You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 25

The worst part of the morning for everyone at the camp was the morning constitutional. Unfortunately, with no running water or indoor plumbing, the bathroom arrangement was a horrid shock to the system and probably one of the things Dani hated most about the apocalypse.

Aside from the ravenous cannibalistic corpses, of course.

The camp’s bathroom setup was simple enough: the survivors had cleared out one of the units, and some shelving and boxes enclosed the entrance, with some shower curtains strung across for some privacy. From there, everyone would do their business in an individual bucket that they’d have to empty later through a gap in the fencing at the western end of the lot.

It was the return of the chamberpot. Things really had regressed.

The closed curtain with a hanging air freshener on display indicated occupied space. For good measure, Bob had found a “Pawdon My Mess” sign out of some grandmother’s unit and hung it inside the unit. Dani had begun to despise the cloyingly sweet puppy on the placard. Everyone gave one another a wide berth when it came to ‘shit-central’ as Bob had taken to calling it.

Water was rare. Thankfully, sanitizer and toilet paper were comparatively less rare than water. The group had managed well enough, but soon they would need water beyond what they’d scavenged. Nobody had bathed in weeks; it had been at least a month since any rain had crossed the sky, and there was no luck with water catches beyond the promise they would eventually work when the weather would finally be on their side.

Dani stepped out from shit-central, holding the bucket away from her, glancing around. She hated this. Even worse, however, was the makeshift latrine on the other side of the fence, right next to Bob’s trailer. He’d been kind enough to avert his eyes as she approached with the bucket; she disappeared behind a pair of shelves he had set up as a privacy marker.

She drained the bucket down the pipe that drained into the caustic pit. As the shame sluiced through the pipe, landing with an audible plop, she gazed across the street. Thankfully, the lone ghoul she had spied hadn’t seemed to notice her. She watched it stumble aimlessly across the road. The last thing she wanted was a walking dead man falling into a pit of shit. It would be too much to bear.

“The pool chemicals have helped out quite a bit, keeping the rankness down,” Bob said as she stepped out, bucket lighter but no less traumatizing. “I wish we could have dug a bigger latrine, though,” he added.

Dani placed her bucket on the ground behind the shelf and glanced at the old man. “Please never talk to me if you see me using this spot. Please.”

He saluted her and turned his attention back to his book.

“Doesn’t the smell get to you?” She asked.

“It beats the dead.”

He had a point. Maybe.

“Tell you what, though, there is a reason I don’t open the back window of the trailer.”

Bob’s trailer, the one he lived in as the “security” of the storage business, illegally before the end of the world, had been parked against the metal-barred fence to shore up a portion of it. He hadn’t objected to the decision to dig the latrine next to him.

Hell, he helped dig the thing over the course of a day, dodging ghouls and taking shifts with Dani, Jimmy, and Edgar.

“Danielle. You got nothin’ to worry about. I don’t mind being here at this spot. It’s where all my books are.” 

Dani glanced at the bookshelves he had erected for a privacy wall, and sure enough, he seemed to have added to his library, somehow. The shelves rested comfortably beneath the pop-up he designated as a library. 

“Truth be told,” he rose from a salvaged recliner, “I have an idea and could use some help with this situation…” 

Dani reflexively nudged the bucket further back with her foot as he approached.

Bob put his hands on his hips and stared at his feet, a frequent gesture he made when working toward something. Generally, his instincts were good, and she was already intrigued.

“I didn’t find a shed or nothin’ in any of these units. I know it was a long shot, but I had hoped maybe some taxman or someone had bought one and never assembled it. If I had a shed, I could rig us up an actual head.”

“Head?”

Bob laughed.

“Sorry, old habits. Bathroom. I could rig us up a bathroom that can work with that latrine, especially if we dig it further and get some more of those pool chemicals.”

“No more shit-central?”

“Baby girl, we’re talkin’ shit-palace.”

Dani and Bob laughed a bit at this.

“If you can get me something from the Hardware Depot down the road… one of those sheds, I can repurpose that toilet we found last week, the one that was still boxed up.”

Bob paused and coughed a bit. It was deep and rattling, less of a sign of imminent danger or illness and more of his general age.

“Excuse me. I’d also need some pipes and all the plastic bins we can get our hands on, but… well… I think everyone would feel a hell of a lot better, and once the rains kick in, I think we could be doing pretty well for ourselves.”

Dani nodded. “That sounds doable. We’ll see when Edgar gets back about arranging a trip down the road.”

“Edgar is still out?”

“Yeah, scouting that place across the street.”

“He seems like a good guy. I hope he’s being careful.”

“Me, too. Though…”

“If you’re gonna say something about him having that gun on him, I get it, kid. I do. But you gotta also think about it from his perspective. Most of us here know nothing about one another.”

“I know, and you’re right. That’s why I am not making a big deal of it.” Dani reached into her left pocket and pulled out the copy of Dracula. “By the way, the kid is done with Dracula and wants to borrow something else.”

“Oh god, yeah, absolutely. Has she read The Hobbit?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Well, take it to her.” Bob walked over to the shelving and scanned the rows until he found a small, silver-colored paperback featuring a mist-shrouded mountain on the cover. He handed it to Dani.

“Thanks, I am sure she’ll love it.”

“You know, you can take a book, too. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you only either working or hiding in that Airstream for the past week.”

Dani took that in for a moment, not registering it entirely until she replayed what he had said. She suddenly found herself on the back foot. It was a sudden, uncomfortable shift to be chastised for not reading given the circumstances, but self-consciousness won out, and she wheeled for an excuse. 

“I’ve never been much of a reader.”

“I can’t think of a better time to start. No more Simpsons.”

Dani sighed. “Yeah, okay. What do you recommend?” She paused, then continued, “And if you say anything Amy Tan, I’ll feed you to one of those dead things on the streets.”

“Not a fan?”

“No, just… had a teacher at community college in an English class who kept saying that I was going to love the book, and it was very relatable. Didn’t even understand I was fucking Korean. It was embarrassing.”

“Gotcha.” Bob scanned the shelves and, after a few moments, added, “Okay, well, how about this?”

Dani took the book from Bob. The cover was faded, torn in a corner, and the spine was so cracked that any of the text was now illegible. 

She scanned the cover. “Shane? Is this a western?”

“Yeah, not a fan?”

“Didn’t say that… I used to watch True Grit with my dad. A lot of John Wayne movies, actually. He was obsessed with the guy.”

“Yeah, we talked about The Green Berets a few times. Your dad was – is – a good man.”

“Yeah, pretty sure he is dead, honestly,” she replied, almost reflexively.

They were both silent after that. All that broke that stillness was an occasional caw of a carrion bird. They’d been so active the past few weeks, and it wasn’t pleasant to consider why. 

“Dani, it’s only been a month.”

“And look how bad things are, everyone is dead, in hiding, or is fucking with everyone else. I know my mom and dad. They wouldn’t make it. He was too trusting of everyone.”

“He was a good man.”

“So are you, but you can be a son of a bitch when you need to, Bob. He never could. Mom walked over him. I got away with all sorts of bad shit. I loved him, loved them, but I’m not holding out hope.”

“I’m sorry, kid; you’re probably right, but damn, I don’t like you going there so easily. The minute you’re broken, I think we’re all screwed.”

She took in a sharp, quick breath. How could she tell Bob that she had been broken before the end of the world? She was relieved to have that AirStream with that locking door so that she could just get away from everyone.

Everyone listened to her, spoke to her, but she refused to speak about what was going on in her head. She didn’t like that so many decisions about the camp had fallen to her when she wasn’t even sure she’d have a reason for living in a state of perpetual fear for much longer.

“I’m fine, really,” she replied.

The scars on her thighs throbbed – a brief instant of dull pain that ebbed into a dopamine flow of some sense of control, albeit briefly. She’d started cutting again; it had started up the day when she had to club her undead neighbors to pulp.

“Well, just give the book a try, okay?”

“Sure.” She wasn’t sure if she would.

A sharp burst of static made her jump, and she looked to the walkie-talkie that Bob had set on a box near his chair. Alicia’s voice rang out, “Dani, are you there? My mom’s leg is really hurting again, and I am not sure what to do.”

Dani walked over and picked up the walkie. “Sure thing. I’ll be there in a moment, okay?”

Another crackle, and Sandy’s voice came through: “I thought these were for emergencies?”

Dani couldn’t help herself. “Yes, we’re dealing with an injury, you’re just being annoying. Over and out.”

Bob snorted.

They’d managed to find four of the devices, and they had been very careful about using them. Come to think of it, Dani remembered, the fourth handset was in her trailer.

“I wasn’t aware Alicia had one. Did Edgar ask for one earlier?”

Bob had slumped down into his chair. 

“He didn’t, he said the sound might draw too much attention as he was scouting the place.”

Dani didn’t like that. She had already felt foolish for not using the walkies effectively days ago when Edgar had to make the pied piper run around the block to divert the ghouls. Nobody had remembered that they had them as they waited out the moment, and it was a complete shitshow. Since then, they’d been strategic about who had them… mostly. Sandy protested not having one, so she was ostensibly a “scout” in the second-story apartment above the office.

“He should have taken one. He could have taken mine.”

“Hey, I told him to grab one, and he said he wouldn’t want to risk it.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Dani shook her head and began to walk toward the back of the yard. Still a shitshow. A shitshow she had been seemingly pushed into managing. She felt lacking.

As though it were a reminder, the couple of spots on her thigh throbbed again. She embraced the pain, briefly, until the sound of three sudden pops in the air caught her attention. Gunfire.

She had turned and seen Bob scramble to his feet, craning his neck to look through holes in the fencing to get an idea of what had happened. Dani jogged up.

“Across the street,” he said. “Sounded like gunshots, right?”

The sounds had erupted across the street where Edgar had been scouting.

“Sounds like he might have found somethin’, Danielle.”

Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available.

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The post The Dead Life #22 – Shit Happens appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Last year, I produced a run of three strips for an anthology from the team behind the former Haunted MTL. Consider them a pilot. Since the book has been out a while, it feels like now is a good time to share the comics and make a little proposal.

Thorn By My Side: The Test Comics

So, let me pitch something, shall I? Here are the three comics. They were completed in January of last year.

Alright, so take a moment and see if you like them. While you do that, let me explain a little bit about the concept.

You’ve probably seen several drawings of Briar, who is one of the two leads of Thorn By My Side, especially if you’ve been following me on social media for a while. They are showing up n the sketchbook a lot. You may have also seen a decidedly spicier Briar drawing as well. You have also seen Thorn, the goblin, at least a couple of times. I’ve been noodling around with the characters and trying to find a style for them. Looking at these test comics, I already see some stuff I might change. But they exist as a thing you can look at now and that is important.

The Concept

The concept of the comic is a simple one: Briar is a girl-failure millennial who struggles with anxiety, work, and her not-so-social life. Her case is pronounced enough that she has been assigned a life coach in the form of an emotional-support cryptid named Thorn, the goblin. Thorn, however, is not very good at his job, nor does he want to be, and he just finds it more fun to enable Briar’s behavior, acting more like a roommate than anything. Of course, only Briar can see Thorn. Maybe it’s all in her addled millennial brain. Or maybe there is quite literally a council of cryptids who try to guide humans toward betterment. We’ll probably find out.

That’s it, that’s the concept. There are, of course, other things involved, some other cast, and some possible stories. The main thing is that this would not be a big story or anything, just a comic strip. The comic is a way for me to process experiences about my generation and explore culture, anxiety, and life through a couple of characters. Relatable gags about life are the key, but with some elements that lean into the overworked, undersexed, awkward Briar and the somewhat sociopathic enabler Thorn. Two neurodivergent folks living together probably make one another worse.

