Dustin Reade's Blog, page 3
June 28, 2011
June 27, 2011
poking it provoked no response.
poking it provoked no response.
A Multitude of Burdens (or: Lost in the Woods)
He wanders through the woods, on a white sidewalk. The rain was really coming now. Harder than last time.
"HELLO!" he screamed. "HELLO!"
The trees were spaced far apart like a movie set. There seemed to be a tint of white, or rather, a mixture of white and light blue. Yes, that's it: a mixture of white and blue. Some of the trees even seemed to be wrapped in some sort of shiny metal. Tinfoil, perhaps.
"I hear you!" a voice called down to him. A loud, manly voice, with traces of an accent. English, perhaps? A Yorkshire accent, perhaps? Yes, that will do nicely. An English accent, calling down to him. Down? From where? A mountain? No, no. There is no mountain. Just the trees and the bizarre tint of white and blue. So, if there is no mountain, then where is it that the voice was coming from? Perhaps it came from some other direction? In front of him perhaps? A frontal English echo in the wind?
No. No use gilding the lily any longer, no more making excuses. The voice most definitely came from ABOVE him. Of that we can be sure. As to WHERE above him it came, well…no matter. It was a voice, and he took a small measure of comfort in that. Familiarity breeds content. No use arguing the facts. Nothing makes a person whom is lost feel better than the sudden presence of another person. Even if the other person turns out to be lost, there is a measure of comfort to being lost TOGETHER rather than being lost ALONE. One gets the idea that our character feels this way now.
To wit: a voice, definitely English, lost in the woods…no…Wait…we are getting ahead of ourselves. We have no way of knowing if this other voice, this person shall we say, is also lost. There is every possibility that this person is quite sure of where he is. Perhaps he is even possessed of a very concrete destination?
Yes, let us say that he knows exactly where he is going, and has stopped momentarily to call back to the voice he himself found floating in the space between the trees.
I quite like that: "the space between the trees".
I think I shall leave with that.
Yes, that, I think, is the end.
No no. that will not do. To end this now would leave too many questions. Or would it? Yes. Yes, I must believe that it would. And I have had it up to here with questions. So, where was I? Oh yes, the woods. The trees. The voice.
He looked up. He saw the half shaded figure of a man. The upper torso and the head visible, but the lower half, I believe it is called the "thorax"? Am I wrong? Yes, I think that refers more to insects. Nevertheless, the crotch and legs of the man were completely hidden in black.
God. This is awful.
"Hello?" he called. "Are you really up there?" what a foolish thing for him to say! Could he not see with his own eyes that this man, partially hidden though he may be, was at least in fact THERE? Of course he could. But one says the strangest things while lost and scared. As when one is lost and has been thusly disposed for some time, say, a span of two or three days, and has had no food. The sudden appearance of a, oh, I don't know, a plate of cheese for instance, would most likely make one inclined to throw out some bizarre comment. Say, "Well, THAT'S odd". As if someone else were near by and needed to be made aware of the fact that a plate of cheese in the middle of nowhere were far from common place.
He looked up at the shadowed man ("the shadowed man"?). Confused and cold.
"Of course I am," the man said. Because of the interruptions, we cannot be sure why he said this. Most likely, it was said in response to the aforementioned remark of "are you really up there?" voiced by our character.
I no longer enjoy this. No more characters. We shall give them names. Let's see. For our character? Jeff? Yes. Yes, the name Jeff sounds like it would be the perfect name. It is no stretch of the imagination to think someone with a name like JEFF would get lost in the woods quite often. And for the shadow man? How about Argosy? Yes. I do not like it but it will have to do. Perhaps, if there is time, we shall return to it later and give him a better name. But for now it is of little importance.
"How did you get up there?" Jeff asked Argosy.
"I come up here quite often," Argosy said arrogantly, and isn't that just like Argosy?
"Behind me," he continued, "there is a small stair way. Don't look for it, it is hard to find, and in this darkness you are liable to fall and hurt yourself."
"I am not a child," Jeff said, perhaps a bit offended. "I can hurt myself if I choose, thank you!"
"Well," Argosy said, a bit angry at Jeff's snooty tone. "No use getting all in a huff!"
He suddenly turned and was gone. Leaving Jeff to the wilderness. The eerie calm of the midnight hours. The tinfoil trees branching out into pure skyline.
Jeff sat.
Lost.
People can so rarely get along.
