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Friday Friends

Excerpt from Zombie Turkeys, by Andy Zach.

Chapter 2 – Edwards
He felt great, full of energy. He led his flock out of the woods. Now there was another field in front of them, with a large barnlike structure on it. Maybe it was another turkey barn! He’d go free them and gain more members for his flock. They had acquired more wild turkey flocks during their march. Now twelve thousand strong, they charged the barnlike structure.
* * *
The Caterpillar Edwards Dealer Education facility was preparing for a big customer demonstration. A large 390F backhoe was digging trenches and D-11 and D-10 tractors were filling them in—inside the voluminous demonstration building. It was only 7:30 a.m., but they had a scripted and choreographed performance to practice, showing the capabilities of the company’s huge machines.
Part of script was for the 390s to dig a huge trench, have a small D-4 tractor go into it and smooth it out, and then have the big D-11s fill it back in.
Then an enormous flock of turkeys entered through the open arena door. “Gobble! Gobble!”
That was not in the script.
The turkeys were mostly white, with some dark gray and brown ones mixed in. They flew up to the people directing the machines on the floor and began pecking them.
Hurt and bleeding, they ran yelling to the office door.
“Those turkeys are crazy!”
“And they all have those bright-red eyes too. Creepy.”
“There’re still more outside!”
“Close the doors then!” And they closed the doors. There were still perhaps a thousand turkeys walking and flying around the demonstration area.
The machine operators were relatively secure in their enclosed cabs, although turkeys would fly up and peck at the windows. The tough glass, designed to resist construction debris, foiled the turkeys. All the operators had headsets by which they could speak and hear each other and what the director said. From inside the office, he said, “Go ahead and make the trench. Make it narrower, just one bucket wide.”
Operating from opposite ends of the arena, the excavators made a trench a hundred feet long, about eight feet deep, and four feet wide.
“Now, you D-11 operators, push the turkeys into the trench.”
With their huge twenty-foot blades of steel, over eight feet high, they pushed clumps of turkeys into the trench. Tangled together, in a narrow space, they couldn’t get out again.
“Cover them up!” Thousands of pounds of dirt filled the trench. The hundred-ton dozers ran back and forth over it until it was as solid as the rest of the ground.
“Woowee! We did it!” The operators jumped out and high-fived each other. The script directors came out of the office to celebrate. After the celebration had calmed down, they heard a peculiar sound: ploop! And then another: ploop! And then ploop, ploop, ploop!
They turned around to where the trench had been. Like gigantic bubbles coming out of a swamp, the turkeys were popping up out of the ground. Hundreds were bursting out every second. They looked worse for wear: brown, dirty, with broken legs and wings, but they were hopping and walking and trying to fly anyway. And their eyes were still bright red. They slowly staggered toward the men, dragging broken legs or wings. “Gobble! Gobble!”
“Let’s get out of here!” The men ran to the office. One called 911. Another opened the arena door.
“Why are you letting more of those things in?” shouted a worker who’d peeked his head out the office door.
“No, I’m opening it to get them out. Once they’ve rejoined their flock and the arena is empty, I’ll close the doors.”
The man who called 911 spoke with May Callahan of the Hanna City police department.
“We’re under attack by a crazed flock of turkeys here!”
“Where are you?”
“At the Edwards demonstration area.”
“So that’s where they went. They were at Wildlife Prairie Park last night.”
“They attacked us while we were practicing our script with our machines. We buried them in the dirt, and then they popped right back up out of the ground.”
“That’s a new one. We’ll send a squad car right over.”
Zombie Turkeys – the comic urban fantasy about turkeys that can’t be killed!  Follow them on Facebook, Twitter or visit their web page. To purchase your own copy or read for free on Kindle Unlimited, click here.
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A Bite of … Andy Zach

The author of ‘Zombie Turkeys’ and the new book out today ‘My Undead Mother-in-Law’ reveals some secrets to the Working Title Blogspot.

Q1: It’s Thanksgiving. What is on your dinner table?

