Dylan Malik Orchard's Blog, page 12

Platform 323 (Part One)

This is, possibly, part on of an ongoing serialisation derived from something I’ve already written. The plan is to put a new part up every Tuesday so feel free to like it, or follow the blog, if you want to see more. Should also say that it was written as a novel, not for piecemeal consumption, so some chapters will be broken up for this site. Like this one…

—

Eight days. Eight days wasted lurking in deep space waiting for a ship that, by the look of things, would never arrive, if it had ever existed in the first place. Eight days of wasted food and supplies, on top of the small fortune Murat had paid for the tip off which had led him there in the first place and beyond even that, eight days where his crew had slowly but surely reinforced their disdain for him over yet another profit-free false trail. Another two days and they’d be turning the guns on him. Hell, even if he did head back to Platform 323 the lot of them would disappear the second they got through the security checks, off to find a ship which actually made money as opposed to flying around in circles waiting for imaginary targets. And to top it off illicit tip offs were never refundable, assuming that that lying bastard Kuzumo was even still on the platform, which was far from a given under the circumstances. Murat sighed and once again took to pacing the length of the box like compartment of his personal quarters. Another day, that long he could wait and then… well, then he may as well sell The Kazamov off for scrap and start looking for a new job, a prospect he didn’t relish even considering his ineptitude as a career pirate.

His quarters were slowly driving him mad, which didn’t help. He’d scanned every inch of the exposed metal walls, paced every inch of the similarly grey floors and organised and re-organised his meagre personal possessions so many times that he’d almost passed through familiarity and into contempt at the sight of them. One book, two surplus Zamin Corp uniforms, one of which he was wearing as some vague attempt at formalising his status as Captain, much to the amusement of the rest of the crew who knew a low level technicians outfit when they saw it, and the rest, junk. A smattering of relics which he’d accumulated since leaving home some fifteen years ago, all of which amounted to little more than a boxes’ worth of experiences and most of them had lost any meaning beyond simply being his. A meaningless haul, thought Murat, for a meaningless life – at least that was probably what the crew thought in their more sneering moments and to be honest he could offer little by way of argument.

In times gone by things had been better, Murat himself had been better. During his time as a conscript back on earth he’d been a good soldier. He’d hated it, granted, but comrades and commanders alike had respected him for his apparent capacity for not getting killed and for going out of his way to ensure the same for those around him. Words like ‘hero’ had been bandied around, medals had literally been dangled before him by self-satisfied looking generals witlessly encouraging him to go ‘over the top’ once more in a desperate bid to gain some steel and gold leaf for his chest. He’d said at the time that the whole war was a farce, quietly, to those he knew wouldn’t repeat it.

By the time of his enlistment the four power blocs of earth had been throwing the best and brightest of their citizens at each other, along with some of the most mindbogglingly advanced weapons conceivable, for 27 years. A whole generation had grown up around the world war and from the drum beating exuberance of the early days, with ranks of fresh faced young volunteers marching out to the front cheered on by loving mothers and fair maidens they’d all seen the slow descent into the desperate, exhausted brawl the whole thing had come to be. By the time Murat signed up training had been stripped back to pointing out the dangerous end of the gun. Fresh recruits were plucked straight out of school and the wonders of modern military technology had decayed into an almost nostalgic state of pointing and shooting whilst hiding in a trench. And above all of that the reasons for the whole thing had reached a point of oblique malleability where justifications changed day by day on the whims of propaganda chiefs.

Murat would have preferred to be able to cite such reasons for his eventual desertion. The hypocrisy, the waste, the meaninglessness of it all – and for the most part he did, although the truth always dribbled out when he found himself particularly drunk and maudlin, which happened with ever increasing frequency when he was off ship. He’d been scared, he’d been terrified in fact. Whatever reputation he had earned as a soldier was, he knew with absolute certainty, ill deserved. Those battles he’d seen won, those people he’d kept alive, were completely incidental to his one goal at the time which had been to stay intact and sane throughout what he regarded as a hellish, sanity destroying ordeal. Piracy, by comparison, had seemed like the dream life. No pointless charges, no battles for honour, no propaganda, just the freedom to run away when you were losing, loot whatever you found and lie in of a morning, free of bawling sergeants.

After a panicked escape via a cargo ship launched from Vladivostok space port, paid for with a couple of cases of ‘relocated’ weapons, he’d set off to his new life on Platform 323. Sitting at the heart of the LaGrange cluster of space stations – collectively referred to as The Platforms in common parlance or The LaGrange Open Zone in more formal settings – Platform 323 served as the hub of the disparate community it inhabited. Whilst far from the largest Platform, 323 had from it’s formal inauguration as the first completed station become the totemic entry point and talking shop the isolated scattering of humanity.

The project itself, the construction of an array of 40 space stations, bio-domes, construction yards and factories, had once been touted as the pinnacle of human achievement. Not only as a definite step into space but also as the final resolution of the millennia of internecine warfare which had blighted Earth and its inhabitants. Fuelled by an increasing sense that, amidst riots, strikes and civil war, they had pushed their people too far in the pursuit of largely redundant grabs for power the leaders of the remaining four power blocs had, amidst great pomp and ceremony, agreed to shake hands and make up. And it had worked, after a fashion.

For two decades global co-operation had fuelled an almost ecstatic notion of Utopia in the making amongst vast swathes of the planets population. Vast military industrial complexes had been re-tasked to the rebuilding of civilisation and the projection of human destiny on to the stars. And as the first stations had come online thousands had flocked to The Platforms mixing an almost religious belief in the new universe they’d set about creating with a grim sense of escaping the plague of wars which had over the proceeding century increased in intensity to the point of near self-destruction. Murat’s parents had even planned to abandon terra firma for a new life on the frontier but war had broken out and links to The Platforms had been severed before the move could take place. A week later Moscow was bombed and, with a five year old Murat in tow, they’d been moved to Siberia where his father’s engineering skills and mother’s biological knowledge had bought them a place in a bunker complex geared towards heralding a new era of weapons technology for the greater good.

