Friday, May 18, 2012

Preview of Soma, the Sequel to Mort


The following is a preview of my next novel Soma, the second volume of what I'm now calling the Fearlanders series. This is a first draft, so there may be some typos and odd grammar. Hope you enjoy it!


Prologue
The world was blue.
An early snow was falling, had been all afternoon, and as the sun dropped below the scrim of the trees, the deepening blue seemed to bleed into the sugary accumulation. 
For some reason it made him think of coloring Easter eggs. 
It had always seemed slightly magical when he was a kid, putting that hardboiled egg on the metal eggholder, then dipping it into a bowl of dye. His mother always oversaw their Easter egg coloring, a Virginia Slim dangling from her seamed mouth. She was quick to criticize if she thought they were making a mess or not taking the activity serious, but her baleful supervision was never quite sour enough to spoil the magic of dying those Easter eggs. Not for young Joe Bob Gillette.
That’s what color the world is tonight, Joe mused. It’s the color of eggshell dipped in blue food coloring.
Not that kids would be doing any such damnfool things now. Not since the Phage came and gobbled up all the Easters to come. The world had died, and it had taken all the egg coloring, trick-or-treating and presents under the Christmas trees with it.
Not that it was all bad. He was free now. Free as a fucking bird. There was no more government, no more laws. If he wanted to parade down Main Street with his dick swinging and a big doobie clamped between his lips, who was going to complain? Equal rights was also out the window. His gang, the  Highwaymen, had a regular Ali Baba harem, and Rule #1 was: put out or get out. Which, in this day and age, was more of a death sentence than an option any of the Pusses might seriously contemplate taking them up on. They didn’t squawk so long as the men kept their bellies full and protected them from the deadheads. And if any of them even thought about getting mouthy, why, all they had to do was take a good look at Sheila. Sheila had gotten smart with him once, and Joe Bob had laid her out. Kicked her fucking teeth in. She didn’t say “boo” to anybody now.
Joe Bob shifted inside the duck blind, trying to find a more comfortable position. It was cold, and that made every little  sharp stick and rock jabbing him in this ass that much more annoying. His nose was running, and his feet felt like two size 12 blocks of ice. 
Just a couple more hours, he thought, and then he’d hike back to HQ. Let one of the other guys guard the base for a while. He’d strip out of these insulated coveralls, grab whatever leftovers there were in the kitchen, then warm his tootsies by the electric heater in the den.
He was dying for a smoke. 
He had a pack of Winstons in the inner pocket of his coveralls. He’d grabbed several cartons of them from the OK Corral just a few days ago-- the day they’d had the shootout with Old Man Shitkicker and Shitkicker Junior. He’d light up right now, only the deadheads seemed to recognize the smell of cigarette smoke. To them, it was an advertisement for an all-you-can-eat brain buffet. He might even take the chance if he thought there were no zombies nearby, but this old blacktop, as remote as it was, seemed to be a regular zombie highway. The nearest town was a shitty little burg called Cloey, population 1200, and it was a good fifteen minute drive from their new base, but there were deadheads marching up and down the road all day. 
Maybe they were migrating, he thought. 
Heading south for the winter.
He couldn’t blame them.
Joe Bob checked his watch again. One hour and fifty five minutes to go.
He leaned forward and peered through the slit in the blind, looking up and down the road. He didn’t see any deadheads, so he leaned to the right and ripped off a hairy fart.
“Damn,” he muttered, as the smell wafted out through the collar of his coveralls.
Oh, well... at least it was warm.
The blacktop wasn’t a blacktop anymore. The snow had finally begun to stick on the tarmac and the road was just a blank white expanse now, marred only by the zigzagging tracks of the last deadhead who had shuffled past, and those tracks were growing fainter by the minute. 
That one had doddered by about an hour ago. A big spade in bib overalls, frizzy hair dusted with snow, jaw hanging slack like some kind of retard. It hadn’t sniffed Joe Bob out, just shambled by, making a kind of sad gurgling sound in the back of its throat, and Joe had let the creature pass. 
It wasn’t the noise he was worried about. He was equipped with a crossbow, or, as he liked to call it, Silent Death. He just didn’t like exposing himself. If he’d shot the big black one, he’d have to go out in the road and pull the bolt out of the zombie’s head. That was like hanging your ass out the window and yelling “come and get it!” at the top of your lungs.
He was also lazy as hell.
Besides, they weren’t supposed to shoot the things unless a deadhead showed some interest. Orders from Big Boss. 
Joe Bob checked his watch again. One hour, fifty-two left.
“Aw, fuck it,” he said.
He leaned forward, checked the road. 
No zombies.
