R.W. Krpoun's Blog, page 34

The myth of maturity

When I was small I knew what being an adult meant, because I had closely observed my father. It meant being tall, needing to shave, knowing what to do and how to do things, to wear red and black flannel shirts when hunting or fishing, and to use a .30-06 rifle. This made perfect sense for a boy shorter than the aforementioned rifle.

Half a century later I have several .30-06 rifles in my collection (one of which was my father’s), I am tall, and I shave every day. I can figure out what needs to be done, and I know how to do many things. I’ve served as a soldier, a police officer, and a police supervisor, and have faced many instances of violence and personal danger.

Yet somewhere still within me is the boy who carefully complied the standards , and he is dissatisfied with my progress. My father was all business all the time, serious and a man who always acted his age. Always.

He wouldn’t own a game platform, read so many books, collect battle-ready medieval weapons, train with the same, or waste his time writing books, and the inner me never lets me forget it. Wounded seven times in the line of duty for nation or city since 1980 just isn’t cutting it.

They say every man struggles to emerge from his father’s shadow, and I certainly have. His childhood was tougher, his war was bigger, his life more productive. I have bested many men in my life in many ways, many of them violent, a few of them terminally, but my father remains forever ascendant. Compared to him I am still a boy caught up in the pursuit of childish things.

In a back closet of my home is a battered old red and black flannel shirt. My mother put it out in our annual yard sale one year for twenty-five cents, and I bought it without anyone noticing. I have carted it around for decades in the hope that someday I will be able to put it on with the sure knowledge  that I am at last and fully an adult.

It hasn’t happened yet, but I still hope.

 

 

Hammering away on a sequel to Dream

After very positive responses to the release of my gaming fantasy novel Dream (a real value at $1.99!) I began thinking about a sequel. This wasn’t easy because I had envisioned it as a stand-alone book.

Last weekend the muddled plot ideas and bits & pieces (you can refer to the post on my process, such as it is, for an overview if you really need to kill some time) finally came together, and yesterday I started crunching words.

it is both liberating and terrifying to begin a book: it is freedom from the value judgments about plots, story arcs, and characters, and terror over the burden of choosing the opening paragraphs, trying for a hook to grab the reader and propel them into the story.

I plan to post the first chapter of the (very rough draft) new manuscript in a few days in the hopes that I will get some feedback.

In the meantime, feel free to examine the 20% free portion of Dream HERE.

 

The value of experienced events

“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull” Mark Twain/Samuel Clements

The golden rule is to write what you know, and any avid reader knows that to be true. Writers of fiction, especially fantasy or science fiction occasionally succumb to the idea that because the world is of their making they need do no research.

Nothing is further from the truth. I’ve already talked about world-building and the value of drawing upon history, and now I would like to address the issue of building the writer. The writer makes the story, and what he or she knows will come through much more clearly than what they have imagined or been told.

So it is incumbent upon a writer to seek out experience that will translate into descriptive text which will speak with authority. Writing scenes of violent combat? Get a baseball bat or an Army surplus machete for ten bucks, and go whack a tree with it (as with any undertaking, keep in mind that staying out of jail is worth that extra little bit of planning and consideration). Whack that tree trunk until the zombie, orc, or villain is defeated, then race over and whack another. Later when you describe the combat scene the descriptive text will flow like a river. If you do not own firearms, try paintball, especially milsim style. It can open your eyes.

Seek some of the experiences your hero has. Obviously you can’t have all, nor need to, but pick a few and try them. A friend who wrote action fiction had me handcuff him because that happened to his protagonist in his current work. He hadn’t intended to be left that way for an hour, but it was a valuable experience and one which will serve him well throughout his career.

Go hiking, preferably in the rain, snow, or heat; it will teach you what a mile really feels like. See if you can be part of a tour of your local jail or prison. Learn to throw a knife (its not easy, BTW). Work a punching bag. Get friends to chase you zombie-style, or just chase you as if with hostile intent (its different than just running). Explore abandoned buildings (as with any undertaking, keep in mind that staying out of jail is worth that extra little bit of planning and consideration), check out alleys and secluded areas in your area. A good writer can find color and description in anything and everything.

Experience is always valuable, no matter how trivial. To me walking along a creek in a chilly rain would bring forth thoughts of desperate battle on bad footing and the screams of the dying as they thrash on the muddy ground, while a writer of romances might see a happy couple running to shelter under a lovely tree.

Putting words on paper is just the mechanics; the best writers live first, and then write.

Tripod’s Saga

I live in the country, on a number of lakefront acres remote from all others. My wife, a very soft touch where cats are involved, has been feeding a few stray cats who live in the area. She feeds them on our front porch, which runs nearly the length of our house. For convenience she keeps the sack of dry food inside a propane grill next to the front door.

One night a few weeks ago I was sitting in the living room watching TV and while fast-forwarding through commercials I heard an odd noise out front. Turning on the porch light I stepped outside.

The noise was caused by and adult raccoon standing on the support bars of the back of the grill in the manner of a kid climbing monkey bars. He was reaching through the narrow gap between the grill lid and body between the hinges, tearing apart the sack of food, and extracting handfuls of food.

I looked at him. He looked back at me with what I can only describe as calm confidence. There was five feet between us.

