BLOG OF CHRIS PHILBROOK
New releases & inner musings
Diggory Finch is on Kickstarter, and get this…
The Darkness of Diggory Finch was fully funded on Kickstarter in SIX MINUTES.
There’s no way I could’ve anticipated that, and boy, I sure am blown away.
Many of the higher-tier pledge levels were gone in ten minutes, but a few remain. There are also many signed copies available, as well as the ability to name places and people in the series.
I haven’t announced stretch goals yet, so if you’d like to get it, and keep rolling this snowball until it’s big enough to steamroll Manhattan, head to Kickstarter and pledge now.
So, so much thanks to everyone.
The Future of AUD
Time to rip the Band Aid off.
You’ve hopefully seen that the Kindle pre-order for AUD 12 – Dead Cities has gone live, releasing on February 22nd in eBook and print formats.
I can’t say when the audio will release for it, or for the Dead Lucky AUD anthology, as I’m in the process of finding a new narrator to move forward on the series with.
I don’t want to go into details about it, but James and won’t be pairing up for the series going forward. What’s recorded and released and what there is, and for the remainder of the series, we’ll need a new voice. I’m disappointed, but I’m trying to view this as an opportunity.
This is obviously late in the process for this to land in the collective laps of the Ringfamily, so I’m trying to play catch-up and figure it out. There’s a chance I’ll be looking into selling audio rights for the whole series to a publisher (for new narration), as well as keeping the existing audiobooks, or recording them on my dime, which would be financially tough.
Not sure, lots of things to balance. As soon as I get anything concrete I will let you know, and if you know a reputable narrator looking for a new series to helm, and you think they can carry the weight of Adrian, send them my way.
Please try to be positive about this, as drama won’t improve the situation. Please also understand that I can’t speak for James, nor will I say anything detrimental about him, so please be respectful.
Back to writing Diggory.
The Darkness of Diggory Finch
More details soon. You can already find more on my Patreon page, if you feel like becoming a patron at the Fire Team level or above.
-Chris
Shipping delays
Hey everyone,
I’ve received a disturblingly large amount of angry emails the past ten days or so about book orders from me taking a long time to arrive.
I ship all book orders via USPS Media Mail, which takes anywhere from one to six days to arrive when things are normal. I’m on the east coast, so if you’re on the west coast, expect the longer ship time.
With the holidays here, and the GLUT of people ordering online, the USPS is absolutely crushed with package volume, and they are behind like I’ve never seen before. This is a screen grab off their site:
Once I pay for the package, and get a tracking #, it is out of my control. I can’t call them and change anything. I can’t make it go faster, or change where its going no more than I can change the color of the box the books are in.
I’m in the same boat myself. Presents I ordered online in November have yet to arrive, and they’ve already missed Hanukkah, so now we’re pivoting, and hoping they’ll arrive for Christmas.
Please be patient with me as I deal with all I’ve got going on, and please be patient with the postal service. COVID is disruptive to an alarming degree, and the holidays are always crazy to boot. My local post office is a very small one, and they’ve had high turnover the past year as the postmaster retired, then their main clerk had a heart attack, and they’ve struggled to get full-time staff out here in the sticks.
If you have a problem with your order, go ahead and message or email me, and I’ll always do the best I can to make it right. I do make mistakes. Sometimes I mess up an address. Occasionally I sign things wrong. But, I am not a scammer, and have no interest in ripping people off.
I hope everyone is healthy, coping as well as they can, and is having a cozy holiday season.
-Chris
No More Heroes has arrived on Audible!
It’s here, it’s here!
Carl Meadow’s entry into the world of Adrian Ring crash landed on Audible this morning, and you can snap it up for a single credit. Narrated by Danielle Cohen, and nearly 12 hours long, it’s a guaranteed good day for your ears, and your brain.
“The apocalypse sucks, man.”
On June 23, 2010, in every country across the globe, the dead inexplicably awaken with murderous resolve. For the first days, Erin Locke – Lockey to her friends – survives alone as society collapses in England with shocking speed.
With her trademark snarky sense of humor, goofy insights, and can-do attitude, she chronicles her early adventures in a journal to keep her spirits high and sanity intact, until she befriends retired Royal Marine veteran Nate Carter, and the unlikely duo find themselves a place they can call home.
Her newfound security is threatened by an encounter with other survivors that ends in blood, and a vengeful hunt by the dead man’s brother begins. After skirmishes with the self-styled feudal lord of their new lawless existence, the pair learn they are the only chance of salvation for innocents enslaved by the aspiring warlord and are forced to act for more than their own survival.
There are no heroes left, so the captives’ only hope are one fast-talking, foul-mouthed woman and one deadly, middle-aged ex-marine.
Set in the world of Chris Philbrook’s best-selling zombie apocalypse, Adrian’s Undead Diary, No More Heroes opens the world up, illuminating the nightmare of the United Kingdom, and bringing its heroes into the light.
Nab the book David Moody called “frantic; crackles with energy,” here today: https://amzn.to/3al7Ksf
No God just released on Audible
Huzzah, Audible! I’d rather not have a new release on a holiday, right before Black Friday, but yay! It’s out, finally!
//
Question: What’s something you can do on Thanksgiving Day to make gathering with family more awkward than usual?
Answer One: rub gravy on your naked body in the living room, or….
Answer Two: Listen to No God, Adrian’s Undead Diary, Book Eleven. Part Three of Adrian’s March.
Now out on Audible for one credit. If you start listening now, you can have it done by bedtime, all while riding that tryptophan high.Enjoy.
The Day Dad Died
I posted this a few years ago, and after a good session with my therapist this morning, it feels right to post it again. Another little memorial for dear old dad as we crash into the holiday, and the grief process I go through every year around this time.
I know it’s a little heavier than my usual book promotion shit, but if you ever wanted to get inside my head for real, here’s your chance.
//
December 1st used to a day of good things. My fiance at the time Kelly and I used to go get our fresh Christmas tree on the 1st. Either it was a weekend day, or we’d do it after work, and we’d always go pick it out, bring it home and get it set up, then let it relax overnight. The next day we’d decorate.
At the time we’d moved into the renovated barn in Henniker my Mom and Dad already lived in. We’d gotten the other bottom floor apartment, and we loved it there. I was able to pop into to say hi to my Mom and Dad whenever I wanted, and between the lilacs and the view, the place had character. I know my Dad loved it.
You have to understand that my Dad was… 78 when he died and the last few years of his life saw him failing. He had almost died I think a year prior when his kidneys failed due to a triple bypass a few months prior to that, and as 2001 aged on, he became less and less able to live. He fell down all the time, forgot to take his meds, forgot to test his blood sugar, was less and less lucid, and had become a real burden on not only my mother, but Kelly and I, and to some extent my whole family. We couldn’t afford and weren’t willing to put him in a home, and we could only barely start the conversation of a home nurse to take care of him while my Mom worked, or while Kelly and I were away.
Back to the day of the first. Forgive me if my memory fails a bit on this, but the basics are all going to be here.
Kelly and I walked out to my car to leave to go get our tree. I had been worried that week because Dad had been worse than ever, so I walked over to the sliding glass door to their apartment and looked in the window. Dad was watching tv in his recliner, and he and I waved to each other. All was well.
We got in the car, and gallivanted downtown to the house where a really nice family sold Christmas trees, and we picked out a good one. I think we paid $35 for it. I tied it down on the car and drove back. The drive was short. Five miles maybe.
I parked, and we were carrying the tree across the yard to our place when one of us couldn’t see my Dad in the recliner. I think it was Kelly who went to the window, and said, “He’s lying on the floor.”
The slider was locked, so we ran around and let ourselves into the building, then into their apartment with the key. Dad had fallen again, couldn’t quite form sentences, and was covered in a cold sweat. I had Kelly get a small glass of OJ while I tested his blood sugar, and as I expected, it was low. Rock bottom in fact. We got the juice into him, and within minutes he was more coherent, and I was able to lift him back into his trusty recliner. When I asked him what he’d eaten that day he couldn’t remember eating anything, so we warmed him up some soup, and sat with him while he ate it. The food helped, and after about an hour he seemed fine, and my mother was due home very shortly, so we went back out into the yard where the tree sat waiting and we got it inside.
I told my Mom what happened, and that we needed to talk that night.
After the tree was setup I remember eating a dinner, and painting a miniature at the kitchen table. It was a Ral Partha knight I was painting for no reason other than to paint, and when my Mom came over I put it aside, and the three of us had a lengthy conversation about what the hell we were going to do about Dad.
Mom was distraught over the fall, and how fast he seemed to be degrading. We couldn’t leave him alone anymore. Mom couldn’t afford to miss work, and I had already missed multiple days to take him to the doctor’s, and I couldn’t afford to just quit. We figured we’d put it to the family, and see if my brothers and sisters would be able to pitch in for a nurse.
Before we called, I remember telling my Mom that we had to tell all of them that if they wanted to see Dad again, they should come up immediately. I think it was a Friday, and I said, “They need to come up like, tomorrow. I don’t think he’s going to last long, and they need to know to come soon.”
I hate myself for saying that.
We called several of my family members, and they were wonderful. All agreed that they would try and find money to help. Together it wouldn’t be that much if we all pitched in something. One of us told them that they should visit very soon, and they started to plan a trip up the next day, or by the end of the weekend.
I think that was around 8pm. I returned to painting.
At 10pm, my Mom pounded on the apartment door, screaming for help like her life depended on it. I answered it and was able to decipher that Dad had fallen again in the bedroom, and wasn’t responding to her. Kelly and I leapt out of the apartment, and ran down the hall to their place.
My Dad had gone down just inside the bedroom. He was using a walker at the time, and the walker had to be tossed out of the way for us to get into the bedroom. He had landed on his back, but his head had hit the doorjamb and was propped up in the corner near the closet. It looked painful and unnatural, but my father had no expression of pain on his face. He looked serene. Peaceful almost.
I knew he was dead, and God help me, I felt some relief.
My mother was hysterical. And I mean hysterical. Balling, screaming, bellowing, walking around throwing her arms in the air with no rhyme or reason. I tried to calm her down as Kelly got the phone, but that didn’t work. She was lost.
I’ll admit that I didn’t want to give him CPR for a few seconds. In the moment I knew that any kind of life he’d have after this moment wouldn’t be good, and I honestly felt like sustaining his existence in whatever form it would be, would only serve as a disservice to him, and to those of us who loved him.
But you can’t NOT give your dying father CPR. Kelly snapped me to my senses. I don’t remember what she said.
I moved him carefully until he was flat on his back (keeping his neck as stable as possible), and as she talked to the 911 dispatcher, we did CPR. She did most of the compressions while I did his breathing. After a few minutes I had Kelly get off to get my mother under control and to watch for the ambulance or police and I took over. After a minute my Dad made this gurgling noise. Air escaping, as if he was coming back to life. That was the death-rattle you hear about. The sound of the air you pushed into the person escaping from their stomach. He still had no pulse, and wasn’t breathing.
Not long after that a Henniker cop showed up with a defibrillator. As he set it up and fired it off the paramedics arrived, and then I went to my Mom, and somehow got her sitting, and got her hyperventilating under control. When I say she had become hysterical I mean it. She had entirely unplugged mentally.
The cop (I don’t know his name, but he was great) said that the defibrillator said he had a pulse, and that our CPR had kept him alive. He said we should gather our things, and head to the hospital, as the ambulance was leaving. That thought galvanized my Mom, and in my pajamas and sneakers, we piled into my Camry, and I drove… far faster than the speed limit towards the Concord Hospital.
The main road from Henniker to Concord is 202/9. A 55 mile an hour road that runs maybe ten miles to I89. The exit from Henniker onto 202/9 is a downward slope to the right. As my mother tried to gather herself, and Kelly fought to help with that we made that right hand turn onto the onramp and sitting there parked in the breakdown lane was the ambulance.
As we drove by there was no driver, and I knew then there was no reason to hurry. When the ambulance stops, and the driver goes into the back to help, it’s all hands. Either they resuscitate you right then and there, or you don’t make the trip. The golden hour doesn’t matter anymore.
My Mom asked me why I had slowed down to the speed limit, and I pointed out the parked ambulance that had Dad in it, and I said that we were going to beat them to the ER anyway, so we might as well not get a ticket.
The ride was us talking about the previous twenty minutes, and how crazy it felt. My mother was sure Dad would pull through. He’d survived two triple bypasses, countless back surgeries, a mortar round in World War Two and worse. A fall? Not enough to fuck with Arthur Clyde Philbrook.
Sitting in the ER waiting for the ambulance to show I was less optimistic. Despite the ray of sunshine that the cop illuminated us with, I knew the likelihood that Dad would pull through was nearly nonexistent. I told my Mom, “We need to start making plans for his funeral.”
The ambulance pulled in. No flashing lights.
A few minutes later a really nice administrator lady asked us to move to a tiny room away from the waiting area. I forget what the room was called, but the little plate with the braille on it said something benign, like ‘room you’re told your loved one died.’
Questions were asked and answered, and I could tell she was gathering info to make the death announcement properly. The look on her face when she looked at me told me what I already knew.
A doctor came in; also a lady, and addressed my mother. Dad had been pronounced dead.
I think me telling my Mom in the waiting area prepared her. She cried, but didn’t lose her marbles like she had in the apartment. The doctor didn’t know what had ended his life, but they would find out soon. Not really an answer you need in that moment.
I hadn’t cried yet. I am not really a crier. It takes a lot, and I am not the guy who panics, or gets emotional in the moment. I focus, I really do. People have told me that it’s calming, being around me when the chaos hits. It’s a compliment. Sometimes I wish I would just let shit affect me so someone else could take the reins.
The doctor asked if we wanted to see his body before we left, and for some reason, I said I wanted to. I think I said yes because I knew after that moment, the next time I saw him he’d be in a suit, in his casket.
The doctor went with me to an ER suite where a mother and father sat with their sick or injured child. The doctor stood beside me as I looked down on my Dad, laying there with his eyes closed as if he’d fallen asleep while reading the newspaper, like he always did after I got out of school. Still, I didn’t cry.
“He was a good Dad?” the doctor asked, and that did me in.
I told her about him as I cried, not much, just a little bit about how I felt. I know my Dad wasn’t perfect, and in the years since his death I’ve learned that he was even less perfect than I knew him to be, but in that moment, he was the best man ever, EVER.
And he was dead. Gone. I’d lost my Dad, my bestest buddy, my biggest cheerleader, the guy who winked at me when I brought a girl home, and asked me if I liked her still a week later. The guy who brought me to baseball and basketball practice, and yelled at me the summer day I lost my glasses tubing down a river.
When I left the ER suite the family I’d walked past had overheard everything, and they were crying as hard or harder as I was. I can’t imagine how it felt to have a front row suite to a son mourning his father not thirty minutes after he’d died. I wonder to this day if they thought about their child having to do the same after the decades passed.
I returned to Mom and Kelly, and we drove home. We made the calls from my apartment. I don’t remember quite who called who, but as memory serves, I think I was the one who actually dialed the phone and spoke. It was too much for my Mom, and it wasn’t Kelly’s job to do, though she was there for us.
The calls were quick; no one was surprised, and despite the grief, there was little to say. Dad was dead. There would be a wake and funeral soon. Call you tomorrow.
We got Mom home, and the apartment cleaned up. I don’t know how she slept in that room that night, or ever again, but I suspect exhaustion had something to do with it.
We went to bed as well, and once the lights went out, Kelly put her hand on me, and that’s when I had my breakdown. In the dark with no witnesses to judge me, I cried and cried. Sobbed. Wracked with grief and hopelessness it came over and over in waves. I couldn’t imagine a life without my Dad. He’d been everything to me for so long.
But I would move on. I had to. He would give me shit if I didn’t. He was like that. Maybe not the best man ever, or even the best Dad ever, but he was my Dad, and I loved him.
No More Heroes has arrived!
“The apocalypse sucks, man.”
On 23rd June 2010, in every country across the globe, the dead inexplicably awaken with murderous resolve. For the first days, Erin Locke – Lockey to her friends – survives alone as society collapses in England with shocking speed.
With her trademark snarky sense of humour, goofy insights, and can-do attitude, she chronicles her early adventures in a journal to keep her spirits high and sanity intact, until she befriends retired Royal Marine veteran Nate Carter, and the unlikely duo find themselves a place they can call home.
Her newfound security is threatened by an encounter with other survivors that ends in blood, and a vengeful hunt by the dead man’s brother begins. After skirmishes with the self-styled feudal lord of their new lawless existence, the pair learn they are the only chance of salvation for innocents enslaved by the aspiring warlord and are forced to act for more than their own survival.
There are no heroes left, so the captives’ only hope are one fast-talking, foul-mouthed woman, and one deadly, middle-aged ex-marine.
Set in the world of Chris Philbrook’s best-selling zombie apocalypse, Adrian’s Undead Diary, No More Heroes opens the world up, illuminating the nightmare of the United Kingdom, and bringing its heroes into the light.
Edited by Chris Philbrook, with an introductory foreword by him as well.
Rude, chaotic, exciting, unpredictable, and very, very bloody, ‘No More Heroes’ is a blast from the first page to the last. It’s frantic, and crackles with energy. Kick back and enjoy this unique vision of the apocalypse.
-David Moody, author of Hater & Autumn
Pick it up here in print, or on your Kindle via Amazon: https://amzn.to/3jAwhul
Follow Carl on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/carlmeadowsauthor/
Follow Carl on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/carlmeadowsauthor/
No More Heroes – The final teaser.
Wanna read something amazing? Author David Moody (Of Autumn and Hater fame) read No More Heroes for us, and he LOVED it. Check out what he had to say:
I can’t remember reading another book filled with so much blood, gore and f-bombs. But that’s no bad thing. ‘No More Heroes’ is gross, frantic, and awesome.
An impressively assured debut from Meadows. In Erin Locke he’s created a hero who’s simultaneously razor-sharp and clumsy, self-assured and yet filled with self-doubt. Lockey is a barely-contained ball of infectious energy: a hugely entertaining guide to take us through the end of the world.
‘No More Heroes’ crackles with energy and rattles along at a frantic pace. If ever I’m stuck in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, I want Lockey at my side.
Rude, chaotic, exciting, unpredictable, and very, very bloody, ‘No More Heroes’ is a blast from the first page to the last. Kick back and enjoy this unique vision of the apocalypse.
Amazing. Just amazing. I knew it was a good book, and I’m so excited it’s going to be a part of the AUD experience.
No More Heroes crashed onto your Kindle in just 8 days, and will be available in print a few days from now as well. Danielle Cohen is narrating the audiobook version, which is aiming for an end of year release.
We’re sharing entries from the book leading up to release day.
To catch yourself up, here are the links to the earlier posts:
Parts One and Two: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/12/no-more-heroes-entry-one-and-two/
Parts Three and Four: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/17/no-more-heroes-entries-3-4/
Parts Five and Six: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/24/no-more-heroes-entries-5-6/
Parts Seven and Eight: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/10/01/no-more-heroes-entries-7-8/
Part Nine: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/10/05/no-more-heroes-entry-9/
Part Ten: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/10/14/no-more-heroes-entry-9-2/
And now, here is: Seriously?
Pre-Order the Kindle here: https://amzn.to/315Ii4A
SERIOUSLY?
We set off at a slow roll, mainly because Nate’s two speeds are crawl or dead when he’s behind the wheel. We followed the road for about a mile before Nate brought the pickup to a dead stop.
“Shit,” he breathed.
There was a big ass wooden gate, just set off from this tiny country road, a good eight feet tall mounted on columns of brick. Either side were just long lengths of dense brush, utterly impassable for anything larger than a fox that acted as a border wall. However, milling about outside this gate were zombies.
Lots of zombies.
There must have been maybe forty or fifty, just banging their faces against the gate, pressing against it. I could see it was bent inwards slightly from the inexorable push that the undead provided, tireless and constant.
“How are there so many?” I whispered.
Nate shrugged, his deep voice almost inaudible. “Don’t know. Maybe those morons have been doing that drumming night after night and they’ve been drawn in over time in tiny groups, like that one last night.” He sniffed. “That seals it though.”
“What seals what?”
“We can’t get in and I’m not blazing through ammunition to take all those fuckers down.” He glanced at me askew. “And you’re not combat effective enough for this tight space. Open space maybe, but not crowded on this little narrow road.”
“There must be another way in for people with actual brains,” I offered. “Those dumb shits will continue to try and use their faces as a master key, but we’ve got actual thoughts. Let’s park up and find somewhere else we can climb over.”
“Erin, we….”