I’ve thought about different kinds of gimmicks and worldbuilding, such as some light lore about cryptids and their relationships to humans. I have also considered ideas like having the characters review things as comics that lean into their obsessions. Hell, I’ve even considered doing NSFW comics as well – the idea of Briar being a failed OnlyFans model has popped up a couple of times. Nothing is set in stone, but people do seem to like Briar, and I am a people pleaser.

Plus, goth girl, so…

Basically, I think there is a lot of opportunity for the comic, but the question is: is there a potential audience there?

So…

So, what do you think? Would you want to see more of this comic? Please comment and let me know what you think about it, and feel free to ask any questions you may have. I’m not committed, yet, but I wouldn’t mind hard questions if you have them.

If you would like to support the work on do here at the website and help me produce comics and stories, donations and subscriptions always help. I post early access material on Ko-fi for as little as $1 a month, and it can really add up. My current goal is to handle my monthly server costs through donations, and we’re about halfway there.

The post Thorn By My Side: The Test Comics appeared first on hpkomics.com.

You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 25

Edgar had been scouting the school district office for a couple of days now. His shifts at the Kim Family Storage rooftop perch across the street had allowed him to take in the layout and observe the local ghouls and their aimless wanderings.

The entire grounds seemed locked up – all gates had been padlocked shut in a hurry, except for one rolling gate that had nearly been demolished by a school bus that had burst through at some point during the chaos of the first few days of the dead. Now up close to that very same rolling gate, Edgar saw that the bus tires were shredded. Unmistakable brown trails of dried blood marked the dusty yellow surface on the outside and the windows from the inside. Behind one of the brown streaks, there was motion… one of the dead was still wandering around within, seemingly pacing up and down the aisle, content with a small domain.

Despite his size, he had managed to stay low on foot, crouching and crawling between vantage points around the block and always warily shifting his gaze around. When these creatures were not alert and moaning, they ran eerily silent. He had nearly had a close call as he crawled past the front office of the storage yard and did not see a ghoul walk out from between a pair of abandoned sedans in the road. That had been the first day of scouting, and it had rattled him so much that he shouted and alerted a few more in the area. He had fled back to the storage lot for safety, and he and Bob had picked up the trio of stragglers that had followed from behind the safety of the metal gate.

Edgar would not make such a mistake again.

Based on Edgar’s observation, the only point in and out that was walkable was the busted rolling gate, but that area also had a pair of nearby wandering ghouls in addition to the ghoul within the bus.

It was manageable, but what concerned him most were the sounds he had heard from inside the district office, echoing out between the buildings of the district campus. Periodically, there was shouting and the clanging of pipes and slamming doors, punctuated by a series of moans from the ghouls. He hadn’t heard these things until he had begun poking at the perimeter, and even then, it all sounded so faint.

Edgar was unsure of the disposition of the survivors, if he was hearing what he thought he was, but the clamor was great. He was sure it was more unknown people than he was willing to deal with on his own, especially given the incident with the police car. He’d been lucky with Bob and Dani, and lucky again with the new ones, Mary and Alicia. Sooner or later, luck would run out.

The good news was that the patterns the ghouls seemed to follow were aimless but also felt almost regular, as though they would reach some boundary, invisible or not, and reverse course. Today would be the day he would test that and work his way into the district grounds to see what he could find.

There was no rush. He wouldn’t push it. He wasn’t in a hurry to die. He woke up with a start more than once these past few days, remembering the swarm of ghouls clinging to his car a week ago – remembering the back seat of the car and the condition of the woman he was sure he’d known.

Edgar came in low, practically on his hands and knees, following along the side of the bus, out of sight of the closest ghoul ahead. When he was close enough, he squeezed himself under the bus. If it hadn’t been due to consistent starvation, he would have been unable to do that. The most fucked of blessings. He was still the biggest person in the camp, but he felt smaller than he had been before everything changed. 

He shuffled quietly on his belly under the bus and toward the front. Pausing, he watched desiccated feet shuffle back and forth; the sticklike legs were in tattered slacks, and one foot was socked but without a shoe.

He watched the ghoul’s motion until it came close enough. He pulled a small camping hatchet from the back of his pants and grabbed at one of the legs, tugging hard. Instead of dragging it under, the leg snapped off, and the ghoul fell to the ground. Black blood splattered, and Edgar quickly tossed the broken leg away.

“Fuck,” he whispered. He scrambled out from under the bus and grappled the waist and back of the ghoul as it thrashed. With an overhead swing, he brought the blade to the back of the skull with a sickening thwack, cracking the rotting skull open before the ghoul even made a sound. Pausing for a second to see if it was done thrashing, he scrambled to his feet to the other side of the bus, peeking out from the front, wary of any movement.

That hadn’t gone as planned. Edgar glanced down at a bus tire, noticing it was so shredded that it could not be an easy fix. He wondered about possibly replacing it, but realized where he was in relation to the bus. Sure enough, Edgar stood in front of the open door. He crouched and held silent for a moment. The ghoul inside must have been in the back because there was no sign of it.

He took his hatchet and flicked away some blood. He tapped the handle at the first step, crouching against the side of the bus. The wait was agonizingly long for the ghoul to spill forth, enticed by the sound. When the creature arrived, it tripped down the stairs, crumbling into a dusty, rotten heap. Edgar pinned it down on the ground with his knee on its back and gave it a couple of violent thwacks with the blade. All that was left of his handiwork was a oozy dark puddle and rubbery nuggets of brain matter, looking like the world’s worst plate of scrambled eggs.

He glanced around, and the other ghouls who “patrolled” this space had wandered off. There was a gap if he wanted to push.

The facility would take a long time to clear at this rate. With no ghouls in sight, and his exit seemingly opened behind him, he pushed forward, taking a low run toward the first building, which appeared to be the school bus depot.

The building was a small outbuilding combined with what appeared to be a large carport meant for bus maintenance. There was no sign of wanderers, so he ducked into the small office that seemed to operate as a dispatching area. The place was a wreck, but there were no signs of life except for some smears of blood on a table. Peering out of the office, he saw the school buses that occupied the large parking lot. There were three parked in the large lot, and a lone bus in the bay that appeared to be mid-repair. Other buses had been out on the job when the place had gone into lockdown, Edgar figured. But the remaining three were just what he was hoping to find – if they were still operational.

He turned his attention back to the small room. There were a couple of computers on desks, a couple of phones, a small table, and some chairs. Little else, beyond, but he checked behind the desks anyway. He was surprised to catch sight of a minifridge, but then realized what was in there had probably become little more than sludge.

Curiosity won out, however, and he crouched down, opening the door. The scent of rot punched him in the face, nearly knocking him onto his ass, but the sight of a sealed can of cola won out. He snatched the can up and slammed the refrigerator shut, gagging all the while.

After a few moments where he could collect himself, he studied his can of cola. It had picked up a little odor from the fridge’s contents, and he ineffectually attempted to wipe away any grime on his pant leg.

He turned the can over and saw it was a diet soda. He grimaced at the idea of a diet soda, but also realized there wasn’t much of the stuff left in the world in the long run. Sugar was sugar.

He checked the date on the label, and sure enough, it was good. Worried about what the can may have picked up from the condition of the minifridge, Edgar spat on the rim and then whipped the can as cleanly as he could with a corner of his shirt. He cracked the tab and took a sip of the sickeningly sweet cola. Content, he took it down in a couple of huge gulps.

He finished the last sips and set the can beside him. All this time, there had been no sound coming from anywhere outside of the office. He rose to his feet, glanced out the door, and turned his attention to the bus in the bay.

From what he could tell, the tires appeared fine. He saw the engine hatch was open and couldn’t eyeball much regarding the engine’s status right now. He made his way to the side of the bus with the door and nearly shit himself when he saw a body hanging down over the stairs.

If it had been a ghoul, it would have moved – but it was just a body. Was it the driver? Or was he a mechanic? Leaning in, Edgar saw that the man appeared to be neither. He wore what used to be a pale green dress shirt and a tie with brown slacks. The man didn’t strike Edgar as someone who actually had much to do with the maintenance or operation of buses. Based on the computers in the room, Edgar figured that the man had a dispatcher.

What was the story here? Edgar had been thinking a lot about the ghouls and bodies he’d seen, wondering about past lives and final moments. He knew why. That car had rattled him in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Since then, he couldn’t help but consider stories.

The body did not appear to have any major wounds from behind. Curiosity gave way, and Edgar grabbed the shirt at the collar and pulled the corpse from the doorway. He turned the body as best he could, and caught a leathery face frozen in shock and fear. He also saw a screwdriver jammed into the chest.

Edgar’s head spun with theories, but he settled on the story that maybe the dispatcher and the mechanic were fighting about something in the chaos. Maybe the mechanic ended it.

Edgar just wanted things to have some kind of reason.

Edgar plucked the screwdriver free and flicked the gunk from it. It was a longer piece of kit, and he figured it would be worth holding onto. Inside the bus, it was relatively clean, beyond the exposure to open doors and windows.

Yet, there were still no signs of what was wrong with the bus, if anything. The keys were in the ignition, but there was no clear way out without moving the bus from the gate or opening another gate. For now, he’d let this one sit in silence, but took the keys with him. It was lucky that the driver hadn’t taken the keys with him.

Edgar made his way to the closest building, which seemed to be some sort of administrative spot. The lot was dotted with other cars, which might be useful – he clocked each one and added it to the mental inventory he had been taking. He kept his creeping, crouched movements, ducking past wandering dead, and made his way to a glass doorway. 

The doorway itself was in good condition, but he noticed that things had been piled up against it on the other side, serving as a makeshift barricade. He saw some desks, chairs, and boxes. The handles of the doors had been lashed by what looked like a belt and jacket.

The barrier was just about waist-high, and fabric had been strung across to hide anything within, outside of the small slivers of space between the barricade and the fabric. Edgar wasn’t sure if the ghouls could see anything, but he understood the impulse. He’d considered lining the fencing with cardboard back in the storage yard.

Realizing he’d come this far already, Edgar kept out of sight and approached the door, placing his ear to it.

Sure enough, there were voices. 

Raised voices. 

Shouting.

Gunshots.

“Fuck, fuck.” Edgar scrambled away from the door, falling over a couple of times, dashing his way back toward the garage area, keeping as low a profile as possible. It was amazing he hadn’t drawn any ghoulish attention in the scramble so far. 

Sure enough, dreadful moans seemed to echo all around, and the sound of muffled gunfire from inside continued to pick up. He ducked around the corner into one of the bays and watched as shattering glass scattered over the walkway where he had just been, and office furniture and boxes tumbled out with a pair of people.

Edgar watched the two run for their lives, a man and a woman. Both were thin. The man, already bloodied and clutching an arm, seemed to shield the woman’s body. The woman’s shirt was torn, a breast exposed.

A third man spilled out of the same doorway and fruitlessly pulled a revolver trigger over and over. His face was covered in blood, and his steps were lurching. Out of ammo, he picked up his pace like a crazed beast, striking the first man on the head. He overtook the woman, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her to the ground.

Edgar saw him climb on top of her and club her with the revolver; the other man, who had been brained, quickly tackled the man with the revolver, clubbing at him.

Edgar threw himself out from behind the wall of the garage and ran toward the scene as the two men struggled over the woman, but four ghouls had begun approaching them from behind some parked cars.

“Watch out!”

Edgar waved and cried at them, but the two men played out their drama, ignorant of him. It was too late; the ghouls converged and fell upon the struggling men, tearing them apart.

Edgar watched in horror as greasy fingertips slashed at the gunman’s neck, and hot blood burst forth. In a second, another pair of hands grabbed at his scalp and began pulling out clumps of bloody hair. The gunman hadn’t been as fortunate with two ghouls falling upon him and sinking rotten, yellow teeth deep into the neck and shoulder. Edgar was shocked at how strong and quick the monsters moved at the prospect of fresh flesh.

