Books of 2021: Quarter 3

 

The Near Witch by V.E. Schwab

 

"If the moor wind ever sings, you mustn't listen, not with all of your ears. Use only the edges. Listen the way you'd look out the corners of your eyes. The wind is lonely, love, and always looking for company."

"No evidence. I am no longer surprised. The wind came in and stole Emily from her small bed. I can picture it. A quilt peeled back neatly, exposing the pale sheets, cool and empty. Maybe they found her charm on the bedside table, cast off like blankets on a warm night."

Lexi grew up with stories and lessons passed down to her from her father about the town of Near and the moor surrounding it. One night, a stranger is seen on the outskirts of town. Then, children begin to mysteriously disappear from the town, one by one, with no evidence left behind of who took them or where they might've gone. Lexi seeks out the stranger for answers and discovers the return of one of the town's oldest stories: The Near Witch.

A shorter story compared to others I've read by Schwab, The Near Witch is a ghost story compared to the adventure theme of the Shades of Magic trilogy or the cat-and-mouse hunt-style of Vicious and Vengeful. The story is prefaced by a short blurb from Schwab describing how The Near Witch came to be. The short piece made me appreciate the story so much more, even though, at times, I was just frustrated with the characters' thinking and decision-making. "What the hell are you doing?" I felt myself thinking at times when I thought they clearly should've made another, better decision. Having read a number of V.E. Schwab's books, I was immediately thrown off by the tone of the book. From the start, something just felt different about it. It took me several pages to realize this was the first of her books I'd read that was written in first-person. Something about the change gave it a much more ... "ominous" or "haunting" style, which is perfect for the ghost story that it is.

This particular book also came with another short story, The Ash-Born Boy, which provides a backstory for the stranger that came into the town of Near. It's a nice inclusion to the re-release of this story.

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

"Of all the materials Mg. Aviosky could have chosen - glass, metal, plastic, even rubber - she had chosen paper. Mg. Aviosky obviously did not realize that the reason Folding had become a dying art was because the skills it enabled were so completely useless."

"Ceony paled at the sight of Lira's dripping hands, at the thought of just how Lira's magic worked, at what sort of horrid thing - like ripping the heart from a child - an Excisioner would have to do to make blood boil."

Ceony Twill arrives at the house of the Paper Magician Emery Thane disappointed that her school assigned her to the study of enchanting paper. What she finds instead is an eccentric and likable magician and an art with much more uses than just folding birds and frogs. When her mentor is attacked by an Excisioner, one that has studied the forbidden art of enchanting and manipulating human bodies, and his heart stolen, Ceony takes it upon herself to face down the thief and retrieve the stolen heart.

Yeah, I already read this one but I finally got around to ordering the other two books of the series from Amazon (47North being Amazon's publishing arm), and luckily I hadn't already gotten rid of the first book. Of course, my favorite part of the story still involves the different paper spells. A long time ago, I watched an anime called Read or Die about an agent that could manipulate paper. I thought the spells would be similar to the anime, but no, they are better than the ones I remember her using: Bringing to life paper animals; A giant paper airplane that one could actually ride upon and fly; A paper fan that creates strong gusts of wind; Creating illusions when reading written words; A fortune-teller game that actually predicts the future. The plot though moved a little slowly for me in the middle when Twill is trapped in Thane's heart by the Excisioner's magic, and she spends it learning about Thane's past and fears and hopes. I know, it jumps the romance forward especially in the next book, The Glass Magician but it still felt like we could've learned about Thane a little faster and gotten back to the Excisioner threat faster.

 

The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

 

"'I've determined that I will teach you to cheat at cards for the day's first lesson,' Emery announced.
Ceony dropped her scissors. 'I knew you were cheating!'
'Astute, but not astute enough,' the paper magician replied, tapping his index finger against the side of his head. 'Unless you can tell me how I did it'"

"The Burst spell exploded
The explosion wasn't as strong as when Ceony had used the spell against Lira, since this one had been made with thin napkin paper, but it was large enough to send dishes flying and chunks of table scattering. Large enough to burn anyone who came too close, even an Excisioner like Grath."

After a harrowing adventure battling a rogue Excisioner and recovering her mentor's stolen heart, Ceony Twill continues her studies under Emery Thane. As her studies in paper magic continue, so does her new infatuation with the Paper Magician. Her troubles with Excisioners aren't over though, as shes sought out by two of the most wanted men in England to reverse the spell she placed on the eternally frozen Lira. Not one to put others in danger, the magician's apprentice sets out to confront the Excisioners and keep those she loves safe.

A battle between paper and flesh! Ok, but first. So this was the second book of the series. Twill continues to learn under Thane while trying to disguise her love for the magician after her adventure in his heart while trying to figure out if Thane feels the same way for her. I liked the pacing of this book a lot more than the first, and even found myself pausing at some of the suspenseful parts - a welcome surprise as there was a good chunk of the first book that I just wanted to get through. In this book we'll meet other magicians and learn about the other materials people are able to manipulate: Paper, Glass, Metal, Rubber, Plastic, and Fire. And, as I mentioned, the highlight of the story comes in seeing Magician Thane battle against a master Excisioner - utilizing paper magic to its fullest against a magician that can kill with simply a touch.

 

The Master Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

"She stabbed a slice of kidney pie with her fork. In a way, the magic - the bond breaking - felt like cheating.
The man she had learned it from would probably agree, were he still alive."

"She struggled against her slick bonds, realizing after a few futile attempts that the rotten scent came from them. She studied them in the dim light, their sackcloth-like color, flatness, translucency. Almost like sausage casing.
... Intestines. And they couldn't be from a pig or cow. Only humans were man-made. Excisioners could do spells with only humans."

After nearly two years under Magician Emery Thane's tutelage, his apprentice Ceony Twill feels confident and ready to take the licensing exam to prove she meets the qualifications of a full magician. At the same time, the two have grown closer finally having confessed their feelings for each other in the previous book. Due to their relationship, however, Thane asks that Twill be tested by another paper magician - one that hates Thane immensely. Passing the exam on her first attempt gains even more importance when she discovers that because of other scandals, opposite sex apprenticeships will be halted and Twill be reassigned to another magician to complete her training. As if the exam wasn't enough to worry about, the infamous Excisioner escapes custody, and Twill knows he will be coming for her and the secret his partner left behind: the secret of how to break the bond to a material and rebond to another.

Will Twill be able to hunt down the escaped Excisioner, and find time to impress her substitute mentor to pass her final exam to stay with the man she loves? Though the first book felt more like a movie on the Hallmark Channel, these last two have felt more like the fantasy stories I'm used to reading. This story still carried the same amount of suspense that the previous one did, knowing just what the Excisioner was capable of and what Twill was not. Like in the previous book, the highlight of the story is the fight with the Excisioner, but this time it's Ceony Twill holding the spotlight having figured out not only how to break and rebond to different materials, but also having learned how to utilize difficult elements of each material. I've played a lot of Devil May Cry and that was kind of what I was hoping the fighting would be like, switching quickly between different weapons. Twill, however worked slower in switching because of the emphasSportsis on tactics rather than looking stylish, which is the point of the video game.

Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History by Mike Pesca

"What-if is a fundamental part of sports. Without what-if there'd be no draft, no spring training, no trades, no free agent acquisitions. Every roster rebuild in pro sports has been a multi-million-dollar exercise in what-if."

Sports are full of "what-ifs": what if someone hadn't gotten hurt? what if the coach called a run instead of a pass? what if an athlete from the past had played today or vice-versa? In this book, sportswriters, podcasters, and even fanatics tackle some of the best "what-if" questions in sports; and not just ones that might affect the outcome of a single game or season, but ones that have consequences that reach even the world outside the game. Each writer provides a thought-out discussion on the events in question, and how the world might look in an alternate reality. Some of the more memorable "what-ifs" include:

1. What if the United States had boycotted Hitler's Olympics?

2. What if football was invented today?

3. What if Major League Baseball had tested for steroid earlier?

to even more obscure ones like:

4. What if Bobby Ficher got proper psychiatric help?

5. What if horseracing was still popular?

So, confession: This book got jumped to the front of my reading list because I started watching Marvel's "What If" series on Disney+. It was also to give a break from genre fiction after finishing "The Paper Magician" series, but mostly because of the show. The book provides an interesting blend of writers: form those that provide a very detailed breakdown of how the world would be different thanks to just one decision, to those who set their narrative within the new reality created and give a first-person perspective of the new world. Even the introduction gives an intriguing "what-if": If the United States got it's slaves from East Africa instead of West Africa, how would modern sports change? Would we be watching marathon-running instead of football?