“Lockey,” I corrected again.
“Erin,” he repeated, just to be an ass. “What’s the point?”
“People are the point, Nate. They clearly don’t know what’s knocking at their gate. Come on, back the fuck up, park the truck, and come the fuck on.”
I slid out of the truck to make my point, Particles under one arm and his Kuato-bag in the other hand.
“Seriously?” he hissed, one eye glancing back to the mass of undead at the gate in case any had noticed us. They were a good distance away. “You’re taking the dog?”
“If you think I’m leaving Particles behind in a truck with the sun coming up, you’re very wrong. It’s already warming up. I’m not leaving the little guy to die a melty death in a truck.”
Particles emphasised my point by staring balefully at Nate, outraged at the notion of being left behind.
Nate said nothing, though I could almost hear the string of profanity echoing in his head, and I closed the door quietly. Nate backed the truck up round the corner, out of sight of the mass of shamblers, before climbing out. He kept his voice low as I settled Particles into his carry-bag. As his head popped out of the hole, all indignant at the inconvenience, Nate just stared at us both for a moment and shook his head in obvious irritation.
Cheered me right up.
#
We managed to find a way into the property by climbing a tree further back on the road, then moving along the boughs and dropping down the other side. Nate did an admirable job for an old guy, but he carries considerably more weight. I, of course, with my mad parkour skills, scampered up the tree, scooted along and dropped lightly down on the other side.
Nate’s attempts were comical, with him blowing out his arse as he dragged himself up, shakily moved across the branches, then flopped like a two hundred pound bag of shit on the other side.
“Wasn’t so bad, eh?” I gave him a shit-eating grin.
“Maybe not for a demented squirrel like you,” he growled.
Particles stared back at Nate, silently judging him.
We pushed on and as we entered a lush green field, there was a beautiful looking building at the top of a hill, all wood and glass. Pretty big too, not some little cabin. It looked like some classy chic hotel for the elite that had limited spaces. We could see a handful of cars parked outside, a long and slender road running from the building down to the front gate we’d seen from the other side.
Couldn’t see a single zombie from this side through the solid gates. You might see their feet if you went up close through the small gap between earth and the gate’s bottom, but other than that, looking down from the building would reveal nothing about the undead party taking place at the gate.
Ever vigilant, Nate had come looking like he was ready for some mass execution, all dolled up in his bad-ass tactical vest, spare clips for his handgun, shotgun shells aplenty, and the double barrel with the selective trigger loaded and ready for action.
We could hear voices, even though it was probably only seven in the morning, just a single, soothing voice, all hypnotic, though no words could be made out. We crested the rise, following the sound of the voice and as we reached the top, both of us stopped dead.
There, on the grass in front of this stunning country retreat, were ten people.
Doing yoga.
Yoga.
Fucking yoga in the apocalypse.
You only had to take one look at these people to know that Nate wasn’t going to get on with them. These people were gentle-looking, flighty and farty, breathing in the country air and finding their centre and learning to love themselves or some shit, while I was accompanied by the Terminator’s granddad.
The instructor was the only one facing us when we appeared, a quite beautiful woman in her mid-forties, who clearly took really good care of herself. One thing I immediately noticed was that everyone looked clean, and that gave me real hope for my future.
The instructor’s eyes were closed as she talked, holding some position that was sure to win any game of Twister without fail, but as she relaxed and began issuing her next instruction, she opened her eyes and Nate and I were both in her cone of vision.
She stopped for a moment, too stunned at seeing our incongruous little trio standing outside their shiny lodge. There was Nate; all in black, tactical vest, handgun, shotgun, and a facial expression that silently said, “what the actual fuck?” He’s shit at hiding what he thinks, especially when he thinks, “What the fuck?”
Then there was me, dirty and dishevelled with an off-centre ponytail in hair that hadn’t been washed in a month or more, my loose athletic pants, battered Nikes, vest top and hoody, with a backpack hanging over my torso, and a pug’s head staring back at them all, judging them. I waved and smiled, knowing full well Nate probably looked like he was about to execute every last motherfucking one of them.
The instructor let out a little squeal, squeaking out a name.
“Theo!”
A man at the front, about the same age as the yoga teacher – probably a little older actually – paused in his stretch and turned, blanching at the sight of us. To be honest, I nearly blanched at the sight of him. He had this really weird round face, with crumpled skin in folds, and a shock of wiry black hair on his head and sticking out of his chin, like he’d just been electrocuted. When I saw him, all I could think of was how he looked like a testicle. With teeth.
The whole group by now had turned to see the commotion and most of them squealed, clustering together fearfully, begging for their lives like Nate was about to start blasting.
“Whoah whoah!” I shouted, trying to get them to calm the fuck down. “Hey, we’re not here to hurt anyone!”
“This is private property!” declared Testicle… erm… Theo. He tried to muster as much gumption as he could, but honestly, he sounded on the verge of tears. “I’ll call the police!”
Both Nate and I stared at him for a moment, stared at each other for another moment, then turned our gaze back to him. As one, we both laughed.
“Okay, Theo, is it?” He nodded dumbly. “Okay, Theo, first question. Where’s your phone?”
As I thought, nobody who looks like this guy takes his phone to yoga. He looked like a kid just caught in a lie and his bottom lip quivered the same way.
“Secondly, we’re not here to hurt anyone. We heard your drumming and chanting last night and – as you can see – we’re a little worse for wear.” I gestured to my appearance which was clearly lacking my usual hotness. “And thirdly, call the police? Really? How long have you been here? Do you even fucking know what’s going on out there?” I gestured in a general sweep behind me.
“This is a spiritual retreat,” stammered Theo. “We’ve been here since the 20th of June. No electronics permitted.”
“Fuck Testi… Theo,” I corrected quickly. Shit, he really did look like a toothy bollock. “How fucking long is this retreat?”
“Thirty days.”
“A month?” I choked. “A fucking month? Who the hell can afford to fuck off for a month?”
I mean, come on. A month of doing yoga, chanting, meditating, inhaling incense and twatting drums round a campfire? Who the shitting hell can afford that?
“Are you telling us,” growled Nate. “Are you seriously telling us, that you haven’t been in contact with anyone outside this lodge, for the past month?”
“No one,” affirmed Theo. “The retreat finishes the day after tomorrow.”
Nate and I shared another amazed look, one of utter disbelief. While the world has been holding the side of the toilet bowl with two white-knuckled hands, screaming in horror as it shits out bloody spikes, this bunch of twats had been singing Kum Ba Yah, blissfully unaware of the world’s end.
Un-fucking-believable.
“Nate,” I said. “Put the gun down, you’re scaring the hippies.”
Nate snorted and lowered the shotgun.
“Now look,” I said. “We’re really not here to hurt anyone, so can we start again? My name’s Erin Locke, but everyone calls me Lockey. This here is Nate Carter, and this is Particles. I think you better put the kettle on. Tell me you have coffee?”
Theo shook his head. “Green teas, camomile, fruit teas; this is a place of healing and cleansing. Here we detox and reconnect with our inner self.”
Here we go, I thought. Here comes the twat-speak. I could feel Nate’s disgust rolling off him in near physical waves. These were not his people.
“Typical, you’re all on a detox, when I really need to tox the shit out of myself,” I moaned out loud. “Well, put some fucking asparagus and broccoli tea on, or whatever it is you drink here, and let’s talk. There’s some shit you need to know.”
No More Heroes – Entry 9
We are less than two weeks away from the release of the newest Adrian’s Undead Diary novel; No More Heroes.
Written by friend and colleague Carl Meadows, and edited by me, it follows Lockey, Nate, and Particles the pug as they make their way through the northern England apocalypse.
We’re sharing entries from the book leading up to release day.
To catch yourself up, here are the links to the earlier posts:
Parts One and Two: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/12/no-more-heroes-entry-one-and-two/
Parts Three and Four: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/17/no-more-heroes-entries-3-4/
Parts Five and Six: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/24/no-more-heroes-entries-5-6/
Parts Seven and Eight: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/10/01/no-more-heroes-entries-7-8/
Part Nine: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/10/05/no-more-heroes-entry-9/
And now, here is: I Think it’s July
Pre-Order the Kindle here: https://amzn.to/315Ii4A
9th ENTRY
I THINK IT’S JULY?
Hola amigo! I haven’t written anything in a while, but I found this shiny new notebook. It’s pink with hearts, stars and rainbows all over the cover. It’s absolutely fucking awful and looks like a unicorn threw up on it, but it will serve my purpose. And that purpose is recording the new adventures of Erin Locke (loud applause), Nate Carter (muted polite applause), and Particles, my lucky pug (and the crowd goes wild!)
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote anything. The apocalypse has been in full flow for roughly a month now and Nate, Particles and I have been touring the countryside like some shit BBC show following B-roads and seeing the back-country sights of this green and pleasant land. Nate had a hard-on for always being mobile, never stopping in one place too long, but it’s really starting to grate on me now.
Like, really.
I really want a bath, or shower, or I’m gonna be able to pass myself off as a zombie soon enough with the death stench rising from my pits and crotch. I’m no girly girl that needs pampering, but I am a normal human being that likes to at least be clean.
So, what have we been up to?
Well, Nate taught me to shoot. Not with his pistol, as he says that his ammo stash is limited for that and it’s too important a weapon, but after Particles’ magic powers helped us discover a new shotgun with two boxes of shells, he showed me how to use that.
Put a controller in my hand on Call of Duty, I’m the baddest stone-cold bitch that ever pulled a trigger.
The first time I fired a real shotgun, I fell over and squealed, as it felt like someone had smacked me in the tit with a hammer.
Fucking hell! Shotguns kick like a mule on PCP. This is not like the movies. Shooting is fucking hard and it’s doubly annoying that Nate makes it look so damn easy.
Anyway, I’ve got the basics, and Nate showed me how to take shit apart and clean it, as apparently that’s super important for reliability. We need some more supplies in that regard, which is partly why we’ve been hitting up every remote farmhouse we can find, as that’s likely the only places we’ll find shotgun ammo and cleaning stuff. As it turns out, the fucker was right. We’re pretty fat on shotgun goodies now, but Nate’s starting to get all twitchy about his Glock ammo. Nine-mil is a bit harder to find in rural Cheshire (like… zero chance except for police stations with AFO capability) and he says he’s okay for now, but still.
It’s starting to get a bit old now though. With Driving Miss Daisy here rolling around at fifteen miles an hour, it’s boring beyond belief. Also, being stuck in a car with a sweaty man and a dog is pretty rank. If either one of those two drops a fart in the car, I swear you’ll still be chewing on it an hour later. Just gross.
Also, I’m getting sick of squatting in bushes when I need to go potty.
Generally, I’m just sick of it. I need some interaction with people. I’m a social person, I need conversation, banter and bullshitting. Nate has the conversational desire of a brick and he’s all business, all the time.
Plus, the only sign of people I see are undead ones. Nate is only a marginally better conversationalist than the zombies, and he doesn’t try to bite my pretty face off, but surely the whole point of an apocalypse is we have to come together and rebuild? Surely?
Not for Gunny Highway here, though.
Anyway, our hand was starting to get forced as I caught Nate glancing down at the dash repeatedly yesterday.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Low fuel,” he rumbled back. He’s so economical with words, shortening his sentences to the minimal amount. You can see why he’s a pain in the ass.
“What’s our stash like?”
“Almost gone,” he said.
“Great,” I muttered. “And here we are, crawling around the arse end of nowhere. Don’t think we’re gonna find a petrol station in…” I looked out the window. “Where even the fuck arewe? As far as I can tell, we’re in fucking Narnia.”
“You swear a lot,” he observed.
“Well fuck-a-doodle do, Sherlock, nothing gets past you.”
That was pretty unfair, but you have to understand, the old bastard was really getting under my skin by this time. The last thing I needed was some old soldier telling me I cursed a lot ‘for a girl’. Thankfully, those three words hadn’t been tacked on as yet, but I swear the minute he does, bad-ass soldier or not, I’m dick-punching him.
Nate said nothing to my childish response, which is just as infuriating. You know when you really feel like having it out? Like a really cathartic screaming match to blow out the dust? I was ready for one of them, but Nate never bites. He just cocks that infuriating eyebrow at you and says nothing more, making you feel like a whiny little twat. Bastard.
We trundled on in silence for a little while more, and it was starting to get dark.
“We’ll sleep in the car tonight,” Nate announced. “Can’t afford to trundle around in the night looking for a new place to stay. We’ll be alright out here.” He declared this as he pulled into a rough imitation of a lay-by and put the pickup in park.
“Seriously? In the car? With you and a pug?” I swore again, just to piss Nate off. “I’m making you a solemn promise that if you start to snore like an asthmatic ogre, I will throat-punch you.”
Nate’s mouth just quirked in the twitch of a smile, just for a moment.
We ate cold food from a can, which was about as pleasant as it sounds, and settled down for a shitty night in a pickup.
I was awoken sometime after dark. It wasn’t super late, maybe around ten, but there was an obvious change to the world outside. I shit you not, my dearest reader, I could hear fucking drums in the distance. Not war drums, like a Zulu horde was suddenly going to appear on the horizon, but really shit randomdrumming, like the contents of a percussion studio had been handed to a bunch of three-year olds smacked up on sugar and left unsupervised. And there was something like singing, or chanting, or some of the shittiest karaoke I’ve ever heard in my life. It carried on the quiet night air and all I could think was, “You know there’s a fucking apocalypse, right?”
Nate and I had our chairs clocked all the way back for sleep and I was about to sit up when his hand rested lightly on my arm. I glanced over at him and he just shook his head, the movement barely perceptible in the gloom, as he lifted one finger to his mouth to shut me up before I said anything dumb. Then he pointed at my window.
My arse nearly dropped clean out as I spied the silhouette of a shambling figure, not two feet from my door, shuffle blindly past. I was too afraid to even shudder in horror in case I made any kind of sound at all, then another went past, and another. Every one of them was silent as a crypt, only the odd scrape of a shoe on asphalt disturbing the night air.
Super creepy.
I swear, I was twitching and sweating like Anne Frank in a pair of tap shoes as the undead wandered blindly past us, and looked down to Particles, feeling the little guy shiver under my hand. He was scared witless, which was much better than him barking some challenge at the undead and drawing them to us. He’s a good pooch and knows when to keep his mouth shut.
I watched in cold silence, hugging Particles to me, as about eight or nine undead shambled past us up the country road, drawn to the constant wall of noise by the morons in the distance. All three of us remained perfectly still, not even the twitch of a muscle, until the group had passed us by.
We waited in silence for another hour, the same stupid drumming and chanting banging away for at least another thirty minutes. No more undead shuffled past and finally, we started to relax.
Didn’t get much sleep that night, though.
Shit, I’d never been so damn happy for the sun to come up and the world have the lights flicked back on again.
“What was that drumming last night, do you think?” I asked Nate.
He shrugged. “No idea, but whoever they are, they’re thick as shit.”
“We should go warn them,” I said, excited at the prospect of new people.
Nate shook his head in the negative. “They made their choice. Can’t risk it.”
“What if they don’t know, Nate?” I said. “What if they’ve no idea the world’s shat itself?”
“How can anyone not know?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say I had the answers. But come on, we know there are other people nearby now. Let’s find them. Strength in numbers blah blah blah.”
Nate snorted, spooning more beans from a can into his cavernous maw.
“Those numbers sound more like a hindrance than help.”
He was starting to get on my nerves now.
“Look, you big miserable bastard, there are people nearby who might not know if the world is even ass-fucked by razor blades, but more than that, there are simply people.” I threw my hands up, exasperated by his spectacular lack of give-a-shit. “What’s the fucking point carrying on living like this, Nate? Huh? Crawling around, picking over graves and empty farmhouses for little bits of food, a splash of diesel here and there, maybe some nice shotgun cleaning supplies or ammo. That’s all very well as a start, but that isn’t any life, Nate. This is just a fucking existence. I want people. I want a bath. I want to stop moving just for a little fucking while as we figure all this shit out!”
I was almost panting by this stage, shoulders heaving and spitting my words through clenched teeth.
“Fuck, I want some clean clothes!” I moaned. “I swear my sports bra has fucking mould growing on it right now. Hell, I just want to take my damn bra off for an evening.”
Clearly my brassiere talk made Nate a little uncomfortable, what with him being so old school and what not, so obviously – being the little shit that I am – I jumped on that like a predator.
“I think new life is starting to grow in my under-boob, Nate,” I said, my mood improving with each new squirm. “A whole species of tit-fungus is growing in those dark and dank places. I need to give them a good scrub and let them air for a bit. Same with my crotch.” He visibly blanched as I moved the conversation below. “I swear upon all that is holy and sacred, my lady-garden has turned into the Amazon in rainy season with all the sweat down there.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hand up in defeat to stop me talking. “Shit, we’ll go take a look. No promises if we’ll stay, but fucking hell Erin, please, stop jabbering about your bits.”
Victorious, I gave him a haughty nod, like I was royalty granting my approval to a peasant soldier.
“Well… good,” I said imperiously.
People.
Sweet. I couldn’t wait. I was so looking forward to it. Potentially a community, and if I was really lucky, they’d have some kind of running water for a bath or shower. I don’t even care if it’s cold. I just want to stop smelling like a zombie shat me out yesterday and left me to bake in the sun.
Well, we met those new people. I’m going to give my hand a rest before I introduce you to our new friends.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Buckle up.
No More Heroes – Entry 9
As we creep toward No More Heroes and its October 27th release date, I hope you’re enjoying the excerpts we’re posting every few days. There are a couple more to enjoy for free, on our dime, and I hope you’re getting excited to have the rest of the book in your hands.
To catch yourself up, here are the links to the earlier posts:
Parts One and Two: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/12/no-more-heroes-entry-one-and-two/
Parts Three and Four: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/17/no-more-heroes-entries-3-4/
Parts Five and Six: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/24/no-more-heroes-entries-5-6/
Parts Seven and Eight: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/10/01/no-more-heroes-entries-7-8/
And now, part 9; Particles
PART 2
THE PUG LIFE
8TH ENTRY
PARTICLES
Today I found a new notebook to start scribbling my thoughts in. I think this is my… eighth?… entry now, after all the weird school and farm shit went down. So, hello again, my fine imaginary reader that has not read my journal because I’m still writing it.
It’s weird that writing helps me figure out all this jumble of crazy bouncing round in my head all the time. The world shat itself a couple of weeks ago now, and after I escaped the school I got trapped in, only to get trussed up and almost anally invaded by a freaky Cheshire farmer, then saved by Clint Eastwood’s long lost English cousin (aka Nate Carter), it’s good to be writing again. I’m especially pleased though, because I have big news!
I found a dog.
His name is Particles and he’s my lucky charm.
Yeah. Particles. How frickin’ cool is that name? What makes it better is that he’s a pug, so he’s this tiny little grey ball of awesome that looks perpetually outraged by the apocalypse. I carry him in a little backpack I wear frontwards, with a hole cut in it for his head to stick out. Honestly, I look like fucking Kuato out of Total Recall, only my belly-face is a permanently outraged pug staring balefully at the world. Judging it.
I love him.
Nate hates my Kuato-bag, as I’ve dubbed it. I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t like Particles despite all the good he’s done. Probably because he keeps saying, “That’s not even a dog, it’s an accessory.”
Bah. The man has no soul. He’ll see. Particles is lucky, and I’m going to tell you why he’s lucky and how we found him.
Going back to Nate for a minute, I can forgive the big, grumpy bear. He’s a fifty-something ex-SAS badass (I think) with a jaw that can chew bricks and that rarest of all rare animals in this not-so-Great Britain; he has guns and knows how to use them. He’s seen some shit in his time, no doubt, and I’ll forever love ol’ Gunny Highway for saving my ass (literally) from Old McRapey on his farm, but how he can hate little old Particles with his particular brand of cute outrage, I’ll never know. War has taken a piece of his soul he needs returning, so my mission in life is to make him love Particles. Love him and squeeze him and call him his own. You watch me. I can be really annoying when I put my mind to it. I’m going to irritate Nate into loving Particles.
Not a sentence I expected to write today.
So how did we come by Particles? Funny story. Well, actually not funny for Particles’ previous owner.
So, after Nate popped Old McRapey between the eyes with his pistol and saved me from hell, we raided that farmhouse for supplies and hung round there for a few days. Eventually, Nate turned to me.
“We can’t stay here, Erin,” he said, in that throaty growl that makes him super-manly.
“Lockey,” I replied for the fifty-seventh time, flicking my long dark hair dramatically like I was in a shampoo commercial. “My friends call me Lockey. Everyone calls me Lockey.”
