Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:08:13 GMT
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 1 Year, 1 Month In — 16-01:
Rosa Drive consisted of a long gravel driveway which cut an uneven line between two tall, opposing fields of weeds. Daniel hated it on sight. He stared down the driveway from behind Atlanta’s leg. What he saw was a wicked thing, unyielding and harsh in its appearance. Even his considerable imagination couldn’t picture it as having once been green or farmable. His sentiments were reinforced when a October gust set the wilted corn stalks swaying within their weed-coffins in a way that was haunting.
Tugging on Altana’s overcoat, Daniel whimpered. “Please,” he said up to her. “I don’t like it.” And, in Daniel’s opinion, it didn’t like him either—he could sense its contempt for him as well as if it had a sign that explicitly (and vulgarly) said so. Not only that, he could just imagine the things it harboured for this very instant: creatures with claws perfect for cutting him, weaving passageways carved into the undergrowth meant for spying or sneaking up on him to pounce, and weird bugs whose sole intention would be to bite him!
There was no room for argument: the field and its many clawed and borrowing and insectile inhabitants all hated him.
He tugged more insistently at Atlanta’s coat and a hand came down on his head and unhelpfully ruffled his already unkempt hair. He batted away her hand like it was a nosy fly and frowned, pleadingly, up at her. “I don’t like it!” he hissed under his breath, fearing, rightfully, that the field would hear him and take swifter action in its plot against him. “I wanna go home!”
Now Atlanta squatted on her heels, so she would be at eye level with him, and countered his hesitate, fearful grimace with a smile of her own. She put her hands over his cold ears—which were being chilled by the mild breeze—and whispered, teasingly but warmly, “I thought we had a deal, little dude.”
They did. Daniel had agreed to come, to move into the farmhouse, in exchange for the ability to pick his own room. But, realizing what evil lurked in what was supposed to be their new yard, Daniel choose to deny the existence of any such agreement.
“We didn’t!” He looked over at Ashley for support.
His other mom grinned, and at that moment he knew just whose side she was on. Strands of her blond hair lashed her face in the breeze.
She’d betrayed him. Daniel’s intake of breath was audible. Then he closed his mouth and tried to act inconspicuous under his parents’ increasingly amused gazes. He had thought of a plan. It might just work…
He turned around and began to run back to the truck Ashley had driven there. She had taken the keys, but it was unlocked, so he could get inside the truck’s cabin and simply refuse to come out again. It was a short sighted plan, but he didn’t get far enough into it to realize that: Atlanta caught him around the stomach, pulled him into a hug, and picked him up off the ground.
He tried his best to remain angry, but the giggles came on their of their own accord. Once he realized he was having hun, he pouted and began to struggle again. Then, realizing Atlanta was taking steps down the driveway, a genuine pang of fear passed through. He stopped fighting, buried his face in her shoulder, and tensed up. Atlanta stopped walking immediately.
“Dan?” she coaxed. “What’s wrong?”
“It hates me,” came Daniel’s muffled voice.
Ashley took several steps and began to rake her fingers through his black hair. Her grin had mostly faded. “What hates you?” she asked softly.
“The field,” came his reply.
His parents exchanged a glance while his face was still buried. There was a thoughtful moment. Ashley spoke at last. “It doesn’t hate you,” she whispered, sandwiching Daniel in a hug. It was a little comforting. “It’s just lonesome.”
“Lonesome?” Daniel repeated, looking up doubtfully. His eyes were narrowed to slits as he regarded the field again with greater scrutiny. The stalks swayed again i nthe wind. There was a sound, like an unintelligible whisper. He once again buried his face. “No! It’s angry! It’s hates me!”
Ashley frowned at Atlanta as she pulled. Atlanta nodded, thinking, then smiled wryly. She asked, “Do you know what empathy is, Daniel?”
He grunted. It sounded vaguely in the positive.
“Ten try to empathize with the field,” she told him. “It may be hard, but try to imagine what it was like a year ago. It was probably the greenest, most fruitful, most beautiful field in all of the Hill Country. It had a bunch of farmers who weeded it, watered it, weeded it, kept it pretty, cared for it. But then what happened?”
“The dead,” Daniel whispered softly, taking handfuls of Atlanta’s overcoat in his tightening grip.
“You got, mister. The walkers drove out the farmers and ranch hands, and it was all downhill from there for this poor field. The walkers didn’t bother it so much, since the people living there had left, but a mean bunch of animals moved in. Hogs, squirrels, and even raccoons tore up the crops. It came back the next season, maybe a little hateful, but mostly just sad and lonely. It had been thinned out on account of the animals and the fact that the seeds weren’t planted at the right depth. So it came back thinner and weaker. And the weeds took over quickly and choked out what was left. And it learned to be angry.”
“So,” Daniel said, a little confused, “you’re saying I’m right?”
Atlanta shook her head. “Not entirely. It’s angry and hateful because of its loneliness. That’s a very important detail. Anger and hatefulness aren’t its base nature.”
He glanced at the field ponderously. “So...” he said slowly, reluctantly. He was starting to grasp what she was saying, but was still resistant to the idea of staying in the farm house. “So it’s just sad?”
“Sad and lonely,” Ashley whispered. “And what do you when someone’s sad and lonely?”
Daniel looked at the field again with a slightly altered lense. The cornstalks were indeed sparse now and clearly dying, choked by weeds drinking up all their water and nutrients and ravaged by hungry and vicious critters. He said nothing.
Afraid they might lose their progress, Atlanta said, “We’ll gonna walk down the drive and see the house, Daniel. The field won’t hurt you. It’ll just sulk a lot and look gloomy. Come on, I’ll carry you the whole way. What do you say?”
He said nothing for the longest time, then nodded because he felt it was probably the right thing to do, what his parents needed him to do. Atlanta squeezed him and walked down the drive. Daniel watched the overgrown grass on either side feign lunges at him but never actually touch him. Whether this was because it didn’t really want to strike him or because they were out of its reach, Daniel couldn’t be sure. Eventually they made it through to a considerably larger clearing with grass that merely came to Daniel’s knees rather than eclipse him entirely.
Atlanta set him on the ground. He looked back at the swaying passageway they had just passed through and conceded to himself that it was a tad more daunting in theory than it had actually been in practice.
Ahead lay the farmhouse with its cracking and flaking white paint that showed through to weathered gray boards underneath. One window, close to the front door on the bottom floor, was broken and covered by a blue tarp. The house was at the center of a large, square clearing and there was a worn down barn that, coming from the driveway, was located to the left side of the house. And there was a shed behind the house, currently out of sight.