Setting aside his crossbow, he unzipped his coveralls and fished the Winstons from the interior pocket. He had to shift around a bit so that he could get his fingers down to the bottom and snatch out his lighter, but he finally got everything situated, and he rezipped his coveralls and leaned back to enjoy a cigarette.
“Another nail in your coffin, boy,” he murmured. 
That was something his mother always said when she saw him light up, not that she had any room to talk. By the time the dead started walking, she had to plug the hole in her neck when she indulged to keep the smoke from leaking out her stoma.
He didn’t have to take off his gloves. He’d cut off the index and middle fingers of both so he could pull a trigger. And scratch. And pick his nose. He opened the flip top and plucked out a fag, then flicked his Bic and blew out a cloud of sweet, sweet carcinogens.
“Ahhh!” he breathed.
He coughed, wiped his runny nose, and wondered how he should kill himself when the world ran out of cigarettes. He was pretty sure all the people who worked at the cigarette factories had been calling in dead lately.
Sure, there were plenty of Winstons left out there in the big dead world, and not a whole hell of a lot of dedicated smokers still alive to smoke them, but you’d have to leave the fort to get your fix, and all the Injuns wanted to eat your brains.
It was a real dilemma: zombies, or withdrawals.
Maybe they’d all freeze to death this winter, Joe Bob thought. There was quite a bit of debate amongst the Highwaymen about the particulars of zombie physiology, and one of those questions was: would they all freeze to death when the temperature dropped below zero this winter? And if so, would they start moving again when they thawed out come spring? Or would they just keep wandering around, cold or no cold, with icicles hanging from their balls? They’d even debated catching one and putting it in a freezer, just to see what would happen, but that proposal had never come to fruition.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Big Boss had said.
A low-pitched and guttural groan drifted suddenly out of the gloaming.
Joe Bob lurched, biting back a cry of surprise. He snatched the smoldering cigarette from his mouth and smashed it out on the gravel beside him.
Fuck!
As quietly as he could, Joe leaned forward and peeked from the duck blind.
Deadhead at three o’clock.
It was a male, middle aged, dressed in just a pair of tattered boxer shorts. The deadhead’s belly was fish white and bloated with gas, its feet ground to hamburger from weeks of ceaseless wandering. It tottered along near the shoulder of the road like a sleepwalker and was going to pass perilously close to Joe Bob’s position unless it keeled the other direction.
Shit!
Bubbly green mucous dangled from its slack mouth. Half its body was overgrown with some kind of greasy-looking gray fungus.
It stopped and snorted at the air as fluffs of snow swirled around it in a little vortex. For a second it looked like the world’s ugliest snow globe. Joe Bob-- ever so gently-- lifted his crossbow in his lap. The zombie craned its head back and forth, nostrils flaring, blue-tinged fingers curling and uncurling. The light was almost gone from the world, but they had good sniffers, those deadheads, and really good hearing.
Joe Bob flicked the crossbow’s safety off.
The zombie’s head swiveled toward the duck blind.
Fuckshit!
Its brows furrowed down over those soulless, cataract eyes, and then it was running toward him, hands held out before it, fingers curled into claws. It came at him fast, howling like a banshee, and Joe Bob stood up, bringing the crossbow to bear.
Tried to stand up. 
He had been sitting so long on the ground that his right leg had gone to sleep. He knee flexed in like a loose hinge, and he almost fell back down.
“Damn!” he hissed, hopping on his good foot.
He swung the crossbow back up, sighted on the ugly fucker’s head.
It was almost too dark to see now. 
“Hold still for a second, you rotten motherfucker!” Joe Bob snarled, and then he pulled the trigger. 
The crossbow twitched in his hands as the bolt flew, but he was already reaching for his Bowie knife. He was going to have to kill it with his pigsticker if he missed the lurching creature. No time to reset the bow and nock another arrow.
No need. Despite the numb foot, the dark and fingers that felt like frozen fish sticks, he got the ugly sucker-- smack between the eyes!
The deadhead took about three more running steps, then fell on its face with a thud, going down hard just ten feet from Joe Bob’s duck blind. When it fell, the weight of its body came down on the shaft of the arrow, and the bolt punched out the back of its skull with a disgusting spurt of cranial fluid. A hunk of rotten brain matter quivered on the tip of the arrowhead.
“Ew-hewwwww!” Joe Bob leered, swiveling his chin back and forth Earnest T. Whorl style. He checked up and down the road real quick, then stomped toward the deadhead, flapping his arms and yelling, “What? What? How you like me now, bitch? You like that arrow in your head? Huh?” He snatched his handkerchief from his back pocket and used it to pull the arrow from the deadhead’s skull, holding the dripping shaft at arms length. “Jesus jumped up Cootie Brown! Your brain fucking stinks, you undead faggot!”