Each man was stripped of skin and tissue by teeth and fingertips. He’d watch a ghoul take a bite and tear strips and ribbons of flesh free, only to see flesh roll out of open mouths, where the ghouls would then go back, sinking in their teeth even deeper. Edgar had never seen the things feed so directly. He felt like he was about to vomit, but Edgar swallowed down the acidic bile that rose in his throat and cautiously approached the group to see if he could at least help the woman.

The ghouls were distracted by their eating frenzy, and the sounds of the men’s screams masked Edgar’s heavy steps. As he was within a few feet of the gruesome scene, he noticed the woman moving. Her face, however, told a different story and amounted to little more than a bloody bowl – he swore he could see white teeth in a puddle of flesh where a face used to exist. The gunman’s revolver had smashed her nose and teeth, and she was drowning in her blood. Her gargles terrified Edgar.

He closed the gap between them and, tears in his eyes, brought the ax’s blade down on her face, smashing what was left of her head into three wet chunks. He cried as he put her out of her misery and, when finished, whirled around and smashed at the skull of the closest ghoul. His swing was wild and glanced off bone. He doubled down and struck again, sinking the blade deep into the ghoul’s temple.

Edgar flew into a rage, striking any head he saw in a pile, and after a few moments and a couple of near bites, had brained every single one of the ghouls and the men for good measure. He instinctively grabbed the revolver and absentmindedly pulled the trigger a half dozen times, hoping at least a single shot was left.

There was nothing there. He knew that.

But the compulsion was too great. 

He tucked the gun into his pants and noticed the commotion had begun to pull in a few stragglers. How had there been even more of these fuckers hidden away? He grabbed the long screwdriver from his belt loop and clumsily rose to his feet, winded.

This scouting trip had become a catastrophe. He wouldn’t chance the district office. It was time to leave.

Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available.

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The post The Dead Life #21 – Stepping into a Private Drama appeared first on hpkomics.com.

You can read the prior chapter here.

Day 25

It had been more than a week of relative calm for the residents of the Kim Family Storage – at least, by Dani’s count. The calendar that sat in the office was already a year old, and she had to maintain her own count until they found a 2000 calendar. From there, time was in their care. 

Since the police car, the group had kept a tight watch from the roof directly on the corner of Lyon and Acacia, careful of ghoul movements. Beyond small clusters, the streets had been relatively silent. Dani, Jimmy, and Edgar had managed to stack some boxes and some sideways shelves up top to keep anyone on scout duty out of direct view. 

It had been a pain in the ass to get that stuff out there, but it would work well enough for the ghouls. The problem was that any people who might see the strange stacks on the roof would probably get a sense of what was up. Bob and Jimmy had planned to create a small wall running along the perimeter in the future. Nothing much but something that would allow for crouched movement, and more to the point, a little protection from any trigger-happy passerby. But that was one of several projects that emerged as everyone decided it was time to settle in for safety.

Not just safety from the dead, either. The cruiser was a grim reminder that they were not alone.

The drug store raid had been a success, and the supplies had helped ease their minds and filled their bellies – at least relatively. Another run, this time to the dollar mart a couple of days prior, had borne a decent supply of canned goods. Best of all, the trip went on without a hitch. So much so that Dani and Edgar had even managed to fill some bags with supplies they couldn’t carry back then and hid them out of sight for a supply run that they had planned for tomorrow.

As for Dani, now, she sat in her trailer, enjoying the reprieve of privacy. In the time she’d been here with the others, there were several swaps and trades regarding the on-site RVs. With the arrival of Mary and her daughter, Alica, Dani had given them the larger one she had been staying in, opting for an old Airstream. Dani wasn’t much for comforts these days. A door and a mattress were about as much as she needed. And a door lock.

Her trailer was tucked just in front of one of the indoor storage areas, which was little more than a concrete structure with several small, closet-sized units. This was where the residents had kept the supplies, and Dani held the key and the watch. The decision to lock them away was not popular, but everyone accepted it.

Accepted by most, anyway. Sandy Gunderson had voiced her concerns over the lock for the past two days. Everyone knew Sandy had snuck a bag of goods while unloading the last supply run, but everyone kept silent. The less she had to complain about and the more time she spent in the apartment above the rental office, the better. Her contributions to the camp were frequent anxiety at best, sprinkled with offers to pray with anyone who would wold accept it. If Dani was feeling generous, she could maybe see Sandy as a camp cook, but Dani suspected that it was more out of Sandy’s perceived necessity for “non-ethnic” food.

It was not lost on Dani, and clearly not on Sandy, that except for Jimmy, their group was not very white. Dani remembered when she was a kid that Sandy had called her a “slant-eyed monster” when she’d accidentally knocked over some paperwork in the office. Mom and Dad had not been there to hear it, and it was something that Dani carried with her going forward.

Dani thought about this little wound and picked at it enough to let out some tension. “Man, fuck that bitch.” 

She shook her head and rose to her feet.

Dani stepped outside of her trailer. The Airstream was planted firmly against the concrete wall along the eastern half of the lot. She had mounted a pop-up canopy over the entrance and braced it with a chest of drawers, a cabinet, and a bucket of nails. Some lawn furniture and a ratty roll of astroturf turned it into a rudimentary outdoor room. It wasn’t much to look at, but the shade was nice. It could be a little too comfortable at times. She’d accidentally taken a nap in the lawnchair and hadn’t allowed herself that since. There always needed to be a lock between her and the monsters – she needed to be sure of that.

From her “covered porch,” she could see Mary and Alicia’s trailer, a couple of dozen feet ahead, parked much like her trailer against the wall. Alicia Macias was sitting on the RV’s roof, reading a book. She saw Dani and waved to her, and Dani responded in kind. 

She liked the kid. Mary, though, was out of sight, likely inside. The broken leg from the drug store was a mess. They had done as much for her as possible. Dani would check in later.

She wasn’t quite sure how to deal with Mary; her recovery was a source of frustration, and more than once, Dani had seen her looking, for lack of a better term, shellshocked and unwilling to state much about life before the day everything fell apart. As open as Alicia was, there wasn’t much there. What was clear was a missing father, and that could be for so many reasons.

But as Dani took in what she could, the reason was appearing more and more obvious, day by day.

Directly across from the Macias’ “residence” was one of the clusters of units where the shitty brown Cadillac of Jimmy DeWitt and Edgar Rosas usually sat. They had opted to claim six units for their own needs in that row. They had also found an additional awning and erected it in front of where the car was normally parked to provide a little outdoor cover.

Dani made her way toward Jimmy’s cluster but was caught off guard by how quickly Alicia had climbed down from the RV. The kid was agile.

“Ms. Kim, I saw a big crowd of those things in the neighborhood behind us.”

“How big of a crowd?”

“It was tough to count them all, but I saw at least ten on the street, between the houses. Not counting the ones in the windows. It’s so weird seeing them up in those rooms like that.”

“Good eye. I am glad you’re keeping an eye on this side of the place. I know Bob appreciates the help.”

“Oh, speaking of Mr. Clark, could you take this book back to him? I’m done with it, and I don’t want to get too far away from my mom right now.”

Dani took the book from Alicia. She flipped it over in her hands and noticed it was a torn and stained copy of Dracula. Well loved.

Alicia was staring at the book. “I liked it, but the vampire felt a bit too… well, real. You know?” She looked up at Dani.

Dani nodded. “Will you be borrowing a new one from him later?”

“Could you pick for me?”

Dani smiled. “Sure, I’ll pick up a repair manual.”

“Hah.”

The two stood in silence. The sounds of birds and insects brought a sense of calm with chirps and clicks on the light breeze. The January mornings were cold, but Emmet was very much a town in a desert in many respects, no matter how many orange groves had been there 80 years ago. It was a California cold, which was largely pleasant.

“Alicia. How is your mom?”

“Her leg is still pretty fucked up.”

Dani’s eyes widened.

Alicia shrugged. “I’m 14.”

Dani laughed. “I know. I know. Sorry. I was just thinking about how my parents would have flipped had I dropped the ‘f-word’ on them.”

“You can’t even say it now, Ms. Kim.”

“Fuck off, smartass.”

They both burst into laughter. After a few moments, Dani sent Alicia off. “Go ahead and check in on your mom, Alicia. Let her know I am gonna come by in a bit to see how she is doing.”

Alicia nodded and, after a brief moment, gave Dani a small hug. Dani initially felt surprised but returned the gesture by squeezing the girl’s elbow. She was a good kid.

Alicia wandered off, gesturing with a wave as she approached her and her mother’s trailer. Dani turned her attention back to the units claimed by Jimmy and Edgar. 

Jimmy and Edgar had opened four this morning. She saw that they had removed various boxes, which had been torn open. The contents had been strewn about in multiple piles, the two still obviously sorting through them. 

The presence of an overly furry lady’s coat on a coat rack caught her eye for a moment. She had no idea what animal it once was, but the fact that Jimmy or Edgar had perceived enough value to hang the coat up was pretty funny. From what she had learned about them, she expected that it was a Jimmy gesture, the more reflective of the two.

She made her way down the row, the main row that ran toward the front gate. Sure enough, she saw Jimmy, the slighter of the pair, standing at the front entrance. His hair had grown a bit longer, and he had a tangle of red curls starting to form. He was in sweatpants and a t-shirt salvaged from one of the boxes. As she approached, she noticed the neon-colored graphic of a boat with “Catalina Open ‘92” in stylized letters on the back.

She presumed nobody in their sanctuary had ever been to Catalina before.

“Where is Edgar?” she asked as she approached.

Jimmy looked back; his hands were on his hips, intently studying the buildings across the street. He pointed to them.

“Edgar is scouting that building, so we’re keeping the gate open when he gets back. I’ve got the car parked there so he can climb over. The dead aren’t great at hauling themselves over things, and Bob and I have our eyes on it.”

“Edgar is there by himself?”

“Believe it or not, that giant is very quiet.”

Giant didn’t even begin to describe Edgar. While only about 5’9”, by most estimations, he was thick, a seeming combination of muscle and fat. Edgar was like a wall. Dani was glad to have him around.

Jimmy was different. He was skinny, and his muscles were ropey. He looked underfed, and his unruly red hair had not only grown longer at the top of his head, but he was beginning to develop a rat nest for a beard. Dani would need to get him something to trim it next time they were on a supply run.

He was pretty wiry-looking when he first came to the storage yard, but since then, he seemed to have mellowed out. He had been enthused about the company and things to do. He was one of the hardest-working people she had met, always up to something to make the location more livable, and the first to assist in projects.

He didn’t even bother hiding his track marks lately. Dani had been puzzling out how long ago he’d kicked his habit and if the work helped him manage. Dani had also been sweating whether this would be a problem down the line. By Sandy’s pointed comments, it already was – for her – but Jimmy had been graceful in feigning ignorance.

“Any idea what he’s looking for over there?”

Jimmy scratched his chin vigorously, and Dani could hear the rustling of hair. “We saw that it’s a school district facility or something. I think they make food there, school lunches and shit… and there could be buses.”

Dani used to live around the corner, right across from the district buildings. She hadn’t paid attention to it at the time. But thinking back, she did recall a colorful mural on one of the walls – some design based on the work of a kid. She always just thought it was ugly and weird. 

She supposed she saw some buses there from time to time as well. It was shocking how disconnected she felt from the location across from her apartment of two years.

“Why are we interested in buses, Jimmy?”

He smiled. “Well, if we can hotwire them, we can take a couple of them and build a wall around the parking lot in front of us.”

Dani looked at the lot; they hadn’t been able to use it due to the necessity of fixing the broken gate.

“We could find a way to make another gate and have two layers of protection here,” she added.

“Yep. Maybe even park a couple of cars or a truck for supply runs.”

“It could also give us a chance to fix the gate. Really fix it.”

“Yeah. I feel really shitty about breaking it. I swear I’ll fix it.”

Dani took a few steps forward toward the rolling gate and shrugged. “You didn’t know anyone was here, and you’re doing what you can to help. Nobody is mad.”

