” He then proceeds to rob him of his shoes and his wallet, cackling like the crackhead he is as he runs back into the shadows.
Two cops are just down the street, wrestling with a musclebound perp on the sidewalk. The recently turned and the about-to-be turned are running to and fro in the rain. A young guy stops, glances at the occupied cops, jumps in their car and takes off.
“Sonofabitch!”
One of the cops pulls his pistol and lets loose on the trigger. 9mm rounds streak through the panicked crowd, a lucky shot piercing the rear window and hitting the carjacker in the back of the head. Blood and teeth and portion of his nose spray across the windshield and he jerks the wheel violently, crashing into a group of young Asian kids outside a comic shop. The Crown Vic explodes into a fireball shaped like Pikachu.
High above this chaos, on the top floor of a nearby hotel, a woman is standing on a balcony. A group of deranged cannibals are slowly but surely beating her door down. One of them happens to be her husband. He’d gone out into the hall to check on a commotion they’d heard, only to find an elderly woman crouched over a bleeding bellhop. Being the Samaritan that he was, he’d tried to pull her off the poor bastard clutching his neck, convulsing on the floor.
“Susan!” he yelled from down the hall. “Call security!”
But she couldn’t move. She had never seen so much blood before in her entire life, never saw anyone die.
“Susan!”
By the time she’d got the phone and found the line busy, the bellhop was sharing a meal of her husband with the crazy old lady who’d just killed him.
Cowering in the doorway, Susan watched her husband screaming, half his face torn off. He was viciously punching the old lady in the face, trying to kick the bellhop off of him at the same time.
Through mangled lips he managed to yell, “Susan, get back inside and lock the fucking door!”
She did as she was told. And now she’s standing on the balcony, looking four stories down, wondering which would be worse: getting eaten alive, or being forced to jump to her own death?
Susan climbs up onto the ledge. Behind her, the door shatters. The wind pulls at her auburn hair, cinders and ash fluttering in the darkness around her. She hears their footsteps, hears their moans. Closing her eyes, she takes the leap.
She screams all the way down, her dress fluttering above her head.
On the ground far below, a crackhead is running for his life with a stolen box of pizza, a ham and pineapple pizza.
Susan lands right on top of him, her big fat ass enveloping his head, pile-driving him into the sidewalk with enough force to break every bone in his body.
Rising to her feet, she finds that her ass and legs are quite sore, but miraculously she’s still alive. She pulls a slice of pizza from her crotch, takes a bite, and joins the rioting crowd.
A National Guard unit has set up a road block down the street. They fire indiscriminately into the thronging horde, unable to distinguish the living from those that just won’t die.
“Aim for the head, goddammit!”
A soldier unclips a grenade from his vest, pulls the pin and lobs it into the crowd. It bounces off the skull of a freak with a dull thunk, rolls beneath a car and explodes. The car lands upside-down, smashing several freaks underneath. Another swath of flesh-eaters are reduced to wet splats on the asphalt by a red-hot, smoking chaingun, mounted on the back of an Army jeep.
Still, no matter how much ordinance they dish out, the crowd will not disperse. Humans and freaks alike keep coming at them, providing a steady stream of cannon fodder, undeterred by bullets or bombs or pain.
***
A stripper named Candy is snorting coke off the back of a toilet. It’s been a long day already. Her back and feet are sore, and some perv had pinched her tit so hard earlier it had given her a knot. She still has four hours left to go on her shift, and she’s hoping that this big ol’ rail of blow will be enough to carry her through.
The cocaine (some good shit, hardly cut at all) enters her nose and hits her mucous membranes, sending a shudder of instant euphoria through her body. And then, just as quick as it hits, she finds she can hardly breathe. She clutches her chest and sinks to her knees on the dirty, sticky floor, not for the first time, but somehow already knowing it will be her last.
Several minutes later, another stripper, Danny, walks in. She finds Candy standing unsteadily in one corner, her shoulders severely slumped.
“Candy, baby,” she says, “what’s wrong?”
Candy slowly turns to face her, and Danny sees the blood dribbling from her nose, down her lips and chin. Candy moans, her lips pulling back in a vicious sneer.
“Damn, girl,” Danny says, “you all fucked up!”