I said, “Get lost,” and slapped the bricks by the door. He returned to extracting and eating food.

I slapped the wall again, and still chewing he shot me a look like “I’m trying to work here.”

Amazed, I got my wife to come see him. Eventually he got tired of the attention and left, sauntering off as if to suggest that he knew of better places to be.

I put the cat food inside a plastic container inside the grill, and although I heard him banging around the lid of the grill a couple times later, that extra level of defense stymied him.

Then one night I heard the sound of metal on metal, which was very out of place. Stepping outside (armed), I saw the raccoon on the back of the grill again. Only this time he had a steel trap locked on his right front forearm; I had been hearing the trap’s anchoring chain rattling against the propane tank.

He had chewed his right wrist through, losing the paw, and was much skinnier than he had been before, but what hit me the most was his bearing-his eyes were wide and fearful, and he crouched in fear as he desperately scrabbled inside the grill. Gone were the easy confidence and swagger I had seen before.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then he clumsily hopped down and hobbled away at best speed, dragging the trap.

I’ve been a police officer for close to thirty years, and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, but that experience unsettled me. I have always loathed steel traps in any case, but I have never seen their terror at such a point-blank range.

I’m no bleeding heart- I’ve shot a lot of varmints, but I’ve always done my own killing and its always been as quick as a well-developed shooting skill can make it.

At work I located a rescue service for raccoons and at home I set out a box ‘catch em alive’ humane trap out on the front porch. I also went hunting for steel traps and even more importantly, whoever was putting them out.

My trap caught most of the freeloading feral cats my wife was feeding and one fat raccoon with all four legs, but no sign of the one I was looking for. I gave up on the trap but left a bowl of dry food out at night on the off-chance that he had survived and would come by. I got into the habit of checking out the door periodically to look for him.

Finally I looked out one evening and there he was: thinner, but glossy of fur and sans the trap, his paw-less limb tucked protectively against his belly as he limped to the bowl of cat food. He was still skittish, but he didn’t look as haunted as before. I christened him Tripod, and watched for him to make his nightly visits.

He devoured Iams dry food, leftover Thanksgiving turkey, Fancy Feast canned cat food and Cheetos. He got confident enough to eat with me or my wife sitting a dozen feet away, and has gotten pretty nimble and quick despite functioning on a three-wheel drive.

Two nights ago he brought a date to dinner, and when he eyeballed me I saw a touch of the brass and swagger of our first meeting. He is moving forward with his life; the trap cost him, but he has paid up and is pressing on with the business of living. There’s a lot of courage in that little body.

Last night he showed his gratitude for weeks of fine dining by stealing the stainless steel bowl we used for the food. I’m sure I’ll find it when it interacts with sixty buck’s worth of blades on my riding lawnmower.

He’s out there right now sleeping off a night’s foraging, curled up in a ball in some leaf-filled hollow inside a greenbrier tangle, perhaps snuggled up with his lady friend. I hope he understands he has an ally in the brick house, that someone is cheering him on.

But he’s going to be eating off paper bowls in the future

The importance of the supporting cast in fiction

Primary characters need little outside advice-writers have their own standards and standards, as the primary character(s) are their primary interface with the plot and often are a reflection of aspects of their own personality. Key villains and antagonists are likewise built around the plot.

But the secondary characters are important, too; they are crucial to the depth of the story and the strength of the plot. Often they only get a brief introduction and small opportunities to be revealed as people, but they are important all the same. Depth and color make the novel, and the best writers are those who can convey a strong impression of a person in a single paragraph.

A weakness many writers have is the development of patterns in setting-as we crunch out our books we find ourselves grabbing the same stereotypes as we create the bit players in our books. This can discourage our fans, and should be avoided.

When you’re tossing in a short interaction between a primary character and a bit player, have something ready. Use a friend, family member, co-worker, acquaintance, your insurance agent, elementary school teacher, or a customer from your last job. If nothing else, the next time you’re in Target or Wal Mart or wandering through a mall, study the passers-by and jot a few notes. There’s a million stories in every city, so why strain your creative powers and risk a pattern showing up when there is a world full of free random examples?

Writers invent/develop plots and arcs, but real life provides you with limitless support material. Exploit that resource, and your books will benefit.

Createing your world

World-building is essential to a good fantasy or science fiction story, as much as characters or plot. What fan of GRR Martin would deny that Westros is as much a part of the Game of Thrones as Jon Snow?

My Phantom Badgers novels (five so far) and the unrelated novel Chains of Honor are all set in the same world of my own creation. The effort of creating this background tapestry was sizeable, but I feel that it was worthwhile.

Build more than you need

Assemble the facts of your world separate of your story, and detail it more than is needed. That way when you set your plot against it the reader will have the sensation of a greater whole, which is very compelling. Likewise the business of writing will not be interrupted when your plot wanders off the ‘colored-in’ portion of your world.

Design nations like characters

Don’t just draw lines on a map. Note down the spirit of the place, and flesh it out. Why is living in nation A different than in nation B? Little details, like the coinage and a few hints of clothing styles can help immerse the reader. As an example, much of the Phantom Badger series takes place in the Eisenalder Empire; over the course of the books I mention that in the Empire non-noble women habitually wear a decorative shawl. This factoid crops up in virtually every one of the novels, often several times, and instills a touch of continuity and color. Its not something a reader needs to lock into his or her memory, but it certainly ought to convey a touch of familiarity when they come across it in the various stories.