Jimmy pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his sweats’ pocket and a book of matches from the other. He lit up and began to puff away. Dani watched him for a moment, and soon enough, he nodded at her, plucking the cigarette from his lips and offering her a puff. She enjoyed it. She handed it back.

“Is he going to be okay by himself?”

“If it were me, you’d be right to be worried. Edgar, though, fucker is built different. He won’t be long. Besides, I really, really want to get to the parking lot.”

“We have plenty of parking here for now; it’s a good idea, but we basically have all the time in the world now.”

“It’s the grass in between the parking and the sidewalk. The soil. I think I can get a garden going.”

Dani’s eyes narrowed. “No shit?”

“No shit. I was in 4-H in high school, and my parents shipped me off to a boy’s ranch as a kid. I picked up the knack for growing.”

Dani thought back to the day Jimmy and Edgar had crashed the gate of the storage yard. Dani and Bob had found marijuana packed up in one of the units belonging to Jimmy.

“So that weed was homegrown, I assume?”

“I can grow potatoes too.”

“I’m sure you can.”

Jimmy took a couple more puffs and handed the cigarette back to Dani.

“I have some ideas, though, I see it, but I need the supplies.”

“Do tell,” Dani urged.

“Well, I can build some garden boxes. We can plant anywhere with those in a pinch. But I need wood, wire, liners… soil bags… seeds; it’s a lot.”

Dani handed the cigarette back to Jimmy. “Hence, starting with that patch of grass to get something going,” he added.

“Makes sense,” she added, “thinking of loading up one of the buses?”

Jimmy looked over at the truck still parked against the front office’s windows.

“That moving truck would have been perfect. I hope we can salvage that if we close the lot.” He began to hand the cigarette over to Dani, but paused and took another puff with a faraway look. “I am thinking about a lot of supplies because I have a much bigger idea.”

He paused for a moment, perhaps worried he was going to sound crazy or something. He looked at her, his eyes a little wide and his eyebrows sloping outward, concerned.

“Dani, do you know what is next to us?” He gestured behind them as he spoke, back toward the southern part of the storage yard, “That area between us at the houses?”

“Not really. Just some dirt, right?”

“A drainage ditch for one, and a dirt alley with the railroad tracks.”

Dani remembered that a railway, long since abandoned, had run through part of Emmett for nearly 60 years. The railway was mostly something used back in the early 1930s, as much as she knew. Maybe it went back to the town’s founding. The tracks were an artifact of the day when the town was known for its orange groves. She saw where he was going with this.

“You want to seal the place up and grow back there?” she asked.

“It’d give us a lot more room than some boxes and a strip of grass in front of the office. We could line the road with a wall that could give us a direct path rather than needing to climb up and over a unit to get there. There may be enough buses to do that with one or two for us to use as transport.”

It was a good idea, but the project seemed like a massive pain in the ass, especially given the need to secure the area and move the goods. She understood why Jimmy and Edgar were interested in the buses. This was workable, but would take some doing.

“The problem is,” Jimmy continued, “that we can’t risk losing that truck in front of the office yet because we can’t reinforce the window frame. We don’t have anything else that can work to haul around the supplies I need.”

Dani thought about it for a moment. Jimmy offered her the last few puffs of the cigarette, but she politely waved it off, deep in thought. She thought back to the area around them and where they had been the past few weeks.

She remembered something about her flight from the apartments where she had lived before the bullshit went down. The place was around the corner and seemed so much further away when she first escaped. Now it offered a tantalizingly close solution.

“I know where we can find a moving truck.”

Jimmy’s eyebrow raised, intrigued. He dropped the cigarette butt and mashed it with the toe of his sneaker.

“Hell yes.” He beamed. “Fuck yes.”

Click here to read the next chapter of The Dead Life when it is available.

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The post The Dead Life #20 – Home Away from Home appeared first on hpkomics.com.

I am still thinking about the project quite a bit and I am considering moving forward with it a bit, but I am trying to find an art style that suits the project. Briar’s design is very much evolving and I am going to keep playing with it until I land on something I feel I can work with consistently. Especially if I am looking into moving into a comic strip with her and Thorn.

In any case, I am really trying to update the sketchbook more. I don’t want this tablet display go to waste. I felt a little uneven and shaky drawing this one, but that is because I am just out of practice. The tablet display is doing it’s job well. It really comes down to me setting aside more time to draw.

But sometimes it is just easier to take a nap when I get home from work, though. Maybe yell at me on social media to motivate me, I guess? I feel like I need folks to hold me accountable.

Anyway, thanks for checking out the sketchbook.

As always, if you are interested in supporting what I do, you can do so through donations on Ko-Fi. I also take commissions.

The post 2026 Sketchbook #014 – Briar appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Performer’s Park was a rather green slice of an otherwise artificial environment, which was Teslovia as a whole. What Kracker knew of civic engineering was little, but he knew enough that green spaces were vital in a city, particularly one of Teslovia’s continental-size, as cities trapped heat. As soon as he stepped foot into the park, he felt a good ten degrees cooler. Beyond that, greenery was vital to the senses. A natural connection. It seemed like hundreds of citizens had made their way to Performer’s Park for that connection. Kracker flipped off his sandals and let his feet sink into the soft, tightly trimmed grass. 

Buskers, bands, and artists filled public spaces or crowded hastily constructed platforms, performing with their various instruments. Kracker moved from small crowd to small crowd, sampling each musician’s style. Nothing seemed to click for him. 

Granted, every musician was talented, but nothing he had heard seemed to convey the mood he was aiming for. Disappointed, he made his way to the edge of the park and took a seat on a bench. It had been painted and tagged over by dozens of artists over the years. Layers of decals, paint, and do-it-yourself printing made the bench’s surface uneven, but still comfortable. He wondered if the years of art worked like a cushion. From here, the individual performers became a discordant mess, their individual refrains coagulating into a tumor of noise.

Then, as he sat, a simple guitar tune drifted by. It was something low-key, sure, but there was some underlying vibrancy in the notes. Kracker rose from the bench and looked in the direction from which he heard the music. He began to follow, and as he did, he felt the strumming quicken and the music grow more confident. His eyes darted around the park and down toward the various tall buildings on the perimeter. 

Then he saw a Gomben, guitar in hand, sitting against a small information kiosk, strumming absentmindedly. Kracker approached and noticed the small placard sitting in front of the guitarist. It featured the intergalactic symbol of patronage, an orange, rounded “P” shape, and a mobile code. Kracker knelt, typed the code into his own mobile, and threw some credits the Gomben’s way.

“Thanks, man,” the Gomben said. He continued to strum out an improvised melody.

“Not a problem, you’re really good.”

Kracker stood back up and continued to listen. The Gomben smiled and began to improvise a new melody, something a little lazier and more wistful. This was the kind of sound Kracker was looking for.

“You wouldn’t happen to be available for a party tonight, would you?”

The Gomben flashed a wry, toothy grin as his fingers plucked the strings.

…

“So, my friends, do you have any idea what your flight plan will be?” Spril asked.

Marken took a sip from his teacup, “Unfortunately, that is decided by GalactiCorp. The minute we know, we’ll send word your way. I wouldn’t mind having another ship grouped up with us for safety.”

Mara self-consciously picked at her salad, only now aware of how awkward her choice of food was given the present company.

A server approached the table and set a small salad before Spril.

“Thank you,” he said, and then immediately stuck several of the leafy greens with his fork, scooping them into his mouth.

Mara and Marken stared at the scene, unsure of what they were seeing. Spril paused for a moment, feeling their eyes on him. He swallowed and smiled.

“I assure you I didn’t just eat my cousin,” he looked directly at Mara, “though I can’t say if your lunch is a distant cousin or not… we all seem so similar sometimes.”

Mara’s eyes widened.

“I’m joking, Mara. Just because I have plant characteristics does not mean that I don’t need food. Vegetables are the most efficient food source there is. Besides, salads are delicious.”

Mara and Marken began to laugh. She took a bite of her own lunch, but then Spril chimed in, “Although your plate does remind me of a growth I once had…”

Mara set her fork down and furrowed her brow toward Marken. He smiled and then turned to Spril, “That’s enough, Spril.”

The Floraran flashed a wicked grin. “I just couldn’t resist.”

“Well, I am certainly regretting my lunch choice now,” Mara pouted.

“When in doubt, stew it out, at least that’s what I’ve always said.”

“You’ve never said that before, Marken.”

He leaned toward her, “I always say that. To myself.”

Spril took another bite of his salad. “Don’t worry, Mara, you’re fine. I may be related to plants, but then again… aren’t we all? I just skew a little closer and can take on their genetic characteristics.”

“That’s always fascinated me,” Mara said, “this galaxy is just full of interesting surprises, isn’t it? If I’m not mistaken, I think our security guard, Guugel, has some characteristics similar to yours… or at least that’s what his eating habits tell me.”

“Guugel? Oh, yes, that cute little Wot security guard of yours. How is he?”

Marken slurped down some stew.

“I think he’s off spending his bonus on some souvenirs or something.”

…

Guugel, at this point, had found himself wandering away from the major thoroughfares of the city into the more cramped corridors between the major buildings that made up the blocks. He was still mostly on the top-level of the city, though away from the central routes, more and more overhangs and walkways blocked out the sunlight. So far, he hadn’t found much of interest beyond his dancing Syrien doll. 

He stumbled into an intersection of two avenues that opened up into a small plaza and sat himself down for a moment on a curb. He pulled out the doll and jiggled it slightly, watching it perform its spring-powered dance.

He peered around the small plaza, particularly at the dried patch of grass in the center. He noticed the sun hit the patch in just the right way to dry out the grass, and he began to think how nice a tree would look in this little spot. Maybe his travels would bring him back here after a while, and he’d find it to be a bustling little spot of weary pedestrians resting in the shade.

Guugel put the doll away in his backpack and hopped to his feet. He decided to see if he could find a tree… but where to begin? Guugel studied the four avenues radiating from the plaza and made his way down the one he was most unsure of. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought to himself.

…

The ambassador’s office was cramped and stuffy. Dash could see it from out in the secondary lounge where he found himself waiting, his initial visit approved. A tired-looking Terrekin of about 70 or so, on the cusp of middle age, was taking a meeting.

His eyes nestled into heavy, dark bags, and the sides of his olive-green face looked jowly and unshaven. He seemed to be talking to someone whom Dash couldn’t see. But he could see that the ambassador was growing increasingly agitated.

“Well, that’s certainly going to make my meeting interesting,” Dash said to himself.

He continued to watch until the ambassador rose and extended his hand to the other individual in his office. They shook, almost begrudgingly, and the other Terrekin stepped out. Dash couldn’t place what seemed off about him until he turned around to say something to the ambassador. Dash saw that the Terrekin’s shell was an artificial one – composed of treated plastic. 

Dash rose, knowing he was next in line to meet with the ambassador. The Terrekin with the artificial shell stormed off, dropping several sheets of paper. Dash knelt to pick them up, but by then the gentleman with the artificial shell had already wandered off. Dash shrugged, folded the papers, and tossed them into his bag. He’d find the guy later.

Dash stopped in front of the door and turned to the secretary, who seemed busy. He looked in on the ambassador, who also seemed overworked, already sorting through papers and datapads piled onto his desk. Dash shrugged and knocked lightly on the door frame. The ambassador’s head rose quickly; his look of frustration was readily apparent. He did his best to mask it with a smile and gestured for Dash to take a seat.

“How can I help you, Mister… uh…” the ambassador flicked through appointments on his terminal, “Kameku, yes? I’m Quinlen Sev.”

Dash nodded and took a seat. “Yessir. I was hoping your office could assist me in ferrying some sensitive equipment back to Ocia.”

“That seems like something that could be handled via a shipping company, though?”

Dash shrugged, “Under any other circumstances, I’d agree with you, but given the nature of the equipment and the networking fees involved, I figured I could classify this as a public works project.”