Thinking back Murat viewed those days with a certain nostalgia. Like life in his later home, Platform 323; the underground city of his youth had offered an insulation from the war. Bombs fell, cities burned and territory changed hands in the bloodiest of ways but for the technicians and scientists of the Siberian installation that all seemed a distant, almost unreal, backdrop to life. A mile above Murat’s head tanks had thundered and planes had swarmed, guarding the subterranean haven beneath, affording it’s inhabitants a false refuge from the chaos. As far as life during a war went it was at the better end and selfish though he could vaguely tell it was he could quite happily have stayed blissfully separated from the realities of war if left in peace to do so. Peace, however, only occasionally managed to reach more than 50 feet above their heads in the bunker.

On turning 18 he’d been informed by the base commander that, while his parents were undoubtedly essential parts in the war effort thanks to their ingenious work in finding ingenious ways to kill people he really wasn’t. His education had been the same as all the other military brats on site, they’d been trained to serve the base like their parents did. Scientists, engineers, technicians, chemists – all their schooling had driven them towards at least one of those militarily essential roles. Murat just hadn’t been very good at any of them. So while his friends and peers smiled sadly at him and pulled on their fresh white lab coats to start in a new career he’d been escorted to the surface, wished good luck and shoved into the arms of the first army recruiter to pass by. By his reckoning he’d enjoyed no more than 15 minutes of adult freedom between the blast doors of the bunker and the army truck that drove him off for cursory basic training and a future of being shot at by strangers. Nonetheless he’d spent plenty of time stuck in the trenches dreaming wistfully of those 15 minutes and wishing he could return to those crazy, carefree days when no one was trying to kill him.

From that moment though the army had made him their own. First in the meat grinder of the Eastern Front, where he’d pointed and fired at distant, unrecognisable figures he’d been reliably informed were part of the evil Chinese hordes out to destroy his way of life. And then on to the Western Front for the majority of his tenure in uniform, where he’d pointed and fired at distant, unrecognisable figures he’d been reliably informed were part of the evil European hordes out to destroy his way of life. Both battles had proven hard ones to care about given that ‘his’ way of life seemed to consist solely of trying to kill other people and being shouted at by officers. If they were really out to destroy that, Murat had decided, then best of luck to them – he certainly wouldn’t miss it. Opinions like that were, he quickly came to realise, seldom welcome, even in the trenches where his comrade grunts were mostly thinking the same thing.

Beyond that though his war had been a largely anonymous one, from what he could tell at the time. The threat of death aside you could at the very least say that his job had been a stable one and if routine was your thing, and you didn’t mind the possibility of being blown up, it could have been an appealing life to the right sort of person. Not to Murat though. More or less alone amongst his comrades he hadn’t been brought up on the surface. War, to him, had always been a distant thing and even if he didn’t like to complain about the injustice of it all, in case it earnt him a swift beating, he always knew there was another way to be. And that’s what he’d run for when he deserted.

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. 

Canis Lupus, Felis Catus and I

“Move faster you lazy bastard, I’m hungry and the wolves are coming”

I nod vaguely, the best I can do given the searing pain in my legs, the sweat dripping from every pore on my body and the worrying burning sensation in my lungs.

“Son of a bitch. Are you actually slowing down? Are you really that out of shape? I could walk faster than this”

I consider suggesting that he does it but there’s not enough air left in my lungs to pull the double duty of moving and talking, plus I know the answer, or at least the vague outline of it, something along the lines of “shut up fatty”. I used to take offence at that, but he has a point, I’m out of shape and sensitive about it.

“Come on, there’s the trailer, get your lard ass over there and then you can feed me”

Like syringes his claws dig into my neck, poor motivation but the only way he knows. I can feel small drops of blood start to mingle with the sweat, oddly enough the new pain does help surpress the old aches, which is something I suppose.

A wild howl goes up in the distance as I stagger through the door, kicking it shut in the same inelegant motion as falling over. With a padded thud he leaps off of me as I collapse and walks around to look down at my unhappy face, his disdain tangible but easily ignored through the exhaustion.

“If you worked harder we wouldn’t have to do this”

I grunt, all the reaction I can offer.

“We should have gone out earlier, moved faster, we could have been home and fed hours ago. Get up and feed me.”

“Ughh”

My muscles have gone limp now, defeated for the day but gradually the air is coming back into my lungs, heart slowing to it’s usual dull thud rather than the frenetic Irish jig it’s been doing for the last ten minutes. Still I don’t move, both because I can’t and because even I have my limits with him.

He watches me for a few seconds, eyes narrowing into snake like slits, disgust no less evident. A paw reaches out and taps my nose, a gentle touch, loving almost and completely false. Unlike the full rake of claws that comes next, scoring a line of fine read scratches across my slick and tender cheek.

“Ow”

“Don’t ‘ow’ me, get up and feed me, then you can die for all I care, in fact, hurry up and die now, I’ll just eat you where you lay. Although given the fat content I’ll probably end up with heart disease for my troubles.”

He’s exagerrating, I’m out of shape, not morbidly obese and I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t eat me. Well, not immediately anyway and he’d definetely rather I stayed alive, that’s why he’s here, that’s why he comes out with me, otherwise I’d have given up long ago.

With probing delicacy I pull myself back to my feet and let the overloaded backpack drop from my shoulders. It takes a second to be sure but I’m fairly confident I won’t fall over, although moving at anything more than a pained shuffle is out of the question. Excercise, or at least the sort of life or death fleeing I have to do these days, is a new one for me, like so much in this world.

“We found that can of tuna, I’ll have that. And the catnip, don’t tell me you don’t have any I can smell it even through the plastic and I’ve had a long day.”

I look down at him, still lecturing me even as I tower uncertainly above him. He’s small, even for a cat, his ragged black fur puffs up in a poor attempt to look bigger whenever I look at him but you can see he was the runt of the litter regardless. I mentioned it once, he nearly took my eye out, he has body confidence issues he said, before calling me fat for the fiftieth time that day. I don’t mind, I don’t enjoy it, but I don’t mind. After all a talking cat is worth the odd insult no matter who you are.