What do natives of a given nation think of other nations, and what do other nations think of that nation? It certainly doesn’t have to be true, but such stereotypes are a part of Human nature as old as Mankind. Create them and use them.

What are a given nation’s perceived threats, and how has that impacted that nation? To continue with my example, the Eisenalder Empire’s north border is a cold plains populated by hostile non-Humans. This means a steady low-grade conflict along the entirety of the border. Because of this the Empire has a military dedicated to professionalism and flexibility, and it has a great interest in good internal roads (for the rapid movement of troops). Therefore in line of prisons convicts spend their sentences building and maintaining roadways. The Empire distrusts its Human neighbors, but with a long bloody border to secure it avoids any suggestion of conflict anywhere else. The Kingdom of Arturia, immediately south of the Empire, has much fewer issues with hostile non-Humans, both in frequency and scope. Their military is much more irregular, traditional, and smaller, and their emphasis on roads much less marked. Imperial citizens see Arturians as lazy, vain, and pretentious, while Arturians see Imperial citizens as grim, uncultured, and hasty.

Do not forget any demi-Humans; you can’t simply file off the serial numbers on medieval Europe, toss in a fistful of elves or Dwarves, and call it a setting. You have to ask yourself why the forest-loving Elves ad the wood-using Men haven’t killed each other by now.

Pay close attention to your villains

In fantasy especially the enemy gets a great deal of attention. Design your hostile races carefully. Are they just funny-looking Humans, or are they different beasts entirely? What are their motivations? Why are they hostile to Humans? How do they like to fight? How do they mark successes in battle and glory in war? Why are they a threat? Why haven’t the Humans destroyed them? What do they eat, how do they dress? What do they think of each other? Are the forces of Evil a monolithic block, or do they feud and fight amongst themselves?

What about your evil/enemy humans? What do they value, what sets them apart from the forces of good? How do they identify each other/ what do they think of each other? Make them something other than enemy red shirts.

The more depth you put into your villains, the more depth to your plot. Always remember that competence is not a virtue only of the good, and that evil does not equate into stupid. Think Anthony Harris playing Hannibal Lector: there is a villain worthy of the name. Insane, yet cunning, skilled, and extremely dangerous.

Languages

This can get away from a writer very easily. On the other hand, you are going to need something to lift your setting above all the others, and a bit of foreign lingo is just the ticket. In my setting, I assigned a real-life language to each nation and race, and drew upon them when I needed to toss in a word in a native language. That way the words you use sound and are structurally alike. Don’t go overboard because your reader is not going want to have to remember a dozen definitions just to follow the story, but a word here or there, especially something commonly used, won’t hurt.

Inspiration

A good fiction writer should be on the hunt for new data at all time. Besides reading history (the Emperor’s Ward was inspired by descriptions of defensive works that ran the length of the Rhine during the latter part of Roman rule) I watch documentaries, especially those on Sundance and Spigot, although NatGeo and the History Channel are not neglected. It doesn’t matter if I agree with the thrust of the show; in fact, I prefer ones which I do not agree with, because that exposes me to attitudes and viewpoints to which I would not otherwise encounter. Remember, you’ll need villains as well as heroes. The golden rule is to write what you know, but there is no limit to what you can learn.

 

Your world setting is the stage upon which your fantasy or sci-fi work will play out, so do not skimp on the props and scenery. A good production is the sum of its part.

Normal (Short Story)

My mother called me Martin Shillings because of my eyes, which are a flat gray, and because she had a deep love of British authors. I’ve used that name several times since, and as much as I think of myself in terms of a name, that is the name I use.

They killed my family when I was eight-they missed me because I had been hiding from my sister in a clothes basket and had dozed off. The screams paralyzed me, not that I would have done anything useful had I emerged. I saw them, though, as they prowled around.

The couple they put me with adopted me-they had wanted kids but couldn’t manage it. I wasn’t any trouble, but I wasn’t what they hoped for, either, so they picked up another kid a couple years later who was more the cuddly sort they wanted. They didn’t ignore me, but they gave me the room I needed to function, and that’s about as good as it gets. They are great people, and I’ve been extremely careful never to go within two hundred miles of them since I left home.

I needed room to function because I had seen the people who had done for my family-just walking corpses, dead people up and moving around. The police agreed solemnly with my descriptions and nice people asked a lot of questions while hunkering down to my level. It was all very kind, and even in my stunned state a tiny bit of me eventually realized it would do well to shut the hell up about the deaders.

One reason was because while I was seeing the walking dead, other people did not-lucky for me kids are expected to say stupid things. It was hard to understand back then, but I came to realize that other people could not see the deaders. Oh, they saw them, but where I saw a slack-jawed corpse with rotting patches where the skin was thin and eyes that were flat and dull like a shark’s, and yet knowing at the same time, they saw a homeless person, or a man with a limp.