“How so?”

“Well, I want to ship a GIN relay to my home village, and because it is a potential addition to Ocia’s communication network, I figured there were maintenance and installation concerns, not to mention that this is a large, expensive piece of equipment to move over public shipping. Given this, I also know that I can ensure proper, safe delivery if it’s treated as a public works project, so-“

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down, kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What village?”

“Movari. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“You’re right. Never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. We’re on a small island off the coast of Konshu.”

“Konshu, huh? My family was originally from there. Tell me more about this relay.”

“Well, Movari is quite small and doesn’t have great access to Ocia’s communications network. We have to use Konshu’s system, but we’re in a bad spot because we aren’t close enough to the island for a good signal, and we aren’t a large enough population to be granted a relay by the government.”

“So you’re taking it upon yourself to solve the problem?”

“Well, doing what I can. I came into some money I don’t need, so I figure I can put it toward a good cause.”

“That’s admirable. I think I may be able to help you in that regard. At least there’s something I can accomplish today.” Quinlen’s brow furrowed slightly.

“I imagine the pay you get as an ambassador more than makes up for it, though, right?”

“HAH! How much do you think we make?”

“I thought an ambassador would be rich.”

“Do you have any idea what a Federation ambassador makes? Our pockets don’t get lined like ambassadors from the Neutrality.”

“I had no idea, I didn’t mean to assume-“

“It’s no worry, kid, I understand. It’s not a great system we have, but I’ve found it to be worth doing what I can from inside. To be honest, I wish I had your gumption regarding another project.”

“What sort of project?”

“Well, my last visitor was my business partner. We’re trying to fund a prosthetic shell lab here on Teslovia. Most prosthetics have to come from Ocia and we figured a lab here would make a lot of sense because it’d be easier to ship the prosthetics if we grew them here.”

“I noticed his shell was a prosthesis…”

“Oh, no, no, we’re talking about full-grown shells that accept nerve connection, like our birth shells. Genetic matches and everything.”

“That’s a great idea. We can do that, now?”

“Absolutely. We’re at the forefront of this. It’s good work. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Problem is, my position as an ambassador requires that I don’t take a major stake in any businesses that I may potentially have influence over. If this thing can get launched, I was planning on retiring. Then, of course, there is the idea of raising the money-“

“Do you need another investor?”

“Desperately, but… well, I have to end my involvement here. I suggest you talk to Korl about it.”

Dash reached into his bag and pulled out the papers Korl dropped.

“He left these behind.”

“Good, good. Listen, go see him, I’ll give you his address.”

“Sure thing. About my-“

“Oh, of course, of course. I’ll make sure all the paperwork is in order for your relay. That won’t be an issue.”

Quinlen rose from his chair and extended his hooked arm ahead of him. Dash rose and did the same. The two touched forearms – the traditional Terrekin greeting.

“Thank you, Mister Kameku. You’ve certainly made my day a little bit brighter.”

…

The dingy waiting room of the augment clinic smelled like sweat and alcohol. In truth, it was less of a waiting room than a loading dock with sloppily constructed walls meant to provide some illusion of privacy. The seating was, for the most part, limited to crates, except for a threadbare sofa that Alix had claimed when she arrived. A couple of “patients” wandered around the room, idly occupying their time until their turn for surgery.

Getting here had been a challenge requiring some bribery and stealth. There was an inherent disappointment in realizing the operation was happening in such an unhygienic location. She made a note to herself to purchase some antibio patches, just to be on the safe side. She wished her options weren’t as limited as they were, but given her background and the nature of the information she needed to retain, an unregistered storage drive mod was her best option.

A nurse – a haggard gaur Alix could only describe as “lumpy”  –  opened the door and poked her head out, asking, “Kira Vaan?”

Alix rose and made her way over to the door. The nurse held it open in her strong, Gaur arms. Alix noticed the telltale injection scars on her forearms. Apparently, the nurse had some augmentations of her own or a potential drug problem.

Ah well, Alix thought, too late to back out now.

She followed the Gaur down the hallway. The Gaur’s steps were heavy and lumbering across stubby legs, and several times Alix noticed the nurse do the “knuckle-walk” – a result of the sheer amount of weight and the length of the arms of the Gaur as a species.

The nurse gestured to a door, and Alix stepped inside. The Tentachlid surgeon was already sitting at a counter, filling out paperwork.

“Please sit on the examination bed,” he said. He did not look up from his paperwork.

Alix looked at the door behind her, which was now shut, and considered simply walking away. She sighed and hopped onto the examination bed, which seemed tailored to a Blassnaught’s proportions.

“Alright, miss…”

“Kira.”

“Sure. Kira,” the doctor winked with a singular eye, that appeared more to be a drawn-out blink, “what are you looking for?”

“I need a portable drive implant and an access port implanted into my body.”

“Hm. Cosmetically-clean?”

“Yes, preferably to be covered by the fur on my arm.”

“Well, that’s going to run you at least 3000 credits for the drive, and another 450 for the cosmetic work.”

“I have the money.”

“Well then, let’s get started. Anesthetic?”

“T-that’s not included?”

“Surgical-grade anesthetic is expensive and in short supply for pop-ups like this. There’s a premium of 200 credits attached to it. 350 if you want the good stuff.”

Alix gritted her teeth. “Fine. Anesthetic. The good kind… but don’t skimp on it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The doctor tapped a small series of buttons on the side of the bed and forced it to recline, catching Alix off balance.

“Just let me know the drive and adapter you want, and where you want the implant.”

Alix stared at the door one last time and then turned her attention to the inventory list on the tablet the doctor held in front of her.

…

Mara, Marken, and Spril found themselves back on the Greensleeves, talking over the options of the gardening business. Suddenly, Mara felt the mobile in her pocket vibrate. She excused herself and stepped to the side to see that she had received a text from Guugel:

GUUGEL: Are you and Marken seeing that gardener today? Can you ask about a sapling for me? I’m looking for one.

Mara smiled and quickly hammered out a message:

MARA: Come see us on his ship. Dock 16, Section Orange, Budget Docking.

She felt a little devious. She could have easily asked for the sapling on Guugel’s behalf, but Spril had been so keen to learn about the Wot that she felt like maybe Spril was interested in him. It was worth a shot, at least, getting them in the same room. She tucked the mobile back into her pocket and made her way back to the others.

…

Kracker felt optimistic. The guitarist had eagerly accepted the commission to play for the party. He was a nice young Gomben named Jem who was courteous and took copious notes about what exactly Kracker was asking for.

He was on his way now to pick up some snacks and drinks for the party to be delivered to the ship. Nothing extravagant, of course, but something for everyone there. As he made his way down the crowded boulevard, a sign caught his eye. He studied it, recognizing the green diamond of the medical industry. He weaved through the crowd and stepped inside. The air was chilly, and he immediately knew that this was a Grey establishment. Shelves featured boxes of medical supplies and equipment, and behind the counter were locked cases of premium-quality pharmaceuticals. At the counter stood a rather bored-looking Grey.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Kracker approached and looked around. “I’m looking for a medical thing.”

The Grey had no discernible eyebrow, but the muscles above the left eye contorted, indicating confusion.

“This… is a medical supply shop.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to find a gift for a friend, but I can’t… hm.”

The Grey sighed. “A tool?”

“My friend? Yes. Haha…”

The Grey’s brow muscle contorted again.

Kracker coughed, “I mean, yes, the thing I am looking for is a tool. Something to deal with triage…”

The Grey rubbed a temple with a finger in contemplation. “I assume you are referring to a diagnostic probe?”

Kracker nodded, “Uh-huh, uh-huh!”

The Grey briskly stepped around the side of the counter, and Kracker followed him to a shelf displaying different boxes of probes of various brands and specifications.

“Do you know what kind of probe your friend might be looking for?”

“No idea,” Kracker beamed.

The Grey sighed.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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Mulluck Eghart lay on his back, his head turned, watching the Wolf leave with the thin stranger and the child. He smiled and spat up a little blood. He’d enjoyed himself greatly and was excited to have an opportunity to fight the werewolf. He’d kill him next time.

He rose off the muddy grass and spat up a bit more blood with a cough. After catching his breath for a few moments, he rose to his feet, swiped at whatever mud he could see clinging to his body, and trudged toward the Mayor’s home. He slipped off the iron knuckles and tucked them into his pocket. As he approached the steps to the porch, he noticed one had been shattered into splinters – likely the fault of the beastman. He skipped the step.

The foyer of the home was a mess, again, mostly the fault of the wolf, though Eghart himself had contributed to it. Though the Mayor needn’t know that – if he were still alive. Eghart paused at that thought – he sincerely hoped the Mayor was not dead. The man had been one of the few people in Eghart’s life who treated him well enough. Eghart may have tried to pull the wool over his eyes with his gambit all those years ago, but the Mayor gave him work and a home and a sense of stability he’d not felt since he was a child, before the monastery, the farm, and the various bandit camps he’d fallen into. Eghart liked the man.

Though he wasn’t convinced that the Mayor wasn’t aware of what Eghart truly was. If he was, he understood the score and kept Eghart around. It was maybe the best relationship Eghart had with any authority in his life; he would rather not lose that. He doubted the town would last long without Mayor Gorval. Though that was likely due to whatever bargain he’d struck that Eghart had no details of.

Eghart approached the man on whom his comfortable existence depended; the Mayor was crumpled into a heap at the base of a bookshelf, covered in errant tomes and scrolls. Eghart crouched, cleared away the small pile, and saw that the Mayor was alive but unconscious. Eghart exhaled and then realized he’d actually been holding his breath. He was relieved that he hadn’t been mauled to death.

Eghart lifted the man from the floor, quite handily despite the Mayor’s not-quite-inconsiderable girth, and propped him up onto one of the seats in the center of the study. The man’s head hung loosely, and Eghart had to lean it back over the top of the seat. 

Glancing around the room, Eghart took in the chaos – the wolf had carved a swath through the study. He couldn’t make out much about what had happened beyond an overwhelming sense of rage. The crossbow bolt sticking out of the opposing seat suggested the Mayor had been agitated as well.  After a few seconds, Eghart saw the crossbow on the ground near the doorway and picked it up, just as Mayor Gorval stirred, groaning.

“Ughn.”

“What happened, sir?”

Corrigan Gorval’s head lolled toward Eghart, and the Mayor was slow to respond, his eyes wide, then shutting again. The man was having a hard time seeing. Eghart approached, holding the crossbow in one raised fist with his other hand held open and flat.

“It’s me, Captain Eghart.”

Gorval, with great effort, leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees, and his head slumped down, staring at the floor. He coughed a bit and spat up some blood onto the rug.

“Fucking werewolf attacked me. One second, I was dealing with that medicine man, and the next I felt myself flying. Then I hit something, and everything went dark. Did you see where they went?”

Eghart placed the crossbow down on the floor next to the Mayor and stepped toward the shattered window, where the werewolf had made his entrance into the home. Glass crunched beneath Eghart’s bare feet, but he felt nothing.

“I saw him climbing into the window from the street and ran here to stop him. Fought him, and he overpowered me. I got my shots in. Ran off with his partner and the child – the other Gorse kid.”

“You fought him?”

“Yes. I can get him next time.”

The Mayor was silent for a moment. Eghart continued to stare through the shattered window as he heard Gorval rise to his feet – all grunting and heavy breathing.

“You saw the Gorse girl… they took my niece?”

“She seemed to go with them willingly, sir.” Eghart turned back slightly to look at the Mayor. “She stabbed me.”

“It’s all falling apart, isn’t it?”

“Not if I can help it, sir. Now that I know you’re safe, let me go get them.”

The Mayor had walked toward the pile of books on the floor at the broken shelving and tapped at them with a slippered foot. He grunted, though Eghart couldn’t be sure if it were frustration or pain. Maybe it was both.

“The Wolf… they were… are… a Triserian. There is some magic in their blood, and that may be why the undead are closing in. Like predators fighting over territory.”