The backpack goes on to the stained and scratched formica worktop which dillineates the optimistically aspirant kitchen from the rest of the trailer and I start to rake through it. Tins of beans, bandages, a pitifully rare half bottle of vermouth, some sachets of cat food and, of course, the tin of tuna. There is no catnip, no matter what he thinks, but I know he’s fiending for a fix and I’ve gotten tired of explaining that to him. Besides, every time I try to he just turns the tables and points out the shakes I keep waking up with, we end up throwing addictions at each other until we’re both too defeated to do anything but sleep. Except tonight I have my half bottle, something to look forward to.

“Hurry up, I’m wasting away here, not all of us have layers of blubber to rely on when we feel hungry.”

“You want to eat sooner, go out and hunt.”

He hisses in a perfunctory sort of way and leaps up on to the counter, watching eagerly as I open the tin and then rushing in to gourge himself as I dump the fish out in front of him. I manage to make it over to the fold out bed before accepting my bodies final surrender for the day, although not before grabbing that precious bottle to see me off.

“We did well today.”

He doesn’t hear a thing while he’s eating so the words are said more for my own benefit than his. And we have done well, enough food to last a week by my reckoning, as long as neither of us indulges too much. Past experience, I admit, suggests that we will, neither one of us has the impulse control to stop but still it’s a nice thought that we might not have to brave the wilds again for a few more days.

“You’re right though, it was close and the wolves are coming nearer and nearer to this place. Might be time to move soon.”

“Move where? Wolves everywhere” he manages to mumble around a mouthful of fish.

We sit in near silence while he chomps down the last of his meal, barring the echoingly loud sound of my unscrewing the lid of my bottle and taking a swig. Outside another howl echoes around our canyon, it could be close enough to be terrifying but it’s hard to tell, the geological oddities of the place can play tricks on you like that. He doesn’t move though, just finishes eating and sets about licking away at the formica, rinsing the last traces of flavour from it. His hearing is better than mine, if he isn’t panicking then I won’t, not that I could do much if I did anyway.

“We’re better off here, you just need to learn to run faster, if we leave it’ll just be the same thing somewhere else.”

With another gulp from my bottle I lose the will to argue, the medicinal mix of fortified wine relaxing my body into wilfully tipsy apathy. I’m dimly aware that, as he’s a cat, his vote shouldn’t count for much but this is no democracy anyway and when he disagrees even the threat of walking away from him and going my own way would be seen as hollow. Besides, it’s an old conversation, a played out one. We should have left weeks back but we didn’t and now it was too late to worry about it, or at least we’d grown too lazy to bother trying.

“Maybe I can dig some traps tomorrow, sharpen some sticks or something.”

He leaps off of the counter and jumps onto the bed next to me, eyeing my bottle with the cynicism of a cat logging its rapid depletion for later use in an argument.

“Don’t be stupid, they’re giant, bastard wolves, not humans. They’re smart enough to walk around holes and use your sticks as tooth picks. They can’t open doors though, so you learn to move faster and we stay inside.”

Until we get caught and killed I think to myself, although as that’s the unspoken punctuation mark to almost everything we say about the future I don’t bother saying it out loud.

“Yeah, ok. I’ll start excercising tomorrow then.”

“Meow”

He always says that when he’s bored of talking to me, which happens at the end of most days. It balances out though, I’m bored of talking anyway and we both know that anything else we say now will be a false promise. By tomorrow we will, one way or another, have eaten everything we gathered today and then we’ll have to make another run into the ruins of the town. The same routine as we’ve followed for the last six months, everything else is just window dressing to our slow decline. For now though he’s slumped down next to me, his face buried in his fur and sleep rapidly slipping over him. He’s not even mentioned the catnip, he must be tired. I rest a hand on his back, ruffling his fur with casual affection, he doesn’t shake me off although neither of us mention the contact. As his eyes slide shut I hear one final mumble of ‘fat bastard’ before we both slump into sleep.

With a final tired gesture I drain the vermouth and fade away as the wolves shuffle and growl outside.

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. All ideal escapes from 2016 and, if you time the reading right, you can dodge a chunk of 2017 too just in case…

Happy New Year

Welcome to 2017, please fasten your seat belts and keep your tables in the upright position. We’re expecting heavy turbulence.

Last Moments

“I’m sorry” he sobbed, voice jerking as it worked it’s way out around the tears. It wasn’t true, at least he wasn’t sorry that it had happened, although he may have been sorry to have upset me, if I was being generous. Or sorry that I might be angry, to be honest.

The gash in his suit was too big to repair, six inches at least. Not that it would have mattered if it was five inches less or a dozen more, I had no idea how to do anything about it either way, none of us did. I reminded myself that it was an accident, I was fairly sure that it was. There was no value in anger now and I couldn’t muster up much by way of sorrow, not underneath the leaden weight of his saliva flecked gasps for breath anyway, the sobs gradually slowing to a sedate and unconvincing pace.

She was standing a few feet away from us, eyes blankly staring down through the grill of the gantry and down towards the distant grey concrete ground. Another one who wasn’t sorry, not that she’d done anything to apologise for beyond be there and not care as much as I did and how could I blame her for that?

“Come on” I spoke through a clenched jaw “we need to get out of here, back down to the ground.

I hauled him to his feet and cast a mournful look towards the shuttle, the cockpit almost at eye level as it quietly thrummed with the early growl of engines warming up. Inside they’d be going through the last checks, probably. In my ignorance I could imagine them tapping dials and reading off impenetrable numbers and reports. One more flight of stairs and I could have waved the world goodbye. At least we hadn’t made it that far.

He was on his feet now and fiddling pointlessly with the hole in his suit, flicking at the freyed edge with heavy gloves, a finger coming away tipped with red from the cut beneath. The part of me that still cared reminded me, louder than I’d expected, that he should get some anti-septic cream on the wound, maybe get a tetanus shot. I ignored it and pulled at his arm, reaching out my other hand to gesture for her to follow me as we began the slow plod to the solid ground.

“You could still go, your suit’s ok”

“It’s ok, let’s just head down”

I tried to keep my voice level and to my surprise it worked, belying the panic that was chewing me up. Hers, as always, was as flat as an iced over lake, not out of cruelty, I reckoned, but because she’d given up on being here a long time ago and wherever she was now there wasn’t much room for caring about things. He just stayed sullenly silent, either joining her out there or just wary of my reaction if he spoke.