Deep fried turkey, in peanut oil, injected with jalapeno marinade–because it’s delicious and natural turkeys don’t have enough fat. It’s accompanied by sweet potatoes with butter, stuffing seasoned with sage and onion, crisp green beans stir fried with garlic, and freshly made cranberry sauce from scratch, with orange peel and cinnamon. All because they’re delicious and the more delicious the food is, the more thankful we are. That’s the point, after all. I have my favorite cabernet sauvignon as a beverage. Dessert is one pumpkin pie and one pecan pie, homemade, by my wife and daughter, respectively. Each is the mistress of her craft. These pie slices are reverently covered in fresh whipped cream (homemade, not from a can) and consumed with strong black coffee. These desserts are traditional and delightful beyond belief. If we could simply bring warring nations together for a meal like this, and agree to feed them thus daily, all war would cease.

 

Q2: What three items would you want with you if caught short by a zombie apocalypse?

First, a naginata or glaive, which is a six foot spear suitable for stabbing or slicing. You want to kill and dismember zombies as far away as possible. Bows and guns run out of ammunition and I don’t trust my accuracy.

Second, a kukri knife. If a zombie gets past your spear, you’ll want a heavy knife to slice them up quickly and easily. I used to think a bowie knife was the best, but upon investigation, a kukri knife seems to have better mechanical advantage. See your local mechanical engineer.

Third, if all else fails, have a whole body suit made of kevlar. It’ll be hot and sweaty, but when the zombies come biting, you’ll want total protection, including a transparent helmet of mylar. You’ll thank me when you eviscerate the zombie that tried to bite you with your kukri knife.

 

Q3: How would you explain the difference between satire and reality?

Reality is what happens, whether anyone perceives it or not, anywhere in our space time continuum as depicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, or outside of that.

Satire is a means of portraying reality by exaggerating certain features in a humorous way. For example, you can portray Congress as immobilized by competing factions for years while people are dying; wait, that’s already happening! As I said, satire is hard, because sometimes reality is difficult to exaggerate. This is where the satirist earns his or her money by portraying a zombie apocalypse or alien invasion which is lost due to political infighting. If you can’t exaggerate one insanity, add another one. For example, Jonathan Swift, in a “Modest Proposal” portrays the political infighting of the time over the ‘Irish Problem’ and gently suggests cannibalism.

Andy Zach was born Anastasius Zacharias, in Greece. His parents were both zombies. Growing up, he loved animals of all kinds. After moving to the United States as a child, in high school, he won a science fair by bringing toads back from suspended animation. Before turning to fiction, Andy published his PhD thesis “Methods of Revivification for Various Species of the Kingdom Animalia” in the prestigious JAPM, Journal of Paranormal Medicine.Andy, in addition to being the foremost expert on paranormal animals, enjoys breeding phoenixes. He lives in Illinois with his five phoenixes.

You can read more about him on his website or his Amazon author page.

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Wednesday Writers

From ‘Druid’s Portal: The First Journey’ – by Cindy Tomamichel

The pendant was solid gold, with a stylised oak tree and some symbols and dots she recognised as Ogham, the ancient language of the area. She frowned, turning it over in her hands.

It felt hot, and the heat pulsed through her until she felt dizzy, as if she was standing on the edge of a precipice. She held onto the cabinet as the museum faded around her.

Then she fell into a grey void.

There was a smell of forest earth, long undisturbed, centuries of leaf mould, of the secret growing business of trees. Quiescence. A sense of time. A time long ago, ruled by gods long forgotten. But not far away—distance didn’t register. Somewhere nearby—close to her home and Hadrian’s Wall. Where she had grown up and where the stone and earth were part of her.

The void split into shadows as the peace was shattered.

Danger. Around her the grey void echoed with screams of hatred and of death that pounded in her ears. She was in a battlefield, surrounded by the misty shapes of men as they bellowed in agony, and she choked as the smell of blood smothered her. A tall shadow filled her vision. Right in front of her a shadowy figure raised a sword, and she cried out and fell to her knees.

Death and danger.

And love.

The grey void vanished, and Janet opened her eyes. She shook her head. It had been the impression of a moment, but death, danger, and love seemed intertwined in a way she could neither explain nor fathom.

 

 

Find out more about Cindy in her interview for us or check out her books on Amazon.

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A Bite of…. Cindy Tomamichel

Q1: If you had to choose would you be a kangaroo or a koala and why?

