When posting the link for my previous blog post on my Facebook wall, I had to do one of those character recognition tests to make sure I wasn't a robot trying to spam peoples walls with my e-filth. Normally they are pretty non-sequitur word sets that you have to identify and retype, like "bridging haptic" or "abandonment crustacean." This one made just enough sense to be kind of a thing, and it was hilarious, and now I've gone off and forgot it. Fuck me sideways. It was hilarious too! Something like Indigent Williams, like a proper hobo name, conjuring up the silhouette of a dirt-eating 75 year old panhandler in the grizzly heights of the Sierra Nevadas.
You may have noticed a sudden dearth in the normally verdant fields of verbiage that this blog purveys. Well, aside from the fact that I'm becoming less and less incredulous about the goings-on of this place as I adjust culturally, I've also been hoarding away my writings so that I could present to you this bumper crop of delightful prose. Two posts in one day! What I have to offer you, aside from my normal musings, is this:
Preface -- An Island Apart, A Fantasy As One
Chapter 1 -- Dead Dread Deadening
Taylor sits quietly in economics class, his gaze catching at seemingly arbitrary points around the room. The teacher drones on about marginal revenue. The stapler, the heavy oak desk that looked so out of place in the sparsely furnished classroom, the hefty aluminum legs on the chairs. The pathetically unintelligent ask unintelligent questions. Taylor doodles and ponders how much time is left. A room devoid of interest but full of so much potential.
All of a sudden, a break in the monotony. A girl by the window screams in horror, the collective attention of the class focuses on her just in time to see her pointing out the window at the offices across the way. At the point where her gaze collides with the building's facade, the class fixates on a bay window awash with the blood of innocents. Students leap up from their seats, vaulting up onto the window sills to get a better view of a sight they know they shouldn't want to see.
Another girl shrieks and points, as girls are wont to do, in the next office over a woman is barricading the door in a desperate bid to buy time for her already fading existence. The weak door cannot withstand the pressure, snapping inward in an explosion of splinters. Four figures enter the room; clothes torn, skin gray, mouths agape and covered in blood...zombies. The walking dead. Not just walking – the limb-ripping, flesh-feasting dead that reside in the collective nightmare of every society. The class watches in horror as the vicious ghouls set into the woman and subsume her into their vile cohort. Down on the street people flee and run from the zombie foe as Taylor's econ teacher slams down the phone, cursing the absent dial tone.
Screams of terror erupt in the stairwell outside the classroom as zombies pour into the building. The teacher rushes over and locks the door, Taylor knows it is a futile gesture, some students begin to weep.
Chapter 2 -- Hurricane Stirring
The screams from outside grow louder, rising with a tide of crashing doors and frantic footsteps as zombies surge into the classroom across the hall. Some other students begin to panic, others faint from terror. Taylor walks calmly over to the coat rack and dons his jacket, zipping up tight. He feels the cool leather of his gloves at his fingertips as they slide effortlessly onto his hands, a sensation almost as familiar to him as that of taking a man's life. As the arms of his night-vision shades slip over his ears, the power cuts out, muffling the gory screams of the inhumanity around him in darkness.
As the zombies begin to bang on the door, students rush over to secure it. Taylor, having realized hours ago the futility of such a gesture in the face of a potential zombie attack of this magnitude, already knows what must be done. He kneels down next to the chairs his gaze had wandered across at the beginning of class, slowly unscrewing one of the metal legs; about 4 feet long and solid – perfect.
As the students continue to pile chairs and tables in front of the door, Taylor waits. Biding his strength for the dark harvest to come, he sheds a single tear for the imminent death of his classmates.
Just then, the all-but forgotten back door of the room slams open. Zombies. Students scream and try to run. Too late. At least 10 of the mutants rush through the door and attack the class now trapped in a brutal bloodlock they have no hope of winning by the very barricade they erected in a vain attempt at survival.
The teacher goes first, torn into a bloody mess, never to give horrible essay prompts ever again. Then the dumb students, caught trying to escape. Taylor waits patiently at the other end of the room. As the zombies devour what they believe to be all the students in the room, one catches a whiff of yet-fresh brains.
The creature raises its blight-ridden skull, directly into the path of the whistling chair leg, which connects with a sickening splunch – bloodying the undead mob already blanketed in red. The creature's zombie allies turn and roar as they face their undoing: Taylor Fucking Woodward.
They lock eyes for a moment,
and charge.
The zombies are slow, plodding. Taylor moves like the wind, swinging his weapon in magnificent arcs as he catches the first zombie In. The. Face.
Ducking, sliding, weaving, he eludes the outstretched arms of his foes, grasping fatefully as their instincts command, only to lose their . And after many strikes of his mighty weapon the dispatches the last of his enemies back into the fiery hell from whence they were borne. As he begins to leave he notices one of the zombies was a police officer, 9mm handgun still holstered faithfully at his side. Taylor commandeers the gun, cleans the zombie blood off his table leg, and walks out of the building as it is engulfed in a crimson inferno.
Taylor feels the heat. He never looks back. He can feel the bodies burn – but he senses no fear.
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