Healer's Gambit (part 3 of 3)

Seeing Falko on his feet braced between my two classmates, I winced at the memory of the lifetime of agony we'd shared only a little while ago. Falko's clothing that still hung together did so by threads and dried blood, every inch of it stained dark red. He looked like a man starved for days. Tufts of hair patched his otherwise bald scalp, most of it yanked out by zombies looking for any sort of purchase on his body. Though his strength must be waning every second, he still kept a white-knuckled grip on his axe hanging at his side. The worst of the damage I could see in his eyes, darting left and right seeking out the next threat coming to cause him harm.

Once I got close enough, very slowly as not to startle Falko, I slipped off my cloak and draped it around him. With a surprising amount of strength I didn't think he had in him, Falko took me to the ground with a shoulder tackle, riding me to the stone floor. A knee in my chest, he raised the axe to strike.

"We're safe now. You got us to safety," I repeated over and over. I held my arms out and away from my body, gesturing to the other two to stay back. I kept my eyes locked with Falko's, trying to find something in there that recognized me: conveying the memories of bones broken, of flesh rendered and torn, of the eternal pain that would never end. With a simple nod, he pulled the pin from his tongue and dropped it on my chest. Then, he got off of me.

Still cautious, I stood slowly. "We'll get you to a real healer as soon as possible, get you fixed up properly," said, trying to convey a friendly smile as I reached out to him.

Falko subtly stepped away, avoiding my touch. "It isn't over yet," he said, walking down the hallway, "You said that the zombies weren't created by a virus, which means the necromancer rose them from the dead. They could've ran off into the town or anywhere else, but they all came this way. The necromancer is close-by, and we're going to find them."

"It'll take us some time to get the Detect Dark Magic spell ready. Are you sure you don't want to rest, or even sit this part out?" Isabella asked, placing a hand on Falko's shoulder, then immediately removed it when Falko let out a bestial growl.

It took the four of us another half-hour to locate the necromancer hiding within the castle walls with the spell. Now that our lives weren't under constant threat, we could not only take the time to complete the spell but actually maintain it while we searched the school grounds and all its hidden chambers. Resurrecting and controlling as many zombies as he did must've weakened him a great deal if he could no longer hide his presence from a simple detection spell cast by four underclassmen.

"So how are we getting in?" I asked as the four of us stared at a bare stone wall. "Do you think there's a password to open the door, or a hidden lever someplace?"

"Step. Aside," Liza said sternly from behind me. I felt the air charge with electricity before I leapt out of the way. A blinding Boom! shook the walls, and for an instant I thought the entire castle might fall down around us. When I could see again, the wall that blocked our path lay in ruins, a thick fog of dirt and debris hanging in the air.

Falko stepped through the hole first, axe in hand. Where he found the strength to keep pushing his body forward after what he'd been through, I'll never know nor hope to ever need to find in myself. A small fire appeared in his free hand which he used to light two torches against the wall. The room appeared to be a storage room filled with rolled rugs standing up against the walls. In the middle of the room stood an old man whose bones probably weighed more than the skin, muscle, and fat clinging to it. A bone grey cloak draped over him. The necromancer. 

Falko approached first, the axe still held down at his side. The necromancer lunged, a knife in hand, one last desperate attempt. The knife sunk into Falko's chest, sliding between his ribs. "Controlling an entire horde may be too much for an old man passed his prime, but once my poison turns your body into a corpse you'll be my puppet. Then we'll see how your friends fare when they're fighting you."

Looking over Falko's shoulder, I smiled at the necromancer as Falko yanked the knife from his chest, the wound already closing. "Healer," I introduced myself, gesturing to my hand on Falko's shoulder. "Now let's all just sit tight until the Council Authority arrives in the morning."

I prepared myself for perhaps one more trick from the necromancer. Instead, it was Falko that moved first, stabbing the knife through the dark wizard's hand and pinning it to a wooden beam against the wall. He raked the axe across the necromancer's mid-section, a line of blood forming on his clothes but not deep enough to reach organs.

The necromancer laughed. "Frail child, that was not nearly deep enough for a killing blow. Perhaps you've used all your strength against my puppets?" He paused, seeing the anger and rage in Falko's face. "Ahh, or maybe that was not meant to be fatal. Do you mean to torture me then, because I can assure you, I will be long dead before you can find any manner of satisfaction." The necromancer grinned even wider, his smile an acid that almost melted the anger from Falko's face into one of despair and frustration.

The final lesson in pain is that it doesn't just end when the body heals, when the bones reset, when the scars fade. Depending upon the amount of trauma the body sustains, it could take even longer for the mind to heal. Healers-in-training spend their first-year learning to heal their bodies from a variety of injuries; and the only way the school teaches is first-hand, constantly breaking the students' bodies. At the end of the year, the school offered all students that passed several counseling sessions over the summer to help with healing our minds with what we'd put ourselves through.

I stared at the necromancer and his toothy smile as if he believed he was the one who was victorious. My body started to shake as my mind returned to the very recent memory of teeth rending flesh and ruthless hands tearing at limbs. I thought about lying on that damn couch trying to describe the helplessness I felt against a seemingly neverending parade of death and torture to someone I knew would never understand. Counseling, as if surviving a thousand, ten-thousand near-death experiences in a matter of hours at the hands of a madman can be cured with mere words. Authority has always put itself between victims and the punishment to be delivered to their assailants, as if they are in a better position to dole out just vengeance than the one that was injured. No, if Falko and I were to truly heal from our experience, we needed to do it on our own, with our own hands. And, I thought, looking at the necromancer's frail body, he'd need to survive for all of it.

I pushed my way passed Falko's frozen frame and slapped the older man in the face. The necromancer recoiled in pain, screaming. And so did I as a spike drove itself into my left eye, the pain of a knife stabbed through my right hand. I glanced up to see Falko looking at me, his resigned face gone and replaced by one of surprise. I nodded.

The necromancer reached for the pin I'd jabbed into his eye with his free hand. With a quick swing, Falko removed it with his axe, the hand dropping to the floor with a wet thud. The necromancer still screamed, trying to pull the pin free from his eye with the bloody stump of his amputated hand. Falko rested the axe on his shoulder while his free hand held another ball of fire. A maniacal grin spread across his face, a contagious one too as I felt his glee spread to my own face. "The Council doesn't arrive until morning. It's only a couple hours away but, trust me, with the experience we just had we know how to make even one hour feel like an eternity."

The axe head swung and I felt it bite into my shoulder, just deep enough to hit bone but not to sever it. Flames scorched my face, melting flesh down to the jaw bone. Like with Falko, I did nothing to numb the necromancer's pain. In fact, I turned up the pain sensitivity as far as I could, causing the necromancer to scream even louder, while ensuring the shock didn't kill him. Through the pain, I felt my own face mirror the same smile on Falko's face. Falko was right, I thought, closing my eyes and embracing the pain, we were in for a long night.

Inspired by a very, very old Reddit Writing Prompt about being attacked by zombies when your specialty magic is healing. And by very old, probably one of the first ones I saw when I started responding to prompts. Wait, you're thinking, why are you only posting this now? Well, this story, like "The Cape" was one of the those stories that I got really carried away with, so instead of ever posting the story, it sat in my head unfinished in other notebooks. Then, since I was writing all those other zombie stories recently, I figured now was a good time to finally get it done. I'm pretty happy about the middle section of the story (I even did research, sort-of, of different body parts that were attacked by the zombies). If this were something I was submitting for publication or getting paid to write, yeah, there's things I'd go back to fix-up. That beginning, we should've gotten more of a look at the 4 students and who they were. Probably introducing the necromancer's motivations, and where the damn faculty disappeared off too that put the four kids in charge of castle defense. If I understood more about mental health (or bothered with research) that ending shouldn't have been so rushed, maybe introduce more about PTSD  and trauma than what I added in there real quick. But those can be added in if I ever find someone looking for a short zombie story, which by the way this already comes in at almost 4800 words (why I split into 3 parts) and if I added everything else, I'm guessing closer to 6000 words which is way too long for these blog posts.