Well, while the rigors (comparative, no snow) of an Australian winter lean me towards being a fluff ball in a tree, I think a kangaroo or wallaby would be better. Wallabies are cuter and smaller and fluffier versions of kangaroos. I also did a stint cleaning koala cages in a zoo once, so I am a bit less keen on koalas after that experience!

Q2: Why is time travel like playing with a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff?

Because look how flexible we have imagined time can be! We can travel backwards by excavating things from thousands of years ago, and hold in our hands a letter written by a soldier missing things from home. We can open a book and travel forward, into the myriad pathways of scifi. We can do both of these things in a moment of time, today. Extraordinary, really.

Q3: Aussie slang is known for its odd contractions – which is your favourite and why?

I think my favourite is yous. As in ‘see yous later, yous lot’. It is a word that aggravates people with a sense of grammar, and I tend to use it a lot. More a made up word, so a proper contraction – sarvo. As in ‘this afternoon’ – ‘Seez ya sarvo.’ Or, ‘I will see you this afternoon’.

 

Cindy Tomamichel is a writer of action adventure novels, some with a touch of romance. The heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way.

Her first book Druid’s Portal: The First Journey– time travel romance in Roman Britain near Hadrian’s Wall has been published with Soul Mate publishing. She also has a number of short stories and poems published in various anthologies.

You can find Druid’s Portal: The First Journey on Amazon.

Her next book, Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey is in progress. An action adventure time travel with a touch of romance set in Roman Britain.

Connect with Cindy on her website or on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or Google+.

 

Amazon Author page: https://amazon.com/author/cindytomamichel

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Your coffee break quickie

THE NIGHT BUS

The midnight bus across town. Nobody’s idea of fun. But beggars can’t be choosers and without her job Louise would have been a literal beggar as well as a metaphorical one. Accordingly, five nights a week found her crouched in a corner of the upper deck making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

Fridays were the worst. At the end of the week it was all an exhausted Louise could do to endure the scent of vomit and the sting of routine abuse from drunks and tired whores.

This particular Friday, the bus was full to groaning and she was squashed in next to a huge woman with pendulous breasts and galloping halitosis. Five youths in hoodies erupted up the stairs brandishing knives. Louise’s companion screamed before throwing herself to the ground and rolling around as if in a fit. The would-be steamers stared
“Woss wrong wiv ‘er?”
One stepped in for a closer look and the jerking woman set her teeth in his calf, gnawing on him as if he were a chicken drumstick. He screamed and dropped his knife, too shocked to even kick out at her. His mates stared round-eyed.
“I’d watch that if I was you,” Louise ventured. “She probably has rabies.”
They turned and ran, falling over each other in their haste to be elsewhere.

The fat woman sat up and winked at Louise.
“Well done, love. I usually has to bite at least two…”

© jane Jago 2017

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A Bite of … Greg Krojac’s Wren

Wren is the heroine of

‘Reality Sandwich‘

I’m twenty years old and live with my parents and my brother Sparrow (though he hates his name and insists we call him Fox). There’s about 400 people in our village in the forest. Like any other young woman of my age, I like clothes. I love it when the scavengers return from an expedition and bring back some clothes they’ve found. I’m a librarian, like my dad. I love books and I love to read too. But I’m adventurous too. Mum says I’m like she was at my age. Full of curiosity. I want to know everything about everything. Dad says it’ll be the death of me.

 

Q1 What is your favourite meal?

Probably anything that isn’t rabbit stew. There’s not much variety in the food we eat – The Event and its aftermath means that there’s not much to choose from. I’ve read about marvellous places called supermarkets, where you could find hundreds of different things to eat, but they haven’t existed for decades. My dad says he’s seen a few when he’s been out with the scavengers, but they’ve been in ruins and any food that was there is long gone. But rabbits are everywhere in the forest, so we won’t die of hunger, just culinary boredom.

Q2 What do you love most about your life?

I love the fact that we’re alive. The Event destroyed most of humanity. We’re the lucky ones. Well, my great-great grandparents were. They survived. That’s the only reason I’m here. It must have been so tough for them. But now we have quite a good life. I mean, we don’t have electricity, or sanitation – what they used to call modern technology is a thing of the past – but we’re happy enough. We have food, shelter, and books. If we didn’t have books I think I’d go crazy. I suppose the best thing about my life is the library. I’m a librarian and can read a book whenever I want.