Eghart understood predators more than the Mayor ever could. He said nothing.

“It’s like watching ants. Those two stirred up the whole pile, and they’re trying to kill the invaders…”

The Mayor turned from the pile of tomes and stepped toward Eghart.

“Can you kill the mercenaries? Maybe we can still salvage this situation. If they’re gone, things can go back. The truce can go back.”

Eghart nodded.

“I need silver.”

The Mayor’s eyes widened for a moment, and then he made his way, limping, to another set of shelves against one of the walls, piled high with boxes and books. He plucked a polished wooden box from a shelf and wiped away a layer of dust from a bronze plate set on the lid. He paused for a moment, glancing longingly at it. He limped back to Eghart and shoved the box toward him, which Eghart took.

“Do what you must. Kill them both. Bring back my niece. I’ve already lost a nephew. I won’t lose her, too.”

“I don’t know if she’ll go willingly. She attacked me.”

“Beat her to within an inch of her life, then. Just bring her back alive by any means necessary. She can hate me for the rest of her life, but at least she’ll be alive to do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Eghart, thank you. You’re going to save us all.”

Eghart paused. He nodded awkwardly. 

“Sir.”

Eghart swept out of the room and out into the open air of New Gordhurst. He pried the box from his chest that he had been clutching tightly, overwhelmed and short of breath.

Eghart had always been a survivor beset by cruelties beyond measure. He still woke up some nights, terrified that he was still the same boy on that ranch. Sometimes Elspeth would rub his chest and ask him what was wrong. He’d tell her nothing and take her, or she would take him. That was their arrangement. 

But the Mayor’s words had shaken something loose just now. Corrigan Gorval relied on him, and not just as a captain of the guard. For the first time in a very long time, Mulluck Eghart felt something other than rage or the anxiety of survival. 

It was pride. He had someone he relied on, but who relied on him as well.

Eghart would do everything in his power to fix the crisis and get the girl back. He’d slay the mercenaries. He’d beat the Wolf to death. He would save everyone of this shitty town. He’d not just be “Egg” anymore – and even if they continued to mock him, he knew that they depended on him, and he would remind them of that. Their lives were in his hands.

He glanced down at the wooden box in his hands. The bronze plate’s etching read “To Harriet, my Beloved.” He flipped the lid open to see dull, but still quite fancy silverware. The set was still complete. Now it would serve a greater purpose.

Eghart closed the box and made his way to New Gordhurst’s meager forge; the weight of the iron knuckles in his pocket was a welcome sensation.

Soon to be the tool of the demise of the werewolf.

Soon to be the tool that saved the town.

…

Nathan Gorten watched Egg wander from Corrigan’s home, holding a small wooden box with a rather uncharacteristically light step. He wondered if the man had taken to looting the place, and if he would find his brother dead. He’d heard the clatter from the inn and had watched Eghart and the Wolf fight. He’d seen his niece in the fray and had conflicted feelings about that.

Eghart had fared well, but ultimately lost. The mercy of the Wolf was striking, and Nathan had wondered if that had been a mistake. Eghart was a murderer – that much was obvious. He’d become a good tool for his brother. Nathan never trusted the man; his arrival was suspect, and the man was off. Between the pale skin, his massive frame, and his curious tolerance to pain, Eghart made Nathan nervous. He’d seen the man back into a spear once and not react. It was terrifying watching the man pull the head of the spear loose from his side, slowly and awkwardly, and not so much as flinch.

Nathan approached and surveyed the damage to the home. The window had been shattered, there was damage to the steps to the porch, and the front door had been ripped off its hinges. He made his way up and paused at the doorway. He’d not set foot in the ill-gotten home in years. He followed the porch to the window and glanced inside, seeing Corrigan’s back as he sat at the desk.

“Are you alive?”

Corrigan glanced back over his shoulder, staring back at his brother. He winced, clearly in pain, and Nathan was pleased by this.

“Yes, regrettably for you, I am still alive.”

“I may hate you, Corr, but I don’t hate you enough to see another brother die. I came to see if you were okay and let you know that our mother died this morning.”

“Fuck.”

“Corea found the body.”

Corrigan turned back to face the inside of the study.

“I see. I feel for her. That can’t have been pleasant.”

“No, she is Larian’s daughter for better or worse, and she seemed… hardened this morning. Resolved to something. She reminded me so much of him when we were kids.”

“She was here, you know.”

“I saw. With the two mercenaries.”

“And you are okay with that?”

“She is Larian’s daughter. She won’t be stopped.”

“You’ll trust her with a fucking monster and soldier of fortune over her uncle, then?”

Nathan huffed.

“You’re not her uncle, Corrigan.”

“I am Larian’s brother, just as I am yours. I am her uncle by all rights, and you fucking rats filled her head with lies. Her and Garen, both. Do you hate me so much?”

Silence hung in the air for a long moment as Nathan wondered what to say. He said nothing, and that said everything.

Corrigan rose from the seat and approached the window, looking Nathan in the eyes.

“I won’t lose any more of my family.”

Nathan moved closer to the window frame and leaned against the wall, staring at Corrigan.

“Its not just your family that matters, Corr. You have never understood that.”

“I lost my son.”

“So did others. And some lost daughters. Some lost husbands, fathers, uncles. Wives, mothers, aunts. We should have fled further when it all fell, but you chose not to.”

“I had my reasons.”

Nathan slapped the wall.

“Just like you had reasons to fall in with that magician. You were blinded by greed. You’ve always been. You hired a killer to guard this town. How many people need to die for your poor judgment? You can’t salvage this. That Necromancer wants us here, and you are giving them what they want – why?”

“Then flee. Leave.”

“You know that I can’t do that.”

“You did when you and Larian changed your names. You forced Mother to do the same thing. You poisoned everyone against me when I needed you all the most,” Corrigan leaned closer, continuing, “yes, I fell in with that dark magician, and he seduced me, Harriet, and Martin. But you abandoned us to him.”

“We broke away because we warned you and you refused our help.”

“That is not how I remember it.”

“Memory was never your strength, Corr.”

Corrigan reached through the open window frame and grabbed Nathan’s apron, pulling him closer. Nathan ripped Corrigan’s hand away and took several steps back.

“I’ll be burying Mother this afternoon. You are welcome to come. Consider it a gift to remind you of having a family.”

“Fuck you.”

Nathan shook his head.

“Your greed fucked me and everyone else long ago. No, thank you. No more.”

Corrigan stepped further back into the study, nearly slipping on splintered wood from the collapsed desk. Nathan watched him in silence as Corrigan drew a crossbow that had been sitting in the dark. He held it aloft and aimed it at Nathan.

“It’s not even loaded, Corr. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Just leave. Go.”

Nathan sighed and sidestepped away from the shattered window. As he followed the porch, he could hear the sound of crying coming from the study.

He couldn’t help but cry as well. How had things gone so very wrong? He thought of his mother and was glad she had not lived to see what had just happened.

…

“I can take care of that for you in a couple of hours; there is no need for swords or horseshoes today,  Mr. Eghart.” Sandval, the smithy, looked Eghart over. “You look like a mess. Did something happen?”

Eghart stood there, a fistful of silverware in each hand. He said nothing, and Sandval simply shrugged and set the kettle into the forge. Eghart dropped both fistfuls of silver into the kettle and reached into his pocket, placing the iron knuckles on a nearby anvil. He walked away from the smithy, who began to inspect the knuckles.

Eghart whistled a tune as he walked back toward his home to prepare for his hunt. It was a sweet little song, and he couldn’t quite figure out if it was a lullaby, a work song, or a hymn. 

Not that it mattered.

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Day 17

The cruiser screamed past the corner where they had paused. Dani had no way of knowing if the driver had seen her group. She felt uncomfortable about someone knowing where she was… someone she didn’t know.

The moans behind the party had grown louder in the ghouls’ approach. Edgar had slowed to a crawl at this point to keep the ghouls on the Cadillac. Now the car was practically swarmed. Dani couldn’t make out how many ghouls had begun to scramble over the surface. All she saw was a tangle of gooey, flailing limbs.

Jimmy had already begun to dash across the street. His gaze was planted to his left, down the street, toward the other group of ghouls converging on their location. Dani pushed her cart forward toward the side gate of the Family Storage – home. She just pulled up after Jimmy had already begun pounding on the gate.

“Bob! Bob, hurry up!”

Bob was rattling the chains that held the gate shut. “Hey Jim, what the hell was that? Was that a fuckin’ cop car?”

Jimmy stood at the cart, his knuckles white from his grip on the bar. Bob was still fumbling with the lock and chain. Jimmy rocked the cart back and forth, ready to charge the instant there was clearance.

“Yeah, guy buzzed us twice, and we’re pulling deadies. We gotta get Edgar in quickly with the car.”

“It’s really close, Bob,” Dani added.

The chain came loose, and the gate began to open slowly. Jimmy stepped away from the cart and pulled hard to assist Bob. Dani had already rolled her cart inside and to the right, just past Sandy.

“Where’s the car? Did you lose the car?” she asked.

Dani rolled the cart forward and ran back to the gate, pushing Jimmy’s cart in as he finished moving the gate back. Sandy had approached and glanced out toward the street, looking worried.

“Where’s the car?”

Jimmy snapped, “It’s coming along with a dozen of those dead fucks.”

Sandy glared at him for a second and then took several steps back, creating distance between herself and the gate.

Dani stepped back out onto the sidewalk and waved down Edgar. He accelerated slightly, shaking loose a group of the ghouls, who tumbled onto the ground like sacks of meat from a refrigerator shelf. Edgar turned the Cadillac to drive into the storage facility, but Dani stepped right in front of him, slapping the car’s hood. She felt uncomfortably close to the ghouls that were limping toward them.

She glanced at the two groups rounding the corner.

“Ed… you gotta lead them away.” 

Edgar threw his heavy frame through the driver’s side window and glared at her. “What? You’re kidding…”

Dani shook her head and slapped the hood again, pointing at the growing crowd. “That cruiser screwed us. There are too many for this gate.”

Edgar grunted and then slapped the roof of the car. “Shit. Fine. Stay low.”

He reversed the car and began the slow drive down the road. Dani dashed back past the gate and helped Jimmy slam it shut. She threw on the chain and closed the padlock.

Dani and Jimmy stood away from the gate. Jimmy turned to Sandy and Bob and gestured at them to stay quiet.

The ghouls began to pass in front of the gate as they followed the car. The gate, thankfully, had a green screen of woven plastic fiber to keep the group out of sight.

A couple of the ghouls, the closest ones, had slapped and rattled the gate, but the distant sound of Edgar’s horn pulled them away.

…

The wait was tense. The last of the ghouls, the ones from the second group, had finally wandered by after what seemed like forty minutes.

Sandy was the first to say anything. “They’re gone, now, right?”

Dani shrugged. “Seems like it.”

Bob was sitting in a lawn chair a few units down, reading a book. Jimmy paced back and forth between periodically unloading goods from the shopping carts. All the while, Dani had been at the fence, breathlessly observing the undead stragglers in silence. Their movements were clear, even seen obscured by the green fabric – jerky, uncoordinated, unnatural.

What were they?

…

Dani had lost track of time. The ghouls were long gone except for a few stragglers along the street. They’d managed to slide the gate open enough for her to squeeze out and peek up and down the street. She also had taken advantage of one of the nearby ladders after they’d closed the gate again. There was no sign of Edgar, Mary, and Alicia last time she had climbed up to the roof of a row of units. She was worried.

She had found another lawn chair and set it up near the gate. Jimmy was still messing with supplies, arranging them into different piles and groups. Bob continued to read. Sandy had wandered off to another unit and was going through boxes of clothing.

The sound of an approaching car echoed in the concrete canyon of the storage units. Dani rose to her feet and peeked out through a small gap between the fence and gate, and saw the Cadillac.