June 26, 2011
Augustus
(Note: This story originally appeared in the Static Movement Anthology "Unquiet Earth: An Anthology of Zombie Flash")
Augustus Parle studied the tree line stretching out before him with a growing sense of unease. Over the tree tops the sun was setting, giving the whole forest a dark red bath that filtered through the massive stumps and bushes in long, eerie shadows, and made the whole forest seem made up of thin, skeletal fingers. With a deep breath, he spurred his horse forward, into the thickness of the woods. He gave himself time to take in all the usual wilderness sounds. He heard a rabbit skitter into its burrow, and in the distance he could hear a creek trickling over rocks and fallen logs. He listened carefully, taking in every sound, cataloguing everything from the fall of the horse's hoof beats, to the dwindling birdsong.
The horse could smell the water, so Augustus let it lead him to the creek. As they drank, Augustus checked his rifle, wiped it down with an oiled rag, and wiped the horse down with a dry towel.
"The way I figure it," he said to the horse, a habit he'd fallen into months ago, in lieu of anyone else to talk to, "We've come about fifty miles. Not too bad, considering."
They had only encountered three Zombies since leaving the Yakima area the day before, where he'd encountered none. That area was still fairly well populated with militias and soldiers. Yakima was the perfect size for billeted soldiers; it was big enough to afford all the creature comforts, and small enough to allow a small enough regiment adequate protection on all sides. Since hitting the mountains, however, Augustus had seen no one, living or dead.
Sitting down beside the creek, his back to a tree, he checked the map, tracing his finger up the thin blue lines. At best estimate, he figured them to be somewhere around Leavenworth, somewhere near the Snoqualmie summit. He could not be sure, having come this way only two times before the outbreak, and those times as a young child, riding in the backseat of the family SUV.
He figured they would reach Port Angeles in two days time, three at most. Supposedly, the menace had never reached that far. There were rumors of farms, and good hunting in the mountains. Plus, with the ocean right there you could fish or escape and that was worth something.
Augustus stood up, folded the map and put it safely back in the saddlebag. He led his horse twenty yards from the creek. He knew enough not to set up camp beside the water. Animals would no doubt be coming around throughout the night, and not just deer and raccoon, there were cougars in the area, bears too.
He built a small fire, stretching a tarp over it to keep the smoke down. The rest would be filtered through the trees. Maintaining a low profile was the key to survival. Not just from the undead, either. People, too. The outbreak had turned them paranoid.
Paranoid people are scared people.
Scared people are dangerous.
"And anyway," Augustus said, drinking the last of his coffee and bedding down in his sleeping bag, "the towns around here are all pitiful little things; some with populations under a hundred. The way I figure it, we should be fairly safe here."
The horse said nothing. Augustus pulled his rifle into the sleeping bag (which he never zipped shut), closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep. In the darkness, after only a few hours of sleep, he was awakened by the sound of twigs breaking roughly ten yards from the fading red embers of the campfire.
He leaped to his feet, rifle up to his shoulder.
"Who's out there?" he said quietly, not wanting to give away more about his location was necessary. If it was an animal, it would simply run away. If it was a human, it would either announce itself or turn tail and run.
The bushes came alive, shaking and rustling like a plastic bag caught up in the wind.
"Uuuuuuunnnnnngh!" It was a zombie. The cry was unmistakable, starting at the bottom of the lungs and growing in intensity as the stale air was forced from the creature's rotten, useless lungs.
Augustus dropped to one knee, keeping the fire between the zombie and himself. Within a moment, the Damned Thing tore loose from the bushes. It was a long time dead. Augustus could see the tattered bits of clothing clinging in vain at the rotted arms and legs. Somewhere along the line someone had taken a shot at it, as could be seen from the gaping hole in its chest, through which Augustus could make out the dim outline of the trees behind.
Without a word he raised the rifle, sighting a decayed bit of flesh between the zombie's eyes in the crosshairs, and fired. The zombie staggered a brief moment before falling to the moist earth. Augustus rose, and pulling a hammer and screwdriver from the saddle bag, went and knelt beside the putrid corpse.
Carefully, he placed the 'x'-shaped tip of the screwdriver against the back of the beast's head and brought the hammer down against the handle, driving the screwdriver into the zombie's blackened, pulpy brains. He then began swirling the screwdriver around in a small circle, making sure the brains were completely destroyed.
The sky was still dark, with a toenail-shaped moon casting a dim blue light over the forest floor. Augustus walked back to his sleeping bag, reloaded his rifle, and instantly fell into a deep sleep, almost as black and empty as the night itself. The zombie lay still, in the impossible immobility of death. Overhead, the first of the birds began a scattered, tired song.
moments later, he died.
moments later, he died.
Slowly, the transformation overtook him.
Slowly, the transformation overtook him.