Q3 If you could have one wish granted what would it be?

I want to know what’s inside the building just outside the forest. We call it The Complex. My parents won’t let us go there – they say it’s radioactive – but my brother Fox and I, we’ve seen strange bots going in and out of the buildings. I don’t know what they do in there, but they wouldn’t go in there just for the fun of it, would they? Fox reckons they’re maintenance bots. I think there’s something strange about that place. My wish would be to go inside the complex and see what’s going on.

Find out more about Wren, her world and her creator, Greg Krojac.

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Monday Meme

 

The Hysteria Was Real – by LN Denison

 

30 October, 1938: the day of the CBS radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’

It’d just turned 10:00pm, eastern time. The streets of Grover’s Mill were filled with people panicking about a series of news bulletins that’d been broadcasted between the times of 8 and 9pm, warning of alien attacks all over the world. I took no stock in the ramblings of mad men. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been warned, that what they’d been listening to was a work of fiction, nothing else. They’d been told countless times during the broadcast that it wasn’t real, but still they chose to create mass hysteria as they ran through the streets, waving their arms frantically in the air.

I found the whole scene highly amusing and tried to stifle a laugh as I walked by. I mean, how gullible can some people be to believe in symbiont creatures from Mars, coming to our little planet and trying to occupy us. It was a ridiculous notion: one I took great pleasure in dismissing straight away. It didn’t matter how many times I heard it, I still didn’t believe that there was life on Mars. With that thought in mind, I carried on with my nightly constitutional, removing my head from the game for a few moments. I took in the same surroundings, as I did every night.  Maybe, in hindsight, it wasn’t such a good idea going through the cemetery that night, not with so many crazies’ out and about. The moon cast eerie shadows over the gravestones, which gave me goose bumps, and forced me to hurry along, as the bitter night chill snapped at my face.

I climbed through the hole in the wall the other side of the cemetery, and headed in the direction of home, almost going full circle. The sky was clear, to the point of seeing every constellation in all their glory, shining down on me as I stared up at Ursa Major. My concentration was suddenly broken, as I spied a shooting star in the corner of my eye. I hadn’t seen one in a while, and this one was a doozy; larger than life and full-on. I watched, and waited for it to disintegrate into the atmosphere, but for some strange reason, it carried on burning, hurtling towards the Earth’s surface. That’s no shooting star. I needed to follow it. Could it be that I was wrong all along, and there was life beyond planet Earth? I let my curiosity lead the way as I followed the descending streak.

My heart began to race, as I kept an eye on what appeared to be a fiery, egg-shaped vessel heading towards Grover’s Mill. With wide-eyed terror, I realised that the object was heading straight for my home, no one else’s, just mine. I ran as fast as I could, keeping my eyes locked on the trajectory of the ball of fire. I suddenly realised that all the kooks and crazies, weren’t so kooky and crazy as I first thought. And what was supposed to have been a radio play, read by a twenty-one-year-old actor by the name of Orson Wells, was actually a reality. Orson Well was not a name that I was familiar with, but he had managed to convince the majority of Grover’s Mill, that the threat was real, and now, I too was beginning to believe that Alien lifeforms existed.

I rounded the corner, and watched as the ball of flame made its final, speedy descent, which was then followed by a crashing, shattering sound; then a billow of smoke. I knew that whatever it’d hit was now a pile of rubble, how could it not be otherwise? I turned into my street, only to have my worst fears realised. I placed my hand over my mouth in horror as I looked upon the object, and the pile of rubble where my home once stood.

A few minutes passed, more people had gathered around the object, which on looking at it, was a diameter of around 100 square feet. Then suddenly, the top of the vast object began to unscrew; groaning and scraping as it slowly twisted open. With a clang, the top fell to the ground, followed by a plume of steam. The silence from the crowd was deafening. We all waited for something else to happen, and then it did. What looked like a periscope, slowly ascended from the steam, swivelling its head this way and that. It appeared to be scoping the its surroundings, scoping us. A strange glow started to manifest as the machine rose higher, vacating its holding cell, letting out a piercing, deafening screech, which began to cause me a great deal of discomfort, perforating my ear drums, and everyone else’s around me. Was this to be our end? I was beginning to think so.