Nate has this way. He lifts his left eyebrow about half an inch, managing to convey – in that tiniest of gestures – the displeasure and contempt of someone who has just watched a leper take a shit in one of their favourite shoes.
He still doesn’t do outrage as well as Particles though. Pugs have that shit nailed. Indignation is another forte of the pug. If I’d had Particles at this point, I’d have held him up to Nate’s face, so they could have a stare-down. Nate can’t lick his own nose though, so I reckon Particles would win every time.
“We’re no farmers and there’s little enough food here. Plus, it’s miles from anywhere. We need to stay on the move.”
“We huh?” I said. “So, we’re like Starsky and Hutch now? Like Cagney and Lacey? Butch and Sundance?” I smiled sweetly at him. “Are we a power couple, Nate?”
He shook his head, pug-like in his expression. “Are you taking this shit seriously?”
“Absolutely not,” I replied. Ha. That stumped him.
“Erin, the world is over,” he said, all grave and serious and baritone, purposefully ignoring my preferred handle for the umpteenth time. “The dead are rising to eat the living. Society has crumbled. There’s no government, there’s no support. No one is coming. The world is dead. And you’re not taking it seriously?”
“Fuck no,” I snorted. “The world is shit and miserable, Nate. It’s taken everything away from us, so the one thing I’m giving the apocalypse back is my ability to drop my pants and wink my brown eye at it in a grand cosmic ‘fuck you.’ No point living if you’re just gonna mope about. Be more Tigger, and tell Eeyore to cheer the fuck up, that’s what I say.”
Nate looked at me like I’d just boned his dad in front of him. We’ve not known each other long, but he looks at me like that a lot. Most people do. Usually when I say words.
Anyway, we decided (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘Nate’) to load up the SUV I’d swiped on my escape from the school with what supplies we could, then head out and keep on the move. Maybe look for a survivor community if any had started to form. I mean, it’s early days yet and people in this country are notoriously selfish assholes at times, and the world only died and shat its pants a couple of weeks ago, so there’s some way to go yet before anything coherent starts to form I reckon.
But then again, this is my first apocalypse, so what do I reallyknow? I’m an apocavirgin, so to speak, so I don’t know how much this is really gonna hurt.
Damn, sometimes I should really stop writing. But I’m using a pen. I can’t delete. So, you’re getting the unfiltered Lockey brainwaves I’m afraid, my imaginary reader. You’re welcome.
Only a day passed before my life changed for the better. We started hitting up some of the country houses for supplies in the local area, mainly diesel for the SUV. Nate has a real hard-on about fuel supplies and being mobile, and always insists on driving.
And he drives so slow!
It’s like Driving Miss Daisy with that old fart behind the wheel. Not a soul on the roads and he’s driving like a pensioner on his way to Sunday church after three hits on a super-skunk bong.
I asked to drive once, he let me, then after a half hour of Hurricane Nate blowing in my face as he raged at me for my speed and late braking, a load of old man stereotypical whine about women drivers, threats of shooting out my knees, and general “I fucking hate you Erin” in various forms, I relented and swapped with him. Usually he’s all calm and stoic, showing his contempt with an eyebrow, or a tightening of the jaw. Enough to let you know you’re edging close to the line. My driving, it would seem, was his rage-trigger. And oh mama, that rage is scary.
For the record, I only swapped because he’s got a gun. And that he could probably snap me in two like a twig without one. I’m a fast little ninja with skills of my own, but Nate has “that look.” I read a really great description in a fantasy book by David Gemmell that really sums it up.
“The look of eagles.”
That’s a bad ass statement that just tells you anyone with this look is a stone-cold killer, backed by experience and will not be fucked with. I can hold my own with anyone in fisticuffs I reckon. I’ve never really thought “I can’t take you” when I’ve been involved in a fight, and I had a few growing up in the care system. I learned to fight fast and dirty, because if you didn’t fight back twice as hard, you’d always be prey. When you’re a girl, you have to be twice as hard so you can rip the dicks off guys who think you’re easy meat to satisfy their boner. So, I learned to fight and never show fear, to blast in headlong and whirl my arms, keys in fists, windmilling in classic British Kung Fu style. I’ve never been afraid to take anyone on in a scrap.
Except Nate. I’m just glad this guy is on my team, because I swear to God, he’s the first guy I’ve ever met that genuinely scares me. If he lost his shit, like really lost his shit, I bet he’s fucking terrifying. You don’t get in the SAS unless you’re a quadruple-hard motherfucker.
Pretty sure the bastard drove extra slow after we swapped back though, just to mess with me.
I do go off on tangents. Okay Lockey, focus.
Particles. Yes.
So, we rolled up to this secluded farmhouse, but this one didn’t seem like a working farm. It had a pretty garden, more like a cottage to be honest. It had this weird little Nissan Micra parked on a gravel driveway as well, bright yellow. God awful thing, but it suggested the owner was still home. Not that anyone being home bothered Nate, as he stopped the vehicle at the end of the path, slid out the door and drew the shotgun he’d taken from Old McRapey’s farm.
“Can you shoot?” he asked, his voice low.
“Like a boss,” I replied with supreme confidence. Probably too confident, as he cocked that fucking eyebrow at me again. “I’m a stone-cold killer on Call of Duty,” I added, making the finger guns and firing them off with a whispered “pew pew.”
Nate didn’t let me have a gun.
I followed in Nate’s wake, at least able to match his light feet with my parkour skills. Balance and grace, I’m not afraid to admit, are two things I can actuallyboast about. I think I surprised Nate, because he looked back to find me in his wake, not blundering around like a drunk bitch fighting with her bra before bed. There was no eyebrow raise, judging me. I call that a win.
Nate has this freaky way of moving, his combat walk. His knees are bent, hips solid, gun up, always in balance. The barrel of that shotgun didn’t quiver once as he stalked up the path. Scary shit. I was shitting sideways bricks in his wake, but he was calm as hell, breathing slow and even, not a twitch in any muscle. Stone cold. Ice instead of marrow in them bones.
Though, in fairness, what did we have to fear from the inhabitant of a cottage surrounded by flowers, who drove a bright yellow Nissan Micra? I was pretty confident a Taliban warlord wasn’t hiding out in the Cheshire countryside, driving a car the colour of a daffodil.
Everything was quiet. Deathly quiet. Nate signalled for me to open the little red gate that led up the path to the front door, and I did so. Now wasn’t the time for me and my smart mouth. Do what the big scary soldier tells you, Lockey.
As we ghosted up the path and reached the door, that’s when we both heard the bumping and scraping from inside the cottage. The curtains were drawn on the front window, so we couldn’t see into the little house. Then I heard the high-pitched yelp.
People can go fuck themselves most of the time. In my experience, most people are assholes given half the chance. I don’t trust easily.
But dogs? Man, I love dogs. They are pure, unconditional, excitable love. They’re like an animal version of me, but without the bad bits. They’re role models for how society shouldbe. Dogs are the only things on this shit-sucking earth that will love you more than it loves itself. You know what I reallylove about them? You can start celebrating and they’ll join right in, wagging their tails and lolling their tongues, when they have no fucking clue what the context is. Dogs are great because they’re just always ready to party. So when I heard that little scared bark-yelp, I started moving.
Now, I know a weakness of mine is impulse control. And no, I’m not doing anything to mitigate that, dear reader, because I am who I am. However, on this occasion, I accept that I made the very grave error of ploughing past Mr Spec-Ops and opening the cottage door, barrelling in and realising all too late that the place smelled like death had taken a shit in there.
I stopped, eyes streaming from the choking cloud of horror assaulting my senses. Then I heard that little muted yelp-bark again and turned to my left.
And promptly squealed at the pitch of a six-year old girl.
Just three feet away was a dishevelled old zombie woman. I say old, but she was probably about Nate’s age in life. Fifty or so. Still, I’m only twenty-six, so that’s two of my lifetimes. Old as time.
She had a little blue cardigan, spectacles on a chain hanging round her neck and hair like Albert Einstein after he’d been electrocuted. Seriously, in that brief snapshot moment, all I could see was this explosion of mangled grey hair, like she’d been banged doggy-style while her head was rammed in a bramble bush. Just all over the place and wild as hell.
She wasn’t moving too fast, slower than a normal shambler, and it was easy to see why. Her right ankle was clearly broken as hell and moving about on it had only made things worse. The foot had all but torn off and sat at a horrible right angle, and she was off-balance as she hobble-dragged herself around. A spur of bone from the shattered ankle was used to rest her weight on, like some messed up pirate peg-leg and – lord above – it was gross. There were bloody smears all over the once shiny oak parquet flooring, and grooves cut by the bone shard, where she’d dragged herself about and slowly torn that foot almost clean off. It made a jarring scrape on the wood as she moved, sending shivers through me like a rusty nail being dragged down my spine.
Agh. Just horrible.
Despite her off-centre gait though, as she neared, the milky-eyed old dear’s lips peeled back, her arms coming up like claws, ready to pounce like some undead predator.
That’s the weird thing, right? Our zombies don’t shuffle about, arms up, moaning and groaning for brains like they do in all the movies. They are silent as a ninja fart and way more deadly, and they smell worse to boot. They’re blank as a mannequin until they’re three feet from you, then their lips peel back, dead expression twisting to this rictus of soul-deep hate for you and they fucking lunge that last gap, ready to make your entrails your extrails.
I’m quick on my feet. But something had me frozen and in that moment, I saw my death. Death that looked like some sweet old lady living in a cottage, who drove a yellow Nissan Micra. The yelp had given me just enough time for a single step back as I squealed, arms up to futilely defend against the grim reaper’s grandma as she lunged for me, but that one step back meant she had to step into the hallway and into Nate’s cone of fire.
Can I just give special mention to – as my first real experience of it – a shotgun going off in a little confined space like that cottage?
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
It was like a god damn army of thunders tearing the air around me. Ho-ly shit.
The world got really loud, then really wet, as I was hit by some of the spray from Nate unleashing both barrels of the shotgun simultaneously. The little old lady’s upper quarter just vapourised in front of me, head and chest just gone, shredded beyond recognition. I think I got some old lady juice in my mouth. Nasty.
I think I was screaming. My throat’s vibrations told me I was, but I couldn’t hear for shit. There was just a dull whistle from the detonated bomb of the shotgun’s blast in the hallway. I was pretty certain I was gonna need to find a new pair of underpants from somewhere, though old lady knickers were off the list. I don’t have much self-respect, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
Dropping the shotgun, Nate smoothly drew the handgun at his hip and stalked the hallway, completely ignoring me until he’d swept the rest of the building for any other undead. Then his hand gripped my shoulder and gave me a shake, bringing me back to my senses.
“Are you hurt?” he said, his voice sounding both distant and underwater. Jesus, guns are loud. “Are you okay?”
“Well,” I shouted, like an Englishman pointing at fish and chips on the menu in a Spanish hotel. “I’m so damn happy, I might need to sit on my hands to keep myself from clapping! You?”
Again, that “you’ve just boned my dad“ look.
Hey, at least I’m consistent.
Well, it turned out that Long John Grandma was named Patricia Fox and – I shit you not – she was a god damn quantum physicist.
Now, I don’t know what a quantum physicist actually is, or what they do, but I do know that it’s all science and shit, and she had books in her house that I struggled to even read the title of, never mind the content. Her picture was on the back of some of them, so she even wrote about quantum silly string theory, or whatever it is. Anyway, she was a scientist, she lived on her own and from what Nate deducted from Sherlocking the place, it looked like she’d taken a fall, broken her ankle and either died from infection, or overdone the pain medication just to end it all.
I can’t tell you how sad that is. She was a quiet woman, smart as all hell, and she died in terrible pain, knowing there was nobody coming to her aid.
The apocalypse sucks, man.
She didn’t die alone though. That little yelp-bark came from under an ornamental bookshelf or dresser or… I don’t know. I don’t know what furniture things are called. Anyway, whenever poor old Patricia spun off the mortal coil, she must have gone chasing after her little doggy, knocked this furniture thing over and trapped said dog in it.
Because the dog was so small, the way the shelving had fallen trapped the animal inside a shelf space. Unbelievable luck. That dog had a tolerance of about eight inches either side or this big heavy bookshelf thing would have pancaked it, and that would have probably upset me more than Patricia’s lonely death. How weird and messed up is that?
Thankfully, Patricia’s spectacular living intelligence didn’t translate to her undead state, so she didn’t have the presence of mind to lift said furniture up to get at the animal trapped beneath. That was one lucky little dawg.
Nate and I lifted the toppled furniture up and found a shivering little pug beneath.
“Is that a dog, or a rodent?” muttered Nate.
“That, my dear Nathaniel, is a pug.”
He couldn’t have been under there more than a day, Nate reckons. Dr Patricia hadn’t been dead all that long. Again, that makes me sad. If only we’d arrived just a little earlier.
Despite no doubt being terrified, trapped under there for up to a day, the pug looked up at me and though pitiful, shivering and scared, somehow, he managed to look outraged.
I fucking love that about pugs. There’s something so very British about their quiet, unspoken indignation. They don’t possess the “small man syndrome” of a terrier or Jack Russell. Those little hilarious bastards act like they’re twenty times their size to compensate for their small stature, barking and screaming a challenge at everything.
Pugs accept their diminutive size and accept they will spend most of their lives being carried around like babies, yet they have this look on their face that mirrors an angry middle-aged man that listens to Radio Four. It’s a really sarcastic outrage, like the face of someone who holds a door for another, only to see them pass through without acknowledgment of the act. The quiet whisper of, “you’re welcome,” lathered in a thick coating of sarcastic outrage, is embodied by a pug’s face at all times. It’s like the world just annoys them and they have to accept being surrounded by absolute morons. I love it.
Anyway, I picked the dog up, feeling him shiver and found a blanket to wrap round him. Once I was sure he was okay, I fumbled on the collar and saw the name.
Particles.
I think I’d have liked Patricia. She was an old science looney who had an outraged pet called Particles. My kind of girl.
“We’re not keeping it,” Nate said.
“No way are we just abandoning him,” I said. “Particles saved my life.”
Again, that look. “What?”
“Had he not yelped when he did, I wouldn’t have had the step back that brought Patricia into your line of fire. She’d have totally blindsided me and ripped me open.”
“If you hadn’t charged in here like a dickhead, you wouldn’t have been in that situation.”
“Ah, but I did act like a dickhead,” I argued.
Admittedly, not my best retort.
“And I’ll probably act like one again before too long.”
I felt like the hole was getting deeper at this point, but I was committed.
“But with Particles here as my lucky charm, I might just make it to the end of this… end of days.”
Nate looked at me for a long moment, silent and thoughtful.
“You know none of that makes sense, right?”
I held Particles up to his face, so the little dog could convey my disgust at the notion of leaving him behind. Pugs have mastered that, too.
“I didn’t choose the pug life, Nate,” I said solemnly, with a completely straight face. “The pug life chose me.”
Here’s where shit gets hilarious.
Nate was having none of it. We took anything we could of use from Patricia’s little cottage – canned goods and the like – but I found a little backpack. I also found a big pair of those seamstress scissors, absolute monsters, and I set to the backpack as inspiration struck me. I got the measurements about right, packed the bottom of the rucksack with a blanket from the dog’s bed I found, then lowered Particles into the bag, zipped it up and out popped the pug’s head from the hole, Kuato style. I thought it was genius.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” was Nate’s opening statement when I walked out with the backpack as a front pack, and Particles staring moodily at Nate, flicking his tongue out to moisten his nose.
“What? He’s only got little legs! Poor little guy will never keep up.”
Nate looked at me for far too long, as still as granite. For a moment, I swear he was considering popping a cap in both our asses, and going on with his own existence, free of loud-mouthed idiots with too much energy and overly judgmental canines.
“For fuck’s sake.” The words hissed out in a low breath. “Get in the car.”
We’d been driving for about half an hour when Particles started to bark. He’d been silent and still for the entire journey, but something really jabbed him in the ass and stirred him, his little head turning to peer at Nate. It was like the dog was shouting at him. Hilarious.
“What’s up with him?”
“He’s house trained,” I mused. “Probably telling us he needs to go potty.”
“Needs to go potty?”
“Yeah, you know. Take a piss, dump, maybe both.”
“No, I know what you mean.” Nate huffed. “It’s just… need to go potty? Did you really need to say it like that? It’s a dog, not a toddler.”
“Well, however I say it Nate, you can stop the car and let Particles here split the atom, or we can have our own faecal big bang in the car.”
I am sopersuasive at times. Nate muttered a quiet curse under his breath and pulled over. I slipped out of the SUV and let Particles out so he could go spray some particles on nearby vegetation. Nate got out as well, ever the vigilant super soldier, eyes scanning the surroundings. There was a pickup parked just out of sight of the road in an overgrown layby. While I watched Particles with his weird tiny legs do that hilarious little run-hop thing pugs do, Nate palmed his handgun to his grip and combat walked to the truck to check it out.
When Particles had finished, Nate walked back over and I swear to shit, he was almost smiling.
“That pickup still has the keys in, almost a full tank, and no dead anywhere to be seen.” He sounded positively joyous. “Let’s unload everything out of this into the pickup. It’s more spacious, bigger engine, better ground clearance, a spare tyre and you’ll never believe what else.”
I stroked Particles knowingly, like a Bond villain with his white cat. “Go on.”
“There was actually a hunting shotgun in the back, with two full boxes of shells.”
I gave him a raised eyebrow. A knowing look. Any gun at all in England was as rare as rocking horse shit.
“What?” he demanded, his leathery face creased into a frown.
“Say it.”
I got a genuinely confused look. “Say what?”
“Say thank you to Particles.”
His expression quickly shifted into the ‘leper-shitting-in-your-shoes’ look.
“What?”
“I told you he was lucky,” I said imperiously. “He saved my ass with a well-timed yelp and now he’s got us not only a new vehicle with a full tank, but one with a gun and ammo. This is Cheshire, Nate, not Texas. Of all places Particles needs to curl a turd out, it’s right here, where there’s a shiny new vehicle with fuel and weapons? Come on! Admit it! He’s a lucky mascot!”
This time his expression reflected a man who had just witnessed a mutant penis grow out of my head while he watched.
“It’s just coincidence,” he huffed eventually.
“Denial, Nate? Really?” I sniffed in a mock haughty fashion. “Just accept that Particles is lucky.”
“Help me transfer all this shit to the pickup,” he growled.
Particles just looked at him.
Outraged.
He still wouldn’t admit my pug was lucky. Even though we were pootling in a giant dick-compensator (and going about twelve miles an hour because of Dame Carter at the wheel) and the proud owners of a new shotgun, Nate refused any further conversation on the subject of Particles being a lucky mascot. It’s just coincidence, he said.
“Well, isn’t it toocoincidental to be coincidence?” I argued. “I mean, come on Nate, a fucking gun with ammo in the Cheshire countryside? Unattended, with a truck that has keys in and nearly a full tank? Exactly where we stopped? Come on. Admit it, that’s not just coincidence. That’s providence.”
“What, so now we’re being looked after by a higher power?”
I shrugged. “Dog is God spelled backwards. Just saying.”
Nate swore. I was starting to piss him off. I should have stopped, really I should have. But I did make it rather clear earlier that I have a real issue with impulse control.
“All I’m saying is that there are no coincidences, only the illusion of coincidence.”
“No way you just made that up,” he accused. “You’re not that insightful.”
Cheeky bastard.
“Maybe I’m just too lazy to show you how clever I am.”
He went to reply, stopped, then chuckled. Actually fucking laughed.
“Now that’s probably the smartest thing I’ve heard you say.” He glanced over. “So, who said the other thing?”
I thought about lying, but Nate actually cracking a smile was too good a chance to pass up, so I grinned back.
“V for Vendetta, Alan Moore,” I admitted.
We drove on for a little while longer. While we did, Nate talked me through loading the new shotgun. Despite my earlier dickhead reply about Call of Duty, I had to learn how to shoot. Firearms were too big of an advantage over the undead. That was one thing the Americans have over us in fighting this global shit-show. They have more experience and more bullets to use against the shambling legions of undeath. I had a great resource in Nate, so I’d be a dumb little prick not to use it.
While he drove, he talked me through popping it open – that’s called a “break action” apparently – and sliding the two cartridges into the barrels. This one was a single selective trigger, Nate said, meaning unlike the older model he shredded Patricia with that had two triggers – allowing both barrels to be blasted at the same time – this one alternately fired each barrel. Heh, look at me.
Learning, yo.
So, I loaded up the new shotgun with two shells and it was all ready to fire.