Candy stumbles forward, hands outstretched before her. She grabs one of Danny’s big fake tits.
“Bitch,” Danny laughs, “you such a fucking freak!”
When Candy bites her nipple off, suddenly Danny isn’t laughing anymore.
***
http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Run-Dead-D...
Like it? Want to read the full the book? Click here.
November 19, 2012
A Strange Trip (a year on the road with StrangeHouse)
What a strange trip it's been...
I met Kevin Strange through one of his short films “Dead Shit” years ago. I can't tell you what year it was, because I can't track time very well, or do math for that matter, but it was a cold day. That means, it was sometime between November and February, and I may still be wrong about that.
When I heard that someone in our shit-hole collection of towns and rundown city landscapes was making Troma-like films, I felt a little spark of life. Through a friend of a friend I wound up being a Steak-n-Shake zombie, and I had a blast. On that cold November-through-February day, I had no idea that some years later, Kevin and myself would be running a business together.
While Kevin continued to build his Hack Movies empire, I was still working in music. Our little band from a small town ended up creating two beautiful albums, and I eventually went on to deal with a small record label and work on a solo stint that ended like most dreams do. That is by taking all your money and leaving you without so much as a word. The studio work I'd done was great, the songs were the best I'd ever done, but none of that mattered. The record label sold out and shut down. Boom. Nothing. Nada.
Although, while there I did meet some very influential people. Through Glen and Gary McCoy (The Flying McCoys) I met Rich Moyer, an animator that we wanted to hire to create a video for a song of mine called “ A Poem of Bullets.” Rich was a swell dude, and through some of our conversations I ended up telling him about a movie idea I had called Beer Run of the Dead.
He liked it. He asked if I had a script he could show people.
“Sure”, I said, lying through my teeth. “Let me get that to you in a couple of weeks.”
I spent those next two weeks writing the 140 page script that became Beer Run of the Dead. With the help and input of Rich I did a couple rewrites and hoped to god almighty morphin' power rangers, that something miraculous would happen.
It did not.
So as some time passed, I found myself in somewhat of a quagmire, directionless for the first time in a decade. I knew I could write, I knew I could do music and art and tell a story, so I went to the final frontier. I began dabbling in film and short fiction.
It was then, somewhere in this limbo that I began talking to Kevin again. Apparently, we'd both been going through the same thing. We were both leaving long stints with a certain media and trekking into prospective new grounds.
Joking one day, Kevin said, “Why don't we start a race to see who's fiction gets rejected the most.”
And the race went on, until the November of 2011 I think. And that's when Kevin said he'd been looking into starting a publishing house. Signing ourselves and other authors, creating some of the craziest fiction and art the Midwest has seen and building a big, scary Strange House.
Knowing the guy was a fierce artist, knowing that he didn't give up and would sleep in a cave to create his work, I felt an immediate kinship and said, “Take all my money. I'm in!”
And now here we are, a year later with almost 10 books available, beautiful and bizarre art, and a heap of shows under our a belt.
When I look back to that November and talking about building this thing, it's extremely funny to me. First off, I'd never been to a horror convention before. I didn't even know that kind of thing existed.
“You mean to tell me there's a comic con for horror fans, where it's Halloween everyday, and people get drunk and party and dance in costume like we somehow found a rave in hell? Oh God yes, take me to that place.”
Kevin Strange just gone and popped my cherry. I was instantly addicted.
There are just too many little stories to fill up in one blog about a year on the road. I mean until you do a ton of these things it just doesn't really begin to set in how utterly surreal it is. Besides the vendors and all the memorabilia, and artists and collectables, almost every show usually has a celebrity or two. Sometimes a ton of celebs.
Shit gets ridiculous.
In the last year I've almost elbowed Norman Reedus from the Walking Dead. He's such a tiny, handsome man, and as I was outside smoking a cigarette, I turned and almost caught the fellow in the face. Instead of him being a dick, we had a nice short conversation about when they were going to give him some more action on the Walking Dead, to which he replied with his melodic accent. “I can't say, they just pay me and I do stuff.”
I've seen Ron Jeremy playing Chopin on piano. Then he kissed my girlfriend on the cheek, and while she was horrified, I laughed and laughed. I get to take that wonderful moment to my grave.