And just for more about the story as it's been sitting in my head for so long. It would be the longest thing I'd written (thus worth more in terms of money per word), it would have horror and action and fear and emotion and just desserts. The other responses to the same prompt, or course, had the main character doing things like healing the undead to counter the necromancy or healing the zombies so their souls could pass on properly. I definitely know that my idea was so much better. I mean, using one of your partners as bait that you keep healing, what a fucked up plan. At least it's not something I'd ever seen anywhere else. Probably because it's such an asshole thing to do. That said, sad to say, this story for the longest time, is what I considered to be my magnum opus, the greatest thing I'd ever written. I know, right, what an insane thing to say - How can you know something is good if you've never written it? And just off the top of my head, I could name at least three stories I've written that are better than this one, one of them even being my Pokemon Fanfic that I also haven't finished so I guess I really haven't learned my lesson. But anyways, it's finally finished after all these years, leaving, I think, just one or two or five more of these types of stories to go before I've gotten through my backlog of unwritten crap. And yes, I also know how insane it is to think that I would send this off to be published as it ends with the main character/s torturing the shit out of the bad guy. Yeah, I'm not so fucked up that I don't know how fucked up that is. And yet, that's probably the one part of the story that I wouldn't compromise if asked, it's definitely staying in.

Healer's Gambit (part 2 of 3)

 

Left arm, I thought, feeling the hands that initially grabbed Falko starting to tug and twist. I focused on strengthening the muscles and tendons, keeping the zombies from tearing off his arm. Then a crack and a pop, the ulna in his forearm breaking through the skin. Falko let out a scream and I felt the temperature drop even more as Isabella increased her assault. I bit my lip, suppressing my own scream, focusing instead on popping the bone back into place and sealing the wound.

Right leg next as my own leg spasmed in phantom pain when teeth sunk into the gastrocnemius in the back of the leg and tore away a mouthful of meat. "Shit," I muttered, emphasizing regrowing the missing flesh while searching the blood stream for any sort of virus or disease. I let out the briefest sigh of relief when nothing out of the ordinary presented itself. "At least the necromancer isn't using a virus to raise and control his zombies."

More hands grabbed and pulled in different directions. More teeth sunk in and tore away pieces of flesh. My own heart pounded in my chest, separate from Falko's own pain and terror. I focused on slowing his heart to prevent him from both bleeding to death and going into cardiac arrest. This was going to be the real test: triage.

I did my best to ignore the pain. Pain tells a person when they've been injured, and where. When your injuries are everywhere though, pain becomes overwhelming and you need to use your mind to prioritize what needs to be fixed first. I put some passive attention on Falko's heart, again keeping it beating at a steady pace. More focus went to the injuries that broke skin - teeth ripping out meat or hands digging into soft parts. I focused on re-connecting veins and arteries, and re-growing the body around them. Broken bones I could ignore for the moment as long as they were still within the body. Viruses that the zombies might be carrying in their mouths also got a low priority, at least everything I sensed wouldn't kill Falko within the next thirty minutes.

Then the phantom pain vanished. One moment of horrific agony just replaced by an emptiness. It couldn't be over, I thought remembering all the undead swarming us in the great hall. Directly in front me, Liza and Isabella continued their attacks, and just further passed them, a dozen or so zombies ripped into Falko as others came around the corner. He couldn't be dead, or I'd have felt it, which meant only one thing - the pin was out! "Shit," I said as I got to my feet. "Falko! Burn! Burn everything!"

Whether Falko actually heard my shouts, or if he realized I was no longer suppressing his magic, I don't know. The temperature in the corridor simply plummeted to near freezing for a second. The air around Falko rippled with heat, then became an inferno. I turned my head, the flames too bright to stare at directly as they engulfed several feet around Falko's body. Once the fire ceased and the air cooled enough that it didn't singe my skin, I sprinted to Falko's side followed by both of my classmates.

"Is he okay?" asked Isabella as I dropped to a knee next to Falko.

Now that I could make physical contact with him, I knew for certain. "He's alive," I said, focusing on the injuries that needed the most immediate healing. "Could the two of you hold the hallway for a bit. I just need some time."

Isabella looked reluctant to leave but Liza dragged her along out into the corridor. It took a couple minutes but I got a majority of the major injuries fixed-up: bite cavities filled in, a punctured eye regrown, a liver partially healed. A mangled hand I magically deadened and amputated, leaving it physically attached but not functional or really connected to anything. It was the best I could do in the time I had and hopefully there would be time after to get it fully healed and operable. Falko's breathing was still shallow and he didn't open his eyes the entire time, but he'd make it.

I found the pin in the mouth of a charred corpse nearby when Isabella and Liza rushed back into the corridor. "I left a sheet of ice blocking the path, but I'm not sure how long it will hold," said Isabella, pausing when she spotted Falko awake and the pin in my hand.

Before she could take the pin from me, Falko, with a surprising amount of strength left for someone in his condition, pried my fingers open and took the pin himself. "Quit playing around," he growled as he stared at the token. "We know why it has to be me. Fire isn't precise, at least not the way I use it. I'm pretty useless in this situation. We can't expect Henry to heal the injuries from both zombies and burns."

Slowly, Falko raised his head and our eyes locked. I didn't have time or energy to heal the superficial scars or minor scratches. His face, as a result, was a web of lines like the worst jigsaw puzzle imaginable. Several teeth were still missing. His eyes though, his eyes were sunken, barely visible in his gaunt face. He was a man who faced death and survived just on the verge of it. In his eyes, I saw a man who would be haunted for the rest of his life by the experiences of the last several minutes. And though I didn't actually experience any of it, he must've seen the same in me because he just gave me a nod, this time sticking the pin through his tongue where it hopefully wouldn't be gotten to as easy.

I placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You are going to get us through this, and I'm going to bring you back," I said before heading back down the corridor, flanked on both sides by Isabella and Liza. To the two of them, I said, "We'll do it the same way we did it the last time, and we might be able to make it out of this mess."

I felt a hand on my shoulder, stopping me in place. "One change," said Isabella, "Let us help. If there's some place you need us to focus our attacks to give you time to heal Falko, tell us. We're not letting him die out there." Without turning around, I just nodded and walked back to my spot.

"You know, after this is all done, Falko is going to beat you to death for this," said Liza.

I couldn't help but smile. "I guess I better not let either of us die." I lay back down in roughly the same position as Falko had. Then I closed my eyes. I didn't want to watch the approach this time. Once again, the pain started small, just hands gripping and teeth biting. Then, of course, it intensified as those same hands forced their way through soft flesh, and teeth began ripping out chunks of meat. The thing about pain that they don't teach is that even after a hundred broken bones, thousands of bites, tens of thousands of bruises, one more is never a boring experience. Every injury hurt just as much as the last which hurts as much as the very first. At least this time I didn't need to concentrate on suppressing Falko's connection to his flames as he already understood his role in the Gambit.

This time though I had teammates that fully understood the plan. They trusted me and I trusted them. "Left leg," I said through clenched teeth, "I need time to repair the artery or Falko could bleed out." I felt a numbing cold sweep the areas as Isabella focused her powers, which also helped to slow the blood flow.

The pain was everywhere and I was running out of time. I numbed any pain from the fingers and toes, forcing clean amputations if they were compromised so that they could break without bleeding being an issue. I kept my focus moving in a continuous circle around the body, healing whatever I could as quick as possible before moving on to the next location. If I put too much focus into one area, it would compromise the rest. Head, neck, chest, midsection, groin, and then back around, keeping my attention consistently on the move.

Finally, the new injuries stopped, leaving behind pain and my screams. "Henry," said Liza, shaking me, "There haven't been any new zombies for a couple minutes. I think we got them all." I opened my eyes to see Liza standing over me, a nervous smile on her face. Just passed her, Isabella was starting to take steps forward, worried about Falko.

"Wait," I shouted, and though it came out raspy and barely audible, Isabella stopped where she stood. "Trust me, you don't want to go over there just yet." Though the injuries might've stopped, I could still feel all the pain racking his body. From the phantom injuries I felt, I knew Falko must look like something out of a horror movie. With whatever magic his body could spare, I spent the next several minutes patching him up as best I could: stopping any bleeding, reconnecting the hand and other extremities I'd severed earlier, resetting any broken bones. Falko must be a real powerhouse when it came to magical reserves though, just seeing how much I had available to work with.

"Okay," I said, slowly getting to my feet as if the pain actually happened to me. "That's as good as it's going to get with the magic we've got left." Isabella and Liza practically flew to Falko's side. I still crept behind slowly, my staff held defensively, not against Falko's possible wrath but in case more zombies straggled down the corridor. 