Then Particles started to lose his shit.
“The fuck is up with your dog?” demanded Nate.
I’d let Particles out of his Kuato-bag to sit on the seat with us. Obviously, he seemed outraged by this at the time, but he got on with it. Now though, it was like he was injected with crack, barking and yelping, scampering all over me with his tiny legs.
“No idea,” I answered truthfully. “I’ve been his owner for about two hours. Not exactly his homegirl for life just yet.”
Nate put the brakes on, stopping the pickup just before crossing a junction. Honestly, for a horrible second, I thought he was just going to draw his pistol and put Particles down.
“I can’t drive like this. You need to…”
The words died as a box truck whistled past the front of our pickup at about fifty, just inches away. Had Nate not stopped when he did, that big ass seven-and-a-half-ton beast would have sideswiped us. At that speed, Nate on the right in the driver’s seat would likely have been turned into a splash.
“What the….”
The box truck careened on and smashed with a bone-crunching thunder into an abandoned car parked on one side of the road.
It was an unholy mess of twisted metal, the box truck flipping to its side, the back doors cracking open as it slid to a sparking halt on the asphalt.
“Stay here,” ordered Nate, slipping out the driver’s door and palming the handgun, legs bent as he moved forward with liquid grace, perfectly primed and balanced for battle.
Damn, that always looked so bad ass.
Obviously, I disobeyed a little. I got out my door, laying the shotgun I’d been messing with on the seat. I watched Nate stalk towards the truck that had appeared out of nowhere at speed. I glanced down at Particles, who looked up from the seat expectantly.
“You are one lucky dog,” I said, turning my attention back to Nate, then whispered, “Holy shit.”
Nate had gone still. Out of the back of the box truck, bloody, shambling figures were beginning to emerge. Seriously, what the hell? Who the hell was carting zombies round in a truck? About twenty-five zeds crawled, shambled and fell out of the toppled truck, all their white eyes fixed on Nate.
Like he was shooting at a fairground range, Nate just planted his feet and went to work. Two hands on the pistol, he was steady, sure and somehow made the whole thing look easy. He didn’t rush, or maybe he made it seem like he was taking his time. I don’t know. What I do know is that the air filled with the crack of his Glock, as he started to put the mini horde down, one by one. Every shot was lethal, popping an undead melon with unerring accuracy, the bodies dropping like marionettes that had just had their strings cut. It was an honour and a privilege to see him go to work.
He popped a magazine out the pistol and switched in a new one from his tactical vest in one fluid motion, before resuming firing. Just as his gun barked into life once more, Particles let out an agitated bark of his own. As I turned to see why he was so tetchy, my eyes glanced over the rear-view mirror on the door I leaned on. My heart almost stopped.
There was a zombie only inches away from me.
Fuck, these things are so damn quiet.
Distracted by Nate’s bad-assery as he single-handed took down a mini-horde of undead, one single zombie had slowly shuffled up behind me, not making a single sound as it approached. As I caught sight of it in the mirror, it peeled back its lips revealing nicotine-stained teeth and bright red gums, an expression of hate twisting its chubby features like my very existence was an offence to it.
The guy was fat. A sliver from morbid obesity. There was a lotof weight in it and to top it off, it was wearing a really loud green and orange Hawaiian shirt. It was bad enough a fat guy had crept up on me, but a fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt? Shame.
I barely had time to react as the thing lunged at me. God, that lungeis pant-shitting. It really comes at you with predatory speed.
I got my arms up in time to deflect its grasp, sliding my forearm underneath the zombie’s nine chins, across its throat and forming a makeshift brace as it snapped its rotting teeth inches from my face.
It couldn’t bite me yet, but I’m only a wee slip of a girl. I’m five-six and built to be a spider-monkey up drainpipes and jumping rooftops and ledges. I’m a tracer, not a wrestler, and even if I was I’d be a lightweight. This gigantic blob was a super heavyweight and the combination of his gargantuan girth and forward momentum with his lunge drove me back. Ultimately, it drove me down.
I could still hear the crack of Nate’s pistol as he cut down the horde, so no help was coming there. He had no damn clue I was being swallowed up by this giant blob of undead flesh.
What a way to go. If the Blob didn’t tear off my face with his smoker’s teeth, I’d either suffocate on his oozing flesh, or just be crushed under his extreme weight. I had nowhere to go, as the pickup door was behind me and it was all I could do to stop the thing biting me, as my mind fought for some solution to this absolute horror.
The weight was too much though. The pressure caused by his obesity and my balance utterly fucked from its initial lunge, eventually I buckled and went down, the giant undead atop me and only my forearm rammed under its chin preventing those teeth from tearing chunks out of my beautiful face.
My dear reader, I was going to die. I was sure of it. An ignoble death, borne to the ground by a fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt, while Nate was gunning down a horde like a boss on his own. I always thought my death would be a blaze of glory, like missing an impossible leap to a ledge and plummeting to my death to die from concrete poisoning.
Suffocated and chewed to a death by a fat guy wasn’t on my list.
My strength was giving out. Like I said, I’m only a little gal and even if this thing was still human, I’d have struggled. It wasn’t human any more though, it was a feral thing, powered by some dark force I’m sure of it. This wasn’t any virus outbreak like in the movies. This was fuelled by hate, a hate so total and absolute than only the utter destruction of my flesh would sate it. That hate gave it strength beyond the human. It was almost demonic.
I was going to die.
Then there was a sound by my head like a storm cloud tearing itself apart.
And the zombie’s head exploded.
All the pressure vanished as the detonation rattled my skull and royally fucked me in the ear drum. I couldn’t hear for shit and I was absolutely drenched in zombie… goop? Blegh. Just awful.
My head felt like it would crack open, such was the aftershock of the gunshot. Had Nate finally finished and come to my aid, seeing my struggle on the asphalt?
Heaving the headless corpse aside, I looked down at my torso. Fuck me. I was covered in zombie shards. Nasty. Spitting a piece of fat man scalp out of my mouth, I put one filthy hand to my left ear which was still deaf, the right ear muted by a dull whine, and turned to check on Particles.
The shotgun I’d loaded was lying on the seat where I’d left it, the barrels pointing out of the vehicle. A wisp of smoke ghosted from the end of one barrel, evidence of its recent firing.
The dog had gone arse over tit into the footwell of the pickup. The fucking dog must have stepped on the trigger and somehow fired the weapon, and the recoil thrown the poor little bastard as it cannoned backwards from the blast. However, that freak firing had blown the fat zombie’s head clean away. It must have been in the perfect place to shred fat boy but leave me untouched by the spread of buckshot. A completely freak occurrence.
“You are one lucky fucking dog,” I said, spitting another chunk of fat guy from my mouth.
I gave Particles a baleful look as he sat in the footwell. One might even say I looked outraged.
He just licked his nose and gave me the same look back.
Particles did it better.
Nate finished his execution of the horde and appeared above me.
“Holy shit,” he said, seeing me drenched in undead goop.
“Now will you believe me?”
“Eh?”
I pushed myself to my feet, leaning into the truck and pulling Particles out, holding him up to Nate’s face. Naturally, Particles looked outraged by this turn of events.
“He saved my life against Peg-leg Patricia,” I said. “He got us a new truck and gun, he saved us getting side-swiped by a box truck full of zombies, and now he’s just shot a fucking zombie with a shotgun! Come on, Nate! Now you’ve got to accept the truth! Particles is a lucky dog! Without him, we’d be fucked!” I stopped then. “What was the deal with the truck by the way?”
Nate shrugged. “No idea. Driver must have been bitten a while back and died at the wheel. He’d reanimated and I had to put him down after dropping his passengers.”
“Makes no sense.”
“Nothing in this world makes sense anymore, Erin.”
“Ah HA!” I said, seizing the day. “That’s where you’re wrong. Keeping Particles makes sense, you have to admit! He’s now a member of the team, right?”
Nate looked at me for a long time before the ghost of a smile haunted his lips.
“Okay, the dog can stay.”
“Yes!”
I made Particles do an involuntary victory dance in the air, which he naturally looked outraged by.
“Just to be clear,” added Nate. “He’s not part of the team because he’s lucky.”
I frowned. “Then why?”
Nate quirked a smile at one side of his mouth.
“Because he’s killed more zombies than you.”
For the first time in my life, I was speechless. I turned Particles to face me and stared at him.
Outraged.
You can pre-order Lockey, Nate, and Particle’s journey on the Kindle right now: https://amzn.to/36uQFu1
No More Heroes – Entries 7 & 8
Are you caught up with the first six entries in the new Adrian’s Undead Diary series, Lockey vs the Apocalypse?
If you aren’t, here are some links to get started:
Parts One and Two: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/12/no-more-heroes-entry-one-and-two/
Parts Three and Four: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/17/no-more-heroes-entries-3-4/
Parts Five and Six: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/24/no-more-heroes-entries-5-6/
Which brings us here:
Part Six, School’s Out, Bitches, and Part Seven, Old MacDonald had a Hard On.
Note: subject matter on these gets pretty dark. Remember; this is a horror story too.
6TH ENTRY
SCHOOL’S OUT BITCHES
Hey there, friend! Look, it’s me! I’m not dead.
My plan worked like a charm. I know, I know, you expected everything to go to shit, as did I, but nope. Nailed it. Everything went swimmingly on the escape, so obviously something was bound to go to shit later on and it did. Big time.
But first, let me catch you up. It’s about 9pm now and it’s been a shitstorm of a day, but I made my escape from the school about 7am this morning. Here’s my account of my crazy day. I’m writing this from a nice quiet farmhouse about four miles outside of town, with a new friend downstairs. I’ll get to him shortly, but first, let’s cover the Great Escape.
So, morning came and with a loaded backpack, I decided to go up to the roof and get a better panorama of the shitstorm below me so I could plan my route to the SUV. It took me no time at all to get out the window and spider-monkey up to the roof. However, I nearly fell off and died on the fucking spot as I was hauling myself up to the flat roof of the classroom building.
Halfway up as I was just about to swing my legs up, a shadow loomed over me and I looked up to see an undead six feet away, shambling towards me, lips already starting to peel back in that flash of lunging rage I knew was coming.
Jesus fucking Christ, my heart nearly stopped. The kid was about fifteen, shambling about on the roof above me these past few days, just feet away while I slept. The fact that I had no damn clue creeps me out like you wouldn’t believe. These things are so fucking quiet.
Now, at this point, I was in something of an awkward position. I couldn’t go backwards because… well… backwards was a thirty-foot drop to concrete and I didn’t have time to get myself back into a climb-down position. I had horrible visions of the little shit dropping to its dead knees and taking a bite out of my fingers, so my only option was to power forward.
Flicking myself up, I sprung past the teenage dirtbag, feeling its filthy claws sweep at me and miss me by the width of a gnat’s pubic hair, but then I was up on my feet, turned, and ran back, leaping at it with both feet.
Boom. Both feet, centre mass, and that fucker shot away like he’d just been snapped back by a bungee cord, right over the edge. I popped my head over the roof just as the undead teen died from a severe case of concrete poisoning, which caused the rotten bastard to burst like a bag of vegetable soup.
Wow, check me out, Hemingway. Check out my awesome simile. I’m a literary genius.
Like a bag of vegetable soup?
Facepalm.
Sometimes I think I should just stop saying words.
Anyway, retarded descriptions aside, I put that quick fright behind me and surveyed the realm. The burst zombie splashing on to the concrete drew the attention of some nearby zeds and they came shuffling in my direction, but as they weren’t exactly gymnasts, I was okay up on my perch.
There were three cars close together on the right side of the car park and if I could get their alarms going, they’d draw everything away from my escape vehicle, while I made a circuitous route back across the roof of the school buildings, preventing me having to work my way through the shambling mass. Then it would be drop down, scamper to the murder wagon, get in the car, grab Mum, kill Phil…. yeah, you get the picture.
So that’s exactly what I did. I worked my way round the back of the building, set those bitches off (I’m not gonna write all the technical ins and outs, because it’s boring, so let’s just accept my awesome) and off they went. Wee-ooh, wee-ooh, wee-ooh. And like a siren’s song to horny sailors, the mass began to move.
Up to the roof again, began my scamper (with far more vigilance this time) and I watched with a fat grin as the mass pulled away from my target vehicle like iron filings to a magnet. It was glorious. Now I really was feeling like a strategos after all my initial fuck ups.
This was going brilliant. As I watched the SUV clear of all zombie presence, I’m not gonna lie, I felt like a champ. I could do this planning shit. It wasn’t that hard. Now all I had to do was get in the car, grab Mum, kill Phil…
I need to leave that joke alone. I’m tugging a dead horse there. Wait, that’s not it. Flogging a dead horse, that’s right.
Shit, that changes the saying in all kinds of weird ways.
Flush with my newfound confidence at my awesome skills of strategy, I shimmied down to ground level and prepared to head to the car. Not gonna lie, I had a bit of a swagger.
Of course, that overconfidence results in anal penetration by a corroded metal sex-toy, doesn’t it? That sloppiness I was talking about earlier? That one that gets you painfully butt-pumped by spikey things with no lubrication for maximum friction? Yep, didn’t follow my own advice.
I dropped down and landed about eight feet away from three zombies. They weren’t in school uniforms; all three of them were dressed in tracksuits, with baseball caps on and hoods pulled up over. Teenager zombie chavs.
Sigh. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.
Honestly, at first glance I couldn’t tell if they were alive or not. I mean, teenage chavs are complete dicks anyway with ‘uh’ as their common response to any question posed at them. Even giving them a sniff didn’t help determine their life status, as the little bastards usually have a weird cocktail smell anyway, like Lynx Africa, weed, Red Stripe and a week’s worth of groin-sweat, all mixed together in one malodorous Eau de Twat. Honestly, that’s not much different from the walking dead.
The only reason I could tell instantly that they were actually dead was their silence. They weren’t shouting “yeah bro”, “fuckin’ tell yer, lad” and “do you fuckin’ know who I am, brah?”… though I swear the grotty little fucks were still trying to roll their faux gangster pimp limps even in death.
Even so, they were damn close, and their ass-scratching hands began reaching for me as I touched down, lips drawing back to reveal teeth that had never seen the inside of a dental surgery. I had to go through them to get to my goal, so I took five quick steps back (and I’m not ashamed to say I squeaked like a little bitch when I first saw them, such was my surprise and their proximity), pulled out the crowbar, dropped my backpack to the ground so my balance wasn’t affected, and I did this United Kingdom a great service.
Chavs are a curse on our once great and noble land. They’re like the human version of wasps. They all look the same, they’re all really aggressive and won’t just fuck off and leave you alone and – to a one – they are all little fucking cunts, and I don’t often drop the C-bomb.
Braining those three little shits – who probably spent their days in life doing nothing but seeing how much of a twat they could be – was no great labour. The other zeds I killed were for survival and generally scared the shit out of me, but this unholy trio of smelly little shits were like a bit of catharsis. I felt absolutely nothing other than grim satisfaction smashing the hooked pointy end of my crowbar into their brainpans. You don’t need a full description; suffice to say, Lockey three, Chavs zero. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bad-ass bitch with a crowbar.
After wiping the crowbar clean, I did a ninja run over to the SUV, checked the back seat first (always check the back seat like Columbus advised), and laughed aloud as the keys were indeed still in the car. I laughed louder still when I turned that key and it thrummed into life first time, so I closed the door, saw it had a three quarter full tank – hell yeah – then popped it in reverse, connected the seatbelt (Zombie survival rule #4, buckle up) and I was out and gone.
I expected chaos and mayhem everywhere, but the truth was the roads were mostly clear. There were a number of accidents here and there, and scattered packs or lone zombies, but I think when the world shat itself a few days back, everyone just simply upped and fucked off before things got too bad. I avoided main roads anyway and trundled away into rural Cheshire in search of a new home.
Took me about an hour of crawling around back roads to find a likely place. Big farmhouse with fields all around (so good lines of sight) and it looked empty. There didn’t seem to be any signs of life, but I thought it best to sneak in on foot and check it out, rather than drive right up in my thunder-truck and give my position away. So, leaving the backpack in the car and locking it, and taking my trusty chav-slayer and a small claw hammer for weapon comfort, I decided to ghost in on foot.
And that, my dear reader, is when it
all went to fucking shit.
7TH ENTRY
OLD MCDONALD HAD A HARD ON
I think I’m pretty stealthy.
I’m quick, light-footed, and a bit paranoid because everything in the world is trying to kill me. Generally, I’m quite perceptive when I actually bother to concentrate, but concentration is a bit of an issue for me, as you have no doubt discovered from my collection of spectacular near misses along my little journey thus far and my inane spilling of random thoughts. Well, this time, I royally fucked it and almost got fucked. Literally.
I sneaked up slowly to the farmhouse, keeping low, but as I said, the reason I chose the place was because I’d be able to see zombies coming from a way off because there was clearance around the house. Well, that same pro turned out to be an equally large con when I was the one doing the sneaking. I was sure the place was empty, because no crazed old farmer came out waving a shotgun at me or trying to blast me from existence, so it seemed like a win. Unfortunately, it just meant that the rampant thunder-cunt who lived there was watching me like a predator as I approached and – knowing his own property far better than little old me – he waited like a trapdoor spider for me to wander into his kill zone. Honestly, it would have been a mercy if he’d just shot me. PTSD is gonna get me soon enough, so let me explain why.
There was a big barn-like structure attached to the side of the farmhouse, so I thought I’d have a peep in there first, but as soon as I pushed open the door and leaned my head in to check for undead… blam. Everything went dark. No warning, no shout, nothing. Just a smack to the side of the head that knocked me the fuck out.
And then this is when shit got really dark.
I woke up, feeling sick as fuck, and tried to move.
That was when I realised I couldn’t.
I was still in the barn I’d been in the process of sneaking into, judging by the open space I could sense around me, aged wooden wall four feet from my face, and the straw-scattered earth beneath me. I was locked into this weird contraption that was a bit like – I shit you not – medieval stocks. My head and wrists were firmly clamped, but weirdly there was a right-angled frame built on to it, so my body was supported. However, when I came fully to my senses, I realised I was bent over at a right angle, my ankles also clamped with my feet flat on the ground and legs pulled slightly apart… and then I felt the air on my skin.
I was clamped into stocks, ass sticking out, and my trousers had been removed. With this realisation, my senses instantly sharpened from fuzzy headache to hyper-awareness. I started thrashing, desperate to get out.
“Here now,” said a raspy voice to my left. “That’ll do you no good.”
I stopped cold and twisted my head to see the voice’s owner. I nearly popped out a log of shit at the sight.
Sitting in an old chair, butt-fucking naked, was some old guy. He was late fifties I reckon, with a dirty white beard that was yellowed by nicotine round his lips, pasty white fish-skin, a middle-aged paunch flowing around his waist like ooze and an explosion of wild grey pubic hair not three feet from my face.
Jesus fucking Christ, what a sight to wake up to.
It was horrifying. Worse, he was sat there in his birthday suit stroking himself. Leisurely working his shrivelled dick into a wrinkly spear with a look of contentment on his red face, like he’d just had a steak and a blowjob, in that order.
“What the fuck man?” was all I could hiss, tearing my eyes away from the horror of him slowly wanking himself. Death seemed like a pleasant choice at that moment.
He tsk’d. Like I was some naughty kid who’d just said a bad word.
“You have a filthy mouth,” he observed.
“No fucking shit,” I snapped back. “See how fucking calm you stay when you’re strapped to a rape-rack with Old McDonald about to go ‘ee-aye-ee-aye-aargh’ on your ass. Let me out of here you freak.”
“Out?” he breathed. Sweet Jesus, he had a voice that was so calm and detached, it was chilling. “Out? Oh no, not yet. First, you have to be a good girl.”
I cannot articulate how fucking scared I was at this point. This creepy old naked guy was going to raid my ass like an anal pirate at his leisure, and there was sweet fuck all I could do about it. I was helpless. Utterly, absolutely, completely, totally helpless. And alone.
After the past few days, after nearly dying in a toilet, having an old teacher try and eat me, and assaulted by three undead chavs, this was a real cosmic, “Fuck you, Lockey!”
I really didn’t want my end to be as a chained-up rape-doll for Old McDonald. A shotgun blast to the face would have been a mercy.
I had no way out. I couldn’t move a fucking inch in his custom Rape-a-tron 3000, and he knew it. He was enjoying himself, savouring the moment, like a cat playing with its prey trapped and injured, maximising enjoyment from the kill.
“Well,” he breathed finally, his withered cock now worked to attention. Jesus, that sight alone will give me nightmares, with his low-hanging old man balls swinging below him. When he sat on the toilet, he’d have to hoist those fuckers up so they didn’t get wet in the bowl.