“This is home,” Atlanta said softly.
“Home,” Ashley repeated.
“I still don’t like it,” Daniel muttered.
“Since this is all actually an elaborate punishment for you,” Atlanta said, “it’s time for the worse torture of all: you get to pick your own room. If you don’t like that, we can always use an alternative means of torture.”
“I think I’d rather pick my room.”
“Smart man.”
Atlanta walked toward the house and the rest of them followed. Looking up at the farmhouse, it seemed to loom over Daniel, making feel a flash of vertigo. He sought Ashley’s hand and she allowed him to squeeze it for comfort as Atlanta unlocked the door—it was a new lock, put in recently—and the three of them proceeded through the doorway.
Their footsteps were loud and echoey on the hardwood in the empty house, though it wasn’t unfurnished—there was, all told, a complete set of furniture in the living as well as, Daniel was aware, throughout the whole house—it was just empty in a lifeless sense, exactly like the one time early in Daniel’s life that he had visited the home of a recently deceased relative whom he didn’t know. He noticed, glancing around, still clutching Ashley’s hand, that there were no pictures featuring the farmhouse’s previous occupants. They had all been taken down. This realization made him uncomfortable, made him feel like an intruder.
Ashley pulled her hand away and crouched in front of Daniel. “Time to pick your room. Any one of them on the second floor could be yours. Think you can find your way upstairs?”
He nodded.
Atlanta came back over and ruffled his hair. She said, “There isn’t anything in here to hurt you. All the same, stay on the lookout and be careful. Alrighty?”
He made a noncommittal noise and hesitantly moved through the living room.
The farmhouse was massive. Six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a walk-in pantry, a storeroom, a utility room, a cellar, an attic, a study, a large number of closets, a den, and the living room constituted its interior. Outside were a front and back porch and, of course, the equally massive barn and the more normal-sized shed. For his first visit here, it was all a bit overwhelming, so he made a beeline to the stairs and climbed up to the first landing. It was there, looking up those remaining steps at the eerie emptiness ahead, that his courage faltered.
Just as he was preparing to head back, he heard Ashley listing off chores they needed to get working on in preparation for the others and that provided the push needed to send Daniel up the rest of the stairs and onto the second floor.
He paused at the top, looked left, right, and continued left down the hallway connecting the upstairs rooms. The first door he passed looked like a study—he peeped in, because the door was open, and saw a desk as well as several shelves filled with books—and he hurried to the next door, feeling that he didn’t belong in there. His fingers brushed the cold knob of a closed door and withdrew shivering. He assumed it was only a closet and moved on.
The door of the next room, capping off the hall, was wide open. He entered, feeling an loosening in his sense of unbelonging as he surveyed the interior. There was an undressed twin-sized bed—which he was thankful for, because it would have been uncomfortable had the bed still be dressed by the house’s previous occupant—and the tanned, weathered-looking wallpaper bore a repeating flower design that was dark green stalks with small purple blossoms. He stepped closer, squinted, and believed he could make out columns and newspaper text underneath the paint. He realized it had been a custom effort, homemade. He reached out and ran his hand along the stenciled flower. It had a pleasant texture.
Daniel drew a few steps back and saw some kind of veiled spectre made movements in his peripheral vision. His eyes snapped to it, and he saw the white curtains hung about the window were being pushed in by a breeze. He approached the window cautiously, eying the curtains with mild concern, and looked out with a terrified, somewhat awed expression. The field was larger from this perspective, and the weeds and grass rolled and rippled in the wind like water or fur, stretching to its northern boundary of a far off treeline, the remaining, dying corn stalks dotting it like blemishes. It did look sad and lonely.
How do you make friends with a field? he wondered, imagining himself shaking a stalk like it was a hand and saying hello, feeling rather silly.
Daniel crept away from the window, giving the pleasant wallpaper another look as he returned hallway and checked out the opposite side of the hall. He ignored another closed closet door, peeked into the den, and passed up a larger bedroom because he knew he didn’t need such a large space. He entered the final room, which was similar in size to the other one he was considering, and he guessed—by the blue wall color and checkered pattern below the trim high up on the wall—that this was a young boy’s room before the outbreak.
Goosebumps broke out on his skin and he rubbed his arms, an unsettled look crossing his face, and shivered. Uncle Jerry’s jacket, while oversized for Daniel, was perfectly capable of warding off the cold. Now he wondered if it could ward off monsters. He touched the cold wall—it had a genetic texture—and his shivering was renewed. Haunted.
Maybe it was just… a lonesome ghost. He could imagine that easier than a field. But, oddly, he disliked the idea of befriending a ghost even more than he did the field. He stayed long enough to look out the window, seeing south down the Rosa Drive all the way to the scar the county road cut into the overgrown fields, but the road itself was hidden. He returned to the stairs and leaned on the banister as he made his decision. Whichever he chose, the one he didn’t choose would be taken by tomorrow. If he regretted his decision, it was unlikely he would get a chance to change his mind, unless someone was willing to trade.
[The Northern Bedroom—overlook of the field, pleasant wallpaper.]
[The Southern Bedroom—overlook of Rosa Drive, possibly haunted.]
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:10:14 GMT
Alex Kotov — On the road, East Texas — 1 Year, 1 Month In — 16-02:
Through the red lens of an eye swollen to a slit, Alex watched clouds drift like slowly migrating landmasses on a map draw up by a drunk cartographer. His other eye was either fully swollen shut or dead and blinded. He didn’t know which it was. He didn’t particularly care which because his entire body was a mess of throbbing breaks and wounds and in some places, a certain, more worrying numbness.
His brain worked ferverishly to conjure—through the ebb and flow of pain and the gunshot-like projectile of agony which stuck him each time the truck hit a bump, and with a high amount of incoherence—a thought: I’ll kill him.
His second thought was Hannah and filled with guilt for having thought of her second. He had know idea what Adrian had done with her, or done to her. Alex remembered some of the things Hannah had told him about Adrian’s passes at her made during her first few months at Hiddleston College—before the dead had even begun walking—and the simple act of remembrance made his blood want to boil, and it would have if he hadn’t lost so much of it. Hannah was in danger. She needed help. He knew, even in his delirium, that wherever he was being driven, it was away from the campus. He didn’t know what destination waited for him, or what waited for him at that destination, but whatever it was, he didn’t want it. He wanted to go back to the campus, to rescue Hannah… to kill Adrian.