“I could put tape around it, he might make it if I put tape around it”

I nodded. He wouldn’t, not where the shuttle was going. Not that we had any tape anyway. Looking at her as we took metallic steps back down the first set of downwards stairs I could see that she’d forgotten the thought as soon as she’d mentioned it anyway. Like a death rattle it was a last, hollow act as her mind drifted even further away.

I could see figures moving below, scurrying their way up the first steps to the launch tower. My legs started to protest as my eyes watched their progress. There was no chance they were friendly, although I reckoned we might have the same fear in common. They would be armed though and full of the same desperate desire to survive that I’d felt as I dragged the others up with me, leaping up four steps at a time to try and make it onboard intact. Driven by a hope which had evaporated in an instant as he’d fallen.

If I were them I’d shoot me for not leaving him behind out of simple disgust and if they did I’d find it hard to blame them. The last seconds before destruction were ticking away around us and here I was walking away from the one way out because… because of what? Loyalty? Pity? I didn’t like to ask myself as we moved further towards the surface.

“Don’t you want to live?” I asked, wondering who might answer. No one did, although he grunted and she whistled to herself, an eery echo from whatever distant place she’d arrived at.

A gunshot rang out from below, a bullet clanking off of the metal rail somewhere close enough to send small vibrations rattling around me. They were shouting down there, at us or at the shuttle, I couldn’t tell which. More bullets followed, missing if they were meant to hit anything I could see. I recoiled with every crack of gunfire, my instincts for self-preservation almost folding me in on myself even as I struggled to keep my feet moving forwards.

The thrum of the engines was growing louder as they came closer to launching. We might not even make the surface before the thrusters forced out a pillar of flame and smoke around us. The strangers below might not make it up in time to take their anger out on whoever they thought deserved it.

I reached out a hand to each of them, grabbing one of theirs and squeezing it. Neither one squeezed back but I took comfort in the gesture. Holding them harder and tighter I could forget the fear, if only for a split second and after all, that’s all we had left.

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. All ideal escapes from 2016 and, if you time the reading right, you can dodge a chunk of 2017 too just in case…

My Marvin

“It’s the youth of today, no respect. We used to respect our elders y’know, we looked after them. If you saw an old lady crossing the road or an old gent struggling with his bags you helped. Didn’t you Doreen?”

Doreen nodded and sank her teeth into her slice of lemon drizzle cake, tongue flicking at stray crumbs as they sought to escape down her chin.

“Now though they’re all little vandals and thugs, they only look up from their phones to rob you or swear. Terrible how it is these days, just terrible. My Marvin tells me all about it, he’s a policeman you know” Doreen nodded again, she knew, Mable told her at least three times every time they met.

“He says that just last week he found a young man with all his bits cut out, oh terrible it was, they hadn’t just stabbed him, they’d done all sorts of horrible things to him. I blame the internet. And the fact that they don’t beat them at school any more, not like in our day.”

An eyebrow went up and more cake went in.

“My Marvin says it was a gangland killing, drugs or some such, that heroin or marijuana. They’re all doing it these days he says, barely even know where they are from dawn to dusk.”

Doreen had met ‘Her Marvin’. He worked at a desk filing reports about stolen cars and struggling to pass his annual physicals despite being a big fat fella with bad feet. He did read the Daily Mail a lot though and that was enough for incisive policing as far as his mother was concerned.

“So, do they know who did it then?”

“Did what dear?” Mable, rant completed, had already moved on to shovelling her own cake into her mouth, dribbling tea as she washed it down.

“Killed him, that poor young man, the gangland killing..?”

“Oh that, no, no idea. My Marvin says they should just go out and arrest one of them, bound to be one of them he says. All political correctness now though isn’t it? That’s why they treat him so badly you know, because he stands up to them he does, not like the rest of them, scared to lift a finger they are.”

‘Them’. Marvin was a big fan of ‘them’, a phrase he used with a perpetual nod and wink and which seldom seemed to mean anything much. ‘They’ could be black people, Muslims, foreigners, Gypsies, homosexuals, teenagers, Scots, anyone really as long as they didn’t argue back too much when he arrested them. Doreen nodded sympathetically nonetheless, quietly happy that she hadn’t had any children of her own just incase they’d turned out like young Marvin. Mable was her best friend though, there was no point undermining her pride in the idiot boy turned idiot man.

“Well, here’s hoping they get their man then, no way for a person to go is that, all cut up and dumped in a car park.”

Mable was back digging into her cake, barely registering Doreen’s words, which was fortunate as she’d said more than she meant to.

“And what about that young man you were telling me about last week? That poor chap who lost his liver by the alms houses?”

It took a while for Mable to circle her mind around to the question, she was good at following a thought when it was her own but lousy when it came to input from the outside world. Especially when there was cake.

“Oh I don’t know dear, I haven’t heard anything. Probably drugs though you know, terrible what they’ll do to you.”

And impressive, it wasn’t often that you heard about cannabis surgically removing someone’s liver.

“Yes, probably. It’s a terrible world.”

“Oh yes, a terrible world. Would you mind if I tried a bite of your cake Doreen?”

“Of course not dear, help yourself”

Smiling she slid the plate across the table, half of her slice still untouched.

“In fact I really must be off, I’ve an appointment with a doctor. Nothing serious but at our age you do need to keep an eye on things don’t you?”

Mable was too busy shifting onto her second dessert to pay much attention but she did manage a smile and a nod as Doreen helped herself to her feet and, with a grunt, lifted her overfull handbag from the back of her chair. Tactfully ignoring the sloshing sound of the jars inside.

She was out of the door and half way down the street before Mable, briefly satiated and thinking comparatively clearly paused to wonder to herself how her friend had known about the body being found in the car park. She didn’t recall mentioning that little detail, or even hearing it from her boy. It wasn’t a question that hung in the air for long though, her Marvin had left her half a key of uncut Cocaine that she had to package up before the bingo on Saturday. He was a good boy like that, he looked after his old mum, bit of a bastard otherwise mind.

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. All ideal escapes from 2016 and, if you time the reading right, you can dodge a chunk of 2017 too just in case…

Escaping Idaho

I’d been dead for five years by the time I decided to stick my head back above the edge of the shallow grave that was Boise, Idaho.