God, I need to stop describing his cock and balls, it sounds like I’m obsessed. But when they’re used as tools of fear and menace against you, they’re the kind of things that stick in your memory.
Rapey Santa got out of his dirty chair and then, in full fucking view of me, he scooped something out of a pot and started smearing it all over his dick, making sure I could see.
“Goose fat” he rasped, his voice like a rusty blade. “It’ll make things more comfortable for us both.”
Then he gave a deep throaty laugh like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
I am not ashamed to admit I started to fucking cry and plead. I removed all pretence at being a bad-ass then and straight up begged for him to desist, but those pleas fell on deaf ears. He disappeared from my sight and moved round behind me and let me tell you, that terror is worse than seeing him work his dick into a frenzy in front of you.
Now I couldn’t see shit, I had no method of escape, I was utterly fucked and about to be violated by a creepy Cheshire farmer. It didn’t matter that I wanted no part of it and to be honest, I think that was part of the thrill for him.
No matter how I thrashed, I couldn’t move. I was at his mercy and I almost threw up in terror as I felt his callused hands slip over my hips like coarse sandpaper, hearing his breathing shallow as his excitement intensified. Fucking hell, I feel sick just writing this shit. Thank fuck for what – or more precisely, who – came next.
I’ve never been one for prayer. I don’t believe in magic space fairies in the sky, but at that moment, I swore I would become a nun if something, someone, somewhere, just did somethingto stop Old McDonald with his grunt-grunt here and his grunt-grunt there. I gritted my teeth, waiting for the inevitable, tears streaming down my face.
“What the fuck?” came a gravelled voice.
It was a different voice to Old McRapey. It was harder, meaner, stronger. No cock smeared in goose fat invaded me and for that I was eternally grateful.
“This is private property,” said my captor. I heard him moving away, then the other voice spoke again.
If Farmer Rapey had been in my ass at that point, I’d have probably broke his cock in two. When the new guy spoke again, I swear on my ass virginity (which had remained intact), it was the most chilling fucking sound I ever heard, with just the barest hint of a Yorkshire accent. My whole body tightened as fear locked every muscle.
“One step closer to that shotgun, friend, and you’re a dead man.”
Nothing fancy. No flowery language. No flair.
Just a simple, cold promise of what came next. There was a finality to it, hard, and yet somehow regretful he was being forced down this path.
I believed him with every fibre of my being. That was a voice that knew the future and was saddened by what was to come. It was regret, but willing to see it through to the bitter end, no matter the pain.
It went quiet, like there was a stand-off, the two men staring at each other at an impasse. Then Old McRapey must have gone for his gun, but the gunshot that sounded wasn’t the tearing thunder of a shotgun. It was the crack of a semi-automatic handgun, and you don’t find many of them in England.
My ears were ringing, but I suddenly felt all the pressure at my ankles release, then a bit of fiddling and the stocks popped open and I sprang up and turned.
The newcomer also looked in his fifties, but unlike my intended rapist who was all flab and filth, this guy looked like he was cut from aged granite. He was physically fit with narrowed eyes, close cut hair and jaw like a brick. He gave a flick with his head, indicating where my pants had been discarded and I nodded, feeling much better once I was fully clothed again. New guy kept the gun in his hand, though, even though it was held loose. Loose, but ready.
Fair enough, he had no reason to trust me. At least he had the decency to turn his back while I clothed myself. I like the guy; old school values even though the world has gone to shit. I bet that’s fucking rare in these weird times.
“Not my best of days,” I said, trying to crack the tension. “Cheers mate, you literally saved my ass.”
I swear to fucking God, I was certain there was a flash of a smirk at one corner of his mouth, but his face remained pretty even. He did, however, seem to relax and slid the handgun into a holster at his hip.
“Lockey,” I said, thrusting out my hand. “Name’s Erin Locke, but my friends call me Lockey, and as you just stopped an unwanted invasion, you definitely fall into the friend category.”
He gave me this quizzical look and it’s one I’ve gotten used to over the years. I can almost see the words in a thought bubble above their head like a comic strip.
“Does this girl really talk like this all the time?”
Yes. Yes, I do. I broke the mould. I made my own mould. It’s a bit wonky and has a stupid grin scratched into it, but this is me.
“Nate,” he said, gripping my hand eventually. I smiled, trying not to weep as his mighty gorilla-grip nearly shattered the dainty little bones of my hand.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, hiding the flex of my crushed hand as I spoke.
“Saw the car at the gate, parked like it was in a rush.”
Fuck you buddy, I’m great at parking.
“Put my hand on it and felt it was still warm, saw the backpack inside and figured someone must be here.” He shrugged. “Thought I’d check it out.” He curled his lip. “Wasn’t expecting to find… this.” He swept his arm round Old McDonald’s rape barn.
I glanced down at the dead man. Shit, Nate was a good shot. Clean between the eyes, no reanimation for you. I tipped my imaginary forelock to my grizzled saviour.
And that, dear reader, is how I met Nathaniel Carter, ex-SAS (I think), all round bad-ass and the man without a smile. I’ll make this straight-faced fucker laugh if it kills me. Though, he might kill me first. But hey, life is for living eh?
I don’t know when I’ll write again, as I’m at the end of this notebook. I can’t really just pop down to Office Outlet and get myself a new one, so for now, I must bid you farewell.
It’s been emotional. Stay safe. And watch your ass, literally, and I will leave you with this inspiring motivational thought.
When life closes one door, another door opens. So shut the fucking door, there are zombies you dick. Hide, run, stay away from doors.
I hope we meet again, dear reader.
Toodles, Lockey.
No More Heroes, written by Carl Meadows and edited by me, releases on Kindle and in print on October 27th, and the Audiobook version drops in December, narrated by Danielle Cohen.
You can pre-order the Kindle version here: https://amzn.to/3l5yr6l
No More Heroes – Entries 5 & 6
As the kids are saying these days… this story slaps.
I shudder to think how lame and strange my parents thought I was with our creation of expressions. In retrospect, nothing we made up sounded that crazy, but I was a teenager, and knew nothing.
Unlike our intrepid hero Lockey, who knows a lot about parkour, and swearing.
Parts One and Two: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/12/no-more-heroes-entry-one-and-two/
Parts Three and Four: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/17/no-more-heroes-entries-3-4/
Here are two more entries in her upcoming first novel, No More Heroes.
5TH ENTRY
NOW WHAT?
So, what to do now? I can’t survive on Snickers and beans for the rest of my days, and I sure as shit can’t live in this classroom. Hell, I can’t stay in this crappy ass town either. The sensible thing would be for me to head out to one of the little country areas that surround it.
That’s the advantage of being in this little slice of northern English gold. There’s a whole lot of greenery and pretty villages and farms nearby, so I guess the smart thing to do is get away from the press of undead and hole up somewhere the zombies won’t be gathering in numbers.
Trouble is, I’m an urban lass. I don’t know shit about farming or surviving on my own without modern convenience. If I want to eat, I go to the store and buy shit, and long term that won’t cut the mustard. To be honest, the thought of heading down to Tesco doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement… I bet the supermarkets have been scavenged by now. That would have likely happened on day one as people loaded their cars and got the fuck out of town.
As people are generally shitty to each other, I’m pretty sure all kinds of awful shit went down there as frightened people went to war with each other over cans of soup in supermarket aisles. People are generally wankers in car parks, and I bet the hole in my ass they got jammed up and fights broke out, complete deadlock with people unable to get in and out, fists flying and so on. In such a massive press, it would take only one person to get killed in a fight and it would have been zombie ground zero, spreading like wildfire, and as I’ve stated, no firearms to stem the tide of growing undead.
Panic makes people do stupid shit (like not checking the bathroom for zombies when they’re busting for a dump) and people are generally stupid as a rule anyway in my experience. I mean, for fuck’s sake, get an inch of snow on the roads in England and people lose their minds, grinding the country to a halt. A zombie apocalypse? Ha. There’ll be mental and emotional breakdowns on an epic scale. We as a nation are not equipped to manage the social collapse, because most are selfish assholes. I wonder how the spiritual people are doing with their positive thinking and crystal energies?
But that’s me just musing. It doesn’t change my current situation. Problem number one… I need to find a Lockey HQ that’s away from the centre of all this bullshit. Thankfully, the nearest city is around 20 miles away, and man… I bet the likes of Manchester, Chester and Liverpool are fuuuuuuucked. Complete traffic gridlock, people fucking everywhere losing their minds. No direction. No clue. Panic, mayhem, murder.
So, to be able to get out of town, I need a vehicle and my eyes keep getting drawn to the too-big-for-this-town SUV blocking the exit. The keys must be still in the ignition as I doubt Mrs Thomson-Smythe had the presence of mind to pull them out when she jumped out of the car after running over her own kid. She switched the engine off and I can see from here that the driver door is still open, so that’s the best option. There are other cars in the school car park, but they’re likely cars of people shuffling round as undead with their keys still in their pockets, so I could be fucking about all day trying to find them.
No… the murder wagon it is. It’s big, it made short work of an entire crew of teenagers as the silly bitch came tear-arsing into the school, it’s high off the ground and it’s got keys in, as well as being a barrier to getting any other car out of here. So yeah, it will have to be the SUV. There is one slight hindrance to my plan though… the battalion of acne-faced undead meandering around it.
I need to draw the army of darkness away from the vehicle, and to do that I need noise. Lots of noise. All the fucking noise. But how?
AH HA!
Of course. Those other cars will come in useful after all. I’ll set their alarms off. They’ll be shuffling over to the source of that noise in as much time as it takes as a nerd to start crying when the internet goes down. Man, I bet so many nerds just topped themselves the moment they realised the internet was gone for good. They’d have been like lemmings throwing themselves from the nearest high point.
I’m not really sure about a destination though. I mean, yeah, I’ve got a plan to draw the dead away from my intended escape vehicle so I can leap in, reverse out and get out of town, but where the hell am I going? There’s no use me breaking for it unless I have a clear idea of where I’m going. I’ve no idea how much fuel is in the vehicle, and a big bastard like that will drink it fast… faster than a bunch of nineteen year old girls on a Saturday night in Cardiff can consume vodka-red bulls in happy hour.
And that is fast, dear reader. I have experience. There are photos.
Now, I have one slight problem in going for a quiet farmhouse that is making me nervous. So no, there isn’t a plethora (I love that word) of guns in Britannia. People aren’t carrying handguns and every home doesn’t have one.
However, farmers are likely to have a licensed shotgun for use on their lands, for shooting game and so forth. And I really don’t fancy rocking up to a nice quiet farm looking for succour from the apocalypse, only to roll up and get shredded by a shotgun. That would really piss on my chips.
Shit, this is like a rock and a hard place. I need somewhere away from it all, but those places are likely already getting locked down by their owners who now have free licence to shoot anyone they deem a trespasser, without fear of any legal reprisal. Still, the alternate is dying a slow death in a classroom and shitting in a pencil case.
Honestly, I’d rather get shot in the face.
Okay. I have a plan. It’s shit, but it’s better than nothing. If I get the murder wagon and head out the back roads at the top of town, then head out even more along the quiet Cheshire back roads and find a nice empty house all on its own that doesn’t seem to have anyone at home, I’m golden. I’ll make the new plan from there.
First thing first.
School’s out for summer.
6TH ENTRY
SCHOOL’S OUT BITCHES
Hey there, friend! Look, it’s me! I’m not dead.
My plan worked like a charm. I know, I know, you expected everything to go to shit, as did I, but nope. Nailed it. Everything went swimmingly on the escape, so obviously something was bound to go to shit later on and it did. Big time.
But first, let me catch you up. It’s about 9pm now and it’s been a shitstorm of a day, but I made my escape from the school about 7am this morning. Here’s my account of my crazy day. I’m writing this from a nice quiet farmhouse about four miles outside of town, with a new friend downstairs. I’ll get to him shortly, but first, let’s cover the Great Escape.
So, morning came and with a loaded backpack, I decided to go up to the roof and get a better panorama of the shitstorm below me so I could plan my route to the SUV. It took me no time at all to get out the window and spider-monkey up to the roof. However, I nearly fell off and died on the fucking spot as I was hauling myself up to the flat roof of the classroom building.
Halfway up as I was just about to swing my legs up, a shadow loomed over me and I looked up to see an undead six feet away, shambling towards me, lips already starting to peel back in that flash of lunging rage I knew was coming.
Jesus fucking Christ, my heart nearly stopped. The kid was about fifteen, shambling about on the roof above me these past few days, just feet away while I slept. The fact that I had no damn clue creeps me out like you wouldn’t believe. These things are so fucking quiet.
Now, at this point, I was in something of an awkward position. I couldn’t go backwards because… well… backwards was a thirty-foot drop to concrete and I didn’t have time to get myself back into a climb-down position. I had horrible visions of the little shit dropping to its dead knees and taking a bite out of my fingers, so my only option was to power forward.
Flicking myself up, I sprung past the teenage dirtbag, feeling its filthy claws sweep at me and miss me by the width of a gnat’s pubic hair, but then I was up on my feet, turned, and ran back, leaping at it with both feet.
Boom. Both feet, centre mass, and that fucker shot away like he’d just been snapped back by a bungee cord, right over the edge. I popped my head over the roof just as the undead teen died from a severe case of concrete poisoning, which caused the rotten bastard to burst like a bag of vegetable soup.
Wow, check me out, Hemingway. Check out my awesome simile. I’m a literary genius.
Like a bag of vegetable soup?
Facepalm.
Sometimes I think I should just stop saying words.
Anyway, retarded descriptions aside, I put that quick fright behind me and surveyed the realm. The burst zombie splashing on to the concrete drew the attention of some nearby zeds and they came shuffling in my direction, but as they weren’t exactly gymnasts, I was okay up on my perch.
There were three cars close together on the right side of the car park and if I could get their alarms going, they’d draw everything away from my escape vehicle, while I made a circuitous route back across the roof of the school buildings, preventing me having to work my way through the shambling mass. Then it would be drop down, scamper to the murder wagon, get in the car, grab Mum, kill Phil…. yeah, you get the picture.
So that’s exactly what I did. I worked my way round the back of the building, set those bitches off (I’m not gonna write all the technical ins and outs, because it’s boring, so let’s just accept my awesome) and off they went. Wee-ooh, wee-ooh, wee-ooh. And like a siren’s song to horny sailors, the mass began to move.
Up to the roof again, began my scamper (with far more vigilance this time) and I watched with a fat grin as the mass pulled away from my target vehicle like iron filings to a magnet. It was glorious. Now I really was feeling like a strategos after all my initial fuck ups.
This was going brilliant. As I watched the SUV clear of all zombie presence, I’m not gonna lie, I felt like a champ. I could do this planning shit. It wasn’t that hard. Now all I had to do was get in the car, grab Mum, kill Phil…
I need to leave that joke alone. I’m tugging a dead horse there. Wait, that’s not it. Flogging a dead horse, that’s right.
Shit, that changes the saying in all kinds of weird ways.
Flush with my newfound confidence at my awesome skills of strategy, I shimmied down to ground level and prepared to head to the car. Not gonna lie, I had a bit of a swagger.
Of course, that overconfidence results in anal penetration by a corroded metal sex-toy, doesn’t it? That sloppiness I was talking about earlier? That one that gets you painfully butt-pumped by spikey things with no lubrication for maximum friction? Yep, didn’t follow my own advice.
I dropped down and landed about eight feet away from three zombies. They weren’t in school uniforms; all three of them were dressed in tracksuits, with baseball caps on and hoods pulled up over. Teenager zombie chavs.
Sigh. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.
Honestly, at first glance I couldn’t tell if they were alive or not. I mean, teenage chavs are complete dicks anyway with ‘uh’ as their common response to any question posed at them. Even giving them a sniff didn’t help determine their life status, as the little bastards usually have a weird cocktail smell anyway, like Lynx Africa, weed, Red Stripe and a week’s worth of groin-sweat, all mixed together in one malodorous Eau de Twat. Honestly, that’s not much different from the walking dead.
The only reason I could tell instantly that they were actually dead was their silence. They weren’t shouting “yeah bro”, “fuckin’ tell yer, lad” and “do you fuckin’ know who I am, brah?”… though I swear the grotty little fucks were still trying to roll their faux gangster pimp limps even in death.
Even so, they were damn close, and their ass-scratching hands began reaching for me as I touched down, lips drawing back to reveal teeth that had never seen the inside of a dental surgery. I had to go through them to get to my goal, so I took five quick steps back (and I’m not ashamed to say I squeaked like a little bitch when I first saw them, such was my surprise and their proximity), pulled out the crowbar, dropped my backpack to the ground so my balance wasn’t affected, and I did this United Kingdom a great service.
Chavs are a curse on our once great and noble land. They’re like the human version of wasps. They all look the same, they’re all really aggressive and won’t just fuck off and leave you alone and – to a one – they are all little fucking cunts, and I don’t often drop the C-bomb.
Braining those three little shits – who probably spent their days in life doing nothing but seeing how much of a twat they could be – was no great labour. The other zeds I killed were for survival and generally scared the shit out of me, but this unholy trio of smelly little shits were like a bit of catharsis. I felt absolutely nothing other than grim satisfaction smashing the hooked pointy end of my crowbar into their brainpans. You don’t need a full description; suffice to say, Lockey three, Chavs zero. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bad-ass bitch with a crowbar.
After wiping the crowbar clean, I did a ninja run over to the SUV, checked the back seat first (always check the back seat like Columbus advised), and laughed aloud as the keys were indeed still in the car. I laughed louder still when I turned that key and it thrummed into life first time, so I closed the door, saw it had a three quarter full tank – hell yeah – then popped it in reverse, connected the seatbelt (Zombie survival rule #4, buckle up) and I was out and gone.
I expected chaos and mayhem everywhere, but the truth was the roads were mostly clear. There were a number of accidents here and there, and scattered packs or lone zombies, but I think when the world shat itself a few days back, everyone just simply upped and fucked off before things got too bad. I avoided main roads anyway and trundled away into rural Cheshire in search of a new home.
Took me about an hour of crawling around back roads to find a likely place. Big farmhouse with fields all around (so good lines of sight) and it looked empty. There didn’t seem to be any signs of life, but I thought it best to sneak in on foot and check it out, rather than drive right up in my thunder-truck and give my position away. So, leaving the backpack in the car and locking it, and taking my trusty chav-slayer and a small claw hammer for weapon comfort, I decided to ghost in on foot.
And that, my dear reader, is when it all went to fucking shit.
No More Heroes releases on October 27th in print and on the Kindle, and on Audible, narrated by Danielle Cohen in December.
Pre-Order the Kindle version here: https://amzn.to/2FZBrC1
No More Heroes – Entries 3 & 4
Hype hype hype, yo.
Here are the next two entries from No More Heroes, the first series set in the world of AUD written by Carl Meadows, and edited by me.
To get caught up on the firs two entries of No More Heroes, go ahead and head here: https://www.thechrisphilbrook.com/2020/09/12/no-more-heroes-entry-one-and-two/
3RD ENTRY
BATTLE OF THE BOG
Well, it could have been worse.
Hey, I’m not dead, I’ve a backpack full of bottled water, cans of food and soda, chocolate bars, breakfast bars and Rosalind Franklin here even remembered a little dash of cutlery and a can opener. I ate a cold can of beans and sausages followed by some cheap ass cereal bar that was like chewing saliva glazed cardboard sprinkled with shrivelled, sun-baked testicles, but still… that shit was dee-lish when you’re hungry enough to eat a scabby dog.
The food and water gathering? Great.
The drop off back here at Lockey Tower? No problem.
My major problems came in the opening gambit of my Totes Good Plan ™ and then right at the end when I was planning to load for zombie bear.
Oh my life… can you imagine that? Thankfully, England has a distinct lack of bears, so that’s one less potential horror to worry about.
With an empty backpack I disassembled the Great Wall of Lockey from the doorway and slipped out. Things were getting desperate in the sphincter department; I was five millimetres away from touching cloth in my pants, so some caution had to go to the wind. I’m not facing the apocalypse smelling of my own shit. No ma’am. Some things are non-negotiable.
Squeaky must have shuffled off somewhere in the night or morning because I heard nothing, which was great. A quick peep down the central stairwell to the bottom and all looked clear. In fact, from where I was standing, I could see the door to the little girls’ room. It shined with a celestial glow to my eyes, and I swear I heard a chorus of angels raising their voices to heaven in joy. Two floors down was anal salvation and I started bounding down those stairs with all my mad parkour skills to make the trip as swift as possible.