As I grew older I started keeping notes on what I saw, partially because I thought I might be crazy, and partly because the walking dead seemed to have a purpose or pattern-some even seemed to hold menial jobs. They didn’t rot fast, and their smell wasn’t nearly as bad as it should be. I collected a goodly number of facts but nothing that tied them all together. I did notice that I never saw a person that I knew become one of the walking dead, and I never saw the walking dead interact with the living, not in any meaningful sense. They shambled about as if extras in a major production, providing numbers and movement without really taking part in the core story.

I filled a dozen notebooks between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, took tons of photos, and none of it really pulled together. After three years I had a bunch of details but no big picture, other than there were dead walking around that only I could see as being dead.

In the end, I decided I had an issue, a complex from what happened to my family, some sort of delayed stress thing. It was harmless. I could live with it. So I quit with the notebooks and concentrated on being normal.

That lasted six months. I still saw the deaders, but I just ducked and adverted like people did with the homeless, and kept on keeping on. I started to talk to a girl, Norma, in school. I think I liked her name the best: it sounded like normal.

I think on that sometimes, especially when its late or I’m feeling echoes of old injuries: about the two-hundred-odd days when I sort of had a girlfriend and was starting to ‘hang out’, learning about bands and songs and style. Shifting from being the weird quiet kid the security guy always watched as I came through the metal detectors into one of the normal ones.

***

My brief foray into normalcy ended abruptly one damp May afternoon, a cool day under low-hanging gray clouds that sucked all the life out of the world. I was cutting across a big empty lot where some buildings had been torn down when I almost walked into a deader, as in I almost bumped into it. It had been coming around a bit of old wall and I had been walking with my head down, walking fast.

Peripheral vision prevented an actual collision, but I looked up as I hopped to the side and we both looked at each other. I had never attracted a deader’s attention before, I never had been this close to one, and I was badly startled.

We looked at each other, and it knew. I saw that, its eyes sharpened and focused. It knew that I saw it, it knew that I saw what it was.

And it went for me. Damn near got me, too, but I was scared and quick and once I had a dozen foot lead there was no way it was going to catch me, but it tried to follow me for a long way. Trying to find out where I was going, I realized. Trying to find where I lived.

I never wore that jacket or those clothes again. I got a haircut, a close burr, before going home. The next day I bought the weakest pair of over-the-counter reading glasses they had at the Casco, and wore them occasionally.

And I quit trying to be normal. Being in a group might be safer because I would be harder to spot, but I also couldn’t watch, and something in the look of realization I had seen in that thing’s eyes made me believe that it wasn’t going to stop looking.

New notebooks with mottled black and white covers and the pages with cross-hatching lines on them, only this time I started listing where and when I saw deaders, and their descriptions, and more importantly, I started to follow them. I bought a pocket recorder so I could mutter details on the move and not be too obvious-I taped ear buds to it so onlookers would think it was an mp3 player and I was just singing along under my breath.

My first studies had just been notes based on observations of the deaders I saw day to day, quick glimpses into the problem that had created a disjointed mosaic of unrelated facts. My second study changed everything.

The most important thing was that I stopped wondering if I was crazy.

At first I chose one at random, one that was moving, and trailed it a few blocks. It was important to build up the skills needed to tail someone before I got serious, but even after the first couple tries it was clear to me that I had missed a huge amount of data in my first study.

The deaders seemed to wander around aimlessly, or to do jobs such as pushing a broom or gathering trash, but it quickly became apparent that their aimless-ness was pure sham. Their movements might be slow and rambling but they moved to definite destinations. They did not hold jobs, its just that no one questions someone picking up trash or carrying a package.

They were looking and watching, for what I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t take a great deal to realize they were moving like cattlemen tending a herd of cattle.

And they communicated, leaving scratched marks at certain places, symbols I copied, and later, staking out those places, I saw others examining or running their fingers over the marks, usually on easy-access places like mail drop boxes, light poles, and bus stop shelters.

The biggest thing I learned, the one that bought me my sanity at the price of greater horror, was that I wasn’t the only one who saw them.

***

Things had been hinting that way for a while-I was three months into the tailing business, doing it pretty much full-time since school ended with a lot of unpaid overtime tacked onto the week for good measure, and I was noticing things. Little things, but there were a couple people who seemed to be a shade too deliberate in not looking at the walking dead, while being a lot more alert to their surroundings than most.

Ditching the deader I had trailed halfway across town, I doubled back and examined the mark it had casually chalked in passing onto the concrete frame of a bus stop bench.

Swiping the lines onto the ball of my thumb with a Sharpie, I started to walk away when a dry voice spoke behind me. “The symbol means it’s being followed.”

The voice belonged to a heavyset man who kind of looked like Hemmingway in his later years, square-faced, bearded, and solemn, sitting on a low stone fence. He was short but solid, wearing an olive-drab panama style hat, one of those loose Mexican shirts, jeans, and heavy-duty sandals. He grinned a little, a hard smile without mirth. “It couldn’t make you, but it knew it was being tailed. You’re good, but a little shy of being great.”

My skin felt hot and tight-I just stood and stared, a whirlwind in my mind stripping me of my ability to speak.

His grin got a little bigger. “Cop a squat,” he jerked a thumb towards the fence. “You don’t want to draw any attention.”

Numbly I sat a couple feet from him, a thousand questions boiling in my mind.

“You think you were the only one?”

I shrugged. “Kinda. Lately, not so much-I think I see others not looking.”