Alex was not a violent person at his core. He had never sought to cause harm to another human being—save for the times in his youth, back when he lived in Santa Barbara, when his so-called friends had made fun of him for his mother’s adultery until he would lash out—until now. He entertained many violent fantasies.
Adrian at gunpoint…
Adrian kneeling before me, a baseball bat prepared to strike…
Adrian prone, his jaw sitting on the curb… Me, boot raised high, preparing to stump...
These, Alex figured, probably weren’t healthy in the slightest, but they helped keep the pain out of his mind. He made the mistake of asking himself Just how am I supposed to do any of this? and injecting realism into his wonderings. He came to the conclusion that none were likely possible given his state of health. He was fucked up, had more fractured bones than he could add up, could hardly see, and was probably in worse shape than that time he was hit by a car before he and his father moved out of California. This time there weren’t any hospitals, doctors, nurses, or physical rehab centers for him to make another absurd, slow, and painful recovery. He would never fully recover, much less make a partial recovery. Things would inevitably heal wrong. He was, in a word, broken.
He held onto another fantasy and didn’t let this one die, or fade, or allow him himself to inject realism to it: this time Adrian was the one tied down to the chair, and Alex was the one asking the former mathematics professor questions, asking him why he was such a horrible leader, asking him why he saw fit to be such a creep, and every time Adrian attempted to defend himself with excuses and lies, Alex would use the same baseball bat Adrian had used on him during his own interrogation, use it in just the same way as Adrian had.
As he thought it over and rehearsed his questions and imagined how he would swing the bat, the sky and clouds above became more abstract and strange. Even the pain from the pickup bed bouncing seemed to fade. The motivations and notions of those driving him wherever they were driving him became less and less consequential. His eye shut fully… because his head still hurt… and after a moment of shuteye, he opened it again, and it was no longer a blue morning—it was a red evening. He was no longer in the pickup bed—he was lying in grass, and could feel the chilling morning dew soaking his clothes, wetting the dried blood covering his shirt and jeans.
He inhaled fully in surprise at this revelation and the action sent waves of agony rolling and echoing through his torso and limbs as he writhed. It began to subsided into the odd, jolting spasm. Once it had settled, he lay still in the unmowed grass. He breathed shallow, if still agonizing, breaths and tried to think over what had happened.
The drivers had, he knew, been ordered to see to his execution, which was probably going to be a quiet ordeal, far away from campus. They had left him alive instead. Unless they were still around and planning to finish him off at any moment. Maybe they were waiting for him to regain consciousness. Though, that seemed unlikely given that his loud sufferings just a few minutes ago would have draw their attention. More likely, he guessed, they had just abandoned him in some ditch rather than get their hands dirty.
This thought sparked anger in him.
He realized he would have to move eventually. He couldn’t just lay here under the open sky until some of the dead came wandering up to him for a snack. And it would be night soon. Still, it was a daunting prospect after the pain from just taking a full breath, so he started slow and simple: he flexed his fingers, hands, and wrists—a little scraped up from the chaos outside the Admin building and the scuffle he had with a guard during his apprehension, but otherwise intact. Next he moved up to his arms and moved them—pain emitted from many deep bruises along his arms instantly, but despite wincing from the pain, nothing felt broken, just horribly battered. His legs were a worse affair—one kneecap might have been fractured from taking a hit from Adrian’s bat and something was wrong with the shin of his other leg—so he figured he’d been walking with a limp, if he managed to walk at all.
He would have to try first to find out.
The ground beneath him was canted. Turning his head and neck slightly, feeling pain by doing so, but mostly numbness, he could see where the embankment fell and rose again on the other side of a small trickle of water. He could try to rolling downslope to get on his stomach and, maybe, onto his feet from there, but he imagined what would happen if he couldn’t rolling, the torment that would inflict, and the possibility he would drown himself in that poor excuse for a creek.
He figured, with the full use of his arms, he would be able to stop himself. If not... He decided not to give it any more thought and threw his weight. White hot pain surged as he turned over. He quickly scrambled onto his knees, despite the horrible sensation it caused, to relieve the weight from his chest and face. He shuddered there on his hands and knees, black dots dancing in his vision, strifling his gasps so his broken ribs wouldn’t cause him to blackout.
He remained in this position for a long time as the pain faded away. Most of it didn’t. The pain in his knee was burning while his legs remained bent. Bile churned in his stomach. He knew he was on the verge of vomiting despite having had nothing to eat since breakfast on the day of the coup, which he thought of as two days ago but now realized could have been much longer.
His jaw. He worked his jaw and felt pain flare in the numbness of his face like a candle in darkness. And the darkness, the numbness, was slowly fading. He imagined what it would feel like to dry heave with a broken jaw.
He tried to stand, succeeded, and blacked out for half a second before he blinked the darkness away and staggered, catching himself but at the cost of another intense burn of pain from all his wounds as his muscles fired, contracted, and spasmed. He somehow remained standing.
Which way? he thought, looking down both ends of the highway, east and west, the glowing orb of the sun visible to the west. He needed to go east. He looked that way at the dark purple filling the sky, at the stalled cars littering the road, at the road which had been cleared haphazardly and incompletely, at the tall pines trees lining either side.
He moved forward in that direction. Pained surged. He had to force himself not to grit his teeth. He managed a dozen steps before, feeling dizzy, he had to stop out of fear of collapsing. He had limped, but he knew he could do it. He could make it. He had to make it. He pictured Adrian tied to the chair, himself with all the control, and managed another thirty steps before the pain made it difficult to concentrate on the fantasy. He took a rest.
I can do it, he thought, trying not to inhale too deeply as his body demanded he pant.
Alex looked to his right and saw a lane breaking off from the highway. In between the tall tree trunks and greenery, he could see that the little drive led to a house. He could rest or look for first aid supplies there. A mad dash back to the college was not sustainable. He would have to stop eventually. Daylight was running out, though. Should he try to make the most of the remaining evening and stop, rest, and further evaluate his situation somewhere down the road, or do so now and loose his first evening?
[Press on and find somewhere to rest down the road.]
[Rest until morning at the house at hand.]
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:11:04 GMT
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 1 Year, 1 Month In — 16-04:
Early in the morning, after his first night spent in the farmhouse, Daniel opened his eyes and looked at the blue-gray light seeping through the curtains. For a time after rising from bed, he stood in front of the window, letting the same damp breeze that stirred the field cool his arms, chest and face. He then put on his shoes and wandered down the hall, but paused before he started downstairs.