I met John Russo (a writer and one of the creators of Night of the Living Dead) and talked shop with him for some time. I eventually gave the guy a copy of my book Scary Fucking Stories. He told me bluntly that people give him stuff all the time and he probably wouldn't get to read it. Which was fine by me, I told the guy that it was a gift of appreciation, that his work was a big influence on me and he could throw it away and poop on it if he wanted. A couple weeks later, Kevin called me up and said we got a letter in our P.O. Box from Russo. The guy sent me a letter, encouraging my writing and success. A moment that is still to this day, very surreal to me.
There have been strippers dressed as dinosaurs, blood drenched furries, Jasons and Freddies, drunken storm troopers and weed smoking zombies, grim reaper nazis on stilts and so much, much more.
It's been a crazy year. Crazy good, with ups and downs and horrific roller coasters and too much vodka and hotel rooms, a blur of cities and road trips and pizza. It's been a blast, folks. Simply a blast. If you're a fan of horror and the macabre, of film and art and you've asked yourself, “Why can't it be Halloween everyday?” Well my friend, you are not alone, and there's a place for you.
As I sit back and relax on this short break before we start the tour again next year, I don't think it's excitement I feel. It's not exhilaration and the want and need to be on the road. It's like going home.
So before I end his little rant, there are some folks I'd like to thank. Kevin, foremost, for getting me involved in this insanity. Our booth girls, Sarah, Mitzi, Kristen Lugosi and Katie Deerest( a goddamned road warrior), our editor who joined us later in the year, and drinks as much as I do -Nick Day. Big thanks to Timo and Ben Harley for the interviews, shirts and Grape Ape, and all the fans, all the supporters, fellow writers, vendors and folks dedicated to the horror community. You all fucking rock.
Hugs and Kisses,
D.F. Noble
I met Kevin Strange through one of his short films “Dead Shit” years ago. I can't tell you what year it was, because I can't track time very well, or do math for that matter, but it was a cold day. That means, it was sometime between November and February, and I may still be wrong about that.
When I heard that someone in our shit-hole collection of towns and rundown city landscapes was making Troma-like films, I felt a little spark of life. Through a friend of a friend I wound up being a Steak-n-Shake zombie, and I had a blast. On that cold November-through-February day, I had no idea that some years later, Kevin and myself would be running a business together.
While Kevin continued to build his Hack Movies empire, I was still working in music. Our little band from a small town ended up creating two beautiful albums, and I eventually went on to deal with a small record label and work on a solo stint that ended like most dreams do. That is by taking all your money and leaving you without so much as a word. The studio work I'd done was great, the songs were the best I'd ever done, but none of that mattered. The record label sold out and shut down. Boom. Nothing. Nada.
Although, while there I did meet some very influential people. Through Glen and Gary McCoy (The Flying McCoys) I met Rich Moyer, an animator that we wanted to hire to create a video for a song of mine called “ A Poem of Bullets.” Rich was a swell dude, and through some of our conversations I ended up telling him about a movie idea I had called Beer Run of the Dead.
He liked it. He asked if I had a script he could show people.
“Sure”, I said, lying through my teeth. “Let me get that to you in a couple of weeks.”
I spent those next two weeks writing the 140 page script that became Beer Run of the Dead. With the help and input of Rich I did a couple rewrites and hoped to god almighty morphin' power rangers, that something miraculous would happen.
It did not.
So as some time passed, I found myself in somewhat of a quagmire, directionless for the first time in a decade. I knew I could write, I knew I could do music and art and tell a story, so I went to the final frontier. I began dabbling in film and short fiction.
It was then, somewhere in this limbo that I began talking to Kevin again. Apparently, we'd both been going through the same thing. We were both leaving long stints with a certain media and trekking into prospective new grounds.
Joking one day, Kevin said, “Why don't we start a race to see who's fiction gets rejected the most.”
And the race went on, until the November of 2011 I think. And that's when Kevin said he'd been looking into starting a publishing house. Signing ourselves and other authors, creating some of the craziest fiction and art the Midwest has seen and building a big, scary Strange House.
Knowing the guy was a fierce artist, knowing that he didn't give up and would sleep in a cave to create his work, I felt an immediate kinship and said, “Take all my money. I'm in!”