“Yeah, that’s how it usually goes.” His eyes watched the street from beneath his hat while he talked, always moving. “A lot who start to see for whatever reason get shuffled off to a loony bin-it makes a lot of people crazy. And the carrion grab most of those who manage to avoid getting a funny jacket but don’t think to shut up quick. Me, I was lucky, I guess: my father could see ‘em, and when he realized I could, he schooled me.”

“They killed my family,” I blurted out, and started weeping, much to my chagrin.

“That’s what they do,” He nodded quietly. “In the end, that’s their purpose. You can call me Mike-its not my real name, but I like it.”

I managed to get a hold of myself fairly quickly, surprised to feel a knot inside me ease-I had been carrying it so long I had forgotten it was there. “Sam.” That was my brother’s name, but I took Mike’s caution seriously.

“There’s three sorts who can see them,” Mike produced a pen knife and cleaned his fingernails, eyes moving while he attended the simple task. I saw that the wide brim of his hat made it harder to see where he was looking, provided the wearer had the discipline to keep his head still. “There’s those who go crazy or talk too much and get snatched, there’s those who duck their heads and pretend, and then there’s the third sort. The third sort takes an interest, which if you’re not careful can lead to you getting killed.”

“You’re taking an interest.”

“Not so much any more. Was a time I studied them, but I lost interest. Now I hunt them.”

The words were spoken normally-in the movies there would be a significant close-up, or dramatic background music, but here it was just an old guy cleaning his nails with a little penknife whose handle was worn smooth and dark, talking in a low, even voice.

“You hunt them.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.” He had a bit of an accent, one he had worked to lose-it made me think of the southeast, maybe. “That’s what they do, after all. See, they’re like wolves-they circle the herd just out of sight, pick off loners, raid a family, do what they do. How many go missing every year? A lot, especially amongst the homeless, hookers, addicts. No body, no interest. And over half the regular murders never get solved.”

“How do you stay out of trouble?”

He grinned, almost a snarl. “You mean the police? Easy-I never break the law. Not ever. See, you pop one of them, and you gotta get it in the head to kill it, then in a second or two all you’ve got is the clothes it was standing in. Littering is the only law you break, so long as no one sees you.”

“What are they? What do they want?”

“I dunno for sure-what I think is that they’re what’s left on Earth after the fight between Satan and the hosts of Heaven, when the fallen were cast out. Some sort of lost foot soldiers like the Japanese troops they used to find on the Pacific islands long after World War Two. They’re still killing, still fighting for darkness, inhabiting corpses for a lack of anything better. Waiting for the end of times I guess, for the recall to the flag that will get them a rematch.”

I sat in silence for a while. “Why my family?”

He sighed. “They have some sort of pattern to their actions-they don’t just run amok. They’ll click along killing people no one misses and hiding the bodies, and then they’ll wipe out a group or family in some awful fashion. Then go back to doing the addicts and hookers. The only time they change from that is when they spot someone who can see them. Then they act, fast and mean. The ones here, they know a Seer is trailing them-I know their signs a bit. They’re looking for you, boy, and it ain’t to give you a present. They’ll kill you and anyone close to you.”

That sent chills down my spine-I didn’t want my adoptive parents to be endangered. “How close are they?”

“Not very-they can’t track too well by sight, a fella once told me they can tell gender and extreme variances in age, but they are color-blind, or at least see colors differently than we do. You can’t get careless around them, but they aren’t going to circulate sketches of you, either. They understand names, but not well enough to track you by the phone book. Me, I never use a moniker too long, just to be safe. Keep on the move, too. They can’t talk, but they do communicate somehow.”

“Are there many like you?”

“A few. Its an occupation with a high mortality rate-I’ve lasted a lot longer than most. But I’ve met a lot of Seers, and more than a few Hunters in my time.”

“How do you survive? With money, I mean.”

He grinned, and this one had steel in it. “They pay my way. They horde money and valuables-I don’t know why, and I suspect they don’t either. Check their clothes after you drop one. They’ve been funding me since,” pain flashed across his face. “Since one figured out my kid sister could See. Trick is, don’t look poor. A guy in dirty clothes with a backpack interests the police. A guy in a decent car staying at a hotel, now, that’s not someone who interests the police unless you’re close to the border.”

“How many have you hunted?”

“Ah, there’s the rub. Thing about them, you put down the shell. They find another corpse, and they’re back in business. I suspect that the others will kill just to free up a body for their comrades to grab. That’s why a Hunter has to keep moving-the more he kills, the more they have to work with when looking for him. It’s a losing game-sooner or later they find every Hunter.”

I thought about that. “So how do you hurt them? Really hurt them?”

“Kill them a lot-as in often. I met a Hunter from England who had worn out his welcome there, He was third generation in a manner of speaking-trained by a guy who had been trained, sort of an apprentice approach. He said the carrion get weaker every time they get put down and get a new body, not a lot, but permanently. Erosion type of thing. He had the journals from the first guy in his line, and the first guy described the carrion as being a lot faster and brighter. Other Hunters have said the same thing. I’ve been hunting twenty years, and I can say that you can see the difference in areas that had been hunted hard, and ones that hadn’t; the carrion are a bit more shop-worn where they’ve been hunted. You know how every culture has legends of vampires? There’s Hunters who think that they stem from the days when the carrion were a lot tougher and technology was lower. I think it feels right.”