Why I did it, I don’t know. Being dead had been good to me, far better than life ever had. My postmortem existence had freed me to feel alive, for once, rather than living in the constant shuddering shadow of my own looming mortality. I had a job, a dull one, hobbies too, meaningless ones, I ate at the local Waffle House every day and drank in the same bar every Friday where I answered the same questions and said the same things to the same people week after week after week after week. Purgatory to some, sanity to me.

So why go back? Why emerge from my forgotten grave and risk coming back to life? Not boredom, that’d be ungrateful y’see, I’ve never been so childish as to forget the blessing I found in that tedium. Curiosity? Perhaps. A poisonous sort of curiosity, the dangerous sort, the sort which bubbles out of nothing and grabs you for a moment, just long enough to take it’s toll, before leaving you to wonder why you’d ever cared enough to humour it in the first place. The type of curiosity that had probably killed the cat and which would almost certainly kill me but wisdom, as always, came too late and by the time I got smart to my mistake I was back in the land of the living – Chicago – a dead man walking once more.

The second I walked into Tyson’s Bar I could tell I was a zombie to those people. Old faces I knew from when I’d been alive gave me the sort of look people gave things that shouldn’t be. Hands reached for guns and cudgels and knives, shock fluidly translated into action as my face appeared flush with the colour of the newly resurrected. If I lacked the rotting flesh and stumbling gait that the dead should be expected to have there were plenty present there on that icy November night willing to make that right. I can’t even say I blame them, if they saw a man who shouldn’t be walking when they saw me then I reflected it from the other direction. It only took a second to realise how out of place I was, how much like a spectre, voyeuristically staring at the living I was. Their world wasn’t mine any more, I had a grave to return to and the intrusion was all my fault, not theirs. I should have been back in Boise, quietly rotting away in their memories, but here I was and with one foot in the door I didn’t even know if I could get away.

“It’s a shame to see you walking around.”

Sal was the barman, the first and only one to break the stunned silence. Laconic as ever he carried his own shock not into anger but into the all important role of being Sal, every ready with words to disarm and lines to remember.

“Figured I needed to stretch my legs, grave’s a cramped place.”

Sal nodded and sloppily poured me a whisky before clinking it down onto the bar. The others didn’t ease up, didn’t talk or smile or look at me as anything other than a dead man. They did let me walk over and place a hand around the glass though, whatever was inevitably coming they were content to let me and Sal go through the routine. Like a Witch Doctor he was speaking out the rituals that were necessary to put me back in the ground.

“Safe though, down there, there was worse things in this world than a bit of discomfort. That one’s on the house, by the way.”

I pulled my free hand back from my pocket where I’d been reaching for my wallet. Or a gun, I guess that’s what those behind me would have thought. I wasn’t packing though, like I said, it was curiosity that brought me back, dumb, random curiosity, nothing more malicious or meaningful than that. Besides, dead men don’t need protection do they?

“Thanks Sal” I downed the drink in one swift motion, trying not to gag as the unfamiliar fire ran down my throat. I’d stuck to beer in purgatory, I preferred it that way, but life was meant to sting a little I figured.

“Did you make it to my funeral?”

He nodded, bulldog face taciturn and formal, body relaxed but only so as to be out of arms reach from the zombie in front of him.

“Yeah, was a quiet one, your Ma threw herself in after the box. Didn’t have the heart to tell her they never found your body.”

My turn to nod, like the rest of the vital, living world she seemed a long way away. I felt sad for her, losing her only son, but these things happen and unlike me she was religious, at least she could imagine me in whatever heaven made sense to her.

“And the wake? Anyone turn up?”

“A few. You did good, going out when you did, made it easier for people to remember who you were, instead of what you did.”

I shook the glass for another drink, Sal shook his head in a sad refusal. Smiling I put the glass back down. There was some upside to my curiosity then, some people at least had remembered me for who I was, rather than what I’d done. It was a nice last thought, a comforting one, certainly better than the fear and anguish that had come when I’d died the first time. It almost made the shudder of pain from the first blow to hit me from behind bearable.

I won’t go back to purgatory this time, I thought as unconsciousness and more crushing blows fell on me. I won’t go back to Boise.

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. All ideal escapes from 2016 and, if you time the reading right, you can dodge a chunk of 2017 too just in case…

McCarrick Christmas Special

ET and Waco did mount up the sled

shaking off cold and giving out dread

in neon red camo they went out to ride

with drinks in their hands and guns at their sides

‘Farewell’ cried the kiddies, their Ma and the rest

‘don’t come back deaded, our pride and our best’

‘Don’t you go wailin’ came the reply

‘McCarricks might go down, but seldom do die,

it’s for all the bad guys that you ought to cry’

And so with a wave and a loving last kiss

the dynamic duo set off into the mist

through copses and and side roads they rode out of sight

out of the holler and into the night

led on by wolves and a misplaced beagle

not quite noble steeds

but burly and evil

‘Where do we go, oh brother of mine

and when we get there,

what might we find?’

‘to fetch Uncle Rango,

if he ain’t yet dead

and a shit load of bad guys

who should learn to dread’

And so they did fly

away from the bustle

of McCarrick land

and Hetsaw’s small hustle

off to the city

where the Fed’s did array

doing their business

the most corrupt way

and on their arrival

in dawn’s early light

locals did marvel

at the rural delight

of two grizzled outlaws

on one creaky sled

led by a dozen strong wolves

and a beagle, near dead

‘What business is here

for strangers like you’

said a bored local lawman

with little to do

‘If parking that wreck

is your sneaking intention

you’ll get a ticket,

I feel I should mention’

to such light weighted threats there was no reaction

though Waco did think to leave him in traction

but ET stepped in with a dark vulpine smile

which sent the bored officer running for miles

‘Now city folk all, come hear our words,

we ain’t out for trouble,

though that may have been heard

In this festive season,

all that we want

is our dear Uncle Rango

and some Christmas eggnog’

Bemused by the strangers

and startled by wolves

the locals did back off

dashing like fools

which left Waco and ET

on government land

to reach for their pistols

and prepare their first stand

‘Bring out our Uncle

and no one gets shot

do it too slowly

and we’ll shoot a lot’

Moments did pass,

quiet and tense

as the urban folk wondered

what would come next

but their questions were answered

shortly thereafter

when three pitch black HumVees

came rolling like thunder

And from there there spewed out

a swarm of black suits

men in dark glasses

and highly trained youths

The McCarricks did snigger

at all the furor

for all of this drama

they had seen before

and when a tall stranger stepped up to them

chewing on gum and leading his men

it was all they could do

not to laugh in his face

for the vodka they’d finished

hadn’t been their first taste

‘Get out of town, you out-country bumpkins,

your Uncle ain’t comin’, he’s stuck in our dungeons,

there to answer for crimes he has done

to man, God and country

his hanging’ll come

And as it stands you’re walkin’ in our yard

and if you’ve only those pistols

you’ll find it mighty hard.’