And now here we are, a year later with almost 10 books available, beautiful and bizarre art, and a heap of shows under our a belt.
When I look back to that November and talking about building this thing, it's extremely funny to me. First off, I'd never been to a horror convention before. I didn't even know that kind of thing existed.
“You mean to tell me there's a comic con for horror fans, where it's Halloween everyday, and people get drunk and party and dance in costume like we somehow found a rave in hell? Oh God yes, take me to that place.”
Kevin Strange just gone and popped my cherry. I was instantly addicted.
There are just too many little stories to fill up in one blog about a year on the road. I mean until you do a ton of these things it just doesn't really begin to set in how utterly surreal it is. Besides the vendors and all the memorabilia, and artists and collectables, almost every show usually has a celebrity or two. Sometimes a ton of celebs.
Shit gets ridiculous.
In the last year I've almost elbowed Norman Reedus from the Walking Dead. He's such a tiny, handsome man, and as I was outside smoking a cigarette, I turned and almost caught the fellow in the face. Instead of him being a dick, we had a nice short conversation about when they were going to give him some more action on the Walking Dead, to which he replied with his melodic accent. “I can't say, they just pay me and I do stuff.”
I've seen Ron Jeremy playing Chopin on piano. Then he kissed my girlfriend on the cheek, and while she was horrified, I laughed and laughed. I get to take that wonderful moment to my grave.
I met John Russo (a writer and one of the creators of Night of the Living Dead) and talked shop with him for some time. I eventually gave the guy a copy of my book Scary Fucking Stories. He told me bluntly that people give him stuff all the time and he probably wouldn't get to read it. Which was fine by me, I told the guy that it was a gift of appreciation, that his work was a big influence on me and he could throw it away and poop on it if he wanted. A couple weeks later, Kevin called me up and said we got a letter in our P.O. Box from Russo. The guy sent me a letter, encouraging my writing and success. A moment that is still to this day, very surreal to me.
There have been strippers dressed as dinosaurs, blood drenched furries, Jasons and Freddies, drunken storm troopers and weed smoking zombies, grim reaper nazis on stilts and so much, much more.
It's been a crazy year. Crazy good, with ups and downs and horrific roller coasters and too much vodka and hotel rooms, a blur of cities and road trips and pizza. It's been a blast, folks. Simply a blast. If you're a fan of horror and the macabre, of film and art and you've asked yourself, “Why can't it be Halloween everyday?” Well my friend, you are not alone, and there's a place for you.
As I sit back and relax on this short break before we start the tour again next year, I don't think it's excitement I feel. It's not exhilaration and the want and need to be on the road. It's like going home.
So before I end his little rant, there are some folks I'd like to thank. Kevin, foremost, for getting me involved in this insanity. Our booth girls, Sarah, Mitzi, Kristen Lugosi and Katie Deerest( a goddamned road warrior), our editor who joined us later in the year, and drinks as much as I do -Nick Day. Big thanks to Timo and Ben Harley for the interviews, shirts and Grape Ape, and all the fans, all the supporters, fellow writers, vendors and folks dedicated to the horror community. You all fucking rock.
Hugs and Kisses,
D.F. Noble
November 13, 2012
Apocalypse Meow (The Novel) excerpt.
Chapter One
The Dick
“You're a dick.”
The brunette to my right isn't askin' a question. She's pointing out the obvious. This business is in my blood. Hell, I must have Dick written all over my face.
“That's right,” I tell her, and finish my martini. “What's it to ya?”
I don't have to look at her directly. The mirror behind the bar lets me watch her just fine. Her jacket comes off, reveals small but perky breasts behind a red dress that tightly fits her thin, and lithe frame. A dancer's body, that's what she has. Could be a ballerina. The kinda dame that will bruise your hips but make your cock look huge in her tiny hands. No more than a hundred pounds. Thin face.
I'm sure she has a glass jaw, and ain't much for takin' punches.
There's a lot to be said about a gal who can take a punch.
“I need a Dick,” she says and sits beside me. “But no average Dick.”
I flag the barman. A snap and a point of my fingers and he's pouring me another drink, and her one to boot. I tell her, “Well, I'm no average Dick, darlin.”