I thought about this, questions sloshing around inside my skull. “I thought I was going crazy.”

“I know. But you’re not-just remember that sometimes the world is.” He passed me a small pocket notebook. “These’re the symbols that I’ve puzzled out or other Hunters have shown me. Keep it, I’ve got another copy.”

“Thanks. How come the government doesn’t know about this?”

“I think it does, to some degree. But can you imagine trying to explain it?”

“Yeah. If you can’t see it, it sounds… crazy.” That was a word I had never been comfortable with.

“Look, I know you’ve got a million questions, but I dropped two of your local carrion yesterday, and it will be bad for you to be seen with me. If you’re smart, you’ll find a town that doesn’t have many, and practice not looking at them. I can’t recommend my choice in life, Sam: its going to be the death of me, and a very ugly death at that.”

“I understand. Thanks, Mike.” He was right-I had a million questions burning inside me, and for the first time since my family I was with someone who understood what I felt. But the look in his eyes was real-this was a man one step ahead of the Angel of Death.

“Good luck, Sam.” He shook my hand, one firm dry clasp, and then he was up and sauntering away.

I headed off in the other direction.

***

I left town three days later. Using Mike’s list I quickly saw that they weren’t just aware of me, they were actively looking for a Seer who was trailing them. They knew Mike was around-he had his own symbol.

Leaving safeguarded my adoptive parents, and gave me time to think.

A week and three hundred miles later I killed my first deader. It had fifteen hundred dollars and a collection of jewelry on it, cheap stuff I left where it would be found.

***

I never saw Mike again, although I saw his symbol in a few towns over the next couple years. I’ve used that name on occasion out of respect. I have met Seers and a few Hunters, shared facts and guesses, explained a few things, and learned more. I have my own symbol now, the deaders know me by reputation, and they’ve gotten close several times.

They’ll get me sooner or later, just like they’ve gotten every Hunter. But in the meantime they’ll pay, and keep on paying. I think the erosion theory is real-although I’m older and lamed up a bit from many injuries, the walking dead seem to be less effective on the average than they were when I was young. I’ve eroded many dozens myself over the years-I’ve purged whole areas.

But it wouldn’t matter if they came back refreshed and stronger-I will keep killing them until the day they drag me down and rip me to pieces.

They should have just left us alone.

All I wanted was to be normal.

Numbers (Short Story)

Its all about numbers-that’s all life is, nothing more. You get born to clocks and calendars, strings of numbers that pin down the time, the place. School, there’s the grade, the period, the credits, all the same. That’s where they teach the secrets, two plus two, two plus three, two plus four.

All numbers. When my birthdays equaled eighteen I signed up to trade a number of months for a number of dollars, and they taught me traverse and elevation, degrees and grid, numbers and more numbers, all to put steel on target. When the months served equaled term of service, they sent me home.

I got a job, so many dollars for each sixty minutes, less what the government took away. It was OK. Quiet, moving materials in a warehouse. They offered me promotions, but I said no, thanks; I liked it in there, it was quiet and alone, just me and my forklift. The boss said I was reliable and serious and said he wished he had a dozen more like me. I hit the time clock when the numbers were aligned, in and out, and stayed home when I was off, sitting in the glow of the TV, choosing numbered channels for numbered time slots, keeping to myself.

Sometimes I would just sit in the dark and feel the numbers pull back, ease away, leave me in peace for a bit. Those were the best times.

***

I don’t know when it started, exactly-I came to it later than most. You see headlines, the tail end of news programs, serious people answering questions in front of a camera. Fighting in the Third World, then riots in the more industrial states, then Oakland and Oahu are convulsed in riots and New York has serious street crime issues. Rumors and cranks and wild claims.

I went to work one day and the car radio said that martial law was being declared in eleven US cities. On the ride home they said the President would address the nation on all channels at seven.

It was a virus, he said, it was hijacking people’s brains and causing them to go insane and attack everyone. The problem was in hand, he assured us, the infected couldn’t use guns and were pretty mindless.

It wasn’t bad at first-they stomped hard and the problem would get under control, then flare up again elsewhere. I got a letter, a mass printing: the President was calling up the Inactive Ready Reserve, and was summoned to put my old training to new uses.

On the time and date indicated I was at the assigned address, where they checked the numbers for my height and weight and blood pressure, stamped the nine digits of my social security number onto two metal tags, and sent me and a number of others to a row of trucks to be handed the same number of uniforms, field gear, and finally a weapon (write the serial number and the stock number there, sign on line forty-nine, date on line fifty).

***

We dealt with the outbreaks, patrolled looking for escaped vectors, expended ammunition and soldiers and received fresh supplies of both. They cut basic and AIT down to twelve weeks, then six, then two, and finally they just shoved kids into uniforms.

Eventually we ran out of uniforms.

I led a squad, then a platoon, and at the last I was the only guy in the Company that had soldiered pre-Virus. I don’t know if the paperwork for my commission really went through, but it didn’t matter because my Company was not much more than fifty troops when I took over, and was down to seven when the radios went quiet.