“Hey, let us in,” Edgar yelled, “I couldn’t shake them all.”

Jimmy had already dashed away from his piles of supplies and was unwrapping the chain from the gate. Dani helped him slide the gate open.

The car rolled in, stained with grimy, bloody marks from ghoulish hands, but all the passengers intact. Dani felt a sense of relief, but lost it the moment she spied a group of the approaching undead. It seemed to be about ten or so stragglers who fell out of sync with the roving horde earlier. 

Dani pushed the rolling gate with all her strength as Jimmy pulled at it. Within moments, the gate rattled shut against the pole, and Jimmy looped the chain around it as quickly as possible, slamming the padlock shut.

Dani and Jimmy both stumbled back as the first crash of the ghouls smashed against the fence, rattling it. Torn fingers wrapped around the exposed metal rods, and through the green woven plastic, dark red blotches spread unevenly across the surface.

In moments, the gore had washed over the green cover with a sickly brown color.

Bob was already helping Mary out of the car into his golf cart. Each of her steps was labored. Sandy stood by awkwardly, not helping, as was her typical state. 

Alicia came stumbling out of the back seat and moved close to her mother. Dani noticed a slight sneer on Sandy’s face, no doubt annoyed and having strangers in her midst again. And a child no less, Dani thought in mock horror.

Dani felt Jimmy grab her hand and pull her to the side, away from the gate and into one of the open units. She glanced at him, and he nodded toward the Cadillac, which Edgar began wheeling into position in front of the gate, backing into the open unit. Jimmy pulled away his hand quickly.

“Sorry.”

Dani shrugged.

After the car was parked in front of the gate, Edgar stepped out, his gun wedged into the band of his pants. Dani walked out of the unit and gave him a knowing look. Jimmy followed along. Edgar shrugged and handed the gun over.

“Sorry… must have slipped my mind that I had it on me.”

Dani smirked. Edgar smiled back. She turned to Jimmy, who looked nervous, still.

She tucked the gun into the back of her pants and walked toward Bob and Mary in the cart. The moans of the ghouls were heavy in the air.

“Hey, Bob. Sandy. Meet Mary and Alicia.”

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Garen was alive. Still alive despite everything this fucking town and the surrounding woods threw at him. 

His nimbleness had been his greatest asset, but he would find himself winded, repeatedly, while the unending tide of wandering dead would ceaselessly march on any resting place he would pause at for respite.

Old Gordhurst was a place he barely remembered from his youth, but the central lane from the escape was enough of a landmark to work with. He found himself clambering from ruined home to ruined home, narrowly dodging some hidden ghoul and barely escaping into the spaces between homes. It would have been monotonous if not the most terrifying thing he had experienced since the initial flight from the town years ago.

He pressed further into town, maybe aiming to reach the other side, or find some relative safety in some space that wasn’t already occupied by a shuffling corpse. He wasn’t sure anymore. It’d been at least a day without any food, and his water-skin was little more than some clinging drops and backwashed spittle. At this moment, he found himself at the gate of the old church grounds – it was a house of many gods, and he leaned against the cobblestone frame that made up the gateway of the entrance to the grounds.

He glanced behind him. Several houses away, a crowd of twenty of the undead continued a slow, lurching bead on his position. He coughed as he watched them stumble toward him and swore he tasted iron. He had been pushed for two solid days, or was it three, now? He didn’t know. He took several deep breaths to try to steady his heart and glanced toward the church. He saw and heard nothing within the openings that served as windows and decided to take his chances. It was a sturdy building, and he hoped the door could be opened and shut again.

He also hoped that nothing lurked within the church, either.

He made his way to the door and tried to open it outward, but it jerked suddenly, and the rattling of wood caught him off guard. The door had been barricaded.

He cried and slammed his fist on the heavy wood. He spun around, his back against it, and screamed in frustration. His spear clattered on the cobblestone steps that led to the church.

He gave himself a moment. That’s all he could afford. He collected his spear and approached one of the windows. The church had never been granted glass – it was a relic of an earlier time, and thus it was always open. Garen limped forward and studied the gap in the wall.

He might fit.

Fit or not, the moans from the undead compelled him to try to squeeze through. He leaned his spear against the wall. His head cleared the bottom of the window, and he looked inside. All he saw was darkness streaked with the greenish haze of light that had filled the sky – he had no idea why the sky was green here beyond the influence of the Necromancer.

He knew why, but not the mechanisms of it all; what the dark magic was. Skies were not supposed to be green.

He weighed the options one last time and, with all of his remaining strength, hauled himself through the window, collapsing to the floor. He expended the last of his reserves and climbed up, putting all of his weight on the church’s stone walls, and reached through the window for his spear. He clumsily pulled it through the open window and finally collapsed again, breathing hard through his mouth. His choking and wheezing breaths smothered any other sounds, and he might just as well die here and now – there was nothing he could do at this point. He was done.

He shut his eyes, and the creaking of wood from somewhere within the church forced him to open them again. He tried to get up, or at least roll into a position that could allow him to defend himself, but there was nothing to it. He shut his eyes again.

“You’re alive?” a hoarse voice asked; A man’s voice.

It took so much effort to open his eyes that Garen almost chose to leave them closed. His vision was blurred, and the darkness of the room made details indistinct, challenging to take in. A figure loomed over him, staring down.

“Blink if you’re alive,” the stranger demanded.

“Fuck you” was Garen’s reply as he finally blacked out.

…

Lemmex was quick to drag the boy and his spear away from the wall and toward the cellar hatch near one of the altars. He didn’t know gods anymore, not really, but the beautiful woman sheltered him, her altar next to the cellar. As he lifted the hatch, he took another look at the matron and the lettering on her platform. He couldn’t read. All he saw was a beautiful, nude grey woman with the characteristics of the Florian people – the living plantfolk of the woods and forests. Where there should be hair was delicately carved stone leaves, and her features were smooth in other spots. Where he might normally have expected a nipple, there was nothing, like she wore layers of plant growth, like her body was a flower emerging from the green of a stalk.

He did not know her, but he loved her. 

He kissed her feet, prayed to his unknown lady, and kicked the boy down the cellar hatch. He soon climbed down and shut the hatch off, lifting it again slightly to grab the spear and pull it under.

…

Garen awoke in a room that seemed relatively well-lit and surprisingly warm for what it was – all stone and rotting wood. The room itself was strange and built around the remains of a dead tree.

He adjusted his eyes, staring again. No, not a tree, but made to look like a carved tree. What was this? His head hurt, and he slowly pulled his body up from the floor, putting his weight on his right forearm.

That is when he noticed a small cup and plate on the floor next to him. He grabbed the cup immediately, sniffed it, and, not smelling anything suspicious, he sipped. It was water. He downed the rest of the cup desperately.

He turned his attention to the plate, and it appeared to be strips of some unknown flesh, burned to a crisp. He sniffed it, and it struck a foul note. He was so hungry, though… 

He shook his head and turned his attention back to the room, taking in the surroundings. He about shit himself when he noticed a man sitting in the corner, staring directly at him, his eyes shining in the dark.

“You’re from the town south, yes?” the stranger asked. His voice was brittle and hollow like bird bones.

“Uh, yes.”

“You here to rescue me?”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“Lemmex.”

“Lemmex?”

“Don’t ask me to spell it. Don’t know how.”

Garen shook his head and sat up straight. His head was killing him, as he’d been sure he’d bumped it. His whole body ached as though he’d taken a fall. He wanted to be home, desperately. Not in this strange space.

Beside the strange, tree-like object built into the stone wall, the room felt like a hovel; a mishmash of scavenged garbage and religious artifacts. There was a small hearth that seemed to feed up into the Helatros hearth that would have normally occupied the church. Ash piled around it, either accumulated from worship long ago in the space above, falling through grates into this cellar, or accumulated from the cooking of Lemmex.

There were also rats, dozens, hanging from their tails across a line of twine stretched across the room. Some had been skinned, and Garen recognized they were going to be food. He glanced back at the plate, and then back to Lemmex.

Garen pointed to the plate. “Rat?”

Lemmex nodded and smiled. Most of his teeth were gone – except those that were rotten or shattered.

Garen pulled the plate toward him and grabbed a small strip. He sniffed it, and it smelled okay. He took some between his teeth, nibbled at it, and, content with the circumstances, ate it. It was gamey and practically burnt to ash itself. He ate everything on the plate.

Lemmex crept closer to the center of the cellar, out of the shadows where he had been hidden. His eyes were wide, yellow, and latticed with stressful red webs.

Garen scanned his immediate area and saw that his spear was not at his side. He glanced around in a daze and saw that the spear had been in the corner where Lemmex had emerged.

Unsure of what to do, Garen held the cleared plate close. He’d seen what a thwap from a plate could do atop someone’s skull from Mr. Goren’s place. It would at least give him a little space to grab something else if it came to that.

“So, did you lot come to rescue me?” Lemmex asked. “I seen your kind here before, but usually the heathens get at you. You all dress the same, so you have to be an army, yes?”

“My kind? Have you seen anyone else recently?”

“Just the dead ones being brought in.”

“Dead ones?”

“Yeah, dressed like you. Must be your friends. They’re dead now.”

“How many?”

“Can’t count. I was just the knife. No need for me to be learnin’ fancy numbers.”

Garen clutched the plate tighter.

“Knife?”

“Oh yeah, me and the boys did the knife work on folks before the town was killed. The road south. Made coin on what people were willing to pay, and made coin if they wasn’t. I was just the knife.”

Garen felt uneasy. The man was clearly a bandit. Had he been hiding here since the night the town fell?

“You live here alone?” Garen asked.

“No, got Stone-Tits upstairs.”

Garen’s head hurt. He felt a sharp pain behind his right eye. “Stone… Tits?”

“Some goddess. Statue of her,” Lemmex pointed above, “ a flower witch. She guards the hatch.”

Garen thought of what goddess Lemmex spoke of, but was not too familiar with the gods himself. He kept the faith in Helatros, but that was about it.

“Aside from ‘Stone-Tits,’ what else can you tell me about her? You said flower witch?”

Lemmex grew agitated and scratched at his cheek, really digging into the matted beard. “The F-florian goddess,” he grumbled, pointing a dirty, thin finger accusingly at Garen, “don’t touch her. She’s mine.”

Garen nodded, “Of course, I wouldn’t touch her. I was just trying to remember her name. I think it was ‘Rootmother.’”

Lemmex stopped scratching at his filthy beard. His eyes grew wide, and he chuckled to himself. He rose from his animalistic crouch and stood up. He did a jig. “Rootmother, eh? Ha ha!”

He stopped dancing and returned to his crouch, looking agitated again. The moment of joy evaporated instantly. “Stone-Tits is better,” he mused darkly.

He flashed a wicked grin at Garen and crept closer.

Garen gulped and nodded. “You’re absolutely right, Stone-Tits is better.”

Lemmex clapped his hands, giggled, and crouch walked toward the lit hearth, away from Garen. Garen released some of the tension in his body, but still held the plate close.

“Hey, Lemmex?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Garen.”

“Good name.”

“Thank you. Can we talk about what is going on here?”

Lemmex sat at the hearth, his body hunched, thin, and his bare back showed scars, including a nasty one near his kidneys. He glanced back over his shoulder.

“I can’t read but I can talk. I like talk.”

Garen rose to his feet and kept the plate behind his back. He stretched a bit. His body was still aching, and his lungs still felt like they were on fire. He took a deep breath and approached Lemmex very slowly. Lemmex turned his head back again, and Garen paused.

“Talk,” Lemmex spat.

“Yes. Can you tell me how you got here?”