The door to the child’s bedroom was cracked. He stepped back around the banister and walked toward the door, wondering if the ghost was relieved or resentful that he didn’t choose to occupy its room. Whatever the case, when he entered, he found the room empty, or so it appeared. He approached the window, saw something moving in the beyond the smudged glass, and opened it to have a look.
In the weak light, a lone figure parted the weeds and dying cornstalks in the middle of one of the fields. Daniel watched, transfixed, his heart suddenly pounding, as the figure clumsily carved a path and stepped onto the driveway. It paused there, making a few indecisive steps, first in the direction of the farmhouse, then toward the county road. Finally, it crossed the driveway, reentered the field, and began ambling a crooked path toward the property’s western boundary. The breeze shifted and brought the figure’s fermenting stink to Daniel’s nostrils.
He groaned sickly and shut the window again before leaving. Downstairs he stopped in front of his parents’ door and knocked. There was no answer, so he peeked inside, but saw no one. He looked around the rest of the bottom floor. Empty. He stepped out onto the back porch and he heard something roar in the barn.
Wide-eyed, Daniel watched the giant doors. Again, the roar boomed out, followed by a sputter before it died down. Was it an animal, Daniel wondered, or a monster, something nightmarish? He began to edge backward and, when the sound flared up again and didn’t stop and the barn door flew open, he sprinted back into the house.
The roar was now a continuous note, and it was on the move. When Daniel worked up the courage to peek out. he saw Atlanta maneuvering a lawnmower around the backyard while Ashley latched the barn doors. Feeling silly but remembering the walker, Daniel emerged from the house. Ashley saw him before he could try to get her attention and yelled something into Atlanta’s ear, who nodded, smiled at Daniel, and continued to mow. Ashley jogged up to the porch.
“Sleep well?” she asked.
“There’s a walker,” he murmured.
“Oh.” She frowned. “Where?”
“In front of the house. In the field. I saw it through the window upstairs.”
She sighed. “Thanks for telling me. Wait here while I let Atlanta know.” She ran off.
Atlanta shut off the lawnmower as they spoke. They moved on without it, Ashley gesturing for Daniel to follow them. He hurried after them through the grass, following them around the house. The adults halted several yards from field. They’d heard something. He listened as well and the sound repeated itself: clumsy feet, weeds being crushed.
Ashley sighed again, slipping the safety off on her pistol but leaving it holstered. Instead, she drew a knife, its edge sharpened and well-maintained. Before advancing into the overgrown field, she asked Atlanta to come with her. Atlanta nodded, led Daniel over to the front porch and told him to sit tight until they got back—it would only take a second.
She drew her own blade and together she and Ashley entered the field, soon wandering out of sight, though Daniel could still hear the receding sounds of their movement. He ran to the steps and got on the porch, then climbed onto the railing. The surface of it was flat and easy to stand on, and he had a perfect perspective on the field. There were three wakes being made, and Daniel could the tops of his parents’ head. The walker was hunched and just hidden from sight. Daniel held his breath. His parents were converging on the walker, and the walker had already left the barbed wire fence in favor of their direction, likely having heard them. Daniel watched, more concerned for his parents than awed by their strategy, as they split up and closed in on the walker from opposite sides The walker, its attention momentarily torn between the two sources of commotion, ultimately advanced in Ashley’s direction. After it had turned, Atlanta shot forward and buried her pocket knife in the walker’s skull. It toppled, leaving, from Daniel’s point of view, a small gap in the field where its body lay, and there was silence save for the hymn of the field in the breeze.
“Daniel!” Ashley called. “Go get the wheelbarrow from the barn!”
Breathless, Daniel lowered himself down to the grass and ran around to the back. The wheelbarrow, tipped on its nose and tucked into a corner of the barn, took some effort to unwedge, but once it was, Daniel was able to wheel it, albeit awkwardly, to the front of the house. Ashley was waiting at the edge of the field, ready to take it from him when he arrived.
“Wait here,” she told him, and pushed the wheelbarrow into the field. Many of the weeds closed again in her wake, but some, treaded on by her boots and the single wheel, remained parted, leaving a curving path. Eventually the her trajectory took her away from his line of sight and he ran back to the porch to see if he could see them work, but all he could see were their heads, strained with exertion and disgust, as they carefully lifted something together.
He descended the porch steps again and, keeping his distance, waited as they emerged with the laden wheelbarrow, at which point he saw it.
The walker was sprawled inside, its arms tucked next to its torso, its legs hanging over the lip. It was male, or had been. Its face was decayed and infused with a sort of feral expression that was somewhat lulled by death—now it almost appeared sleepy. Daniel stared at it without feeling sick, or even really being disturbed. It seemed to merely be a human corpse, dug up, perhaps, from its grave. What he felt might have been pity. He averted his gaze to escape those feelings and instead looked down at his wrist—the waterproof watch, with its slick design and inlaid compass along band, said it was thirteen minutes till six. It wouldn’t be long before the others arrived.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:11:56 GMT
Mei Xia — Colorado Springs, CO — 10 Months In — 16-03:
The buildings were negative spaces against the night sky. Mei Xia navigated her way through the boulevard by starlight, studying the odd flicker of candlelight behind glass and drawn curtains high above her in thoughtful silence as she jogged.
Work had kept her later than it should have. The guard, who was supposed to relief her sharply at eight PM, had showed up half an hour late visibly drunk. Mia, of course, had refused to give her post—they weren’t guarding a tool shed, after all—and reported the infraction once a fresh guard was able to relieve her.
It had been nearly ten when she was finally able to leave. She had left her post and gone straight to her route, hurrying if she wanted to squeeze her nighty jog in before curfew, which loomed ahead—according to her watch, which was set to the community’s standardized clock and as close to Mountain Time as possible—in a mere thirteen minutes.
The weight of the city’s gaze was on her shoulders and back as she followed the reflective yellow line. The sidewalks, the streets themselves, were empty, but she didn’t let herself think she was alone—they were watching from above and behind glass, glimpsing her in the lit cones of streetlights as a blur of dark clothing and short hair, a moon of a face and little else in the moment they had to see her. Her pace was quick, limber, and more importantly, consistent—she could run for like this for hours. Most people assumed just she was gearing for a change in her career, maybe to a scout, or scavenger, or even a courier. Had they knew the truth, that it was just cathartic exercise, many would have probably have scoffed at such a waste of calories. It wasn’t a waste, she believed, if it kept you together. Boredom and monotony, as she routinely experienced as a guard, could drive you insane, or at least depressed—she could do without either.