Healer's Gambit (part 1 of 3)

 All around me the sounds of groans and chattering teeth echoed off the stone walls, filling the castle's great hall. This should have been the safest place to hold them off: the biggest enclosed area in Fortuna's School for the Magically-Gifted provided plenty of room for the four of us to maneuver while putting down the zombie horde that invaded the school grounds. Instead the zombies continued pouring into the room, more dead bodies than I thought possible.

"Every time we put one down, another replaces it. They just keep coming," said Liza as she released a wave of electricity that seized the muscles of a handful of zombies, stopping them in their tracks.

Falko brought his axe down onto the skull of one, and torched another with flames from his free hand. "It just means we're in for a long night," he said with a smirk. I couldn't help but admire his optimism, no matter how misplaced it may be in our situation. I crushed the skull of another zombie with my staff when Falko called out to me. "Hey Henry, can your healing magic help us out at all against these zombies? You know, healing magic vs necromancy."

I shook my head. "That's not how it works. There's other types of light magic that could work directly against zombies but not what I'm in training for."

"What if you, I don't know, try bringing them back to life or something?" said Isabella as she froze the ground in front of her. The zombies directly in front of her lost their footing and slipped, more than one cracking a skull open on the floor.

"Oh, you mean necromancy, the magic being used to try to kill us? I'm training as a Healer. The best I could do would be to heal you all but I'll need some time and space. I could heal the zombies we're fighting but that seems counter-intuitive to our mission."

"Sounds like you're pretty useless right now," retorted Falko, pushing me aside and bathing a dozen or so zombies in fire.

I stumbled a bit but luckily stayed atop the table which I'd been standing. Swinging my staff, I knocked a zombie aside, though not hard enough to put it down for good. "We need to figure out a new strategy," I said.

"We could try the Detect Dark Magic spell? If we can find the necromancer resurrecting the zombies, we can break the curse," suggested Liza, changing tactics and sending a bolt of lightning through the head of an approaching zombie, and whatever else happened to be behind it.

"There's not enough time to set up the spell, or concentrate long enough to track the necromancer. Not with these zombies all over the place," I replied, placing two hands on Isabella and healing the scratch on her leg.

"We could run, find someplace to hide until The Council arrives with reinforcements, or at least full wizards," said Isabella, waving a hand and flinging a wide arc of ice knives through the air. A couple of them found the skulls of decayed bodies. One of them drove itself into the chest of a teacher, newly resurrected into a mindless zombie.

"We already locked the rest of the school into the dorms and classrooms. If we can't keep the necromancer's attention, then he'll just send the horde to breaking down doors. We stay and fight," said Falko letting out another stream of fire.

"Both!" I shouted, pushing a zombie into Falko's flames. "We could do both! Hide and fight. I just need to find a particular hidden room in the castle. The upperclass healers talk about it, the Gambit. It's a secret weapon used against an overwhelming enemy in relentless pursuit of killing your party. It's how we'll get out of this." I grabbed Falko by the cloak and gave it a tug, hoping if I could get him on-board the other two would follow. I got about twenty feet before risking a look back, but sure enough, all three were running right behind me.

We sprinted out of the great hall and wove our way through the castle corridors and hallways, the undead pursuing right behind us. The other three did their best to slow them down or pick them off when they got the chance. Meanwhile, I scanned each path looking for the right hallway. We needed the Gambit, we couldn't keep running nor could we stop to fight. Even if we found someplace to hole-up and strike from a protected location, they'd eventually overrun us, especially in this enclosed castle. What we needed was the Gambit. And, we needed bait.

Finally I got to a corridor that looked promising. This will have to do, I thought. I stood at the turn, motioning Isabella and Liza around the corner. "It's one of those bricks in the wall at the end of the corridor. Find the ones that move and we can re-arrange them to access the secret room." They'd gotten about halfway down the hall when Falko turned the corner, bringing up the rear.

I grabbed Falko with both hands, letting my staff clatter to the stone floor, and twisted him around. His back hit the wall hard, all that momentum knocking some of the wind out of his lungs. A knee driven up between his legs knocked out the rest. With two hands on his head, I slammed the side of it against the cold-stone wall. I pulled a short, thick pin from a pocket in my cloak and jabbed it through his earlobe. Though I'd already prepared for it, I still needed to catch myself from instinctively numbing the pain I was feeling between my legs. It isn't my pain, I thought touching the pin's twin in my own ear. I threw Falko to the ground about ten feet into the corridor. Retrieving my staff, I ran down to the dead-end.

"Turn around! Turn around now!" I shouted shoving passed the other two and putting my back against the wall.

"Where's Falko?" asked Isabella, turning to see Falko lying on the floor.

"What about the secret passageway, and the Gambit?" asked Liza, looking from me to the wall.

I shook my head to both of their answers. "There is no passageway. I needed a dead-end into which we could funnel the zombies. As for Falko, he can't join us since he's our bait. The Gambit isn't a weapon, you understand, it's a strategy. This is the Gambit."

"That's insane," said Isabella, taking a step towards Falko before I grabbed her by the wrist. "We have to help him."

I shook my head. "As I said, this is our only option." Pointing to the twin of the pin I'd stuck in Falko in my own ear, I said, "I've linked us. Any pain, injury, wound he feels, I'll feel too. I can heal myself but I'm not good enough to do it under intense pressure. As long as we're bound, I'll know exactly how he's hurt and can keep him alive, healing him from here through the link." 

"And Falko is the bait. Live bait," said Liza looking at me with grim understanding in her eyes as the first of the zombies came around the corner. I just nodded. Liza pushed me back to the wall and pulled Isabella with her. "Come on, we're on guard duty."

Isabella didn't go quietly though, pulling back against Liza. "And you just chose Falko because he told you that you're useless? Or is it just because he's a guy?"

I nodded. "Yeah, because he's a guy. I'm just a 2nd year, and the Gambit is about healing speed. I won't need to focus on the differences in anatomy." Also, not wanting to say it aloud, but I didn't think I'd be able to concentrate as well hearing Isabella or Liza's screams versus Falko's. And there would be a lot of screaming based on what I'd already seen the zombies do to my classmates.

"If you could also do your best not to hit Falko, that would make my job a little easier," I said as the other two positioned themselves just ahead of me and to either side of the corridor. I lay myself on the floor, arms and legs spread, putting all of my focus into feeling Falko's body. It would happen anytime now. I took a deep breath and focused on healing the concussion, and, unfortunately for Falko, for what was to come.

"Here they come," I heard Liza say as the sound of crackling energy filled my ears and I felt my own hair as well as Falko's stand on end. The temperature dropped and a shiver went through my spine as Isabella also readied her power. No going back now, I thought, bracing myself for the phantom pain while Falko groggily awoke.

Pressure as hands tightened on Falko's wrist startled me, but I ignored it. That would simply leave bruises, and numbing Falko's pain would defeat the purpose of all this. Besides, in a second things were going to get much worse. Instead I put focus into suppressing Falko's access to his fire magics. I could feel his confusion as he reached for his power but found it unobtainable. My muscles seized as a sudden dose of electricity got dumped into Falko's body but again it wasn't a concern. Then it truly began and I went to work.

 

Fire

So, 2 years and 9 months ago I was on my "Grand Adventure" exploring Korea after a week in Japan reuniting with Plume dormmates. Three month prior to that though, I was in the middle of an inferno that cut through the orchid farm. And I guess being the three year anniversary, now seems like a good time to post about it. Why post about it three years later? you might ask. Well, at the time I was also still focused/ overwhelmed with getting everything together for my "Grand Adventure" trip. Besides, an anniversary seems like a good time to talk about something. Also, when I close my eyes I can't immediately pull-up images of smoke choking a red-tinted sky, or flames marching toward me.

My dad and I were working in one of the fields right before lunch when we smelled the smoke. It was a hot, dry summer and a windy day. We spotted white smoke coming from the property above us further up the mountain. We hoped it was someone burning rubbish but then the flames crossed over a hill, the smoke turning black as it burned through so much dry brush and grass so quickly. We ended up wetting as much of the property line as possible with a bunch of garden hoses connected together. The fire came too fast though and soon the air filled with smoke that almost blacked-out the sun as the sky itself took on a reddish-hue. If you're wondering about any pictures or videos, sorry, I don't have any as I really didn't want to be one of those people that die attempting to get a cool picture or video to post on Facebook.