Waco did giggle and ET did frown,

they both now knew the CIA were in town

A terrible sight as Christmas approaches

Black-Ops trained Seals

on vicious, cruel motives

but seldom is a seen a McCarrick in flight

especially when there’s the chance of a fight

Plus the boys Uncle Rango,

a terror for sure,

was only just guilty

and others were more

so here they would stand,

and here they would fight

against all these comers

and all Federal might

‘We know where he is’ ET intoned

‘down in the basement of your Black-Ops home

and deep in my satchel I’ve brought you a treat

a big block of Cemtex

wrapped nice and neat

but if you insist on your foolish denial,

I’ll shoot you right here and we’ll square off a while’

No idle meant threats

or hollow bravado

as ET shot first

his brow barely furrowed

The Agent went down

red in the face

as blood sprang up quickly

all over the place

‘Well now I see’ Waco did marvel

dodging debris

from the would be Marshall

Bullets went flying,

soldiers did fall

the Agencies finest

come to the call

but all unprepared

for McCarrick invasion

and all not yet trained

for Waco’s frustration

and so it became

and so it went on

Montgomery town

became a gory throng

as all through the streets

with rifles still blaring

grenades going off

and wolves all a’tearing

the brothers did fight

the forces of order

all for their Uncle

who’d not made the border

After a while things got all quiet

a bunker was reached

the baddies gone silent

‘Is he down there

brother of mine?’

‘I reckon so Waco,

I’ll go plant this mine,

just a bit of C4

a trace of the Nitro

we’ll soon be in

and home by tonight-o’

Waco did shrug,

for his brother had rhymed

but it being Christmas

he didn’t mind

but ducking quite quickly

explosions to dodge

he saw half the building

tumble and drop

a terrible sight

for those who had built it

to see their dark tower

broken and stilted

To their surprise

and strange felt delight, the building seemed empty

nobody in sight

‘Where do you think

our Uncle has gone,

in our attack

do you think we were wrong?’

‘All things can happen’ ET decreed

‘dogs can look up

dinos can breed

but as for the question

of what we’ve done wrong

I have to admit my info was strong’

And in this moment of self-doubting anguish

a friendly voice cried

‘Hey up, an escape bid!’

And Rango walked over

but not from inside

for he’d been in Arby’s

awaiting his ride

‘Oh Uncle, our Uncle,

what have we done

we blew up the Federals,

we’re off on the run!’

‘Never mind

nephews of mine,

head back to Hetsaw

where you’re hard to find,

it doesn’t matter that I just made bail

and walked my way from that terrible jail

because I’m not the first

nor am I the last

to find himself trapped on that terrible path

and with your explosion you’ve done them a favour

you should be pleased with your mighty labour

and the CIA, should they remember,

have learnt a lesson

this humid December

Never take a McCarrick in walking

because if we’re not down

there’s just no use talking.

—

For more from Waco, ET, the rest of the McCarrick clan and plenty of others check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. It’s the ideal Christmas present for adults of all ages, children of some ages and also the undead. Even better, buy it for someone who’ll hate it and you can be sure to get it back next Christmas so you’ve got your own copy!

Happy Christmas (in advance), one and all.

The Rhythm of Life

“We can’t stop here, this is Cat country!”

It wasn’t the ideal line to hear from a bus driver, especially as he overshot my stop and picked up speed on an increasingly mad dash through Catford. I tightened my grip on the seat in ahead of me, getting a wary look from the man in front as he watched my knuckles turn white. Why he wasn’t panicking I don’t know, especially as a booming ‘YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW!’ rang out over the speakers on the top deck. Usual behaviour for London bus drivers perhaps? It seemed unlikely, they never did that sort of thing back home, not as far as I can remember. But then back home I never got the bus, so perhaps this was the norm in all big cities and my fear just marked me out as a newcomer.

I ducked down as the bus screamed through traffic lights, not much of a defense against the possibility of a t-boning truck, which we narrowly avoided to the maniacal laughter of the driver downstairs. Still nobody seemed bothered, in fact a mother and daughter were even playing a game of ‘I Spy’ behind me. A routine past time made worse by the little girl’s loud and excited guess for ‘s’ – ‘sudden death’ she shrieked as the truck that had narrowly missed us spun out of control and flipped over in a spray of sparks. We’d missed the two stops after mine too.

“Do you have a valid Oyster card? Well, do you?”

The driver’s voice had suddenly grown sad, a good thing I reckoned as it coincided with the bus slowing down to a more sedate rampage down the road towards Lewisham. It was ok, I figured, I could walk home if I had to, plus my Oyster was valid, which had to be a good sign, right?

It was also irrelevant, apparently, as the now crawling bus continued to avoid every stop it passed. My grip had loosened on the seat in front, the wary looking man visibly relaxing as my minor physical invasion at the periphery of his vision went into retreat. I could, I reckoned, jump off the bus now, hit the emergency button downstairs and make a running landing, or at least a stumbling and non-fatal roll along the pavement. That’d be sensible, that’d be sane, given the circumstances, I should escape before the maniac in charge perked up and decided to start racing with death again. I didn’t move though, in fact if anything I relaxed into my seat, on the edge of a panic attack on the inside but somehow anchored by the gentle swaying of the bus. Besides, everyone else still seemed completely calm, they must have known something I didn’t and it would have been rude to start acting all crazy and jumping out of moving vehicles. I didn’t want to be rude, and the bus had to stop eventually, right?