Her route wound around the downtown area of Colorado Springs—slightly altered this night to accommodated starting from her station—and its southernmost stretch took her right up against the wall.
Ahead, it towered, riding the edge of an open courtyard of an office building and joining with another building across the street. The courtyard was smartly converted into a garden. Interlacing it were small paths. Mia’s route veered into garden. On one side of her was the wall—a dark monolith—and on the other, the planters, tightly packed to converse space.
Had the sky not been clear, had the moon not been shining, Mia would not have seen the lump. She passed it but hesitated. Her first assumption was that she’d seen several bags of mulch piled on top of another. Never one to leave with only a guess, she drew the flashlight from her belt and flicked it on. The beam traveled along the path as she walked, turned, and illuminated the still-flushed features of a man tucked away between planters.
She shut the flashlight off instantly, the image burned onto her mind’s eye: the blood glistening around a gaping maw of a neck wound, having flowed down onto the man’s uniform, which was outfitted for guard duty atop the wall.
Mia turned and left. She continued her route, her grip tight over the stack of her flashlight, which she didn’t plan to return to her belt. Her muscles were tensing, preparing to lash out at any shadow that might detach itself. She wasn’t so concerned about the dead man. She was left thick skinned, an expert at appearing outwardly impassive, by her training in the years before the plague. Not to mention the apocalypse had a way of adding additional layers of callous. No, what concerned her, what set her mind racing, was that the guard’s rifle—the kind of weapon you’d bring into a warzone—hadn’t been appeared to be on his person.
Mia left the courtyard at a slow jog, feeling the peach fuzz on her neck tingle as if somehow aware it was being sighted upon. Her expression remained neutral. Nothing had fired yet. Maybe it wouldn’t. A gunshot would wake up the whole city and bring its fury down on the shooter.
Her own footsteps were the only ones she heard as she returned to the streets. She only left her route and sped up once she was safely out of sight and away from any vantage point the killer might have had in the garden. The police precinct was close. She headed toward it to report the murder, certain it would be a long night.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:12:42 GMT
Alex Kotov — On the road, East Texas — 1 Year, 1 Month In — 16-05:
Alex ambled toward the driveway, moved up it. Each step stabbed his shattered knee cap as if with a glowing hot fire poker. There was no question: his jaw was broken. His exertion kept involuntarily tightening it, paining him.
The numbness had all but faded, and the speed of his forward slog and the lack of progress were about as excruciating as the pain. Ahead waited the entrance, closed off by nothing more than a screen door.
When he stepped foot on the stairs, he almost didn’t believe it. He brought his bad leg to the next step, put weight his weight on it as he pushed off with the other, and nearly fainted for the wave of dizziness that assailed him. His grip held fast to the handrail, let the nausea pass, and continued upward at a slower pace.
He grabbed the handle, stepped inside, and let the screen door bang shut behind him as he stared at interior. The drywall of the hallway was torn off the walls, and it blanketed the floor in chunks and piles of dust, save for a little path carved by the passage of feet.
A drughouse? He hoped it hadn’t been used recently, but couldn’t be sure. It was, however, a certainty that he wouldn’t find anything of use here.
He walked through the drywall and dead electrical wires, ripped from the walls like the veins of some desecrated corpse. He rested against the doorframe of the living room, looking in. Someone had cut open the couch and cushions and pulled out their stuffing.
Alex moved further down the hallway, passing a closet door hanging by a single hinge and a kitchen with its countertops demolished, until he came to a bedroom. The walls had been torn out here as well, all over the bed, but he was past the point of caring.
The bed appeared intact under the debris, so that was one consolation. He walked around the bed, checking the other side of the room and finding nothing, then coaxed off the sheet off the two corners, and discovered he didn’t have the energy to it from the remaining ones. Pushing it as far to the side as he could manage, the sheet and the debris filling it and covering formed a little barrier atop the bed, facing the door.
The mattress was dirty and stained, but Alex couldn’t find a damn to give, and he eased himself onto it and looked up at what little remained of the ceiling. The dust he’d churned up swirled in the air above him in the fading light.
However much strength he’d started off with, it had left him entirely. The flame of hatred he had been clinging was dimmer. He tried to imagine all the ways he would hurt Adrian, but his pain and exhaustion had taken away his desire for such things along with his focus.
When night came, and the chill got to him, he drew the sheets over his body and lay awake with his eyes locked shut, trying to recapture his hate, fan the flames, but it was use. Eventually, exhaustion won over pain and he nodded off.
The screen door slammed and snapped him awake.
By force of will, Alex stifled a cough. The dust. Ah, shit. He hadn’t considered what inhaling it might do. His throat itched. His jaw tightened again, and his other muscles tensed as well, striking a horrible note of pain and nausea throughout his body.
Don’t gag.
He listened to the shoes pounding down the hall and shut his eyes again.
Shit shit shit.
They entered the bedroom, two pairs of footsteps, pushing through the debris on the floor. Alex heard their winded breath. They had been running, and now the crap they’d thrown into the air was making them cough and squeeze.
Alex was practically holding his breath. His nose tickled.
“Get under,” one of them barked, and Alex felt the bed rock and wondered, worried, why they were hiding under the bed. The speaker had been male. Beyond the fact that he sounded young, there were no other conclusions Alex could draw. He heard the same man speak again, and this time the voice came beneath him. “Quiet.”
It was an order. The other person didn’t speak. By the sounds of their coughing and squeezing, Alex guessed they were both male and now covered in drywall.
They hadn’t seen him. They’d been in too much of a rush to realize it.
But why?
That was when he heard it: a quick, rhythmic tapping on the tarmac. No sooner had Alex thought Hooves than the horse turned up the driveway and the hoofbeats changed pitch as they pounded gravel. It wasn’t the only set. More horses, presumably carrying riders, entered earshot and moved from to the road to the drive, heading toward the house.
The tickling on his nose grew too much, too unpleasant.
Shit.
Shit shit.
“Quiet,” the man under his bed whispered again to his companion.
F-fuc—
Alex squeezed. The man beneath him cursed with a start, and something hit the underside of the bed, likely his head, but Alex was too busy writhing in pain to take notice.
Boots fell on the boards of the porch. The screen door was wrenched open, and the steps of multiple people traveled up to the hall. They diverged throughout the house, raising such as racket that Alex almost didn’t pinpoint the steps that headed toward the bedroom and stopped outside the door.