He started to walk around the body so he could roll the deadhead’s remains into the ditch--
--And that was when it got him.
Rarrrrh!
Joe Bob wailed as cold fingers seized the back of his coveralls, wrenching him to and fro like a pitbull with a kitten in its jaws. He lost control of his bladder and squirted about half a cup of hot piss into his Hanes. His knees buckled-- both of them this time-- and he fell down on his rump, and that was when he realized he’d been had, that one of his buddies had snuck up behind him, not some deadhead. 
Mainly because said buddy was laughing his ass off.
“Ray, you fucker!” Joe Bob snarled, rolling to his hands and knees.
Ray backed off, still laughing, as Joe Bob jumped to his feet.
“Sorry, dude, I couldn’t help it!” he snorted, holding his hands out in front of him.
“You made me piss my pants, you asshole!”
Ray looked down at Joe Bob’s crotch, where a Florida-shaped wet spot was currently spreading down the man’s inner leg, and went off into gales of fresh laughter.
“Oh, my god! You did!”
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Joe Bob yelled, and he launched himself at the other man.
It wasn’t much more than a schoolyard scuffle. Ray had saved his ass more time than he could count since the dead rose up and took a bite out of planet Earth’s ass. Joe Bob just shoved his laughing companion around the road until he’d blown off some steam. He did land a few satisfying rabbit punches to his buddy’s chest and shoulder, but they did little damage, then he was spent. He leaned forward with hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, while Ray wiped his eyes, his laughter winding down to the occasional snort or snicker.
“You okay?” Ray asked.
“Y-yeah,” Joe Bob gasped.
“Your face is all red.”
“Winded... Need to... quit smoking,” Joe Bob wheezed.
“No, seriously. You look like you’re about to have a coronary.”
“Just gimme a minute,” Joe Bob panted.
Ray walked to the blacktop to check for zombies while Joe Bob tried to catch his breath. Luckily, the road was deserted in both directions. If there were deadheads within earshot, they were in the woods out of sight. 
He thought the coast was clear, however. Most deadheads screamed their heads off when they were in kill mode, and he didn’t hear any wailing. The landscape was cold, white and silent.
Ray went to the deadhead Joe Bob had killed and checked out the corpse.
“Nice shot,” he said, when Joe Bob joined him at the road.
“Thanks,” Joe said. 
“One shot?”
“Yep.”
“Nice.”
They dragged the carcass across the road and rolled it into the ditch, then headed back toward the duck blind, wiping their hands on their pant legs.
“You come down early to relieve me?” Joe Bob asked.
“Yeah. I brought you some turkey, too. I was afraid the other guys wouldn’t save you any.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
Ray walked up the gravel drive and retrieved the covered dish he’d brought down from the farm, then they sat together inside the duck blind and talked idly while Joe Bob scarfed some leftover turkey and dressing. 
Because they were simple men, they talked about simple things. Sports teams they’d supported before the whole world went down the toilet. The cars they’d owned: mostly pickup trucks, the bigger the better. And then finally women.
“What do you think about the tall one. The one Big Boss is so hot for?” Ray asked.
“Alexis?” Joe Bob asked, his cheek distended with food. With his grey-streaked beard and bulging cheek, he looked like a man-sized chipmunk. 
“I don’t think she’s a she, you know what I mean?” Ray leered. He pointed at his throat when Joe Bob looked confused, said, “Adam’s apple.”
“You think Alexis is a boy?”
“I think Big Boss might be in for a little surprise when he takes that chick out to the shaggin’ wagon.”
They laughed together, then realized they were on guard duty and checked the road for deadheads.
Ray leaned back, pulled at the front of his jeans with a grimace. “Speaking of shaggin’,” he said a little more quietly, “I think one of those bitches gave me the clap or something.”
Joe Bob set his plate and utensils aside. He’d all but licked them clean. “You’re lucky one of them ain’t give you AIDS,” he said to Ray. “You know you’re not supposed to be fuckin’ them bareback. Ain’t no telling what kind of diseases they got, and Big Boss will give you hell if you get one of the Pusses knocked up. We ain’t set up to be taking care of no babies. Not right now. They’ll probably be deformed anyway, what with all the radiation. Hell, half this snow is probably radioactive ash!”
Ray looked up at the sky, his eyelids lowered to thoughtful slits. “You’re probably right,” he murmured. A couple flakes of snow drifted down onto his face, coming to rest on his eyebrows and lashes, and he scrubbed them away quickly. He looked at Joe Bob soberly, and asked, “You got a roll of toilet paper down here?”