The Alien machine had completely detached from the belly of the beast, and began to buzz into action. Laser beams shooting in all directions, vaporising anybody that stood in its way, indiscriminately, mercilessly. Was I next? I was going to make sure that I wasn’t. I started to run back towards the cemetery, but it would seem that I wasn’t fast enough, as I felt the Alien being’s ray start eating into my skin, disintegrating my flesh and bones. Suddenly, I felt nothing, the burning had stopped, for some reason I’d been spared from the ray’s penetrating beam, but I didn’t know why. I truly thought I was a goner, and then I woke up, startled by the sound of Orson Wells voice. The broadcast of the War of the Worlds had only just begun.

 

You can find LN Denison’s Books  HERE and catch up with her on Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter.

You can also read the interview she did for us.

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Weekend Wind Down – a dreamscape cross-over.

Jazatar Baldrik meets Darek Kemp

The dream came as it did every night…

An explosion crumpling the building to his right as if it were paper.
Three more blasts in quick succession, the last close enough to spew out a lethal hail of masonry. The kinetic shielding on his armaments belt protected him so the rubble bounced away, but the screaming beside him was cut off abruptly. What had been two human beings a moment before, was now a pulped mess.
To his left stood a man with his arms held out in front of him, veins bursting from his tanned skin. He was clenching his fists in rapid succession at speeds he could not comprehend. The rubble was crumbling to dust around him. As if in a time warp, he smiled appearing almost bored with his task as he yelled out over the chaos.
“Hey. I’m Darek Kemp. Best surfer on any Earth. Looked like you need a hand and I was just flying by.”
And with that, the flyboy took flight and the air was still.
A shattering silence followed. Jaz had no time to wonder what was going on, who that had been or where they had sprung from. He could see troops advancing – eight – and five more still in cover behind them according to the Lattice screen. With three bursts he dropped two of the nearest, the rest scattered for cover.
“Leader Four-Delta from Prime. Withdraw immediately.”
The voice in his ears at last.
“Acknowledged.”
Relaying the order to his three surviving team members, Jaz put down covering fire as they retreated. The Lattice was pounding him with information through his scalp implanted data-port, faster than he could absorb it: numbers and location of the enemy, their armaments, expected movements, ground plans, suggested paths he could take. More.
Then:
“Leader Four-Delta from Prime. Lattice is showing you are surrounded. We are unable to support. Repeat. Unable to support.” A pause, before the voice added: “You’re on your own out there, Jaz.”
“Acknowledged.” Snarling the word, he focused on keeping up covering fire. He knew they were surrounded. He could see what was going on. The handful of Special Legion troops he had been given for this job were being sacrificed – a feint – so the rest of his unit could hit the main enemy base largely unopposed. Except of course no one had told him that. It crossed his mind to wonder who he had pissed off enough so they chose him for this suicide run. If – when – he got out of this he would find out and make them pay. Then the thought occurred that it was probably nothing personal at all. When you were living out a death sentence, you shouldn’t be too surprised to be treated as completely expendable.
“Bastards.”
“Well that’s not very polite now is it?” Darek landed positioning himself defensively back to back. He was wearing surf shorts and flip-flops like he just left the beach. “Looks like we’re surrounded. What now boss?”
“Now we get out of here,” Jaz said, tightly, “I want to prove those bastards wrong.”
A sudden blossom of light caught one of the three whose retreat Jaz was covering. It impacted in the centre of the spine and the figure’s arms went wide, briefly embracing air that was suddenly red with a haze of vaporised blood, flesh and entrails. Jaz swore and pulled a grenade loose from his belt, sending it in a skillful parabola back towards the enemy to cover his own retreat.
Darek was proving to be an effective teammate. He disintegrated anything in their path as he plucked the guns from the hands of the visible enemy, telekinetically. He hummed a tune that sounded like a nursery rhyme and smiled, seemingly unfazed that his life could be over with one misstep.
Another of Jaz’s surviving team went down to a sniper shot, but the third was trying to offer what covering fire she could from behind a partially demolished building and was being pretty effective. Jaz ran, rolled, then vaulted the lowest part of the wall, crouching beside her, checking Lattice screens, looking for any way out for them.