Alex began to cough and squeeze simultaneously, uncontrollably. There was nothing he could do as someone ventured inside. He saw the barrel of the person’s pistol as dark tendrils coiled around him and his senses. Unconsciousness came, releasing him from the agony of his injuries.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:13:30 GMT
Alex Kotov — On the road, East Texas — 1 Year, 1 Month — 16-06:
When Alex finally woke up, he had all the usual aches and pains, plus an urge to cough. He found himself in a tent, lying on blankets, naked but for the blanket that covered him. It appeared to be day, for pinpricks of light penetrated the tight weave in places—a spell of warmth after what had been weeks of overcast. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on outside the tent: bustling, cursing, laughing. From some close by, he heard a whinny, and he recalled the events in the trashed house, the clop of hooves he had heard.
With care, he stretched his limbs. He received twinges of pain which, he knew, were warning of much greater pain to come if kept testing himself. But it was sufficient to find that the sensation of constraints he had been feeling was actually a cast, or perhaps several layers bandages. Whatever the case, he settled back into the blankets and seemed to doze for a while, comfortable in the knowledge that his injuries had been cared for: that had to mean something, had to mean he was safe, at least for now.
Some time later, he awake came again, this time to the sound of footsteps right outside the tent flap. He propped himself as he best he could. As this person approached, they became dark silhouette against the canvas, one which now crouched and reached for the zipper.
When the man poked his head in, Alex was watching, and they met eyes.
Alex was surprised to the man was roughly his age of twenty-two. The man’s hair was red and shaggy, and he had several days’ growth of red beard on his jaw and upper lip. He moved further in, so Alex got enough of a look at his neck and shoulders to determine the man was muscular and, Alex would hazard, tall. Of his attire, Alex could see black tank top and, as the man climbed in entirely, jeans and socks. The boots he’d taken off were visible through the tent flap until the man closed it and zipped it back up.
The man was appraising Alex as well. Adrian’s beating had left innumerable bruises, which had turned a sickly yellow. Alex figured he was the opposite of a sight for sore eyes: a sight which made eyes sores.
“You’re a piece of work,” the man said at last. He paused afterward, waiting for a reply or, perhaps, a rebuttal.
Alex parted and licked his dry, cracked lips, gauging his ability to speak with a broken jaw. Before he could test himself, however, the man spoke up again.
“I’m Ryan,” he said. “What’s your name?”
Already the smallest movements had stirred up a dull pain. “Mason,” Alex said, for a moment puzzling even himself with the lie, but he had said it, and now thinking about it, maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to keep his name to himself.
“Mason,” Ryan repeated, slowly, almost savoring the name. “Well, Mason, you know of course of the two guys hiding under your bed. I imagine you do, lying right on top of them as you were. They claimed not to know that you were there, and they denied beating the shit out of you, but like I told them, likely story. So let me hear it from you. Did they do this to you?”
Lying, he decided, had no use in this regard. “No,” he answered, in a breath that was hardly a whisper, more an approximation of a word than anything else, as pain flared.
Evidently, Ryan heard him loud and clear. He was squatting on his heels in the tent, and now he leaned in closer. “Who did it, then?”
“Not the guys under the bed. But who are they?” It didn’t occur until after it said it that maybe the past tense was more appropriate for the question.
Ryan simply smiled. “A question for a question. Fine. I’ll deal.” He made himself more comfortable, sitting on crossed legs. “They’re just a pair of assholes who tried their hands at thievery and did a poor job of it, and an even poorer job of trying it on my band. So, they stole from us, some food, nothing else, and ran with it. We, of course, ran them down. Into the house you were lying in. Now, answer me: if they didn’t do this to you, who did?”
He’d had the entirety of Ryan’s little story to wonder what he was going to say, yet still he wasn’t sure. What would Ryan and his group do if they knew there was a community over yonder? he wondered. Would Ryan seek an angle? A chance for profit? That, he realized, was the only reason he was in their company: so they could profit from whatever he might be able to tell them. So yes, assuming they were just about bandits, they might be the type to conduct a raid, maybe a takeover. But maybe, Alex figured, that wasn’t such a bad thing, given his situation.
If he tried to do things on his own, beaten as he was, the task of freeing Hannah and getting back at Adrian was, admittedly, all but impossible. Yet if he brought a band like this back, his and Hannah’s chances would skyrocket. Hell, he didn’t care what Ryan and his people did with the college so long as it meant he got Hannah. And Adrian, of course.
But how to answer, and where to begin? Stroke his curiosity, he thought. So he answered slowly, vaguely, fleetingly as the pain rekindled in his jaw, “Adrian.”
Ryan nodded, holding his question. “Your turn, then. Ask away.”
“What will happen to those guys, the thieves?”
“They’ll be punished. I haven’t decided how, though I probably won’t kill them, if that what you were wondering. Now, my turn. Who’s Adrian?”
“He leads a community. Shittily. He’s mine.”
“The man smiled again. “I’m breaking order, I’m sorry, but I have to ask... yours?”
“Mine to kill, or not. And Hannah, my girlfriend: I want her back, want to save her. Everything else is yours… the supplies, the weapons… the whole place, if you’re willing to take it.”
There was an unhidden gleam of interest in the face watching him. “Here’s what will do. We’ll get you dressed—or if it suits you, you can stay like you are now. Either way, I have to step out for a moment, then, when I get back, you can tell me all about Adrian and his... community, as you called it. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Wonderful,” Ryan replied, then he pulled the zipper and disappeared through the tent flap before closing it behind him again, and once again, Alex was left alone.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:14:10 GMT
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 376 Days In — 16-06:
They buried the walker’s corpse behind the farmhouse, because, Daniel understood, it had once been human. It was right to do that. At least when you could. To show respect. There was already a cemetery behind the house. They buried the corpse next to three other plots that had been dug out and filled in with bodies, perhaps from the outbreak. Grass had grown over them. The only indications of their presence were telltale mounds in the earth.
When it was done, no one said anything in the way of a eulogy. Atlanta just stared at the fresh mound as if it was nothing more than a procession of problems. They’d come, hopefully, to the last of this round. “It broke through somewhere,” Atlanta said. “Gotta mend the fence.”
“We’ll walk it,” Ashley told her. And to Daniel, she said, “You. You get to mow.”
This was worrying. “Alone?” Daniel said.
“We showed you how.”
“I wanna come with you. Help you fix the fence.” Mainly he just didn’t want to mess things up, mowing on his own. What if he broke the mower? What if he hurt himself? What if he hit an animal? Oh god, what if—
Atlanta knelt to his level. “You can do this. Besides, to get to the fence we have to go in the field, and that’s just no place for you. You could step in a hole and break your ankle. We don’t have a doctor.”