“This is the 185, terminating at termination. Please remember to take your bags with you and, for the love of God, don’t put your feet on the seats…”

Londonistan

When they tore down the Catford Cat it should have been a clue on the direction things were heading in. A ‘pagan effigy’ they called it and that was why they got away with it. Everyone knew it was part of some dark magic, they just didn’t talk about it and behind the collective silence people really were tired of the disappearances, the sacrifices and the strange meows in the night. Everyone except for the people of Catford, of course, and they always were barbarians.

So, we all let it go when they threw chains around the cat and dragged it off to be melted down. Some of us even lined the road to cheer, not me though, even then, though I didn’t think enough to see it, I had the nasty feeling that things were going the wrong way. Not to say I’m smart, anything but, if I were I’d have done something to stop them before it went any further. Still though, I knew something was sitting wrong in the city and they were at the heart of it, slowly taking over and changing everything.

Next – and I don’t mean to get poetic here – they came for the Elephant & Castle. It was ‘morally unacceptable’ they said. I saw one of them talking about it, just before they started the purge, a wild eyed man on a plinth in Trafalgar Square denouncing the abominations, hedonism and sins of the natives of Elephant. Shameful, he declared, that such a iniquitous mob should be allowed to roam the streets bringing disgrace to us all. No one came out to cheer that moment, it was all grim faces and nervous looks, depending on who was doing the listening. I was at the back of the crowd, with the idle observers, for a while at least. We were the first to drift away though as the fanatics rant spun itself into a spit spraying frenzy to the delight of his invited audience. There was an ugly mood and not one anyone sane wanted to stay and see, so we left them to it, comforted to at least know it wasn’t us they were after. I heard what they did to the Elephant & Castle, though I never saw it myself, few who did left to tell the tale and to this day I don’t even get the bus through there – I don’t even want to see the streets were that shit happened. Not that I’d be allowed to of course, no free movement these days, you go where they tell you to and you keep your mouth shut about it.

After that it all came in a flurry of atrocities. Then we had to care, comfortable ignorance was no longer an option and we were blown away that all we’d missed with our eyes half closed. There were so many of them, so many that we weren’t even sure whose city it was anymore. Sure, if you stayed at home, or went to the shops, or sat in your local it seemed like everyone was same, that everyone was one of us but the proof was in their actions – they were there, somehow operating in the city without us ever noticing. A whole parallel world that had grown up in the city without ever touching on ours.

Whitechapel, Farringdon, Angel Islington, Tottenham, Peckham, Camberwell, Vauxhall, they all fell like vast concrete dominoes. There one day, working and sane and safe, gone the next to be replaced by something unrecognisable, something which, now we weren’t part of the staring crowd anymore, seemed disgusting and alien. All of the old certainties faded away, hacked apart by the new order that we were powerless to stop. The pubs changed, the takeaways changed, the shops changed. What had once been a local, comfortably decayed and unwelcomingly friendly was suddenly all horse brasses and real ale, old men calling themselves the ‘Colonel’ lining the bar in tweed jackets, never mentioning the Lee Enfield rifles they all carried as a matter of routine now that they’d taken over the streets. What used to be a Chicken Cottage or a Morley’s would, almost overnight, be turned into a traditional pie shop, or a tea house, lingering youths and famished commuters driven from their doorways at gunpoint for preferring a two piece meal to eel and cow’s eye pasties. That was how things should be, they told us, that’s how it was meant to be but I can tell you it’s never felt natural to me, not in London. Even my local corner shop wasn’t left untouched after they’d finished. I remember it now, as it was, as it should have been, a surly nod from the Sri Lankan who worked there, a pint of out of date milk and the local alchy ahead of me in the queue taking his time over the spare change taken to buy a can of K Cider. Halcyon days in the city. Now it’s all Union Jack bunting, rosy cheeked children buying penny sweets and friendly smiles from men in brown shop coats. Sickening, really, what they’ve done to the place.

I’m old now. My back’s bent and I’m tired. Certainly too tired to fight them. It’s all I can do to sidestep the Morris Dancers and cheery urchins on my way home. I remember, they used to say ‘If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life’ and fuck me but I’m exhausted with it. Some used to warn us too, back then, that we were being taken over. Muslims they said, hordes of them, Sharia law, public stonings – well, they weren’t all wrong, if only they’d known that the threat was coming from those Home County bastards instead. Still, too late to worry now, my city’s gone, they call it London Village now and I need to finish up here, it’s time for mandatory cricket on the green. Used to be a Primark y’know, backwards and barbaric they called it when they burnt it down…

Agnes, Theresa and Others

Mr Blaine was still shaking, sweat dribbling down an unhealthily grey face before making a visible escape from his ends of his nose and chin. She hadn’t expected this much of him, to still be conscious for one but also to have thought to call her in and stay at the school long enough for her to arrive. A lesser man would have at the very least skulked off home to hide under a blanket, re-considering his career in teaching and she’d always assumed Mr Blaine was the least of the lesser men. Going by brief and formal parent teacher meetings at least he’d come across as a bit of a mediocrity, an average man doing his job in an average way and passing judgement on her daughter, Theresa, in an average way. As he dealt largely in platitudes for want of anything more useful to say she’d always wondered if he even knew who her daughter was, or if he’d spent the last year offering dull appraisals of some other child in his ignorance.

He certainly knew Theresa now though, no doubt about that and to his credit he’d survived the revelation relatively unscathed. Her daughter’s last three schools and six teachers hadn’t fared nearly so well but then both she and her mother had resolved to make this one work, especially as they were running out of new areas to move to.

Theresa really had tried too, she’d made it all the way to the summer holidays without anything of any interest at all happening. For once Agnes had started to feel that steady mix of pride and disappointment in the feeling that her child was neither a disruption nor particularly noticeable in any way. A relief, really, a necessity given the events at past schools but it was still an experience tempered with a slight hollowness. If Theresa was going to be normal now then Agnes would just have to learn to live with it. Of course that didn’t matter now, not since Mr Blaine had called her at work, breathing heavily and demanding she come in for an emergency meeting. The normality had been, once again, shattered into a lot of very small and very awkward pieces.