She slides a pack of smokes from her purse, lights one and I watch her sweet, thin lips. I wonder how she tastes. Wonder what those lips would do...
I've always been a sucker for the mousy dames, but there's no point in lettin' her know that. No point in showin' I'm even half interested. You don't catch cats by chasin' 'em.
“I've been told,” she says and lets a puff go, cocks an eyebrow at me, “that when it comes to Dicks, you're one of the biggest in town.”
“Big, small,” I say and flip out my own pack, “it's the Dick that gets the job done.”
She takes another drag and I can feel her eyes rolling over me, the way a cat eyes a bird in a cage, or the way a fat lady eyes a Wonka bar in a cage and her fingers are too fat to get through the bars or turn the tiny locks to open the cage so she shakes the hell out of it with her meaty mitts till it slides through and she claps those big sausage fingers in joy.
“Well excuse me for being bold, but... this case needs a Dick... A Dick with some brass tacks...”
“You need a Dick with balls, darlin. I hear ya.”
“Huge balls.”
“Big Dick, huge balls. I gotcha.”
“Are you a big enough Dick for the case?”
“I'm your Dick, lady. You need a Dick you got one.”
“Things could get hard.”
“I'm used to being hard.”
“And rough.”
“I can be a hard dick, darlin, and I can get rough.”
“Things could get sticky.”
“Dicks are usually getting sticky, lady.”
“Things could get tight.”
“I'm good in tight in places.”
“Things could get tight, and sticky, and rough, and hard...and you're sure you're the Dick for that?”
“If the pay is right,” I tell her, “this Dick will go anywhere, doll-face.”
“I need a Dick who can come in a back door and get to the bottom of it.”
“As a Dick, I prefer the back door. And as far as getting to the bottom, I once spelunked off the coast of Panama.”
“How deep did you go?”
“This Dick came out dirty, if you get my drift.”
“Protection?”
“Rubbers that time, foxy. Go deep like that, and a Dick needs a dive suit.”
“So I'm sure you've blasted a few guys?”
“Never in the back unless they asked for it. I prefer to blast a guy face to face.”
“That's tough. Tough but honorable.”
“There's no honor it, darlin. Never any honor blastin' a guy. It's a messy business. Something you don't want on your chest.”
“So you're experienced...Guess there's quite a load on your chest?”
“Like I said... It get's messy.”
“How do you feel about two Dicks? Two Dicks working hand in hand.”
“Sounds messy.”
“What I got, it might need two Dicks. Unless I have one good Dick.”
“Why two dicks?”
“One for the back door, and one for the front door.”
“Not sure that I get ya.”
“Never had two Dicks going hard at it at the same time?”
“Seen it in the movies.”
“Well what if I want two Dicks?”
“I know another Dick, but I prefer to work alone.”
“Well maybe it'd be swell to have another Dick handy? In case one of the Dicks come up short.”
“I'd say you're a tough case lady, and that might make most Dicks uncomfortable.”
“You're saying I couldn't have two dicks?”
“I'm just saying it'd get messy, doll-face.”
“What if I wanted three Dicks?”
“I'd say your a loon.”
“What if wanted four or five Dicks? What if I need a whole train of Dicks?”
“Why would you need a train full of Dicks?”
“Maybe it's just that deep.”
“You saying a Dick could get lost in it?”
“Maybe.”
“That's a lot of Dicks, lady.”
“Who knows, maybe one good Dick could crack it. Could get hairy though.”
“If a Dick can't handle hairy, he should hang it up and retire.”
“Well what I've got for you is pretty hairy, mister.”
“How hairy?”
“So hairy it might scare you.”
I take a deep drag off my smoke and let it coil out like a cobra being coaxed by an Indian with a flute. I look this broad in the eyes and she holds that stare and doesn't turn. That mean's she ain't joshin' me.
How could a cute little thing like this get so hairy and why would she need a train full of Dicks? Maybe what she's got really is that big or maybe she's crazy as double dipped cat shit. Either way, she's got my interest.
“Why don't we go over the details at my office,” I tell her.
“Sounds swell,” she says and offers her hand. At first I'm not sure if she wants me to kiss her ring or shake her hand, so I do what a Dick normally does. I don't shake her hand and I cock my eyebrow at her.