Calvin, Daniel thought. It was bitter and lingering, like a penny in his mouth.
“There’s snakes to be concerned about,” Atlanta went on. “And mice.”
“And lions!” Ashley grabbed and tickled him as she growled the words. “And tigers and bears!”
He laughed and tried to hold on to his worries but lost his grip on it. “Okay,” he admitted, smiling and breathless after Ashley had finished, “I’ll can do it.”
And he did it. His parents went off with a pair of pliers to twist the broken ends of the barb wire together. That was easy. Mowing the lawn, it turned out, was easy, too. The hard part was starting it, which his parents did for him before going off to deal with the fence. The mower did most of the work, dragging itself along while he directed it. He tried to keep his rows even, and did mostly well. He was in the backyard, almost finished with the job, when he heard the blades hit something that wasn’t grass and wasn’t a stick, that sounded fleshy. He panicked and let go of the bar and immediately the lawnmower died.
He worked up the courage to drag the lawnmower backward. Then he walked around it. He crouched, sifted through the cut grass, and then froze stock still.
There was a gray-scaled baby snake in the grass, cut into three pieces and mutilated.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:14:47 GMT
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 376 Days In — 16-07:
He buried the snake in the cemetery. Like a secret, spoken into the earth and swallowed. Yet it still played on his conscious, and he cried alone on the porch. It was the first thing he had ever killed.
The smell of fresh-cut grass was heavy in the air. It climbed into his nostrils and tickled a memory. In the place of the openness of the fields, he saw in his mind’s eye a tight, urban sprawl, a small residential yard, and a man… or a woman, in any case someone he held dear, who was pushing around a lawnmower and filling the air with the same scent. Whether this was one occasion he was remembering, or an alagamagamation of several, he didn’t know. But he recognized San Antonio when it crept into his thoughts, and he knew seemed to know his old parents, even if he didn’t know how they looked or what they were like.
It was the same with his sister. In his nightmares, it was the same with his brother, whose face was always locked in agony and whose body was, upon first inspection, covered in a writhing layer of black and yellow fur.
Memory led to nightmare. He shut his mind from the former to rid himself of the latter.
He sat on the porch and waited, tears drying to his face. He was patient. There was too much motion in the world for boredom, and in times of stillness, too much eeriness to be bored. He watched the wind rake the field. He listened to its shivering, rustling song. It was as if the field was trying to speak to him, only he didn’t know its language and couldn’t understand. What would it tell him?
About what had happened here. About every footfall in this place, starting with Daniel’s and finishing with the very first. About extinct animals he had no names for. About untrampled ground and prehistoric skies pouring rain and split with lightning.
He wanted to hear. Wanted to know. If only he could understand.
It baffled Daniel, in retrospect, that his parents had warned him away from the field. They had convinced him that it wasn’t evil, that it needed a friend and that he was to be that friend, and now they didn’t want him in it.
He was still trying to decipher its noises when he heard the pur of an engine, rising to a growl as it drew closer.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:15:20 GMT
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 376 Days In — 16-08:
The truck stopped in the yard, and people climbed out of the cabin and the back end, and Daniel’s parents from the field emerged to greet them. The dog jumped out of the backend, and it was the only one to approach Daniel. Asher had called it Mutt, because it was a mutt, but Daniel wasn’t nearly so indifferent to names; he called it Adam Gooddog, at Keith’s suggestion. Adam Gooddog came up the steps and at Daniel in a flurry of kisses and sniffs and battered him with its tail. He petted it, then watched it as it went off to investigate its new home.
When Daniel looked up, he found that Josephine had been the first to climb the porch and reach him, the first to see that he’d been crying. He came to his feet. She touched his shoulder and smiled at him with concern. “Did something happen, Daniel?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“Missed you, is all,” he lied, prettying up the lie with a genuine smile.
She didn’t question it. She pulled him into her in a hug, and he was pressed against her giant stomach. “Well, we’re here now, baby,” she said. He hugged her back, taking care to be especially gentle, since he was afraid she might pop or something, or the baby might die. Josephine cast her gaze over her shoulder, her smile undiminished. Daniel pulled away to see who was coming next. He was disappointed. It was Natalie.
Why did Calvin have to die?
As she climbed the steps, Daniel wondered this. It was like an open sore: tongued, worried, it had never healed. He had liked Calvin. Of course, he had been scared by him, too. By Doctor Calvin’s power to declare him sick, by the latex smell of him. Yet his death rattled had Daniel. So suddenly, so unexpected, it had rattled everyone. Josephine especially, who had found him. But none more than Natalie.
After his death, Natalie had revealed to Josephine that Calvin had been her lover… whatever that meant… and that he had confided to her about heart conditions that he wanted kept secret because he was the only doctor and he was afraid they wouldn’t let him do his work if they knew. Daniel believed, along a few others, that Calvin had been murdered. But that didn’t make perfect sense: unless it was an outside attack, why destabilize your own community by killing your only doctor? The real explanation—a heart attack—disappointed him, and that disappointment carried over to how he viewed Natalie. She wasn’t a villain, conspirator, or anything of the like. She was on their side. That wasn’t as interesting.
But she knew a few things about pregnancies, having had one herself and having dogged Calvin into teaching her some things. They didn’t like each other much, Natalie and Josephine, but she was Josephine’s best hope of the baby being born alive and healthy.
So Daniel smiled at her, hidding half behind Josephine. Forced as his smile was, he had to keep Natalie close—at least for Josephine and the baby’s sake.
And for a wonder, Natalie smiled back. To summon such a show of friendless was no small feat. The bags beneath her eyes, the stiffness of her posture, spoke of a tiredness Daniel couldn’t begin to understand, not for a long time. The separation—splitting the Laredo community into six self-sufficient sub-communities, of which Rosa Drive was but one of them—was taking its toll on her.
“Hello, Daniel,” Natalie said to him, almost sighing the words. She leaned against the porch rail to rest.
Josephine turned Daniel by the shoulders toward the steps and the truck. “Go on, little man,” she said. “They could use your muscle.”
He nodded and scampered off.
They were waiting there, his parents and Keith and Lindsay and Jake who were unloading the truck and an old man named Jefferson who was leaning on a cane and standing off to the side watching the cloudy horizon. Daniel walked past him and joined in the labour.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Oct 5, 2018 21:17:47 GMT
This is the first "new" part since the move over to these forums! ("New" because it's been mellowing on google docs for a while—I can't wait to get to writing some actual new material!)