Together, the two of us made as many passes as we could before the smoke choked our lungs. Exhausted, we headed into the house to rest, knowing the fire outside would burn because that's what fire does, and that we'd soon go back out there because that was all there was to do. At this point, the fire was much closer than when we started, sitting at the property line and threatening soon to jump over. I grabbed the van keys and all my stuff, and insisted we should leave, just abandon the cause, throw the dog into the van, and get the hell out of here. When I asked earlier, my dad said we should stay, believing we could stop it at the property line. Again, he declined, this time because "There's no where to go." At this point we had no idea how far down the mountain the fire had spread, if it was already covering the single road in and out or knocked anything across it. We wouldn't be able to see more than five to ten feet ahead through the smoke. There was a part of me in there though that was screaming, "Fuck that. I've been driving this road every weekend since I was in high school. I could make it blindfolded." But we stayed.

At this point in our story, you're probably thinking, "Alan, come on, where are all those jokes about death that you like to throw out there?" Well, welcome to that section of our story. Of course as I'm sitting there, my mind drifts to the realm of "you could fucking die here." Unlike the movies though my brain didn't bring up loved ones I'll never see again or flashback through my entire life. Instead (and no, I'm not making this up for the post as I'm simply re-writing this from a journal entry I did that night) I was disappointed that I'd never get to see the conclusion to Avengers: Infinity War - and that was it. I might've tried to think about other regrets but really that was just it. Maybe because I wasn't dead yet so there really wasn't a point to worrying about anything real or of substance yet. To jump ahead for a moment (spoiler: I survived) two of my cousins came up the next day to help with the damage. When I told them that my biggest fear from yesterday was burning alive, one of my cousins reported that it probably wasn't that bad depending on how you did it, I guess (he's a doctor he has a doctorate). Supposedly the fire and heat should quickly overload the pain sensors near the top of your skin and render you unconscious. So maybe you'll die of shock or just be unconscious until the fire eventually kills you. Either way, you won't spend an eternity in agony as your skin turns extra crispy. The thing though is that you really need to commit to it, just go right into the flames and hang in there until you're gone.

Back to the house, I was recovering and coughing up what I was sure was my lungs while my dad went back out to man the hose again. After a little while, the smoke thickened and the fires now burned in the yard to one side of the house and in the fields on the other side. I ran outside and started yelling into the smoke. For awhile, there wasn't an answer. I continued screaming, going as close to the flames as I'd dare. Eventually I heard his voice though it would still be another few seconds before he emerged, hacking and coughing as I had been. He handed off the hose and instructed me on where to go while he went into the house. The fire had moved over the property line and was well into the farm by now. With the hose in hand, I was basically just doing hot-spot maintenance, hitting the areas that the fire burned but might come back.

I guess it's at this point that I should give a shout-out/ thank you to Tom Cruise. No, not for any firefighting movies he's done (has he done any?). Earlier in the day we watched Edge of Tomorrow, that one where he fights aliens by reliving the day in a time loop. As I'm soaking as much of the flames as possible, I kept hoping for the fire department to eventually show up and take over as this should be a job for professionals, not some dumbass like me. It's not like bagging my own groceries in the check-out line. Then, the scene from the movie just came to me. It's that part where Cruise's character is first strapped into the mech and he tells the other guy that he's never been in a mech before. The other character just responds with "Yeah, well I've never been with two girls at the same time before. But you can bet when that day comes, I'll make it work." And that line kinda just became my mantra through the rest of the day, just repeating it over and over to get me through the shit.

The fires eventually moved their way passed us/ through us. There was nothing we could do about the fields. The only good thing being the very flammable netting above the fields (orchids don't do well in direct sunlight) and high winds that moved the fire along rather quickly. It probably would've been worse if the fires spread downward to the plants and wooden benches and PVC piping carrying our water. We kept soaking different areas where the flames seemed to keep re-igniting themselves. It was here that I got to fulfill every guy's fantasy - pissing out a fire. Well, close enough. I came across a spot that was smoldering and every so often flames would jump from it. Something to note first: I'd been walking, dragging close to six hoses connected together for hours now. I was exhausted, dehydrated, still a little scared that I would die, plus the hose I was pulling had several leaks in it that soaked my pants all day. Also, I'm not a complete idiot, I'm not going to be putting my exposed dick anywhere near an open flame. That said, at one point while it was just a trail of smoke rising from the pile of wreckage, I put the hose down, unzipped and went to work. Now with all those factors I mentioned working against me, I will admit it wasn't a good showing, but I think I got the job done. This was also about the time that I was working up the courage to apologize to my dad for letting fear get the better of me and trying to bitch out of the task at hand. Everything turned out as best it could and we survived. So obviously he had the right idea to stay. Before I could say anything though he just offhandedly remarked "You know, if I was a smarter we would've left a long time ago." And now I'm thinking "well what the hell am I supposed to do with that, to take away from this experience?" And to this day I'm still trying to process it.

Oh, and if you were wondering, I got some pictures of the aftermath

  

 

 

Candy Got Attacked

 

Ok, so first off, spoiler: Candy is fine. There's just a small scratch on her face but honestly she's gotten worse when she fought cats those several times.

I've walked Candy around the block (up my street, around a corner, down another street, and then back around) for years and years now, and much more recently, I've been doing it everyday. At this point, I've got to be some sort of fixture in the area by now, you know, like in your own neighborhood. Like some kids who are always playing in the street after school, or an old lady who always sits on her steps at a certain time of the day smoking cigarettes, or that particular house where you know they're having cult meetings. Honestly, I've been at it for so long, some people have asked how Candy is doing, or asking about her age, everyone probably just surprised that she's still alive. And with the way she grunts when she stands or eats or shits, yeah, she's up there in age.

But more on that another time (seriously, I've been putting together a post about Candy's old age for several months). Let's get to the events. So, for a time reference, this happened last week Thursday (I hate typing, and I prefer posting on weekdays). I'm going down the other street when a dog starts barking. Nothing unusual about that, dogs bark all the time when Candy is peeing in front of their house. I see a dog's head through gate bars and it follows us as we walk passed the house. I see it try to peek over the low part of a fence, and I laugh as I hear some elementary school age kids trying to calm down the dog. We got to the end of the next house/ plot when I hear the kids' screams get louder. I turned back and naturally Candy does too, you know, because of the leash, and there's a dog barking and running right at us, roughly Candy's size or a little smaller.

Now, I told you that whole thing about walking Candy for years to set-up the fact that this obviously isn't the first time we've encountered loose dogs on our walks. And every single one of these encounters, no matter how aggressively the dog was behaving earlier, ends with the other dog either stopping short, barking more, and then running away; or circling around Candy to sniff her butt.

So, as this other dog is charging us, children yelling in the background, I'm just standing there thinking, "I wonder how this is going to go?" Well, that dog took option three and lunged right at Candy's face, who managed to avoid letting the dog clamp down on her snout. Instinctively I pulled Candy away and put myself between her and that other bitch (I think I'm allowed to say that, right, since it was a female dog). The other dog snarled and started circling around me, trying to get to Candy. I'm not sure why it considered Candy the threat/ target and not me but I guess that's a dog thing. Then I just spent the next minute or two (it probably wasn't that long) just keeping myself between it and Candy until those kids finally came over and grabbed their dog. 

I know what some of you are saying, "If that was me and my dog, I would've punted that other dog down the street." Well, let me tell you, it's a lot more difficult than you think to actually kick a dog. Not morally harder, mind you, I was still snapping kicks at it even when those kids came into view. I just mean that it's a lot harder to kick a moving target with your off-leg (is that the correct term? Non-dominant kicking foot?) as Candy's leash is held in my right hand, while you're also trying to keep yourself in front of your own dog, who, even after being attacked, is trying to get in front to see what that bitch's problem is.

Well, eventually those kids grabbed their dog, and Candy and I walked away. Well, she first stopped and peed in their neighbor's yard, and then we walked away. She got a small scratch on her nose which bled a little. Back at the house I cleaned it off, spraying some antiseptic on a paper towel and dabbing her wound. I thought about spraying it directly on the cut, but if she behaves the same way as she does when I give her a bath, I would've ended up spraying it in her eyes while she struggled. We went for another lap afterwards and didn't see the dog, so I can't say for certain what happened to it (their dad sounded really mad about the incident).

Land of the Undead (part 2)

The three shadows split apart, one going after each group. I readied my spear and I heard Anna notch an arrow behind me. My grip tightened as I finally saw them in the glare of the setting sun. It was even taller than the other ghoul, almost seven feet tall. Unlike the ghouls though, the creature was shaped more like a gorilla, huge slabs of muscle covering its entire form.