“So you really are a Dick, then,” she says.
I finish my drink in one long pull and say, “Through and through, lady.” I stand, finish my smoke and drop the butt into the martini glass. I get a good long look at her as she stands and slides her jacket back on. She's gorgeous, and she knows it. Pretty sure fellas are lined up around the block to sniff her skivvies, and I'd be right there with them except for one thing.
I'm a Dick.
The Dick
“You're a dick.”
The brunette to my right isn't askin' a question. She's pointing out the obvious. This business is in my blood. Hell, I must have Dick written all over my face.
“That's right,” I tell her, and finish my martini. “What's it to ya?”
I don't have to look at her directly. The mirror behind the bar lets me watch her just fine. Her jacket comes off, reveals small but perky breasts behind a red dress that tightly fits her thin, and lithe frame. A dancer's body, that's what she has. Could be a ballerina. The kinda dame that will bruise your hips but make your cock look huge in her tiny hands. No more than a hundred pounds. Thin face.
I'm sure she has a glass jaw, and ain't much for takin' punches.
There's a lot to be said about a gal who can take a punch.
“I need a Dick,” she says and sits beside me. “But no average Dick.”
I flag the barman. A snap and a point of my fingers and he's pouring me another drink, and her one to boot. I tell her, “Well, I'm no average Dick, darlin.”
She slides a pack of smokes from her purse, lights one and I watch her sweet, thin lips. I wonder how she tastes. Wonder what those lips would do...
I've always been a sucker for the mousy dames, but there's no point in lettin' her know that. No point in showin' I'm even half interested. You don't catch cats by chasin' 'em.
“I've been told,” she says and lets a puff go, cocks an eyebrow at me, “that when it comes to Dicks, you're one of the biggest in town.”
“Big, small,” I say and flip out my own pack, “it's the Dick that gets the job done.”
She takes another drag and I can feel her eyes rolling over me, the way a cat eyes a bird in a cage, or the way a fat lady eyes a Wonka bar in a cage and her fingers are too fat to get through the bars or turn the tiny locks to open the cage so she shakes the hell out of it with her meaty mitts till it slides through and she claps those big sausage fingers in joy.
“Well excuse me for being bold, but... this case needs a Dick... A Dick with some brass tacks...”
“You need a Dick with balls, darlin. I hear ya.”
“Huge balls.”
“Big Dick, huge balls. I gotcha.”
“Are you a big enough Dick for the case?”
“I'm your Dick, lady. You need a Dick you got one.”
“Things could get hard.”
“I'm used to being hard.”
“And rough.”
“I can be a hard dick, darlin, and I can get rough.”
“Things could get sticky.”
“Dicks are usually getting sticky, lady.”
“Things could get tight.”
“I'm good in tight in places.”
“Things could get tight, and sticky, and rough, and hard...and you're sure you're the Dick for that?”
“If the pay is right,” I tell her, “this Dick will go anywhere, doll-face.”
“I need a Dick who can come in a back door and get to the bottom of it.”
“As a Dick, I prefer the back door. And as far as getting to the bottom, I once spelunked off the coast of Panama.”
“How deep did you go?”
“This Dick came out dirty, if you get my drift.”
“Protection?”
“Rubbers that time, foxy. Go deep like that, and a Dick needs a dive suit.”
“So I'm sure you've blasted a few guys?”
“Never in the back unless they asked for it. I prefer to blast a guy face to face.”
“That's tough. Tough but honorable.”
“There's no honor it, darlin. Never any honor blastin' a guy. It's a messy business. Something you don't want on your chest.”
“So you're experienced...Guess there's quite a load on your chest?”
“Like I said... It get's messy.”
“How do you feel about two Dicks? Two Dicks working hand in hand.”
“Sounds messy.”
“What I got, it might need two Dicks. Unless I have one good Dick.”
“Why two dicks?”
“One for the back door, and one for the front door.”
“Not sure that I get ya.”
“Never had two Dicks going hard at it at the same time?”
“Seen it in the movies.”
“Well what if I want two Dicks?”
“I know another Dick, but I prefer to work alone.”
“Well maybe it'd be swell to have another Dick handy? In case one of the Dicks come up short.”