(Side note: I would buy the music of any band that called itself Anal Salvation.)
I went through the door as quietly as possible but as I laid my eyes upon the stalls, the burning press intensified. Things were starting to get warm in the basement, so all pretence at stealth went. I went into the stall, closed the door and locked it (why, I don’t know, but it’s just what you do right?), dropped the seat, dropped my pants faster than if Brad Pitt had said “allow me to pleasure you”, placed my cheeks upon my ceramic throne and… released the kraken.
I know I shouldn’t really dwell on it, because there’s more interesting stuff to write about, but… Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph… it was like a religious moment. Anal salvation was achieved as I felt myself deflate. It was like I was purging myself of all my tension, all my fear and… well… all the shit that was threatening to explode in my pants. But still, after the event, I had exorcised my demons and my ass was clear.
It. Was. Epic. So much relief.
Now that we’ve got that down for posterity, let’s move on with Lockey’s tale of woe, shall we?
So, as I’m grunting and groaning with relief, eye twitching as the splash back occurred, at that moment I probably was the happiest I’d been in days. I let out a big Randy Macho-Man Savage “ooooh yeeeeah” and gave myself a mental high five, leaned back, sighed in contentment, savouring this most treasured of moments.
Squeak.
Splash back, Part Two: The Return. I swear to whatever god from whatever pantheon was having a good laugh at my situation, when I heard that squeak, I was so glad I was still sat on the shitter, because I full on shit myself for a second time.
Literally.
My ass squeaked and pumped out a second round from the barrel with a “bloop” into the lake below, before it snapped shut tighter than the eye of a needle.
Squeaky was in the fucking bathroom.
Seriously, what the hell? How did Squeaky get into the bathroom in the middle of the night? Well, it turns out it did, and little did I know – when I burst into the bathroom in a wild ass panic – that Squeaky was in the far stall as I had headed for the nearest point of salvation. Maybe it had been drawn by the noise in the pipes or something? A mouse? No idea.
My wild and savage cries of anal salvation had obviously drawn Squeaky’s attention. The squeak of those shoes on that shiny floor sent my blood cold and clamped my ass tighter than a shark’s arse at ten thousand fathoms after Splashback Part Two escaped. Sat there, vulnerable and weak, I heard him shuffle-squeak his way out of the end stall to mine, not making a sound except for those damn shoes, and then bump into the door. And again. And again.
Toilet etiquette for the win. I’d locked the stall.
However, it was a tiny piece-of-shit lock that wouldn’t stand up to consistent pressure and the door opened inwards, so I was on the clock in the most surreal moment of my life to date.
Imagine, dear reader, calmly wiping your ass, while a zombie head bumps over and over outside your door, its shoes (totally a teacher with those bad boys) squeaking and squawking like nails on a chalkboard, while you are trapped in a little cubicle that smells like its own special slice of the apocalypse. You check, wipe again, making sure you banished all those little nuggets from your life, and still… bump, bump, bump, bump. Squeak squeak squeak. Not a single sound from the dead though. Silent as the crypt itself. I’ll never get used to that.
And then, like a shining light, I remember.
Zombieland. Survival rule number three. Beware of bathrooms.
And that image of the movie from a year earlier comes to mind of the zombie crawling under the stall to eat the guy taking a shit and inwardly I facepalm. I forgot your rule, Columbus. Cardio, I’m good. I always wear my seatbelt (and I’ll check allthe backseats in my next vehicular adventure). There are some others, but I can’t remember them all now.
Anyway, suddenly faced with the potential prospect of Squeaky dropping to his knees and climbing under the stall (didn’t know if they could at this point), my wiping became more frantic. A sense of urgency was returned to me; after all, I’m sat on the shitter and there’s a zombie three feet away trying to break into the stall with his face, so a sense of perspective was required, I think. A realignment of one’s priorities.
Also, getting murdered by a zombie while sitting on the toilet? That’s a pretty ignoble way to go. Here lies Erin Locke. She died upon the shitter.
That would not be my fate, so pants up and head in the game.
Thankfully, I’m little at five-six. I’m in good shape, as you have to be when your free time is spent scampering on rooftops and making retarded jumps between stone walls. I’m agile and wiry, which is really handy when you have to escape the Siege of Stall One.
While Squeaky kept up his retarded assault using his face as a battering ram, I went up and over into the next stall. As I was slinking over, thinking how the fuck I was going to get out of this pile of stupid, my eyes alighted on my new weapon of choice. After all, I had to get past the zed, because I was now further away from the exit.
But I spied the lid of the toilet’s tank and a little light bulb went “bing” over my head. You know the ones I mean? The big ass heavy ceramic lid that covers the tank with the floaty ball thing in it? (I’m not a plumber, work with me here.) Well, those things are heavy and as I dropped into the stall and lifted it, I nodded appreciatively as I hefted that bitch. Oh yes, this would do nicely.
Armed with my mighty club of doom, I stepped out of the stall and instinctively took a step back to give myself swing room. As I did, I got a good look at Squeaky for the first time.
The guy was in his mid-forties. He was the kind of guy that boredom would look like if it was moulded into a person. You know the ones I mean? The type of person who is SO boring, you feel like they’ve poisoned you?
He was all beige and tan, with a woolly sweater vest over a pastel coloured shirt, two-for-a-tenner men’s grey trousers, and a “I still let my mum cut my hair” style atop his head that was carefully side-parted with enough product that an open flame might make him do a pretty fair impression of Ghost Rider. And those shiny, squeaky shoes that no man who ever wanted to get laid would even consider wearing. I don’t know what you call them, as I’m not down with virgin-chic, but you can probably work out how uncool and shite they were from my artfully descriptive depiction of his general appearance.
They were shit. Let’s leave it there. If you were to have a conversation with this guy when he was alive, I imagine you’d have been as bored as a midget in a theme park.
He’d obviously died from the three vicious bite marks on his arms and by the size of those bites, they looked student sized. He probably bored them to death, and they unleashed their undead vengeance on him the only way they could.
I’d given myself the room I needed and gave the toilet lid a couple of practice swings to get the arc right. Overbalancing and falling on my face would be a bad move, so I made sure I got myself planted and ready for his lightning assault.
Squeak. Shuffle. Squeak. Shuffle.
Zombies are slow, and they aren’t intellectuals filled with witty conversation or the ribald tales of a horny sailor, but fuck ME… I was getting bored waiting for him. But then, at the last moment, something changed. Lips drew back, fingers curled to claws and his expression changed into pure, unadulterated hate. It was a stark and sudden shift and I swear my heart nearly seized. He went from a vaguely comical undead to terrifying supernatural force in the time it took to fart out my fear.
I swung that thing right to left in a sudden panic, catching him clean on the side of the head and knocking him the fuck down.
It obviously didn’t kill him with one blow, but once he was down, then I started to pound. Letting out a feral yell – stealth could blow itself, I was shitting it and just wanted this done – I brought the heavy edge of the lid down on to the side of his head while he was flat on the floor and was rewarded with an audible crack. Still wasn’t dead, so I did it again. And again. And again.
I wailed on his head like that scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, where Vinnie Jones’ character is slamming that guy’s head in the car door for threatening his kid. Full on scream, roar, fuck you, die mother fucker.
For a moment, I completely lost myself in an equal blend of fury and terror. By the time I got my senses back and looked down at my handiwork, Squeaky would squeak no more. There was nothing left of his head but a mangled pulp of red, white, and grey.
Awful. I dropped the lid and stepped back into the empty stall I had emerged from and threw my guts up for a good thirty seconds until I had nothing left in me. I flushed, sat on the seat, and took a minute to get my shit together.
My hand hurts. Dear reader, let me tell you, writing for so long with a pen is hard. I’m gonna take a break and carry on the tale shortly. Thinking about splashing that head has made me feel sick again.
4TH ENTRY
VICE, VICE BABY
When I’d finally got my shit together, I stepped over the human wreckage and bobbed my head out into the corridor. I mean, shit, I’d been screaming in terror like a child molester thrown into prison gen-pop while I was pancaking Squeaky’s head, and I was half expecting a scene from Thriller in the hallway as the army of darkness came shuffling towards me. All was well, however. No sign of any further threats, so I slipped out and headed straight for the school canteen.
I expected to find it full of zeds, but amazingly, there was not a damned soul anywhere. After the Battle of the Bog, I was all slaughtered out and just wanted to fill my backpack with snacks and get back upstairs, so that’s exactly what I started doing. I threw all kinds of snacky goodness in the bag, took plenty of bottled water and generally started feeling better about myself. And then, fate smiled upon me.
As I was filling up my backpack with fat loot, my eyes were drawn to a socket on the wall and there – winking at me – was a little red light.
Power.
Frowning, I flicked the light switch and lo and behold the lights came on. I stepped out into the hall and flicked the lights out there, but there was nothing.
Okay, so I’m no electrician, but it said to me that the kitchen and canteen were on a different circuit, maybe their own circuit with a backup generator for the fridges and freezers, but who knows? In fact, who fucking cares? I fortified all the doors, so I had an early warning system, switched all the electric hobs on, got some pans, raided the fridges and lo and behold, Lockey had herself a fry up.
Eggs, bacon, sausage, hash brown, beans, toast, butter… homygod. And then the coup de fucking grace. I switched on the kettle and made myself a fucking brew.
I sat at a table with my awesome full English breakfast, a god damn cup of tea and felt like the Queen of the Apocalypse. Pity there was no TV in the canteen. My morning would have been complete watching Jeremy Kyle torture people on TV in spectacularly titled episodes such as, “My boyfriend thinks I cheated with another man through a letterbox!”, “Where was my boyfriend when he said he was behind the chicken shop?” and my personal favourite, “Leave your fiancé, he had sex with me in a graveyard!”
Good times. Shit, if all this bullshit exploded while Jeremy was filming, I’ve got visions of a new episode…. “My wife made my brother a zombie but not me; is she cheating on me?”
When I think of Jeremy Kyle, it comes to mind that the apocalypse might have done us one favour at least. What a twat.
After finishing breakfast – my god, it was sweet, sweet heaven – I felt better than I had since the world shat out a razor blade. Lockey versus the Apocalypse was on. Bitch is back in the game. I shot back upstairs, emptied my bag of all loot into my temporary home, ready to receive tools and weapons aplenty, and off I popped to the middle floor.
The walkway that crossed the inner courtyard of the school campus was an experience. You go through a set of double doors into a little covered glass bridge about twenty feet long that transfers you from a classroom building over to the sports hall, one floor above ground level. I have to say, I was a little surprised to see that the inner courtyard had about thirty zeds staggering around aimlessly, some teachers, some parents, some uniformed kids in their dark blazers. All were bloody as fuck. I don’t know what happened, but I was surprised to find so many in the courtyard between buildings. I thought everyone had done their level best to get the fuck out when all this shit started. Kids waiting for parents that never came, maybe? Shrug.
Freaked me out though when I was pattering along the bridge. They clearly heard or sensed me. Thirty sets of dirty, glassy eyes snapped up and looked right at me, then they all started shuffling my way, lips peeling back with hate as though I was responsible for their current undead stasis. Ass squeak moment. I wasn’t hanging around for them to gather beneath me, so I picked up my pace and popped through the second set of doors at the end and then switched to ninja mode.
There is something about an empty school that really freaks me out. I remember playing a cracked version of Silent Hill on the original PlayStation, and because it was a copy, for some reason, there was no colour. The whole game was black and white and man, it made for “creepy level: expert”. Silent Hill one and two are just pant-shitters of games. I think my fear of empty schools comes from those games. I expected a nightmare to appear around the corner at any moment.
Just the bang of a settling radiator, the rattle of a pipe, creak of a floorboard popping back into shape… they’re all amplified and threaten to pop a nugget straight out your back door in fright, every time you hear one.
Honestly, if my life continues in this manner, my sphincter will have a fucking six-pack in a week’s time.
My entire existence is one of paranoid hyper-vigilance because – let me tell you – sloppiness gets you surprise dry-fucked in the ass by a rusty metal dildo. Things would not end well. Remember how quiet these things are? Constant head on a swivel.
Getting a handle on my breathing took some effort, with all those freaky stares of hunger from a moment ago still on my mind. I sucked in some (allegedly) calming breaths and started to Mission Impossible through the first-floor entry hall, making my way to the steps that led down. I saw nothing, I heard nothing, it was great. Confidence began to return as I ghosted down the awful terracotta colour steps where the woodwork room was. I put my hand on the door, creaking it open and just as it literally started to creak open, I heard a sound, a footstep of metal on tile.
A memory bubbled up from deep, like a wet fart in the bath breaking the surface, deep and ominous, when you’re not sure if you’ve followed through and you might be now sitting in a bath you’ve sharted in.
When I was in high school, the woodwork teacher (they called it CDT then… craft, design and technology) was Mr Emerson. He was in his late forties, a small rotund little man with a grey widow’s peak and a surly facial expression that was as sour as a bulldog sucking piss from a nettle. I never understood why he went into teaching as he fucking hated teenagers. I mean, with a passion, and oh mama, he was not afraid to let us know. He was like a drill sergeant with his obvious disdain for his students. Allow me to divulge some of his most memorable sayings.
“I don’t have the energy to even pretend to like you today.”
“Life is full of disappointments. I’ve just added you to mine.”
“Sometimes I listen to what you’re saying, and I can’t help but wonder who tied your shoelaces for you this morning.”
“Oh, you don’t like being called stupid? I’m sorry, I thought you were already aware.”
He was a right little splash of sunshine was Emmy. Everywhere he walked, he left a trail of rainbows sprinkled with the glitter he farted. Wanker.
So why do I bring up my memories of my old woodwork teacher?
Well, Emmy’s most bizarre trait was his choice of footwear. He was proper old school and the safety shoes he used to wear were something of a joke to everyone he taught. No modern safety footwear for Emmy, oh no. I shit you not my fearless reader, this guy used to wear these things that looked like solid wooden clogs with hammered metal on the bottom, so they made this really distinct sound on the hard tile floor of the wood shop. Metal on ceramic tiles. Clickety click, clickety clack. Pretty sure he made them himself.
As I creaked open the door… clickety clack. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that zombie Emerson was shuffling round the wood shop. That certainty was confirmed by the death stench that wafted through the door crack as I heard the undead Riverdance. Zombies fucking stink, man. Once the human dies they piss and shit themselves as everything relaxes. It’s gross as all hell, but they have this… this… aura. Their smell isn’t just natural odour; it’s like some brimstone kind of shit. I don’t know what brimstone smells like, but it’s always associated with evil. That’s what they smell like. Pure, absolute corruption. Hard to articulate.
When the apocalypse wasn’t a reality, every kid would dream of getting the chance to brain an asshole teacher without fear of reprisal, but when the end of the world is real, and that asshole teacher can equally just kill and eat you, well… that’s a whole different set of rules. Plus, as I had discovered earlier, smashing the brains out of someone – dead or alive – is no fucking joke. It’s brutal, it’s messy, it’s sickening. This isn’t Shaun of the Dead where hilarity ensues. Putting someone down up close and personal is gross as all hell. I imagine our friends across the pond have things a bit easier, as there’s probably a certain amount of detachment popping the melon of a zed with a nine-mil from thirty feet away. We don’t have a gun culture though, so the report of a gunshot is super rare. Having to do the job nose-to-nose with something that smells like a rotting colon, with full on head splash in your face? Nope. Fucking awful. Everything about it is shit.
So here I was, about to have a gladiatorial battle to the death with a short, fat wanker that would no doubt be even surlier in undeath than he was in life. Marvellous.
Well, me creaking that door meant that little flash of sound was like an airhorn to Emmy. He scuttled and bobbed over like a fat shrivelled skeksis towards the door and I could hear him coming in his clickety clackety way. The door opened inwards so I waited and waited for him to weave and stumble his way round the workbenches until he was heading towards the door and – as he got up close – I full on kicked that door like Bruce Lee, right into his kisser.
There was a satisfying crunch and crack and he went arse over tit, bounced off a workbench and collapsed flat on his face. Well, I say flat. As I said, he was a rotund fellow, so he bobbed, rolled and flailed on his big belly as he tried to climb to his feet again. It would probably have been hilarious had I not been so desperate to get past him and find a weapon. After kerb-stomping Skeletor the other night and remembering how rank it felt to do that – feeling a skull splinter under your boot as you stamp repeatedly on it – I had no desire to do it again. All I wanted for Christmas right then was something big, blunt and traumatic, so I could end this shit-show with a single blow.
Of course, with my luck, I couldn’t see a single tool to hand and Zombie Riverdance didn’t take long to wobble to his clacky feet, all while my head was on a swivel looking for somethingI could brain him with.
So, it was time to get creative. There are some big ass vices in that room and one of them had wide gaping jaws fully opened, a real industrial width. A quick estimation of Emmy’s melon and the gap between the jaws…
Remember my parkour nimbleness? Mr Emerson couldn’t get near me as he shuffled and bumped his way around, while I jumped up and over the benches. Every time he got near though, that same silent snarl appeared I keep seeing on every one of these things when they’re just a pounce away. No growl, hiss or even gurgle. Just a twisted expression of hate as it screamed in silence at me and accelerated like it had just been given a shot of zombie adrenalin. Gives me shivers every time.
Once in position, I slid across a bench to strike from the rear, planted my foot full in his back and pushed him face first towards the vice. He didn’t go flush in. Nope, first I had to gag back vomit as I heard him go teeth-first into one of the vice’s jaws.
Blurgh. That sound.
I remember a kid I used to know when I was ten named Timmy. We used to crack golf balls off the top of a hill across a big stretch of earthy wasteland, seeing how far we could hit them, and obviously the boys couldn’t get beat by a girl, so they were super competitive. We only had one club, passing this iron between us as we took turns. Timmy had taken his turn but hadn’t moved far back away from this other kid we used to hang with, Nick.
Nick brought the club back, swung, smacked the ball clean and the club continued to sweep up. Timmy was too close.
There was a weird sound like a mix of metallic chink and dull thunk with a shuddering ceramic splinter as that club’s iron head met Timmy’s front teeth.
I’ll never forget that sound. Never.
It was brought to stark life once again as Emerson took an involuntary bite of the metal vice at speed.
The crack and shatter of teeth against solid metal, dear reader, is hard to describe. I’m no prizewinning writer to capture the sound in words, but I felt that shit shudder through my fucking soul. My eye is twitching just writing about the memory.
Swallowing the bile, I followed up while I still had the advantage. Shifting Emmy to the side while he was still face down, I pushed his bulbous face between the jaws, then held him there, helpless, while I whirled that industrial sized bar for all my worth; righty-tighty mother fucker. Finally, the jaws had fully clamped his temples and he couldn’t move. Panting by now, I clambered off him, and set to work with all my tiny strength on that bar.
Jesus, what a way to go. I mean, I know I was being creative, and I write about how awesome I am, but slowly crushing a human skull in a big ass vice is fucking nasty. Creaking, cracking, tension, straining and then suddenly…
Pop. Crunch. Fracture.
The tension is gone as the skull’s structure collapses. Then it’s a free roll into Squish Town.
I stood back after crushing Mr Emerson’s skull and brain in the bloody mess of the vice, surveyed my handiwork with a nod, put my hands on my hips in satisfaction like a champ, then promptly puked my guts up again, right next to his dangling corpse.
Lovely.
Tallahassee had to be proud right? That had to be a contender for Zombie Kill of the Week? Vice, vice baby.
I’m pretty sure I could hear the sound of my heart breaking as my full English breakfast splashed around my feet, though. Bye bye baby, it was nice to have known you for even a little while. Sob.
After I’d purged, I had more time to find the tools I had been denied. Finding a locked cupboard and my Sherlock-esque skills deducing the tools were in there, I returned to the Fat Controller, wondering how he’d died, as he didn’t have any bites or injuries I could see. Maybe his heart just gave out. I mean… shit… he wasn’t exactly training for a triathlon, was he?
Anyway, Emmy had keys in his pocket, and I returned to the locked cupboard, trying key after key that looked like it might fit.
By the way, who does that in an apocalypse? Locking away potential defensive weapons? Pretty sure that wanker wantedall the teenagers to get eaten and prevented them from acquiring any defensive capabilities. Wouldn’t surprise me. Seriously, that guy hated everyone.
Now, however, I have returned to Lockey Tower. I have hammers, screwdrivers, and a god damn crowbar which is my new favourite toy. It’s heavy and curly and pointy and all kinds of comforting to have in hand now.