***

We put down the outbreaks, but every outbreak cost us, and the replacements were not as well-trained as the troops they replaced, and after a while the number of replacements was less than the battle losses and desertions. We took down fifty for every one we lost, but as time passed it became a losing game, and eventually we stopped putting down the outbreaks and just struggled to extract the uninfected and contain the virus.

Then we just covered the withdrawals of the uninfected as they fled to safe zones, and then we just fought. Supplies and replacements dried up, so we salvaged and recruited as we could.

Eventually the orders stopped coming, and a few left, but the rest of us kept fighting-there didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

***

Ironman, Sergeant Troy Gusen of Bulwark,Florida, so named because he looked like the actor in the movie, an Air Force Forward Air Controller who came to us after the jets stopped flying. He was dapper, thoughtful, and funny, and if I was the brains of the outfit he was the heart, the one who kept us all moving.

Doug, Private First Class Debra Quinn, a chunky girl with red hair and freckles and an irritating laugh who hailed from upstate New York. She liked automatic weapons, and got her nickname from a comic strip, although I was never clear which or why. The others tended to say her nickname with a particular lowered note, lots of emphasis on the ‘D’, for reasons unknown to me.

Ratfink-his real name was Private Barry Oldsmoore from Dayton,Ohio, but he had this sticker of a deranged rat on his load-bearing vest and the name stuck. He was one of the last replacements to reach us, having had seventeen days’ service in the US Army from taking the oath to assignment to a combat unit. He was a crazy tow-headed kid who loved the Net and knew a hundred ways to modify stuff into improvised explosives, a skill which was worth more than a dozen PhDs in our brave new world.

Seth, a tall, rangy black guy from the Northwest, quiet, introspective, a wanderer we picked up in the days before the radios went silent. He never talked about the past, never expressed interest in the future, but he did well enough in the present.

Doughboy, as we called him, an overweight multi-racial kid from Phoenix who was forever footsore and a constant consumer of anything with sugar in it. We found him in a bus stop the same day we got the last draft of untrained replacements. He wasn’t much in a fight, but he was a good scrounger, and as the circle tightened we didn’t throw anyone away.

Jessa, who was a tall, plain girl with washed-out blond hair and sad eyes, too quiet to ever be noticed in the world before; a colorless native of New Orleans. She was part of a hospital we evacuated, and she stuck around after, serving as a medic since Doc Brown had off’d himself. She and I had a thing going, more need than felt, but what the hell.

***

We kept racking up the body count after the radios went silent, luring in mobs of the zeds into kill zones packed with Ratfink’s best work. We burned ‘em, blasted ‘em, and buried them in collapsed buildings. We put down hundreds across the Midwest, salvaging food, fuel, and firepower as we went, and made our fun as best we could.

Doughboy went first, might have been a heart attack, might have been a panic attack, but whatever it was it stalled him right in the face of a hungry mob at a town square southeast of Des Moines. Ratfink went next, a mis-mixed batch of explosive turning him into wet confetti in a warehouse in Red Oak, Iowa.

Doug got hers in Alliance, Nebraska making a stand to save Ironman and Seth when a car alarm tripped unexpectedly and we got swarmed before we had the kill zone fully prepped.

Without Doug on the SAW and Ratfink on the boom-boom our enthusiasm for ambushes waned, and I directed us towards McCook, down near the Kansas line, tracking a report of a group of survivors having established a colony.

There was a holding there, but something had gone wrong, and the number of zeds killed was less than the number who were attacking, so there was nothing for us. Seth shot himself a couple days into Kansas.

We got jumped while scrounging gas in Alina, Kansas, and Ironman got separated from us. He didn’t answer his radio after that, and after three days of circling back and trying to search for him Jessa and I moved on, heading south.

In Denton, Texas we found a place some survivors had set up-the people had moved on, but left a message and a fair amount of supplies. We lived there for three weeks, needing a rest after a very rough eight months.

***

On a numbered day, at a numbered hour, we were in the numbered aisle of a building with a numbered street address, scrounging food. And a number of zeds rushed us. Ironic, really: after the numerous ambushes we had mounted, the last ambush we were involved in was sprung upon us.

We were not easy meat-we fell back with the efficiency of bitter practice, one firing, the other moving, each in turn. They cut us off from the front, and we fell back into the unlit stockroom, our weapon-mounted lights making the darkness and danger surreal. Somewhere in the thirty yards between the store interior and the hard sunlight of the loading dock Jessa went. I didn’t see her go, didn’t see the flashlight moving or lying immobile on the floor. She was firing, I moved, sweeping the way ahead of me to make sure it was clear, turned to fire…and she was gone. No light, no desperate screaming, no last volley of shots, nothing.

She might have cut her light and ducked down the rows of boxed goods, her light may have failed and she had gone down under a rush of zeds-there was no telling. I had my hands very full of trying to keep them off me without a second shooter.

Coming off the loading dock I got a jolt of white-hot pain up my left leg, and was barely able to hobble to an abandoned cargo truck and drag the doors shut.

I can see through three holes in the truck body, rust-weakened patches I opened up with my knife. I have zero water, one unswollen ankle, five remaining cartridges, and at least nine zombies waiting for me to come out.

Its all about numbers.