A twang! and an arrow flew just over my shoulder and struck the hunter in the knee. I'd seen the an arrow fired at full draw sever smaller limbs on animals. A hit to the chest might not be fatal but could knock a full-grown elk to the ground. Against this behemoth, I expected a shattered kneecap. Instead, the arrow glanced off harmlessly and the monster continued charging toward us.

"Put it in the head or the eye!" I said, hoping not have to go toe-to-toe with this thing.

It got to within a hundred feet before Anna released another bolt. No way she misses at this range, I thought, feeling my nervous grip relax slightly. Then the monster jumped. Not a lunge or a dive like a lion might when tackling prey. No, it was twenty feet in the air and still climbing when it occurred to me to look up. It took another second for me to realize it would come down on top of us.

I shoved Anna and rolled in the opposite direction. The hunter landed with a heavy thud, feet and fists sinking a couple inches into the ground. I thrust my spear toward its chest, hoping to pin the hunter long enough for Anna to stick it in head with her spear. The taller ghoul was right through - the spears were sharp but didn't have the weight to hold it as the point of the spear barely stabbed into the hunter's dense muscle. I tried to drive it further but the creature's muscle wouldn't budge. Anna's spear unfortunately met with the same result as she stabbed at the side of the hunter's head. 

The hunter roared and, seeing me first, reached out a massive arm. I shut my eyes, imagining great fingers wrapping themselves around me, pulling me to it, just a snack for this beast. Instead there was a loud crack! and I opened my eyes to see the hand hanging limply, the arm broken at the elbow. A club swung and shattered the hunter's leg, dropping it to a knee. The ghoul swung a third time, two-handed, bringing the club down on the hunter's head. It must've been enough, the force shattering skull and destroying the zombie's brain. The hunter fell.

I panted, terrified, until I heard Raymond cry out. I turned in time to see a hunter maul Raymond, bringing him to the ground and disappearing under the hunter's mass. Turning away from the gore, I looked over to see the other trio. The hunter lay motionless on its back while Tristan drove his spear into the monster's head. An arrow stood tall, probably a miraculous shot right through its eye and puncturing the brain. I let out a sigh of relief and began turning to help kill the last hunter. Then Denise screamed.

Turning around, a zombie draped itself over Karl's back with its teeth sinking into his neck. A set of hands wrapped around Denise's ankle, bringing her to the ground. Tristan stood transfixed, spear still in the hunter's head.

"Help your friends. The rest of the horde approaches. I'll take down the last hunter." The taller ghoul ran, Anna following right behind him.

I ran to Tristan, knowing too well that Denise and Karl were already among the dead. I got to Tristan, still standing in shock, and yanked him behind me. "Run back to the bunker!" I shouted before putting my spear through the heads of the two zombies. In the shadows of the trees, I could see a pack of zombies, almost two dozen of them, shambling toward me.

I found myself shaking, sobbing, looking down at the mangled forms of Denise and Karl. Though we weren't necessarily close before we went into the pods, we knew we would be all each other had when we awoke a thousand years into the future. We are all each of us has left. "There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do," I repeated to myself as I raised the spear over Denise's skull. I closed my eyes. I tightened my grip. I took a breath. A great roar shook me, the spear point burying itself in the dirt several inches away from my target. I looked over to see the ghoul delivering a fatal blow to the last hunter, similar to the one it delivered just a little while ago.

Quickly, I inhaled the sigh of relief I was letting out as smaller cries came from the treeline. Within the trees, zombies shambled out of the forest: skin withered and decayed, some missing limbs, their teeth an endless chatter. Amongst their ranks, cloaked figures moved unheeded between the corpses, delivering death blows with logs and stones. The zombies took no notice of the ghouls killing their brethren, all their focus on me and the other living humans. "Maybe it won't be too bad to travel together for a while," I said aloud, staring in wonder as nearly half the zombie horde is brought to the ground by a force seemingly invisible to them.

Two hands gripped my ankle with surprising strength. I try to jump back before realizing I'm anchored in place by a zombiefied Denise. "Shit!" I shout at my own carelessness. Of course they would change faster in the future as the virus progressed further and further. A thousand years ago, it took almost an hour for the change to complete. Looks like now it could take as little as a minute or two. I brought the butt of the spear down hard, fracturing the zombie's jaw. I did the same to its wrists, freeing my leg. Carefully I lined up the spear tip then shoved it through it through the eye.

As soon as I completed the task, another pair of hands wrapped around my waist and hot breath hit the back of my neck. Panicked, I dropped the spear and tried to pull away to no avail. I heard the snap of teeth close like a bear-trap but the pain never came. I looked down to see a pale hand unclenching the zombie fingers that held me. "Free yourself," said the smaller ghoul once he'd pried off enough fingers. I stumbled from Karl's hold and saw his teeth digging deeper into the ghoul's other arm, the leather-bound book lying in the dirt. The zombie fell to its knees, the ghoul's arm still hold in its teeth. With a free hand, the ghoul held the zombie's head back, exposing its face. "Finish it."

I picked up the spear, lining it up with the zombie's head again. Behind the head though, the ghoul struggled to keep hold of the head against his midsection. "Are you going to let go? I'd rather not stab you too if the spear goes through the head," I said.

The ghoul's head tilted quizzically. "I'm already dead," the ghoul simply replied.

For a couple more seconds, the zombie's head wrenched this way and that, trying to get to me though it still had a mouth full of the ghoul's arm. It was taking too long and I wasn't sure how quickly the rest of the horde would arrive, or how many of them. "If you could just hold still for a moment," I said quietly through clenched teeth. For a moment, it seemed that Karl could actually hear me and stopped struggling. Or the ghoul just managed to hold him a little tighter. Or I just focused a little bit harder. Either way, I managed to line up the spear for a second, enough time to lay Karl to rest.

The ghoul dropped the corpse to the dirt and I handed him back his book. We regrouped near the bunker entrance with the larger ghoul and the other surviving humans, six of us in total. In the trees, I could see cloaked figures standing statue still, their cloaks the only things rustling in the wind. Scattered on the ground, the bodies of zombies and their mutated brethren. It was more than we thought we'd find when we awoke but we'd do what humans do best, I thought as I took the book and opened it to unreadable pages. We were going to survive.

 

Based on the Reddit Writing Prompt: to survive the zombie apocalypse you put yourself in a hibernation pod for 1000 years only to discover an advanced zombie society. This might be the first prompt that I wrote a story all the way through (about a month ago), realized it was trash, and went back to re-write it completely differently. It wasn't that bad (by the standards of this blog which isn't that high at all) just not that good. Originally I took the zombies from another story I wrote that would get smarter the more brains they ate. In the end though, virus-type zombies can't really build a future society as their whole motivation is consuming everything. Then I spent time thinking about different types of undead, and there's so many I forgot about. And then, like with most ideas if I'm left alone with them for too long, it just fucking spiraled out of control to this thing. But of course, why end it when you can have one type of zombie interacting with other zombies, says the part of my brain that wants to continue this thing though I've threatened to cut it out several times already. From what I learned during the editing process (and if you're reading this you're thinking "Wait you go back and edit? Then why is this thing so bad?") I could stretch certain spots out to increase tension or suspense, but what I think I need is to shorten/ tighten sections to move along the story (did you enjoy that in a story about zombies it took forever before they were even mentioned?). I did mean to sort of end it with the main character (who I just realized I didn't name) and friends going off to look for other humans to sacrifice and free the ghouls, or something like that. Edit: crap, I didn't actually write that part into the story because I just wanted to stop writing this one already, especially since it's already taken up so much time already and the reason for no post last week. And the worst part is that I may go back to put it in if this fucking thing keeps going around in my head and bothering me to write it. I take that back, the worst part is that I'm already working on another, separate zombie story. No, I don't understand how I got on this binge of zombie stories, but hopefully I can stop after this one.

Land of the Undead (part 1)

 I awoke with a jolt, my body jerking upright. Confusion set in, then panic as my body still sat calmly. The last time I tested the hibernation pod, my lungs couldn't wait to evacuate the hibernation slime. Perhaps something went wrong this time? Perhaps I was actually suffocating? Immediately I stuck a finger down my throat. Like clockwork, my body reacted and I began coughing up the neon green slime that made the hibernation pod possible. My hands kept a tight grip on the interior handholds to prevent the natural urge to roll out of the pod and crack my skull on the ground. Slowly I began testing my movements while still lying on my back. The hibernation pod and the chemicals in the slime prevented as much muscle atrophy as possible but it was always best to test the results, especially after sleeping for a thousand years. 