Bottom line, I have food, water, tools / weapons, have secured the stairs so possess a relatively safe classroom to reside in while I figure shit out and I’m not dead. Now I just need to figure out a solid escape plan and get on the road and out of this shithole town and into the country before I get swarmed and eaten. Yay.
Best bit of the day though?
I got me a fucking brew.
Fuck yeah.
No More Heroes – Entry One and Two
To get you excited for the first novel set in the world of Adrian’s Undead Diary, Carl Meadows and I are giving away the first ten chapters or so of his book. A couple at a time, once or twice a week here and on Facebook.
Here are the first two entries: Not Sun Tzu, and A Woman With a Sort of Plan.
NO MORE HEROES
Lockey vs the Apocalypse
Book One
An Adrian’s Undead Diary Novel
By Carl Meadows
Edited by Chris Philbrook
PART 1
“CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE
RUCKUS, SIR?”
1ST ENTRY
NOT SUN TZU
Hey. It’s 2010. It’s June. I think it’s like the 24th? 25th? Honestly, I’m not sure. My phone is dead and there’s no power to charge it. And who wears a watch these days?
Anyway.
Two days ago, the world shit the bed.
I’m not talking about an accidental shit the bed, dear reader, like a fart gone wrong that leaves a little chocolate streak on the sheets. Oh no, I’m talking about waking up from a major girly night and realising you’re riding the wave of a faecal tsunami that’s drowned every part of the bed you’re in. I’m talking a half hour of screaming and anal incendiaries as you purge your system. And the situation is made worse because that guy you liked? The one you finally hooked up with and came back to your house? Your hunky chunk of man beef?
Yeah. He’s been sandblasted by your rectal volcano.
That’s how bad the world has shit in its bed.
I’ve no idea what happened, or why it’s still happening, but the world has become a horror movie. I’m talking a legitimate zombocalypse. The dead are up, shuffling about, lunging – yes, lunging- and fucking eating people.
No, wait, that’s not right. They start eating people, yet as soon as the victim is dead, the meal comes to an end. Then it’s like they just wait for their newest recruit to sit back up after a bit of twitching and join the silent shambling mass, looking for the next victim.
Movie zombies all shuffle around moaning, arms outstretched, or hissing like I do when someone’s stolen my last tampon.
Not these ones.
These are ninja zombies, hungry stalkers that sneak up on you if you don’t constantly pay attention. I nearly walked right into one downstairs last night and just managed to get my hand on its chest, pushing it away while it snapped its jaws at the empty air in front of my face. Pant shitting stuff. Most of the guy’s face had been chewed off, leaving a bloody half-skull snapping its teeth together in the air. There’s something inherently chilling about teeth smashing together over and over like that, plus Skeletor looked at me with such fury. Weirds me out how they always seem so rage-filled when you get up close. They’re dead and should be empty, but it’s like there’s something… there. Something… wrong.
Eesh. My butt is puckering just at the thought.
I’m just spilling all this out as it comes to me, trying to make sense of all this bullshit.
The world is ending. Everywhere is fucked. Everywhere. The world is a porn star being aggressively boned in all available orifices and there’s still a queue impatiently waiting for summary insertion.
Hey there, unknown reader who may have found this scribbled notebook. I hope you can read my handwriting. The name’s Lockey. Well, my actual name is Erin. Erin Locke, but my friends – well, basically everyone – calls me Lockey.
I’m 26 years old, I have a mouth (and apparently a hand when a pen is in it by the looks of it) that runs off before my brain gets in the driver’s seat. I make frequent and often obscure pop culture references and I have a particular set of skills, skills that make me a nightmare for zombies like you. If you give the world back now, I will not look for you…
See? I love movies, comics and general nerd-stuff and can’t help but quote them.
What are my particular set of skills? Well, I’ve been doing parkour and mixed martial arts from thirteen. Zombies can’t chase you up a drainpipe when you spider-monkey the fuck away from them and using the aerial highway when possible makes life a little easier. Thankfully, I haven’t come across any climbing zombies as yet. I’ll probably just give up on life if that happens.
MMA is great for up close and personal if I end up tangling with another survivor for a can of soup. Ground and pound on a zombie is pretty useless, as no choke hold or arm lock is gonna stop Chompy McTwatface from chewing through your arm. Sleeper holds are ineffective against the rage-filled dead. Plus, I came up in the care system. When you’re a teenage girl and you start shaping like a woman, a lot of unwanted attention comes your way. I found the best way to deal with such attention was a kick in the balls followed by a knee to the teeth, so I applied myself to perfecting aggressively violent self-defence.
It also helped when Skeletor popped up like Aladdin’s genie and tried to bite a chunk out of my beautiful face. When I put my foot through the front of his knee, then kerb-stomped his head like an 80’s football hooligan, it felt pretty useful then.
What’s my other skill? I drive like a Hollywood stuntwoman.
Okay. I might be overdoing that a bit, but I’ve been stealing cars and joyriding them since I was fourteen. Admittedly, there were some “incidents” where things didn’t go “as planned” and I may have “crashed” a few times, but nobody’s perfect, right?
Look, I never said I was a shining example of goodness and light, but a girl has to do what she can to survive right? I came through the care system and learned to take care of myself. So, I’d describe myself as a mix of Ripley from Aliens (because she’s bad ass and you don’t know me so I can say whatever I like), Tigger and Jackie Chan, all rolled into one sweet-cheeked package of awesome. Go Team Lockey. (And the crowd goes wild…)
But all my awesomeness aside, I’m still shitting myself.
Do you know what is notone of my skills?
Strategy.
I’m more of a reactive, rather than a proactive girl. I wing it. I ride the wave of fortune and sometimes I’m up high, or sometimes I’m teeth-deep in liquid shit.
This was the latter.
#
What was I thinking? Who thinks a fucking high school is a good place to ride out the apocalypse? Well, my dearest reader, let me tell you about this rare and uncompromising genius.
Sticks two thumbs up, rams them backwards.
I’ve obviously watched too many movies where the great strategists say, “if you own the high ground, then victory is assured.”
Well, Boudicca here took that to heart, didn’t she? And the tallest building around was the top floor of the high school in this shitty small English town so off I went. Everyone was coming out, a flood of panicked teenagers desperate to escape, so Sun Tzu here decided to go for the high ground. Well done Lockey. You are now the proud resident of a classroom, with huge windows looking out over a town filled with fucking zombies.
They’re everywhere, because this high school is right in the middle of a residential area.
Sigh. I am so wise. Pass me that great tome of knowledge, so I can chew on it like a retarded donkey.
It’s not a big town by standards, but it’s still a town. In the full bloom of life, there had to be a good ten thousand living here. Not exactly a rural hamlet, so there are people everywhere. Well, there were. Most of the town fled when Hurricane Shitstorm landed, but they’re the live ones. The rest are dead and just milling about, all lost and forlorn.
Such a weird thing to say… the dead are just milling about.
So, what’s my problem? Well, let me tell you, my inquisitive unknown reader friend. About ten minutes after I shimmied my way up a drainpipe and through an open window, some panicked helicopter parent in their giant SUV (pointless for a town this size) came thundering through the school gates to pick up their precious little angel. Of course, Mrs. Thomson-Smythe isn’t exactly trained for high speed driving and as she came through the gates into the car park and rounded the corner at pace all panicked for her little cherub’s safety, she managed to plough through a field of teenagers.
Dear. Fucking. God.
It was awful. It was like a bowling ball through pins, scattering the poor little bastards everywhere, though the ones at ground zero just made a god-awful “thunk” sound as they were hit square and smashed flat, then ridden over. The asphalt of the car park near the school gate was splashed with crimson and mangled uniformed kids, which then unleashed all kinds of crazy. Kids started screaming, the mother in the giant SUV was screaming, I was standing two floors up screaming. Did I mention the screaming? There was screaming.
Turns out it got even worse, because one of those little angels that got splashed was her own little angel. So, Mrs Thomson-Smythe gets out of the SUV, screaming in shamanic tongues as she goes to attend her very dead child who – yep, you guessed it – summarily reanimates and bites a mouthful from the fleshy front of her throat. Shit, sometimes these zeds reanimate reallyfucking fast; there was probably a total of twenty seconds max, from dead teenager to flesh-rending undead. I saw the arterial eruption even from my elevated and distant position. Gross.
Some more rapid twitching followed from other mangled kids, which was then followed by more Dawn of the Dead, and well… you can guess what happened from there.
Multiply zombies to the power of “oh shit.”
Those kids who had gone to help friends – or were holding their phones up and recording the horror on their grainy little cameras like assholes – suddenly fled the scene like they were escaping from a fart-clouded elevator, but not before a metric fuck ton had pieces chewed from them. Some of the bites were insta-kills like poor Mrs Thomson-Smythe, some were slow bleeders that would kill them in minutes, and others ran off home nursing apparently superficial bites to arms and legs. I’ve seen enough zombie movies to know what that means though. They’ll just die at home later and eat their parents and siblings.
It’s in the movies and it seems to be the case in this messed up reality. Getting bitten equals doomed. It might not be right away, but once those zombie teeth leave their mark, the doomsday clock starts ticking on you ending up a brain-chomping cock-rot.
So, that means now I have a car park full of mangled, blood covered high school kids and parents, a big SUV blocking the vehicular exit of the school – so even if I get in one of the vehicles in the car park to make my daring escape I can’t get the bastard out of the gates – and a whole heap of “what the fuck” to sort through.
Having raided the stores for this shitty little school notebook and a box of pens, I’m writing all this bullshit out to try and order my thoughts. I’m a social person who doesn’t know when to shut up, and with nobody else to talk to, it helps that I’m talking to you, unknown future reader who will find this after my death.
Shit. I need to give you a better name. I’ll think on that.
Honestly, I have no fucking clue what to do next. I’m trapped in a high school, surrounded by a legion of little bastards that want to bite chunks out of me, with no clear method of escape or plan for what comes after.
I mean, I could just run over the back field behind the school and leave all this shit behind me, but the field backs on to houses. It’s a residential area and I don’t really fancy the idea of jumping over a fence and coming face to face with a zombie doberman.
Fuck, is that even a thing? Does the zombie virus – or plague, or possession, or whatever it is – pass to animals? Being chased by a pack of zobermans is noton my “things Lockey would like to experience” list. See, just the thought of it is making me talk myself out of that plan. I love dogs. I really do. They’re awesome. But I’ve never been a huge fan of massive dangerous-lookingdogs that could tear all my lady-parts out in a single snap.
I like terriers, collies, mongrels and pugs, but if I see an undead doberman or rottweiler coming to chew through my most precious of orifices, I’ll probably just die on the spot out of sheer fucking terror. I love dogs. I really love dogs. But killer zombie dogs?
Nope.
So, if heading into the heart of a zombie council estate to be eaten by zombie smackheads or undead canines is off my list of things to do (and it is) I’ve got to figure out a way to get my ass from this school. I’ve got to get out of this building, through the car park, out the gates and prance off into the sunset. Though… I’ve got no idea where to go.
This planning shit is hard.
2nd ENTRY
WOMAN WITH A SORT OF PLAN
Well, not only is sleeping in a school classroom overnight uncomfortable, it is fucking pant-shittinglyterrifying. Honestly, I thought I’d been dropped into Silent Hill last night. When it gets dark, and there’s no power… holy shit, it gets fucking dark. And let me tell you, my dear stranger, the night carries with it a capacity for pant-smearing terror that the day cannot hope to match.
There’s a pile of desks and chairs I’ve pushed against the classroom door I am now lovingly referring to as the Great Wall of Lockey. It’ll take me ten minutes to pull all that shit clear to leave and I’m planning to do that shortly, because… remember how good I said my planning skills were? Well, what does a human being have to do to survive?
Yup. Eat and drink.
Sigh. I’ve got no food and no water. I’ve seen a hundred zombie movies and clearly learned nothing. You know how you laugh with your geek mates about what you’d do if the zombocalypse descended like a great celestial turd to curl upon the world? How you think you’ll be a fucking champ and know exactly what to do?
Bullshit.
Unless you’re a proper survivalist who truly ispreparing – even hoping – for the end of civilisation (and anybody who says theywantan apocalypse is a total turd of a person), when it comes, all us normal folk do is squeal “arrgh, shit, zombie, run!” And we all run like the little bitches we really are with no plan, no good sense, and not one fucking clue. How the fuck is the world supposed to survive a zombie apocalypse when most people run away from spiders and can be defeated by peanut allergies? We’re just not that strong these days.
So, here I am. Hungry. Thirsty. And of all things, I’m absolutely bursting for a shit. Yeah, that’s never in the movies is it? Everyone just thunders round popping their rounds into zombie skulls, but the heroine never says, “Dude, hey, dude… I gotta drop the kids off at the pool.” That’d be badass having Charlize Theron drop her panties and gruffly wave everyone ahead, nine-mil clasped in teeth and squatting because she’s got to saw a log in half, and all the while the zombies are getting closer. Whoosh. That’d be some tense cinema right there.
Nope, the need to go potty is never in the movies.
I need to go and purge myself and I’m building up the courage by scribbling in this stupid notebook.
Last night was so damn quiet. When you go to sleep at night, there’s usually some ambient noise outside your little bubble. Cars in the distance. Wind in the trees. Teenagers laughing overly loud because they’re pissed up on some cheap booze bought with a false ID. That kind of stuff.
Well, somebody pressed the world’s mute button last night. I couldn’t sleep because it was too quiet. I could hear my own heart beating in my ears. Freaky. You know what’s freakier though? Hearing the squeak of shoes somewhere below you.
There are zeds still in the school, maybe random staff members or students. How they died, I don’t know. But hearing that squeak… squeak… squeak…like some horrific metronome echoing up the stairs as something shuffled somewhere below? Eesh.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Like he was shuffling around in a circle. I’ve been waiting for whoever that zombie is to shamble off before I go out hunting.
In the movies, our intrepid heroes wield their handguns like a boss, headshot here, headshot there, headshots everywhere. But this is England. I can’t very well throw three darts for one-eighty and distract the zombies with a nice cup of tea now, can I?
Aw, I’d fucking lovea proper brew right now. Mental note… get a brew. I’m from Liverpool originally. A solid, boiled-in-the-bag English northern girl. How am I supposed to take on the apocalypse without a brew and two sugars? Mind you, there’s no power, so how the fuck will I even boil a kettle? Ray Mears I am not.
So, I’ve got something that resembles a plan. I think. Ha, because we all know how well Alexandra the Great has done so far eh?
But anyway, I’ve got a plan. I need food, I need water, I need a weapon and first and foremost, I need a great big shit. And the stretch goal? One cup of tea. Just one.
So, first off, there are toilets on the bottom floor of this building, right at the base of the stairs. How do I know this? Well, because this shithole was my high school when I was a teenager a decade ago and not much has changed. I know this place, so at least I’ve got that going for me.
Once I’ve dropped the kids off at the pool, it’s a quick run through some double doors into the canteen. In there, there’s got to be water, dried food, and canned stuff. From there, back up to base HQ and stash any fat loot I acquire.
Then I go back to the middle floor, to the end of the corridor that leads to a walkway crossing the inner courtyard, over to the sports hall, then down the stairs where all the art rooms are and…. drum roll please… the fucking woodwork department.
Tools. AKA weapons. Big ass hammers, screwdrivers, stuff. Before the morning is out, I’ll be hammers-in-hand and feeling better about my chances of escape. So, here’s the plan.
Downstairs, take a shit, wipe (front to back, I’m no savage), canteen to get food and water, back upstairs, dump my loot, back to middle floor, across to sports and arts building, downstairs, load up on weapons, back up to my classroom HQ, take the car, go to Mum’s, kill Phil, grab Liz, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?
Like my old stoner mate Rodney, the plan I have is simple.
But unlike Rodney ever did, this plan might just work.
Gotta take a dump first though, I’m fit to shit.
No More Heroes: Lockey vs the Apocalypse
“The apocalypse sucks, man.”
On 23rd June 2010, in every country across the globe, the dead inexplicably awaken with murderous resolve. For the first days, Erin Locke – Lockey to her friends – survives alone as society collapses in England with shocking speed.
With her trademark snarky sense of humour, goofy insights, and can-do attitude, she chronicles her early adventures in a journal to keep her spirits high and sanity intact, until she befriends retired Royal Marine veteran Nate Carter, and the unlikely duo find themselves a place they can call home.
Her newfound security is threatened by an encounter with other survivors that ends in blood, and a vengeful hunt by the dead man’s brother begins. After skirmishes with the self-styled feudal lord of their new lawless existence, the pair learn they are the only chance of salvation for innocents enslaved by the aspiring warlord and are forced to act for more than their own survival.
There are no heroes left, so the captives’ only hope are one fast-talking, foul-mouthed woman, and one deadly, middle-aged ex-marine.
Set in the world of Chris Philbrook’s best-selling zombie apocalypse, Adrian’s Undead Diary, No More Heroes opens the world up, illuminating the nightmare of the United Kingdom, and bringing its heroes into the light.
I edited this bad boy, and helped Carl take a story that was nearly perfect for AUD, and make it perfect for AUD. It’s a hilarious, tragic, beautiful, ugly version of the events of 2010 and beyond from the eyes of a young woman who’s lived a hard life, and just won’t let the apocalypse get her down.
I love this story, and I am so, so glad Carl chased this muse, and built on the world I created. The Lockey vs the Apocalypse series will be a huge hit with fans of Adrian Ring.
You can sample the first few sections of No More Heroes in the anthology Dead Lucky, and we’ll be releasing a few more excerpts as we get closer to release date.
October 27th. Kindle and print for sure, with audio not long after.
-Chris
Dead Lucky has arrived!
Today…
You can read about a pastor giving a sermon to a church full of the dead.
You can read about two friends lost in the desert, with undead following their every footstep.
You can read about a homeless man in The City, who once loved a redhead who’s long since dead. A homeless man who can now make a difference in the world.
You can read about Saul, who saved a boy, saved his own soul in the process, and is now being dragged back into a war he wanted no part of.
And of course, you can read about a brave man, and his two brave teenagers, on that day, when they were trapped in a porn store, armed only with Big Rubber Dicks.
Stories by Jay Wilburn, Chisto Healy, Shannon Clare, Chris Leininger, Christopher Tiberius MacDonald, Richard Restucci, Jacob Demers, Carl Meadows, and myself.
Jeffrey Clare of All Things Zombie was kind enough to write us a foreword as well.
Luck is quirky, to say the least.
Kindle and Print today, Audible in September.
The Bleed: RUPTURE is HERE!
“From three of apocalyptic fiction’s most innovative authors, THE BLEED series pits humanity against an infectious, all-consuming evil in stories packed with great characters, interesting ideas, and plenty of good end-of-the-world fun.” –Craig DiLouie, author of THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK
The first book in a new series spanning worlds and ages. A war is raging between gods and demons, with an unstoppable interdimensional terror – THE BLEED – destroying everything it touches. From ancient alien civilisations through to modern day London, through to deep space and beyond, nothing and no one is safe. The Bleed wants flesh. It wants to destroy life. It wants to be worshipped.
London: next week.
The Bleed strains at the edges of reality, and God has come to help Earth make a stand against the demons from beyond, but it’s going to come down to one frightened kid to save the entire planet from a blood-soaked fate.
The moon: sometime in the future.
A covert mission to colonize the moon is Earth’s last chance. The mission is going well, until the brand-new technology used to operate the colony begins failing mysteriously. Will the survivors of Earth’s civil war be caught up in a larger conflict they couldn’t ever know anything about?
Another world: another time.
The gods of this world left to fight the Bleed. The war raged on the horizon, at the very edge of this reality. One morning there are screams at the shore and the red tide arrives. The war against the monsters of the Bleed is no longer forgotten history, it’s happening now.
OUT NOW!
Buy here: https://amzn.to/37zwCsH
The Bleed: RUPTURE – Chapter Three excerpt
3
Filthy Halfsies
When the grandfathers to the grandfathers were young, the race of gods stepped through time and space, appearing in the North. Fleeing an ancient, world-eating evil they called the Bleed, they came to build anew, in peace. Other than strange hair and eye colors, they appeared similar to normal human beings—but they were taller, stronger, and smarter, and were ripe with powers from their home world. They brought unheard of learning and experience with them; they built their Endless City from one edge of the North to the other, with its mile-high walls and towers of stone, steel and wood soaring above that. They ruled the world from afar, without war, or even effort, ever watchful for the signs of the Bleed, their unending, ever-hungry foe.
They took husbands and wives and left thousands of half-breed children behind when the enemy they fled bled through the fabric of the worlds. Deep in their city, servants of the evil ate at their new home, one bloody soul at a time. They made their stand at the edge of the world, almost a score ago, and not one god has been seen since.