“I'd say you're a tough case lady, and that might make most Dicks uncomfortable.”
“You're saying I couldn't have two dicks?”
“I'm just saying it'd get messy, doll-face.”
“What if I wanted three Dicks?”
“I'd say your a loon.”
“What if wanted four or five Dicks? What if I need a whole train of Dicks?”
“Why would you need a train full of Dicks?”
“Maybe it's just that deep.”
“You saying a Dick could get lost in it?”
“Maybe.”
“That's a lot of Dicks, lady.”
“Who knows, maybe one good Dick could crack it. Could get hairy though.”
“If a Dick can't handle hairy, he should hang it up and retire.”
“Well what I've got for you is pretty hairy, mister.”
“How hairy?”
“So hairy it might scare you.”
I take a deep drag off my smoke and let it coil out like a cobra being coaxed by an Indian with a flute. I look this broad in the eyes and she holds that stare and doesn't turn. That mean's she ain't joshin' me.
How could a cute little thing like this get so hairy and why would she need a train full of Dicks? Maybe what she's got really is that big or maybe she's crazy as double dipped cat shit. Either way, she's got my interest.
“Why don't we go over the details at my office,” I tell her.
“Sounds swell,” she says and offers her hand. At first I'm not sure if she wants me to kiss her ring or shake her hand, so I do what a Dick normally does. I don't shake her hand and I cock my eyebrow at her.
“So you really are a Dick, then,” she says.
I finish my drink in one long pull and say, “Through and through, lady.” I stand, finish my smoke and drop the butt into the martini glass. I get a good long look at her as she stands and slides her jacket back on. She's gorgeous, and she knows it. Pretty sure fellas are lined up around the block to sniff her skivvies, and I'd be right there with them except for one thing.
I'm a Dick.
October 24, 2012
Ridiculous titles for books I may or may never write.
Sometimes, in the depths of an insomniac delirium, I think of titles that would make an average person gawk, or downright get violent. Why? First, I suppose it has something to do with watching people's faces. I love that. A weird combination of words that will melt a human's face and make them lash out and immediately smash a puppy. Second, I think it also has something to do with challenging everything we've thought a book or piece of entertainment should be. Titles like:
Day of the Puppy Smasher (a children's book).
Your Mother is a bitch and No One Knows Why (relationship therapy book).
I do this like a game, all day. Trying to top myself. There are probably a dozen more at the top of mind that I actually will write but don't want to tell you about just yet. Titles so wrong, that they are horrible in ways that are terribly bad. Titles that will make my girlfriend break up with me... So feel free to add your own. And if by chance you end up reading this and writing Day of the Puppy Smasher, hey just send me a copy. I'd laugh and laugh, you ballsy prick you.
Day of the Puppy Smasher (a children's book).
Your Mother is a bitch and No One Knows Why (relationship therapy book).
I do this like a game, all day. Trying to top myself. There are probably a dozen more at the top of mind that I actually will write but don't want to tell you about just yet. Titles so wrong, that they are horrible in ways that are terribly bad. Titles that will make my girlfriend break up with me... So feel free to add your own. And if by chance you end up reading this and writing Day of the Puppy Smasher, hey just send me a copy. I'd laugh and laugh, you ballsy prick you.
October 18, 2012
How Santa Claus Made Me An Agnostic
(Thoughts on the evolution of Consciousness)
I don't remember how old I was, I had to be young, it's one of my earliest memories. It was Christmas, and I was lying in bed, restless, waiting for my presents. I had a love for Batman and Ninja Turtles I remember fondly, a love for people getting their asses whipped in the name of justice.
I also had something else. A natural born skepticism .
You see I didn't believe in Santa Claus. I had a strong suspicion that my parents were lying to me to make me behave. This I understood, so I played a long of course, to get my presents. I was just missing one thing...proof.
This I learned from Matlock and Night Court I think. You had to have proof.
So, lying in bed, a planned formed in my growing sponge of a brain. I knew my parents were in the living room, they said they had to make sure we kids were in bed, otherwise Santa wouldn't stop by.
I suspected otherwise.
"Mom!" I cried out. "I'm thirsty, can I get some water?"