You’d never know it though, not if you walked into the room now with Theresa sitting on a child sized seat in the evacuated classroom, legs swinging restlessly and eyes gazing off into one of those daydreams so consuming that only children, with their mixed indifference to and infatuation with reality, ever seemed to manage. Small for her age, dark skinned and still cute looking, baby fat not yet stretched out by a growth spurt, she was usually just another face in any school photo, another gap toothed smile amongst many.

Still, appearances could be deceptive, as Mr Blaine had discovered and Theresa, as perfectly normal a child as she generally was, had moments that could break that image completely. Like today.

“I’m sorry Miss Taylor, sorry to have called you out of work at such short notice but Theresa’s had an… episode… and I really thought you should be here to take her home for the day.”

Agnes nodded at the euphemism. The poor man may not have been worth much but he was trying and ‘episode’ was a nicer term for it than the ones they usually used.

“I’m very sorry Mr Blaine – and I’m sure Theresa is too, aren’t you?”

The girl smiled vaguely, recognising that they were talking about her but barely paying attention to the adult conversation.

“I’m sure she is and that’s good but, well, I really don’t know what to do here, I’m not entirely sure what happened but I know I wasn’t trained for it. Have you ever considered taking Theresa to a doctor?”

“Oh she’s seen doctors. And priests, nuns, psychiatrists, Voodoo spiritualists, witches, preachers, scientists – the lot. None of them know what to do about her and she really doesn’t mean any harm by it, honest, she doesn’t. People barely ever get hurt and the children love it, not that she does it on purpose.”

Agnes stressed the last few words, the other children did love it but she didn’t want the teacher to think that Theresa ever intended for it to happen.

“I’m sure she doesn’t, but I’m not sure that helps really. I mean, it was really very impressive and I’ve certainly never seen anything like it but is the classroom really the place for it? All I asked her to do was to read her story out loud and…”

His voice trailed off. He was worried about repeating the ordeal out loud in case it made him sound insane, Agnes knew the feeling but hesitated to throw the floundering Mr Blaine a rope.

“… and suddenly there we were. I was a pirate. Short, fat, pirate… I only had one leg and… someone stabbed me.”

Agnes nodded, silently cursing herself for letting Theresa watch Pirates of the Caribbean. It had seemed like a safer bet than Frozen, which had left three small children lacking frostbitten fingers at the the last school. Plus it didn’t have any songs, which had to be a step in the right direction. She craned her neck forwards, if Mr Blaine was still lacking a leg, or was sporting any serious wounds, then it didn’t seem to be bothering him too much. Another bonus, sometimes they came back just the way they’d been while… whatever it was, was happening. That was when the real trouble usually started.

“Well” Agnes put on her cheerful voice, the one that she hoped made her sound calm and happy even though she suspected that to everyone else it made her sound stressed and slightly mad “that must have been a bit of an adventure for you. You made it back in one piece though, didn’t you? And the children..?”

“Loved it…” the colour was coming back to his face, he looked relieved that another adult had taken his admission in their stride. Lucky bastard, Agnes thought to herself, first time it had happened to her they’d sent the men in white coats around and threatened to section her. At least they had until Theresa had sent them off on a really strange trip with monstrous vacuum cleaners and toilets that ate people alive. She’d been younger then though and it had almost certainly been unintentional, although they did leave her alone after that, or what was left of them did at least.

“No harm done then really. They must have learnt something too, you could call it a history lesson.”

“A seven year old turned into Captain Jack Sparrow.”

“There you go, a sailing lesson too, bet the other children don’t get many of those do they?”

“I think he was the one that stabbed me.”

They were both silent for a moment. Theresa had started to hum to herself, Mr Blaine was starting to sweat again until Agnes gave her daughter a gentle push in the shoulder to quiet her down.

“Look, Mr Blaine, I know you’ve had a bit of a shock but trust me, you’ve taken it well and Theresa really doesn’t mean for it to happen. Please don’t expel her, not for this, she’s been to so many schools already…”

To Agnes’s surprise Mr Blaine looked shocked.

“Expel her? Of course not, of course not” She could see that he meant it, his eyes had sharpened at the mention of expulsion, some educator’s instinct that she’d never have guessed he’d have was kicking in.

“She’ll certainly need some, erm, special attention… but we’re an inclusive school and I’ve never expelled a student in my life. Not even suspended one, I’m a Teacher.”

He was off now, the certainty in the job title was working it’s way through him, stifling the nervous sweats and getting the blood pumping again.

“I mean, a child’s imagination is a wonderful thing, it should be encouraged, not punished.”

“Absolutely” Agnes said, doing her best to suppress the memory of Theresa’s recurring nightmare about the Muppets, although ‘wonderful’ was, she supposed, one word for that.

“Yes, well, Theresa, you’ll really have to make sure you don’t let this happen again, I’m sure you don’t mean any harm but what you did today could have been very dangerous.”

It was the first time he’d spoken directly to her and the innocent smile she gave him in return would have convinced anyone but a mother that she’d never picked her nose and eaten it, never mind helping her classmates to stab their teacher. Agnes let it go though, it was no time to go pushing reality into the face of Mr Blaine.

“Well, I think I need a drink and a good night’s sleep. You too I should think, the sleep that is, er, not the drink. I’ll see you in class tomorrow Theresa, don’t forget your homework.”

From there it was all strained goodbyes and handshakes as Agnes rushed to get her daughter out of the room before he changed his mind. He was insane, obviously, or very stupid, to know the risks and shrug it off so easily. That wasn’t much of a disadvantage though, sanity had never worked all that well in the past and she was willing to take any chance that was offered.

It was only as she shoved Theresa out of the door, silently willing her daughter not to say, do or imagine anything else, that Mr Blaine said anything that had the dangerous edge of rationality to it.

“Erm, do you think it might help if I started bringing a sword to class? Or a gun maybe? You know, just in case it’s a dragon next time or something?”

It wouldn’t, Agnes knew, nothing passed over between the real world and the fantasy except for the person experiencing it. Still, if it was a comfort…