Without their vibrant presence, the gods’ city crumbles. The common folk wander through the world, aimless, as the world at the city’s feet awaits their victory, or defeat, at the edge, where the seas turn to ice and fall into night’s oblivion, where only gods dared tread.
#
“Why are there no more fish?” Arridon Gray muttered as he threw the nets down on Mercy Point’s last remaining rickety pier which jutted out over the sea’s edge. The sea’s agitated waves rolled in, foamy and cold, and smashed against the shrinking village’s stony shore wall.
Fishing under the summer sun off the docks with his father’s old nets had yielded Arridon no fish for the third day running. The young man wasn’t the only person with empty nets either; none of the other men standing on the shores of the Dawn Sea had catches that would fill a belly come dinnertime. After sitting on the pier’s end, boots dangling over the brackish waters below, lamenting the fortune he’d received over his twenty short years and the fortunes of all the other people struggling to feed themselves in the village of Mercy Point, he got to his feet. He packaged the old net back into his father’s large canvas bag and began the trudge inland to the home he shared with his father and younger sister. He walked carefully on the aged planks, using the golden eyes his mother had passed down to him to watch for rotted boards, perishing from disuse. The weight of the bag over his shoulder cut into his skin, but the calluses fought back.
He walked past the old fishery warehouses that no longer smelled of the day’s catch—and hadn’t for years—and then past the almost abandoned inns that used to cater to merchants coming and going on boats that no longer came or went on the Eastern Sea.
They were too close to the gods’ war at the world’s edge, or so the traders claimed.
Arridon believed in the war at the edge of the world, even though he couldn’t see it and didn’t know anyone who had. He believed in the gods fighting that war, including his mother, though she’d been gone for over a decade now. Worrying about his drunken father and protecting his little sister occupied all the anxiety he could work up in a day’s time. The gods’ war against the Bleed would come to them, or it wouldn’t. He had no say either way.
He passed through the village’s central courtyard, with its long-unused guillotine and trio of freshwater wells, and took the slight turn towards the street he and his family lived on. Several buildings ahead, he saw his sister leaning against the side of an abandoned home, surrounded by several of the local boys. Her eyes were narrowed into dagger slits of anger as she looked from one boy to the next.
“Shit,” he whispered, and picked up speed to get to her before one of the boys did something they’d regret.
They were arguing with her when he arrived.
“Why won’t ya?” one of them asked her, taunting. “You don’t think he’s good enough for ya, ya golden-eyed freak?”
“No, actually, he isn’t good enough for me,” Thistle shot back as she put her long brown hair up in a ponytail. “Not a soul in this godless village is worth so much as my freakish kiss, and at the bottom of that wretched, worthless pile is all of you and your friend Sebastian especially. Now kindly, you can all go walk off the edge.”
“Come on now,” the one Arridon knew to be Sebastian said. “No harm meant. Just one kiss. A plump, wet one, and I’ll be off.”
“Seb, you heard her,” Arridon said, approaching the four teenage boys harassing his sister. “Her lips are hers to decide what to do with. Now be off or I’ll drag each of you to the pier and throw you in, one by one. Let you float to the war and right over the edge of the world.”
“Oh, we was just having fun with Thistle, Arridon. You both get your halfsie panties twisted over nothing,” Sebastian shot back.
Halfsie.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been called a halfsie, but it stung just as bad every time. Arridon’s blood boiled. He dropped the heavy bag filled with netting on the cobblestone street and shot a hand out at the throat of the kid who’d called his sister and him such a terrible name.
“Say that again,” Arridon dared him. “Call my sister and me a halfsie one more time.”
One of the boys stepped forward to intervene, to rescue his friend from the older, stronger Arridon, but the “halfsie” man stared at him with his golden god’s eyes, and the bully froze in his footsteps.
“But that’s what you are,” Sebastian choked out. “Dirty half-people. You think the two of you would add up to one worthless person but you don’t. Your two good halves are gone and the halves you got left don’t add up to nothing.”
“We are both more than half a person, thank you,” Thistle shot back. “Our mother was a god from the Endless City, and at least we know what man mounted her in the dark, you fatherless bastard.”
Sebastian slipped into rage and struggled, but the deceptively strong grip skinny and tall Arridon had on his neck held him from attacking Thistle. He resorted to grunting in anger at her, and foaming at the mouth like the angry surf, or the mouth of a rabid dog held barely at bay. After several seconds of that, Sebastian gave up the struggle, and stood, arms limp at his sides.
“Listen to me,” Arridon said, leaning down into the bully’s face. “All of you listen to me. I won’t say this again; next time I’ll save my breath and just punch you in the face.” He looked to each of their scared faces, and when he knew they were paying attention, he continued. “My sister and I are good people. Whole people. We didn’t choose that our mother was one of the god-kind, and I’ll be honest: I’m glad she was, no matter what the haters say. Now you say what you will about the other gods, and where they went when they left, but our mother was a good person, and so are we. Now pay close attention. I’ll stop being a nice person if you keep harassing my sister and me, you understand? I’ll use the part of me that came from her, and I’ll shrivel your little dicks so small they’ll turn inside out. And then, I’ll lay a curse upon your fields and your harvests, and your children—if anyone ever willingly touches your shriveled cocks. None of you will ever be happy again if you cross my family, and none you know will be either.”
Coming this Tuesday from David Moody, Chris Philbrook and Mark Tufo.
Buy here: https://amzn.to/3fAsRq1
The Bleed: RUPTURE – Chapter Two excerpt
2
Base Station New Start, Sea of Crises, Earth’s Moon Surface
It was 2035, the year the earth came to a tipping point it could not recover from. Deforestation, pollution, melting of the polar ice caps, overpopulation, and an inability to provide enough food had pushed the world into a war that dwarfed the two great wars combined. Nearly every country that had a standing military had joined the fray, battling for scraps of an ever-diminishing supply of resources. Alliances were tested, broken and reformed on a continual basis. It got to the point that most didn’t even know which side, or who exactly, they were fighting with anymore. Humanity was on the brink of extinction, and somehow killing each other seemed the best solution. For twelve years, unbridled savagery was released upon the planet. Billions died in the conflict, and there seemed no end to the misery. War and the wretchedness of it were all anybody knew.
It was a French woman, Esmee Marchand, who had covertly approached what remained of the governments with a plan to save what was left. Esmee had been an ecologist; she’d studied at Harvard and Cambridge University before the war started. She bore witness to the destruction of her planet and had switched her field of focus to terra-forming. She’d devised an original method of rejuvenating environments; creating safe zones for human life, and with this knowledge in hand, she had offered an escape, a fresh start. So, even as countries tore themselves and each other apart, scientists and technicians worked in secret to create rockets and gather the materials, people and animals that would inhabit the moon, always with hope that someday they could return to the earth, once peace had been restored and the threats facing our survival had been removed. What they did not know, what they could not know, was that the Bleed had found their oasis among the stars, and it was doing what it had always done: destroy.
2070
Day 1 8:02 a.m.
“Woohoo!” Samantha Morrison screamed as Tyler sent the M.O.W.E.R., the Moon Octagon Wheeled Express Rover, into a tight donut. She was standing up in her seat, holding on to the turbulence bar mounted on the dashboard.
“Sam, sit your ass down!” her brother, Derrick, said from the back seat.
“Just drink more of Maddie’s hot water and stop being a prude!” She smiled and twisted around, making sure Tyler got a good view of her backside.
“This beats the shit out of calculus!” Juan said, grabbing the illegal bottle of alcohol from Derrick’s hands.
“Speaking of which, don’t you think they’re going to know something is up when half the kids are missing?” Derrick asked.
“Moon flu,” Tyler said as he got the mower out of its slide and was now racing forward. At sixteen, he was the oldest of the four by three months. He stood nearly six feet tall and was the object of desire to almost every girl in his class, though there were only five. It didn’t matter to him, as he only had eyes for Sam. He yearned for her. The only downside was her twin brother Derrick, whom she insisted come along on whatever adventure they leapt upon.
To Tyler, Sam was the perfect woman. She had dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and a smile that made him want to lasso the earth and give it to her on a charm bracelet. Then there was Juan, Tyler’s oldest and dearest friend. Their parents were molecular scientists and had been working closely together since they’d landed on the moon some twenty years ago. They’d known each other since their first remembered thoughts. They were as different as two people could be; where Tyler was tall and wiry, Juan was short and stocky. Their only similarity was that they both loved a Morrison. Tyler often smiled when he imagined what Derrick would think if he knew Juan had a thing for him.
“Don’t hog that!” Sam had to shout over the music blaring from the mower’s speaker system. She reached her hand back for the hot water. She took a hefty swig and sat down hard. “I think I might be…ebriated.”
“Ebriated?” Tyler laughed, looking over at her.
She laughed and then hiccupped. Tyler could not take his eyes from the heavenly sight.
“Dude! Tyler, man, look out!” Juan shouted from the back.
“Oh shit!” Tyler turned and was looking at one of the massive support pillars of a Terraforming Transfer Tower, a big one—a T3. The structure itself was over two hundred feet tall; the support pillar was ten feet across by ten feet high made of steel-reinforced concrete and it filled his windshield view. The mower wouldn’t so much as scratch it if it struck. Tyler pulled the wheel hard to his right; the internal gyroscopes did not have enough time to compensate for the sudden maneuver. The wheels on the left came up off the ground just as the front passenger quarter panel squealed in protest and collided with the tower. The force tipped the vehicle completely over and sent it skidding and twirling for close to five hundred feet before it came to a teetering stop on its roof. Dust swirled around outside and inside the vehicle. Electrical circuits began shorting, leaving a smell of burnt ozone in the air.
“Fuck! Everyone all right?!” Tyler fell to the ceiling as he undid his seat restraint. He looked over in panic to Sam, who was in a curled-up heap, blood flowing from her head.
“Good,” Juan said as he sat up and tried to help Derrick, who angrily shoved him away.
“Sam?” He was scurrying to move to the front and help his sister.
She sat up. “What a rush!” She was laughing.
“You scared us to death!” Derrick shouted.
“So dramatic, this one,” Juan said. “Uh, guys, better suit up,” he said as he watched a small crack in the window closest to him sucking out the all-important life-giving oxygen and replacing it with choking moon dust. “We’ve got a leak.”
The mirth at having survived the accident quickly gave way to alarm as Derrick moved to the rear of the vehicle to grab the pressurized suits.
“How far are we from the base?” Juan asked as he began to dress.
“I…I don’t know….” Tyler was quickly putting his feet through the legs as more oxygen seeped out. An alarm had sounded, warning of the loss of air, but promptly ceased as all electrical functions on the mower died.
Derrick again rooted around in the trunk, grabbing some liquid sealant. He squeezed the end of the tube; the semi-liquid moved toward the hole and before it could slip through, it spread out and sealed the breach.
“Good move, dork,” Sam said. He stuck his tongue out at her.
Once Sam had her suit on, she looked to the tower and up. “That’s number thirty-four, so we’ve got to be close to ten miles out.”
“You know the layout of the towers?” Tyler asked as he pulled up the front of his jacket.
“Our dad helped put them there and is responsible for the maintenance. He takes us out all the time to show us, as eventually this is supposed to be our job. Of course, we’ll be lucky if we don’t end up in jail over this,” Derrick replied, looking sourly at Tyler.
“There’s no jail on the moon,” Juan said. “That’s only in the books and movies from Earth.”
“Yeah, well, they might make one now just for us. We need to get moving; we’ve got two hours of air and a lot of miles to travel. Dumbasses,” Derrick muttered that last part.
“What about the winch? Can’t we use that to turn us over?” Sam asked.
“I think the damage is too severe to drive, and besides…” Derrick pointed to a spot some hundred feet away where the spiraled winch cable sat in its housing.
“Um, we have another problem,” Juan said as he held up the broken faceplate of his suit.
“Shit, take mine,” Tyler offered. “I’m the one that got us into this mess.”
“Okay. Sam and I can go and get help; Tyler, you stay here with Juan. When the oxygen inside the vehicle is finally tapped out, you’ll have to share what’s in the suits. Should have plenty.”
“Look at Take Charge Derrick, my hero!” Tyler went in to give the other a kiss.
“This is serious!” Derrick pushed him away.
“So was I.” Tyler put on a mock countenance of hurt.
“Come on, sis.”
“Shouldn’t she stay here? It would be safer,” Juan said.
“Not sure about that,” Derrick answered, moving toward the airlock. “And you know we’re always supposed to go out in pairs in case something happens.”
“Not sure if the rules apply anymore,” Tyler said. “We already drank something we weren’t supposed to have and stole a mower.”
“That’s on Maddie for even making it,” Juan said, trying to make light of the situation.
“I didn’t drink any, and I didn’t steal this truck.” Derrick was next to the manual override. “Sam, come on.”
“Why’d you even come?” Tyler could not hide the hostility in his voice.
“To save your asses when you invariably did something like this.” His sister came up beside him. He turned the crank quickly; the inner door to the airlock opened with a hiss. He and Sam walked into the small anti-chamber before he shut and locked the door behind him. Then he went for the outer door. It took the combined effort of both of them to turn the wheel, the door having suffered damage from the collision.
“You should take it easy on him,” Sam said through the comm device built into the suits.
“And maybe you should reevaluate what you see in him. He could have killed us all and we’re still in a lot of trouble out here. It’s not recommended to be more than a mile away from a facility, and here we are, ten times that.”
“It’s so boring here, Der! You know that. You must. You’re always reading; don’t the people in those stories ever have fun?”
“Most of what I read is on science.”
“Maybe that’s your problem.”
“I hate to tell you this, sis, but Tyler isn’t going to be riding a white stallion to your rescue any time soon.”
Sam pushed him. “Shut up. I’m sixteen—almost seventeen—and besides playing board games with our parents, I barely have any fun.”
“And I’m the dramatic one,” Derrick sighed. “You should talk less and walk more. This is going to be close.”
“Shouldn’t we run? Jog, maybe?”
“We’ll use up our air faster.”
“What about the oxygen level outside? Haven’t the towers made enough yet?”
“I realize Tyler is dreamy and all, but don’t you pay any attention in school?”
“Why should I? You always fill me in.”
“The oxygen around us is a little over sixteen percent.”
“That’s not enough?”
Derrick let his head sag.
“I’m kidding, okay? I know twenty-one percent is the optimal zone for human life, but won’t sixteen point-two-five be enough?”
“The only thing that can survive in that is fire. It’s going to be five more years before we can live outside.”
“Oh, can you imagine? To be free of these suits…to lie out on grass and stare up at the stars?”
“We can do all of that in the solarium.”
“You mean that domed building with the glass ceiling? Not the same, baby brother.”
“By four minutes. My guess is you probably tripped me on the way out so you could be first.”
They walked the next few miles in silence, doing their best to conserve oxygen. Sam tapped the base of Tower 12 then looked over to her brother; his eyebrows furrowed.
“Five miles out,” he said.
“I’m at a third of a tank,” Sam replied.
Derrick said nothing.
“Derrick.”
“I’m at less than that,” was all he offered as he plodded on. After a few hundred yards, he stopped. “Sam, I’m not going to make it. If I give you my tank, you should have just enough.”
“You’d sacrifice yourself for little old me? That means so much! Okay, take it off, I’ve got to get going.”
“I’m serious!”
“Not a chance in hell I’m leaving you out here. We’re both going to make it.”
Derrick didn’t think so, but he didn’t want to waste oxygen arguing with his sister. He couldn’t remember the last time that had worked out in his favor. His visor began to flash red just as they saw the facility on the horizon. So damn close, he thought. His head began to swim as he took in more carbon dioxide than air.
He didn’t remember falling to the ground.
Coming July 14th. Written by David Moody, Chris Philbrook and Mark Tufo.
Buy here: https://amzn.to/3fAsRq1
The Bleed: RUPTURE – Chapter One Excerpt
1
LONDON, NEXT WEEK
Somehow, everything in this complex sprawl of a city feels like it’s interconnected. More than seven million people live here and work and play and learn here, and despite the fact most of them stay happily within their own little bubbles, doing all they can to avoid talking to anyone else, the day-to-day runs pretty much like clockwork. The masses are together, yet isolated. People weave around each other along the clogged pavements, side-stepping without even looking up from their phones, skillfully avoiding collisions. The traffic stops and starts along heavily congested roads in bad tempered order. Deep underground, tube trains race from station to station at speed, dumping hundreds of people at a time onto platforms already crowded with hundreds more waiting to get on and be whisked away elsewhere.
It’s an incredibly complicated but largely well-oiled machine. It copes with occasional accidents and interruptions, compensating to keep everything moving. It would take something catastrophic to stop the whole damn thing in its tracks. Something way out of the control of Transport for London or the Metropolitan Police. Something bigger than anything ever seen here before. Something inexplicable and indisputably huge. Something mind-bending, world changing, even perception altering.
Something like what’s going to happen next Thursday.
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It began as a barely perceptible greenish glow illuminating the underbelly of a disconcertingly specific section of the overcast gray sky above the heart of the city. Hardly anyone noticed it at first, preoccupied as they were, as usual, with the Thursday morning commute. At just before seven o’clock, few people were in the mood to be interrupted or diverted. The daily race to their weekday destinations had begun.
But the glow remained and slowly increased in brightness, the bile-green hue growing brighter, more and more noticeable. There was something of the Northern Lights about it, but the possibility was so remote, and anyway…surely not with this much cloud overhead? In any case, whatever it was, it wasn’t as important as the meeting at the offices near Westminster at nine sharp, or catching the connecting train to Milton Keynes at eight-twenty-three, or making that appointment with the casting director of that show and not looking like a complete hungover mess, or getting a decent place in the queue for tickets for the—
Everything changed when the cloud cover was breached.
It looked like a comet—a luminous nucleus with a sickly green-tinged tail—but its movement was all wrong. Instead of racing across the London skyline, it was instead bearing down. And actually, as crowds of people now gazing skyward began to realize, it wasn’t racing at all. The impossible mass seemed to be drifting down with control, sinking slowly as if coming in to land. As the comet-thing descended, its speed almost so slow now as to be imperceptible, people began to react.
Most stopped dead in their tracks.
There were collisions on pavements and bumps in the road as people spotted it. Those who hadn’t yet looked up followed fingers pointing skyward and all began to sense the early morning light changing. The subtle green tinge which had been barely noticeable now covered the city. It made everything and everyone look unwell.
Folks who normally completed their morning commute without saying a word to anyone they didn’t know began to look to each other for explanations, though none were forthcoming. In an atmosphere of anxious uncertainty, strangers quickly became allies. Pointless questions were posed, pointless because even though no one had any answers, it didn’t stop them asking. It was a nervous thing. As the bright mass continued its painfully slow descent towards the heart of the city, people nudged those next to them and cocked their heads in the vain hope this was just a publicity stunt they’d not heard about or a scheduled light display their fellow commuters might have seen mentioned on the TV news.
It wasn’t long before panic set in. Despite the absolute lack of detail or information, one thing was clear as crystal: whatever it was up there, it was heading directly for the center of London on an unstoppable collision course. The true size of the comet—if that was what it really was—had been hard to discern, but when an Emirates Airbus 380 flew past and was dwarfed, and then a phalanx of military helicopters crawled in front of it like tiny but well-coordinated spiders, it became painfully apparent to everyone watching that this thing was huge. As in capable of wiping out the whole of London huge. As in…capable of ending all life on Earth.
Subdued British politeness turned to absolute fucking terror.
In contrast to the well-rehearsed order of just a few minutes ago, the pavements and streets were now chaotic in the extreme. And the faster people tried to walk or run or drive to safety, the slower everything became as one collision became two, two became four, and four became many more. It didn’t take a genius to work out that if—when—the comet hit, the area for miles around this place would cease to exist in seconds. Of course, that didn’t stop most people trying to get away.
Jennifer Allsopp wasn’t like most people.
She knew that it probably wasn’t worth running. She instead looked up at the glowing orb in the sky overhead, watching it tumbling over and over towards her. Although she’d have given anything to be somewhere—anywhere—else right now, she knew she was stuck. She could run at full speed for as long as she could manage, but it wouldn’t make any difference. She could catch the fastest bullet train (if they even had them here), but she knew she wouldn’t get far enough to escape the inevitable impact and blast wave.
Best not to bother trying, she decided. Save your energy. None of us are going anywhere. We’re all fucked.
Coming July 14th. Written by David Moody, Chris Philbrook, and Mark Tufo.
Buy here: https://amzn.to/3fAsRq1