Satisfied, I climbed cautiously out of the pod. Around me, similar coughs and groans echoed the room as my roommates for the passed millennium also awoke from hibernation. Seven others climbed out of their pods, stretching and waking themselves to the tasks we prepared to undertake. The next forty-eight hours would be crucial for us. The pods sustained us while we slept, but now that we were awake we would need to locate shelter and supplies.

"What about them?" asked Denise, motioning to the other five pods, still closed and their inhabitants still inside.

I inspected the five still-sealed pods as well as the electronic pads connected to each of them. Though Dr. Soares made the read-outs easy enough that an idiot like me could understand, I still preferred to put some faith in looking at the bodies inside the pods too. Especially since all five read-outs said their inhabitants were dead. Two were definitely deceased, decomposition slowed over a thousand years by the internal climate-control devices within each pod. The other three, well they could simply be asleep. "We'll have to leave them," I said making my way to the exit. "The computers say they're gone. Even if we forced open the pods, if they don't wake up then we'll be carrying a couple lifeless bodies through the unknown. Best to leave them here for now. Maybe the pod will awaken them as it's supposed to later, or maybe we can find someone in the new world that can do it." As I passed my pod, I picked up a steel spear, made from the same newly forged metal that the pods were built from, one of the few things guaranteed to survive a thousand years into the future. A couple of the others also had bows and arrows made of the same material.

I paused at the shelter door, two feet of steel separating us from the rest of the world for a thousand years. Before we went into hibernation, the world was descending into chaos as the government was on the verge of collapse and society was giving way to anarchy. The zombies, I thought and my body gave an involuntary shudder. The virus had spread worldwide and there didn't appear to be any hope for a cure soon. It was a losing war and so our small group, and probably dozens of other groups throughout the globe, took the only ride out of the madness. We planned for several different scenarios to emerge once we awoke. Would a utopia emerge after humanity eradicated the zombie threat? If the government decided on using nuclear weapons, would we be stepping into a nuclear wasteland? What if the zombies somehow survived after all this time despite the weather and the rate of decay of a human corpse?

"Are you sure it's safe to go out there?" Raymond asked, turning back to look at the pods.

I shrugged my shoulders and placed a hand on the door. "I have no idea. But we can't go back into hibernation, if that's what you're thinking. We're all out of the drugs they used to put us to sleep. Also, the only guy who could operate the machines died a thousand years ago. No, there's no going back." I gave the lock a twist, and pushed the door open.

I stood frozen in the sunlight as I took the time for my eyes to adjust. A humid breeze gusted passed, the smells of nature overwhelming after a thousand years in sterile isolation: a recent rainfall, decaying undergrowth, animal droppings. A howl from something that once might've been a dog. Trees stood taller than any house in the cul-de-sac had ever been, reclaiming the land as their own. And, standing just outside the door were two figures cloaked in some sort of rough fiber or hide, one of them a couple inches taller than me, and the other several inches shorter.

Immediately, my hand gripped my spear tighter. It took me a moment to realize why. Though they appeared as simply two people cloaked from head to toe against the wind, it was the smell of decay that gave them away. Zombies. The thought crossed my mind as a spear lunged forward and hit the taller figure in the chest. Anna always was faster than me.

"Please stop that," said the smaller figure as it pulled back the hood to reveal a clearly deceased man, blackened veins streaking his corpse-pale skin. In his other hand, he cradled a thick, leather-bound book. There wasn't a title, but instead the cover depicted an angry, bestial face that looked almost alive.

The taller figure simply grunted and yanked the spear out of its body, it's chest covered in tattered clothing beneath the cloak. Anna stepped back and I raised my own spear. I heard a couple arrows notched and strings being drawn back. "Sharp but too light," it said as it buried the spear tip in the dirt.

"Wait, the zombies can talk now? What kind of future did we just wake up into?" I heard Raymond ask from behind me as his spear lowered just over my shoulder.

The two figures exchanged a look and the smaller one smirked. "No, not zombies. At least not like the ones brought back from death by the virus. We're ghouls. Undead resurrected by magic to serve a master."

"So there weren't any zombies when we went into hibernation?" said Raymond.

The smaller ghoul shook his head. "Sorry, I think you misunderstand. There were zombies. There are zombies. What I meant is simply we are not zombies."

I knocked Raymond's spear away from my face. "And this master you serve, did he or she send you to get us?" I asked as I planned my next action.

Again the smaller ghoul shook his head. "No, The Master is long dead. Not many things can survive for more than a few centuries, even with magic." The ghoul held out the giant tome to me. "Unfortunately, we still aren't free to die, and in the state we are in, we can't decipher his texts to free us. Hopefully your group may assist us, freeing our souls from these bodies and moving on."

I stood motionless, trying to process everything I just learned. A primal roar erupting from the trees brought me back to the present. "A hunter. Could it be Meyers?" asked the taller ghoul, its hand reaching above it's head to something strapped to its back.

The smaller ghoul just shook his head. "No, Meyers would have kept his hunters quiet until the moment they struck. Probably just a small horde of zombies. They should pass us by."

The grip on my spear tightened again yet my chest was filled with a strange sense of calm. "Sorry, did you say 'zombies'? And what's a 'hunter'? And who is Meyers?"

Both ghouls turned to face me and I saw a look of terror fill the smaller ghoul's face. "Oh no," he said, "the humans."

Another roar exploded from the trees, and from the gloom three shadowed shapes rushed toward us in a barreling charge. "Zombies?" I asked, amazed that the monsters we originally tried to escape from could evolve into such creatures.

"Hunters. A particular mutation of the virus-created zombies. When it consumes enough muscle they turn into those behemoths. We call them hunters. Normally they pass us by since we are dead too. They must sense your group here." The smaller ghoul, now clutching the book tighter to his chest, moved closer to the taller ghoul.

"Don't worry. Though we expected nature to take care of the zombies before we awoke, we did practice for hunting wild game in case civilization collapsed. Taking down a few zombies shouldn't be as hard." I motioned for my team to spread out. Three split off to my right, three others to my left, Anna staying with me and readying a bow.

"These are not like the zombies you encountered before your long sleep," said the taller ghoul as it guided the other to the bunker while it unslung a gnarled branch from its back. "Destroying the brain is still the best way to put them down though."

Books of 2021: Quarter 2

 

 

So, I wasn't going to keep up with doing the book reviews every month as I did for the first three months of the year. This list also includes the first books that I bought from a bookstore since COVID-19, as well as a few re-reads.

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

"It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men."

"She had vowed that she would never let a friend down, that she would do anything, anything at all, to protect them. A vow more sacred to her than the Ancestor, more holy than the church from tallest spire to lowest crypt."

On a world orbiting a dying sun, the ice slowly seeks to cover all of the planet. Life struggles to survive on a thin stretch of land encircling the globe only a couple miles wide. Nona Grey is saved from the hangman's noose and taken in by the Convent of Sweet Mercy to train to become a nun. It is here she'll be raised and trained in the ways of blade and poison and magic, for any Sister of Sweet Mercy is a force on her own. But Nona's enemies are powerful and patient, and will seek her out for revenge.

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence

"There is a purity in rage. It will burn out sorrow. For a time. It will burn out fear. Even cruelty and hatred will seek shelter, rage wants none of them, only to destroy. Rage is the gift our nature gives to us, shaped by untold years. Why discard it?"

"At a separation of three yards and driven with the speed of a hunska full-blood Kettle's throwing stars allowed no opportunity for evasion. The left one would hit the closest woman somewhere in the neck; the right one would take the other woman in the right eye. Kettle was more accurate with her right arm."

Two years have passed since Nona Grey got her revenge on Raymel Tacsis, and the shipheart was stolen from the Convent of Sweet Mercy. Nona graduated from Red Class to Grey Class. Along with her previous studies, Nona will now learn new arts such as disguise, magical threadwork, and training with a sharpened blade to further hone herself into a weapon of the Church. The ice however continues to squeeze the world tighter and the country is being invaded from all sides. Also sitting outside the convent is the stolen shipheart and the murderer of Nona's friend. To get her revenge, retrieve what was stolen, and possibly save her country, Nona must leave the safety of the convent for the outside world.

Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence

"Perhaps no battle so ugly had ever played out across the Blade Hall sands before. But the simple fact was that Sister Iron, the presumptive Mistress Blade, retreated before the sword of Nona Grey, her own hair wet with sweat now. Sister Iron's own swordwork was now stretched to extravagant lengths, all within a packed handful of seconds that few possessed the vision to follow."