…

Lemmex found it hard to remember a lot of things. He thought hard. He took time to put together what he knew. Maybe more would show up when he needed it. He spoke:

“I joined Egg’s band a couple of years before everything went to shit. We were doing good for ourselves. I did the knife work while Eggy did the planning. Smart guy, he was. Real asshole, too. Cracked me a few times, strangled Sylvo to death once on account of him slipping up at a bar. Egg planned to rob a small wagon, and Sylvo squawked and Eghart strangled him – no, snapped his neck – yes, broke his neck like a little chicken. Got rough for a bit and had to lay low. Only ever saw some of the guys try to kick out Eghart after that. We used to call him Egg, you know? They tried to kick him out, and Egg cracked three of them. There was fifteen of us. No, fourteen. Sylvo is dead. Yeah. Egg broke three arms, and then nobody said anything after. Lean times. Mostly knife work and buryin’ folks in the woods. Stripping bodies for what we could. Egg, Eghart, he got us through until all the shit happened. Some magic fucker raised the dead, and our robberies came back to bite us in the asses and we lost more guys. I was a knife guy, so I made it okay. Something wrong with all that. Unnatural, the dead walking, isn’t it? Eghart led us to town, but everyone was leaving in a panic. Then something snapped, Eghart cracked, and he crushed Millin’s skull like it was nothing and drew on us. We tried to fight, but he was an animal and felt nothing. I am good with the knife, and he felt nothing. He tried to stab me, and I ran here. Should have run elsewhere, ha ha. Ran here and found the church. Knifed the priest and locked the door. Heard screaming. Had to get away from Egg, though. Stone-Tits pointed the way to the cellar. Been here since. Got the priest down here, too.”

Lemmex pointed to the remains of the priest in the rightmost corner of the cellar.

“Felt bad about what I did. He keeps me company. Don’t talk much, though.”

…

Garen had originally failed to notice the remains of the priest, having confused them for garbage when he scanned the room. Now he saw the brown custodial robes and the leathery skin stretched tight over skeletal remains – some skin broken at the top of the head where a yellowed skull began to peek out.

All of this was a lot to take in. The mention of Egg alarmed him, of course, but the madman sitting at the fire was the immediate concern.

“Thank you for letting me know, Lemmex.”

Lemmex said nothing and stared into the embers of the hearth.

“I want to thank you for bringing me into your home and giving me some food and water. I am going to leave now. I promise I will send someone back to rescue you. I can’t do it myself. Okay?”

Again, Lemmex said nothing and continued to stare into the hearth.

Garen took a deep breath and edged his way toward the corner where his spear rested, the plate still firmly tucked behind his back.

“Death out there.” 

Lemmex’s low whisper forced Garen to pause. Garen felt sweaty now and cold around the base of his back.

Lemmex rose to his feet, eyes still locked onto the flames. “You won’t come back.”

“Lemmex, I swear, I will. We’ll get you out of here, but I have to leave to do that.”

Garen edged closer to the corner and began to reach out with his fingertips. He was just about there.

His eyes darted back and forth from the corner to Lemmex. Lemmex stood still, and Garen’s fingertips crept ever closer to the spear.

A glint at Lemmex’s hip caught Garen off guard, and before he could quite understand what he had seen, Lemmex had lunged, knife arcing wildly in front of him. He gargled and barked, swinging the blade.

Garen reached out for his spear with his free hand and waved it at Lemmex’s arm as he went in for a thrust right toward Garen’s gut. In the moment Lemmex was caught, he yelped at the redirection of his trajectory. Garen pulled the plate from behind his back and slammed it into Lemmex’s face. The heavy clay shattered into a dozen pieces, and the madman fell to the ground, face-first.

Garen tightened the grip on his spear and stood in front of the ladder, peering above, noticing the hatch. He began to climb and pushed the hatch upward, but it didn’t budge. He fumbled in the dark for the barricade and threw it to the ground, finally lifting the door, climbing back into the darkened church. The eerie green light already told Garen it was late afternoon. Darkness approached.

Garen stepped away from the hatch and observed the statue of the Rootmother. He silently mouthed a “thank you” and found he was still very much winded. Whatever amount of rest he had taken had certainly helped, but it was not enough.

He leaned on his spear, doing his best to catch his breath again. The noise of the hatch, he realized, must have echoed in the stone church, because he heard the barricaded door at the entrance shake. Ghouls had begun throwing themselves at it. Through the glassless windows, he would see ghouls reaching decaying arms into the sanctity of the church.

He spun around, taking in the entire room, and saw a door opposite the entrance, behind the central pulpit. He weaved between the seats and climbed the steps, throwing himself past the pulpit to the other portal. He opened it with little caution to find it was nothing but the chamber of the custodial priest. He grunted and dashed to another chamber door on the opposite side of the pulpit. He threw open the door and found the kitchen. He stepped in, found a door to his left, threw it open, only to find it connected back to the priest’s chamber.

Garen howled in rage.

He shuddered in surprise to hear someone howling back. He stumbled through the priest’s chamber, back into the church proper, and saw Lemmex standing before the entrance. He began to howl again. He smiled, flipped the barricade upward and to the floor, and slit his throat, stumbling into the door as he bled out. His weight fell into the door with such force it popped, creating a crack for long enough for a ghoul to slide an arm through, and soon enough, tattered fingers gripped at the wood, pulling the doors increasingly open against the crush of ghouls pushing toward the church. The very doors once thrown open, outward, to collect the weary, were now a funnel for the damned.

Garen dashed to the cellar at the base of the Rootmother’s visage and threw himself into the hole, looking upon her as he fell.

He landed hard on the cobblestone floor, but wasted no time grabbing the barricade at his feet, climbing the ladder, and locking the hatch. He slid down the ladder and heard clumsy feet walking all over the wood, rattling it terribly.

Garen’s legs gave out, and he slid down the ladder, sitting just below the entrance. He was tired and had to hold himself up using a rung.

He began to cry.

…

It must have been night by now. Garen had drunk more of Lemmex’s water and cooked up some rat. He was surprised to find a wineskin and took a sip.

His first real drink. Hell of a place for it.

He’d tried to drink from one of the cups left by a patron at the inn when he had worked there briefly. Mr. Gorten – no, Uncle Nathan – caught him in the act and slapped the cup out of his hand after barely a sip. To add insult to injury, his uncle had slapped him hard across the ear, which rang until the next morning.

He hadn’t tried that since.

But now, the dead above, in the hovel of a lunatic murderer, he was sure he would be forgiven for drinking something.

He’d fucking earned it.

Above him, there were still sounds, but they’d slowed down and grown less intense. Still, it seemed too dangerous to move back into the church. With little else to do, Garen began to explore the cellar. As near as he had determined, this room was a secret space that was intended for some other faiths. Maybe far older ones than he knew. More private, he supposed. It couldn’t have been storage for the other shrines within. This was a secret place.

There was the stone tree and the smaller hearth. There was also a cracked pillar that held a stone hammer, or most of it – the handle had broken off. There was a tapestry on one wall, hidden behind Lemmex’s filth and scrounging, and covered in grime and dust. Garen could not figure out what it meant to depict.

But two of these hidden shrines stood out to him.

The first appeared to be a carving of a werewolf into ancient wood. The figure appeared to be a woman with a wolf’s head and tail, her body draped in some robe with regalia he did not recognize. He took a swig from the wine skin, taking in the detail.

She looked resplendent yet feral. He considered Triseria to the north. Gordhurst had been close to the border of the kingdom, and as a child, he remembered tales and warnings of the wolves. Triseria had once laid claim to this area, he imagined. Long, long ago.

But the wolf in the carving comforted him in some strange way he could not understand. He continued to gaze at the shrine, nodded to the figure, and poured some wine to the floor. It seemed like the thing to do, like something in his very blood demanded he pay respect in some form.

The other shrine that spoke to him was one he knew was far older than any other here. He saw a stone, largely roughly hewn, but carved from it was the delicate work of a skilled hand, depicting a dragon.

Dragons died centuries ago, as Garen remembered from childhood tales. They gave their souls to Poe, the hero of legend. They’d given their lives to help him to defeat the Void, which ended with a cataclysm that shattered the West. As he understood it, the Void had not fully been defeated. All the dragons were dead. He was here in this godsdamned cellar, staring at some shrine to dead gods and dead heroes.

He sighed and squeezed out the rest of the wine from the flask to the floor. Once empty, he threw it toward the hearth in the back of the room and stood in silence. The silence helped his head hurt a little less. But the silence was broken by something curious – the sound of running water?

He looked around for the source and noticed the wine draining off, behind the dragon shrine. He glanced around the base and followed the flow to the base of the stone wall next to the statue. On a whim, he tapped at the stone and was greeted with a hollow sound. He felt the wall and ran his fingers over the surface, desperate for a seam. He began to search the cellar for something to make a torch. He found a broken chair and pried a leg away, and then made his way to the remains of the priest, nodding solemnly before tearing old fabric from the robes. He dipped his torch into the wine on the floor and lit it in the hearth.

He felt hope as the old robes caught flame.

Under torchlight, he searched for a seam, and finding it, traced the outline of a passage. These were old religions, some of them perhaps forbidden. There must have been an escape in case of an emergency. But pressing on the hidden door did nothing. There had to be some trigger.

He took a look at the dragon shrine again. The placement of the shrine and the door had to have a deeper meaning. But what? He recalled everything he knew about dragons and the legend of Poe, but nothing seemed obvious to him.

As he scanned the dragon shrine, he took in the intricacies of the depicted dragon and wondered if this had been a specific one. He had no idea, but he took in every detail he could notice. This shrine, a depiction of a serpent-like figure carved from a solid stone, emphasized the torso where a human chest might appear had it been a bust of the legendary hero himself.

He thought back on the legend as he knew it. The dragons gave their souls to Poe. Garen’s heart pounded in his chest. He was so close to something. As he grew conscious of his heartbeat, a strange turn of phrases rattled around his brain. A common saying, innocuous enough, really. He thought of Corea, as he always did. He loved his sister… heart and soul.

“Heart and soul?”

Garen took a free hand and placed it on the part of the dragon’s torso that seemed to him where a heart would be, as much as one could interpret the body of a dead dragon. He put his weight against the stone and felt the stone begin to shift and grind as three of the bands that made up the dragon’s underside began to collapse into the shrine under the pressure of his palm. Once the resistance grew too great, he heard a click as the hidden passage popped open. It was a simple wooden door with stone tiles meant to mask it like solid stone, so seamless in craftsmanship.

Garen glanced at the dragon statue and began to cry.

“Thank you.”

Click here to visit the project hub for Fang of Triseria; click here to read the next installment of Fang & Bone.

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So, let’s get into this new “horror-core” poem I hacked together from an old horror movie review, shall we?

“Rerun”

a murder is committed on an average of every five minutes

the only difference

is the names of the victims have changed

a young man who went on a killing spree

chopped, hacked, sliced and diced

the story is still the same

A respectable 18

not the all time high

but just enough to continue the bloody tradition

it drew attendion

just one attack after another

a string of murders

to wipe out the nightmares

macabre; contrived

you know some people have a weird idea of what’s entertainment

Notes on “Rerun”

Is this just edgy garbage? I can see how some people might see that. Had been doing this in high school, I might have been put on some kind of list or sent to speak with several adults who might have been concerned about me.

I can state here for the record, I am fine. I feel pretty happy right now, and this is just me playing with the words and themes I find in the text I carve new poems from. Like the previous piece, “Massacre,” I am pulling from this great collection of vintage horror reviews and one-sheets from Archive.org.

Rich Bentley’s review of Friday the 13th: Part VI is very dismissive, calling the film more of the same. I get it, and it pretty quickly established a theme I built on by focusing on the repetition of violence in the criticism.

The thing I found funniest, though, is that, for as much as Bentley is dismissive of the film, he does get up on a video-nasty high-horse about the threat to children within a sequence of the film. Apparently, it is more of the same, except when it does something different, but it shouldn’t do something different, either.

Sometimes it feels like horror just can’t win. But hey, what have you heard of before? Friday the 13th: Part VI, or Rich Bentley?

That’s what I thought.

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