Social structure in a zombie epidemic

The collapse of a society in the event of a zombie outbreak of any sort is inevitable should the causative agent reach multiple points in a nation before the problem is detected.

Events such as Katrina shattered the local infrastructure but were contained because its limited scope in terms of the nation meant that organizations from outside the affected area to restore order.

In a zombie outbreak the very nature of the outbreak will strike hardest at the medical and emergency responder fields. Besides this high attrition of trained specialists, the impact on the organizations as a whole will be threatened. Will the average EMT, firefighter, nurse, or police officer remain on duty in the face of a rapidly-worsening crisis, or will they depart to secure the safety of their families?

Some will stay, some will have no significant attachments, and others will either arrange for their families to get to safety without them, or return to duty once their families are safe, but the disruption to the organization is obvious.

The military will be equally affected. While the troops at the cutting edge will likely stand their ground due to the immediate danger, it will be tough for a mechanic or supply clerk in the support environs to do his job in Nevada or Iowa when his family in Texas is exposed to attacks by the walking dead.

Modern society is a highly complex structure that requires the daily interaction of scores of governmental and private organizations to function. As history shows us, it can adjust to temporary dislocations (Katrina) and prolonged disruptions (the various strategic bombing campaigns), but it has never faced anything akin to a zombie outbreak, where the effects will be most dynamic where people are most concentrated.

While zombies are vulnerable when faced by a modern military, those militaries require an extensive logistics ‘tail’ to support them, and a functioning society as a foundation.

Therefore for society a zombie outbreak is truly a ‘death from within’ if it is allowed to expand to multiple points before the government is aware of what is going on. On the other hand, if governmental awareness is fulfilled while the outbreaks are limited in a number of areas, it is possible in the post-9/11 era that they could be contained.

Zombies: the head shot quandary, or, what the smart survivor will be carrying

If you are to write zombie fiction, the story will inevitably involve combat with zombies, and there is where too many zombie stories break down. A wise author will carefully ponder the issue of the specialized nature of putting down zeds.

When dealing with a zombie threat, we have to examine the circumstances of the attack:

Single or small number When facing one to three zeds the survivor should think of speed of employment. Melee weapons are quick, but they expose the user to blood splatter and the risk of infection, and require a high degree of conviction and physical strength. The plus side of melee is that there is no requirement to reload, minimal skill level, and they are easy to come by. Avoid power tools because of the noise and spray; whenever possible, stick with blunt objects. The baseball bat is a favorite, while the crowbar, albeit heavy, can also be used as a universal key. However, remember that they are exhausting to use. Get a baseball bat and whack a tree a few times to get the feel of the act.

Firearms are a survivor’s best friend, and in the USA they are easy to come by and fairly easy to feed. Close in against limited targets, a shotgun is perfect for an adult large enough to handle recoil; semi-autos are faster, but a pump action is more reliable. Double barreled weapons should be avoided as zeds have been known to come in groups of three or more. Revolvers and semi-automatic handguns also work well against a few targets or close-in.

Larger groups When facing larger mobs of zeds the survivor should look for magazine capacity, speed of reload, and rate of fire. In this scenario the .223/5.56mm assault rifle (in semi-auto) is the number one choice, as it fills all three categories to the T. While the ultra-common .22 Long Rifle is lightweight, easy to use, a decent skull-popper, and in the case of such weapons as the Ruger 10/22 carbine, fast to reload, these weapons should be avoided unless nothing else is available. The rim-fire .22 cartridge is highly susceptible to jamming in semi-auto weapons, particularly when employed in rapid fire.

Shotguns are too slow to reload, as are revolvers. Semi-auto pistols are decent if the shooter is skilled, and for taking out zeds go for lighter calibers such as 9mm for minimized recoil and larger magazine capacity. Conversely, man-stopping calibers such as .45 ACP firing hollowpoints could be used to target torsos for knock-down: remember, in most cases escape is the survivor’s goal, and knocking down a zed not only makes that possible, but in a group situation it will often trip up those following behind.

Specialty weapons Flamethrowers are popular in depictions of zombie outbreaks, but in reality they are extremely uncommon-the US Army only issued two per infantry battalion, and they have long since been pulled from service. If you can find one, loaded and ready to go it will weigh seventy+ pounds, and provides eight to ten seconds of flame, normally expended in half-second bursts.

On the other hand, the tried and true gas bomb or Molotov cocktail is a sure cure for massed zeds; be warned, however, that it is not an idiot-proof weapon. A careless or over-hasty user can spill burning gasoline on himself or a bystander, have it bounce instead of break (test bottle types filled with water to establish what it takes to break them), or just go out in mid-flight. Additionally, they do not transport or store well.

The wrist-rocket, or forearm-braced slingshot is an under-rated weapon in the survivor inventory. Loaded with half-inch ball bearings or even marbles, it can drop a zed at out to thirty feet, and silently. If the ammunition is positioned carefully, it can also fire rapidly. Its only drawback is the short range and the high degree of skill required.

The compound bow is an excellent weapon, having a decent rate of fire, range, and effectiveness, but it is limited by the high degree of skill required to use under combat conditions. The crossbow is much more forgiving in terms of skill when a serious model can be found, but it requires strength and time to reload.

In short, tailor your weapons load-out to the environment you expect to encounter.