"Nona scanned the forces arrayed before her. She felt her devils moving beneath her habit, their voices crying out for blood, and she found herself in agreement. The Book of the Ancestor says that for everything there is a season. This was a time to reap. A time for death. A time to die."

The ice closes on The Corridor from the north and south, continuously forcing everyone closer together into the only land touched by the moon. Within the walls of the Convent of Sweet Mercy, Nona Grey completes her trainee period and must decide which habit to take up and how best to serve The Ancestor. Meanwhile, her enemies are both invading from outside the borders as well as scheming from within their walls. To bring peace, Nona and her friends need to uncover the mysteries and secrets of the moon high above Abeth, and the Ark hidden deep within the Emperor's Palace.

 
The last book of Mark Lawrence's "The Book of the Ancestor" trilogy. The book jumps between the present as Nona Grey completes her lessons in Holy class and takes her orders as a full nun of Sweet Mercy, and the escape from Sherzal's forces from three years prior that concluded "Grey Sister." A different set-up from the previous two books that mostly stayed in the present except for a couple excerpts chronicling the future (or present day from the perspective of "Holy Sister") attack on the convent. Like the conclusion to Lawrence's Broken Empire trilogy, the ending is such an epic culmination of all the prior events and the changes to the protagonist's character that the actions taken come as such a perfect surprise. The only downside to the story was my own impatience, not letting the story unfold word by word as it should. To explain, though I read this book after re-reading the first two, I originally read "Grey Sister" about two years ago. That's a long time to wait to see how one child can bring peace to a dying world. Because of this, I found my eyes constantly jumping from the page I was currently on to skim through words on the next page that popped out as something important, like looking for a constant teaser about what happens next. I guess it also doesn't help that this is the first book I bought since 2020, the first one of a batch I bought from Barnes and Nobles, and I guess I'm anxious to get to all the others as well.

Another of Lawrence's post-apocalyptic-style stories, the setting is a character itself. Lawrence imagines a world orbiting a dying sun and what that means for life on that planet. Most post-apocalyptic settings use desert wastelands filled with sand dunes and wrecked structures. Starting from  "Red Sister" life only survives with the help of an orbiting giant mirror magnifying the sun's heat and driving back the ice. Everything in the band thrives as it should, but outside it the ice has covered the ground miles deep. It is this world that four original races arrived from the skies and settled on this world. Each race had their own unique physical or magical trait, and blending them allowed all four to survive on this harsh world. The history itself that Lawrence creates is fascinating to read and learn.

From his other two trilogies, I know that Lawrence has a way with writing fight scenes, but I only remembered why (again) when re-reading these books. It's not necessarily the fight itself, which can be extremely hard and, honestly, boring if you're just describing the characters' movements and strikes. No, it's the words inbetween, the ones that add meaning and suspense and thrill to the fight that make them so good.

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

 

 

"Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of telltale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers."

"'It will help me if your guys grab them up, I don't want to have to shoot them all.'
     'Got a conscience?'
     'No, I've got thirty rounds of ammunition. Which isn't really enough. I need to parcel it out.'"

Riding the New York City subway at 2am, Jack Reacher finds himself on a train with five strangers, one of them matching the profile for a suicide bomber: all 11 points of a checklist distributed throughout the military and law enforcement. Of course Reacher attempts to diffuse the situation except he finds his assessment wrong. His actions though drag him into a far reaching conspiracy, stretching not just between eyes from Washington D.C. to Afghanistan, but actions that happened 30 years ago that could easily reshape the present day. Everyone thinks that Reacher has something and they're all stepping out of the shadows to come after him.

Finally, another Jack Reacher novel! After spending all of 2020 re-reading old books without a Jack Reacher book, I finally made it outside to a bookstore for the next book in the series. As always, the books are entertaining with the same type of vigilante justice, violence, and tactical knowledge I've come to expect from the "Jack Reacher" movie but also like "John Wick" and "The Equalizer." Lee Child does a great job putting action on the page, balancing movements with a brief explanation on their necessity that keeps the story moving without bogging it down. That said, the other half of a great mystery novel is trying to solve the case with the clues as they're presented, hopefully solving the mystery before the protagonist (which, once again, I failed to do). From the very start, the clues are dispersed and I once again learned it'll take a better eye than mine to solve it. Suspicions, of course, can only get you so far to finding the truth.

Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

"Wizards live a long time, and they don't do it by taking unnecessary risks. If you look up unnecessary risk in the White Council's dictionary, my picture is there. And my address. And all my personal contact information. And my permanent record from middle school."

"The old man glowered at me and thrust out his jaw. 'Boy, tell me you ain't dumb enough to try this.'
     The Winter mangle immediately bayed for blood, for defiance, for violence.
     I started drawing for power.
     'Oh, I'm more than dumb enough,' I said through clenched teeth."

A negotiation has finally been announced between the Fomor and the rest of the supernatural community, and it's just Harry Dresden's luck that the talks are being held in his town, Chicago. As a representative of both The White Council of Wizards and of Mab and the Winter fae, Dresden's job is to keep the peace and make sure everything goes smoothly. Of course, nothing is ever easy for Dresden and a new mystery presents itself at the same time, a mystery Dresden must solve or risk losing his brother. 

The sort-of newest Dresden Files book in the series ("Battlegrounds" in hardcover came out sometime last year too but I'm still waiting on the paperback). It's the newest one I've got and why I spent the first six months of last year re-reading ALL 15 of the previous novels in the series. I also went out to Barnes and Nobles the week it was released in paperback to pick it up, and spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out the new shelving system just to find it. After the heist-style story of the previous novel, "Peace Talks" puts the storyline back in the battle against the returned Fomor, a supernatural group that had retreated into the depths of the ocean when humanity began gaining their hold on the world. Though the Dresden Files has been running for 16 books, this is the first one that really feels like it ends on a cliffhanger. Having listened to several interviews with Jim Butcher, it does make sense as the storyline should be approaching a sort-of climax based on the plans he's revealed for the future of the series.

Maybe it was just because I waited so long for the next book, or maybe I'm just nostalgic for how the series used to be (Dresden taking on a monster of the week while solving a mystery) but this wasn't one of my favorites. I understand that the previous formula of Dresden being assigned a supernatural case that leads him to a greater understanding of the magical world is gone, replaced by things much bigger and more dire, but I still miss those stories. In regards specifically to this story, there was a good chunk in the beginning I felt was unnecessarily long though I understand its importance to the rest of the story. I probably would've tried to shorten the section, or cut it out somehow while still keeping the information the reader gathers from that part of the story (though I've never finished a story so of course, don't listen to me).

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

 

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

"There were five billion people down there. What was going to happen soon would make barbarianism look like a picnic - hot, nasty, and eventually given over to the ants."

The end of the world is upon us, as accurately predicted by a 16th century witch. The Antichrist has arrived on Earth ushering in the end times. A Hellhound is set out to great its master. After bidding their time doing what they do best, the Four Horsemen are also setting out to start humanity's end. Heaven and Hell are preparing for the last great battle. An angel and a demon though, having lived on Earth since The Beginning and having grown quite fond of their time here, set out to ensure that the apocalypse doesn't happen. Except one thing is derailing their plans: it seems that no one knows where the Antichrist really is.

For a book written by two people, the writing blended really well in that I couldn't tell it was written by two authors. Having read a bunch of books by Gaiman, I could pick up some of the elements of his writing, for example, transforming already established ideas and concepts in a way I've never thought of before. Having never read any Terry Pratchett but having watched the first season of "The Watch" by BBS, I could definitely pick out the side humor put in by Pratchett, like the author is making fun of his or her own characters in such a way that none of the story characters are even aware. The story blended their writing styles very well to create something so good and wouldn't be possible without the two of them working together. 

Originally I'd meant to re-read this book BEFORE watching "Good Omens" the show on Amazon Prime but I was still in the middle of reading another book and besides, this book was too far under my bed to conveniently retrieve. The show and the book are basically the same in terms of story and theme. I think the book though has more jokes that the show didn't have, either because of time constraints, they just couldn't be fit in, or just wouldn't be funny to today's audience (the book was published in 1990). I think the main thing I'm sad that got cut from the show was the side remarks (because even in the book we never meet him) about Greasy Johnson - the third boy at the hospital during the baby swap scene.

Also, when I mentioned earlier that it was in an inconvenient place, I meant that it hidden in a box with other books I haven't read for a long time under my bed blocked off by a bunch of other crap next to it. And by a long time, I mean that I've had this book for over ten years now, as you can see from the yellow coloring on the pages and how every page turn felt like it might tear. Still a great book to read though.