Joe Bob chuckled. “Yeah. Why?”
“I got to shit.”
Joe Bob laughed. “Why didn’t you go before you walked all the way down here?”
“I didn’t have to go then.”
Joe Bob fetched his little cardboard box of guard duty supplies and handed his friend a half-spent roll of TP. Ray stood up and headed toward the woods on the east side of the gravel road. There was a fallen tree back there with a limb perfectly positioned to pop a squat over.
“Be right back.” 
“Hope everything comes out all right,” Joe Bob called after him.
He listened to Ray crunching through the underbrush. His partner stumbled in the dark and cursed, then fell silent for a moment. Joe Bob heard a very faint zip, then some very noisome elimination. 
“How about a courtesy flush?” Joe Bob called with a grin.
“How about you come over here and suck this dick?” Ray called back.
“Get it ready for me,” Joe Bob replied.
Joe sat in the duck blind, grinning, waiting for Ray’s rejoinder. 
He waited. 
Just in case his buddy hadn’t heard him, he called out, “You gettin’ it ready for me?”
Nothing.
“Ray?”
He grabbed his crossbow and loaded it, then clambered to his feet.
“Ray, you okay?”
He heard something, but it was very soft. Sounded like a heavy exhalation.
“Ray!” Joe Bob yelled.
The crackle of a limb breaking.
“Oh goddam it!” Joe Bob muttered, and headed into the woods after his friend.
He edged into the forest, the crossbow seated against his shoulder, ready to aerate the first critter that jumped out of the dark at him. “You better not be playing another prank on me, Ray,” he said. “I got the safety off and a twitchy finger.” 
He tried to walk as softly as he could, but there was a lot of brush underfoot and each step he took sounded like someone munching on a big bowl of Rice Krispee cereal.
He smelled something musky and animalistic in the air. Kind of like skunk. He sniffed, his upper lip peeling back from his teeth. Skunk and... Well, to be honest, skunk and sweaty dick.
He heard a grunt and a not-too-promising ripping sound, kind of wet, like someone pulling open a watermelon with their fingers. Taking a steadying breath, he came around the trunk of a tree and sighted on the log where they all came down to shit when they pulled guard duty.
Ray wasn’t squatting on the log though. He was laid out on the ground, his pants around his ankles, with something big and dark crouched down over him.
Even in the murk, Joe Bob could see that his buddy was dead. It wasn’t the expression on his face-- because he had no face. It was ripped off. Rather, it was the sight of that big, dark thing pulling out quivering loops of Ray’s guts. You couldn’t play in someone’s guts like that without them screaming bloody murder. Not unless they were dead.
But what was it?
It wasn’t a deadhead. He couldn’t really tell what it was, it was so dark, but whatever the thing was, it was doing a passable imitation of a magician’s scarf trick with his buddy’s innards.
Joe Bob felt his hair stand up. What he didn’t feel was the remaining contents of his bladder pouring down his left leg. 
He sighted carefully on the back of the thing’s skull, sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth, but it seemed to sense him before he could squeeze the trigger. The big creature ducked and twisted around, tiny yellow eyes fixing him where he stood. 
He realized, staring into those luminous orbs, what exactly he was looking at, what had killed Ray while his friend was taking a dump, and Joe Bob felt his courage drain out of him like someone pulled the stopper out.
“Jesus,” Joe Bob groaned.
It didn’t snarl or growl, it just stared at him, silent as death, and then it rose up on two feet, its head ducked down between broad, powerful shoulders.
Joe’s finger twitched and the crossbow jumped in his hands. He hadn’t meant to shoot, and the recoil made him cry out.
The thing that had killed Ray reached up and snatched the arrow from the air. It’s arm moved so fast it was just a blur, but it didn’t seem impressed by its own speed. It merely plucked the bolt out of the air and tossed it casually aside.
Joe Bob retreated with a whimper.
The big beast loped after him, crashing through the underbrush.
Joe Bob ran for all he was worth. Bare branches slashed at his cheeks like skeletal fingers, and then he was jumping across the ditch to the end of the gravel lane where the duck blind was set up. He slipped and fell when he came down on the other side, but he rolled over quick as he could, his breath coming out in puffs of white vapor. With trembling fingers, he reached for his Bowie knife.
The big thing that had gutted his buddy stepped out of the forest. It stretched one foot across the ditch, the muscles of its oddly-shaped leg taut and quivering, but before it came and ripped off Joe Bob’s face, it hunkered down with a start, looking up at the sky with its lips curled back from its fangs.
Shaking uncontrollable from head to toe, Joe Bob followed the creature’s gaze.
A flight of angels was descending.

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