From down the hall she replied back, "Yeah just get some from the bathroom, use the little Dixie cups...Don't come in the living room!"
"Okay!" I said, and then sprung into action. I leaped from bed, hurried to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. I knew they could hear me, I needed cover so they couldn't hear my approach. With the faucet on I hurriedly crept down the wall with my back to it, being as stealthy as I could in my G.I. Joe underwear.
I could hear sounds of paper crunching, wrapping paper no doubt. I stopped at the edge of the hall, right beyond was the living room. This was it, the moment of truth. Quick as a mouse, I peeked my head around the corner, I only needed a nano-second, and with my own two eyes, there were my parents, putting the final touches on some last minute gifts.
I also glimpsed a sweet, jet black batman bike.
It took everything in me not to jump around the corner and scream with laughter, and call them something imaginative at the time like you bunch of lying butt faces!
But I hesitated. If I knew Santa was fake, and let them know I was in on their game, would they stop giving me presents? Sweet Jesus did I hurry my little ass back to the bathroom, and turn that faucet off.
"I'm going back to bed Mom," I called out from the doorway of my bedroom. Her response I don't quite remember, though I’m sure it was something of the usual. I was too busy fantasizing about my new batman bike.
If all I had to do was act good to get presents...then all I had to do was not get caught doing anything bad. As I sat there thinking about their lie, contemplating what else they were lying about, a thought sprung into my head.
What if God was nothing more than a lie to control big people?
Except God didn't give you presents like Santa did if you were good. If you were good, he would let you live forever in heaven after you died. And my heart cringed, that big people had to wait that long being good just to die.
That night, logic and reason led me to a struggle I would battle for the rest of my life. To question faith, to question authority, is a treacherous path...
I don't remember how old I was, I had to be young, it's one of my earliest memories. It was Christmas, and I was lying in bed, restless, waiting for my presents. I had a love for Batman and Ninja Turtles I remember fondly, a love for people getting their asses whipped in the name of justice.
I also had something else. A natural born skepticism .
You see I didn't believe in Santa Claus. I had a strong suspicion that my parents were lying to me to make me behave. This I understood, so I played a long of course, to get my presents. I was just missing one thing...proof.
This I learned from Matlock and Night Court I think. You had to have proof.
So, lying in bed, a planned formed in my growing sponge of a brain. I knew my parents were in the living room, they said they had to make sure we kids were in bed, otherwise Santa wouldn't stop by.
I suspected otherwise.
"Mom!" I cried out. "I'm thirsty, can I get some water?"
From down the hall she replied back, "Yeah just get some from the bathroom, use the little Dixie cups...Don't come in the living room!"
"Okay!" I said, and then sprung into action. I leaped from bed, hurried to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. I knew they could hear me, I needed cover so they couldn't hear my approach. With the faucet on I hurriedly crept down the wall with my back to it, being as stealthy as I could in my G.I. Joe underwear.
I could hear sounds of paper crunching, wrapping paper no doubt. I stopped at the edge of the hall, right beyond was the living room. This was it, the moment of truth. Quick as a mouse, I peeked my head around the corner, I only needed a nano-second, and with my own two eyes, there were my parents, putting the final touches on some last minute gifts.
I also glimpsed a sweet, jet black batman bike.
It took everything in me not to jump around the corner and scream with laughter, and call them something imaginative at the time like you bunch of lying butt faces!
But I hesitated. If I knew Santa was fake, and let them know I was in on their game, would they stop giving me presents? Sweet Jesus did I hurry my little ass back to the bathroom, and turn that faucet off.
"I'm going back to bed Mom," I called out from the doorway of my bedroom. Her response I don't quite remember, though I’m sure it was something of the usual. I was too busy fantasizing about my new batman bike.
If all I had to do was act good to get presents...then all I had to do was not get caught doing anything bad. As I sat there thinking about their lie, contemplating what else they were lying about, a thought sprung into my head.
What if God was nothing more than a lie to control big people?
Except God didn't give you presents like Santa did if you were good. If you were good, he would let you live forever in heaven after you died. And my heart cringed, that big people had to wait that long being good just to die.
That night, logic and reason led me to a struggle I would battle for the rest of my life. To question faith, to question authority, is a treacherous path...