“Nice shooting young lady. I am Darek Kemp. Best surfer on any Earth…shit. Look out!” Darek warned and took flight.
More blasts exploded on either side and the world disintegrated. Finding himself suddenly under a pile of tumbling masonry, Jaz shook free of it like a wet dog shedding water. But beside him, one arm was all that was visible from beneath the rubble – that and the blood. He started running again.
“You got some muscle I see. The girl?” Darek asked flying beside him. Jaz shook his head quickly and got back to the business of focusing on the mission. This was not how it was normally, this was strange…
Watching the environment.
Watching the screens.
Checking the Lattice data overlays.
A movement on the screen broke the profile of the low rise building beside Jaz, some kind of accommodation block. Appearing on screen: ground-plans, elevations, positions of people, their predicted paths. The data projected into his visual field, augmenting his reality. He turned, raking fire across the facade. A figure fell and a fusillade of energy fire came his way from the building.
“I’m seeing six assholes and some big ass guns,” Darek announced Jaz stared at him, wondering just how the hell he could know that and Darek offered an explanation with an innocent shrug of his shoulders. “You got muscles, I can see through shit. Don’t worry, I’ve got your back boss.”
Then the Lattice visual was showing Jaz six men in the building. Lattice data was telling him they were armed with anti-mech heavy weaponry, which he knew they would now be turning on him. The energy threshold of his kinetic shield would be zero defence against that kind of power. Lattice data flashed up a helpful message warning him of the over-ride risk. Better late than never. He cancelled it and pumped more of the adrenalin based cocktail of drugs through the intravenous clip fixed into his torso. Speed was his only defence now and not much of one.
He ran. Darek flew.
Who the hell was this freak and where had he come from? But there was no time to question it.
Using cover. Darek disintegrated the enemy.
Changing course. Darek dived and dipped in the air.
His whole focus on making that speed.
The buildings ended in a high wall and as he made the final sprint towards it, he tried to decide between tracking along it for a break or scaling it and risking exposure. Checking Lattice screens for the information he needed to inform the decision. A close burn sent him diving into the last available cover before the wall but –
The screens all went dark and a mild voice was speaking calmly in his ear:
“You are not logged on to the Lattice. Please be aware when the countdown hits zero your brain implants will self-destruct – you are not -”
Fuck the bastards.
Jaz cancelled the voice and ignored the timer as its chilling digits counted down his heartbeats on the edge of his visual field. There was nothing he could do. The coms drone has been pulled out leaving him to die. For a moment he felt the futility of fighting. They had abandoned him, he was not going to get out this time.
“Boss? What’s the plan?” Darek asked. “You do have one right?”
Jaz shook his head.
Then he heard it.
Distant sounds of a firefight.
He felt an almost dizzying rush of relief – these were the sounds of death that offered him some small hope of life. A moment later he was up and running.
“Ah, the wall. You know I can fly you up…”
Somehow Jaz was not inclined to trust that so freeing the climbing line on the belt, he fired the grapnel, barely waiting for it to impact before swarming up the high wall. He felt incredibly vulnerable – naked to the guns behind. Then he was flattening himself, sliding over the top, dropping down and sprinting.
“Or not. Look out!”
The warning came just as a trace of light caught in his peripheral vision, making him break into an evasive diving roll. He saw, not felt, the next splash of energy. The shock of it impacted afterwards, horrific and crippling, tearing out his strength and will.
He hit the ground and stayed down, unable to rise, unable to think, his consciousness hollowed out by the pain.
Darek slapped his face repeatedly. He could barely make out his words. “Hang on Boss. Hang on. Someone is coming. One of your people.”
Time fragmented.
Awareness shrank.
The smell of the dark ground beneath his face, musty and sweet – an alien soil. The beat of his heart timing the steady flick of numbers that counted down to the moment oblivion would devour him.
Then –

Something moving, lifting him, an arm under his shoulder. A voice – his brother’s voice – Avilon Revid.

“Let’s get you out of here.”

….. waking was always sudden and never easy.

A Fortune’s Fools’ story by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Featuring Darek Kemp from Earth No. 105,

courtesy of Ame Terra.

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