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 376 Days In — 16-09:
The day passed slowly. They moved boxes of supplies and personal items from the truck into the rooms of the farm house. Lunch was made quickly, most eating standing up or plopping down wherever they could sit to wolf down their food so they could get back to the hustle of moving in. Jake and Atlanta and Adam Gooddog split off to evaluate the fence, while Keith and Lindsay and Ashley and Daniel moving the remaining boxes and unpacking, and Natalie saw to Josephine’s comfort, sitting her down in the living room with Philip the Cat for company before Natalie, too, got back to unpacking and shelving canned goods. Jefferson had retreated to his room to rest.
By the time evening rolled round, and the sun began to set, everyone but the cat was dog tired. The dog was worn out, too. He had found a hare which he had chased to its hole; he had spent the last few hours of daylight trying to widen the hole to fit its body and failing and pacing around the hole whimpering. He came back sullen and disappointed when Daniel called him inside for his dog food. Daniel called him a dummy for getting bested by a hare but scratched him behind the ears to show that he didn’t really think it.
The dining room was alive with the sounds of talk and chair legs scraping the hardwood floor when Daniel got back. As he was about to claim a seat, a hand touched his shoulder. He looked up at Natalie.
“Would you bring Jefferson his meal?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“And you better clean your hands before you come back.”
He nodded, grabbed the tray that the food was on, and took it into the hall. The further he got from the dining room, the darker it got, but the sounds behind him were loud, surely loud enough to keep the monsters away. So he proceeded through the dark with their sounds for company. He pressed the tray into his stomach so he could free one hand to open the door to Jefferson’s room, then entered. A few steps into the room, the door closed shut. Maybe most people would have jumped, or spun around, but Daniel locked up.
It was much darker in here. Frozen, he held his breath, listened. The blankets rustled in front and a figure sat up. Seconds later a flame clicked to life upon the old man’s lighter. Jefferson normally had a soft, kind face, but the flickering light filled his wrinkles with shadows and lent his expression a sinisterness that his smile could not quite redeem. The late hour seemed to have robbed Jefferson of some of his wits; normally clear and lucid, his eyes were now glassy with tiredness.
“That for me?” he said, in a Texan drawl. He lit a candle on the nightstand and put away the light.
Daniel inhaled, finally. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, hand it here.” Daniel passed it over and then stood there with his arms slank at his side. Jefferson stirred the beans. Tasted the rice. Bobbed his head, as if in approval. He looked up at Daniel again. “You waitin’ for me to dismiss you or what?”
“Uh...”
“It’s alright, boy. Thank you. You mind gettin’ me a glass of water?”
“Uh, sure.” He scurried out. Scurried back. As he entered again, he left the door standing and watched to see if it would do anything. It did nothing.
“Something peculiar ‘bout that door?” Jefferson said as he chewed.
“Nothing. I just thought…”
“That it, what, closed on its own?”
“Yeah.”
“Possible it did.”
Water sloshed against the rim of the glass. “Really?”
“Give me that glass before you drop it and I’ll tell you.” Jefferson took the glass and patted the mattress beside him. Daniel climbed up, and as he looked back, the door clicked shut, the cutting the sounds of the volume of the others in half. The candle couldn’t illuminate the whole room, and darkness crouched in the corners, on the floor, and up at the ceiling. “Well,” Jefferson, chewing some more, dragging Daniel’s attention to him, “it probably just fell shut. But you can’t know, can you?”
“No?”
“You can’t. Not for sure.” He spooned more rice into his mouth. “Not when the dead walk the earth. You can ascribe it all to science and fiddlin’ with the gene and viruses and what not but you can’t know for sure. Could be that heaven and hell are overflowin’ and we’re gettin’ the run off. Could be that the devil or god or whoever got tired of people and hung up their hats. But you can’t know that either. When you’re in the dark, when you’re ignorant to the inner workings, you gotta walk on with all possibilities in your head and the possibility that none of them are true and that the truth remains untapped. Maybe when the dead are done walkin’ again they start hauntin’. Maybe these are stages to some metamorphosis that we don’t know the full scope of. Could be. Could be. Baby, to adult, to” —he laughed— “ hobbling olddie, to dead, to undead, to ghost, to whatever next. Maybe full circle, then. Ghost, to baby again, or an animal depending on your karma, which is the good and bad you did in your life. Reincarnation. That’s a Hindu belief. Or maybe the stages of life and death go on and on. But no human on this earth knows.” He quoted: “‘Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.’ John 5:28-29. That’s from the bible. That’s my book.” Tapping his plate with his silverware to produce eight thin clinks, the old man paused to mull over something. “I’m a Christian man,” he continued. “Be good and kind and helpful to others and I believe you get to go to heaven and be happy forever. I don’t like the idea of hell. Don’t think most people deserve it. None of these people came back because they were evil. No, sir. Anyway. You’re young, so you probably don’t know, but there was a war. A long war. A war no one really liked—that is, if you can say there was a war anyone really liked. Anyway, if I learned anything from fightin’ that war it’s that you can shoot problems away if they’re flesh and blood, you can shoot these here walkers, but if they come back without their meat, you’re up a creek. You can’t shoot the dark, boy. You can’t shoot nightmares or poltergeists. You can’t shoot the dark.”
Daniel emerged from the bedroom as if from a fever dream. His mind was reeling with so many unfamiliar names and concepts that he had forgotten his hunger. Well, for as long as it took him to get back to the dining room. There, the smell of the food and the merriment brought him back to the world. A placed had been made for him at the table, and a plate had been filled. He sat, and ate, and deliberately left the world again to think about what Jefferson had said. Jake and his parents were spitballing solutions to make the farm more defensible, but Daniel was too busy going mental gymnastics to care much about sheet metal or trenches. Half of what the old man had said seemed like nonsense. And the other half? Stuff that bordered on nonsense. Heaven, hell, metamorphing whatever, karma, reincarnation, poltergeists. But it all had an affect on Daniel. His takeaways were these: that he should maybe avoid talking to Jefferson when he’s tired and rambling and a little frightening, and that there was no way to attack a ghost physically. It occurred to him, then, as he finished his food, that while you couldn’t attack what wasn’t there, there might still be ways to defend yourself.
______________________________________________________________________________
Daniel did not want them to leave. They had to, though. Natalie’s community—the largest of the six, perhaps what you might call the central nervous system of their setup—depended on her. She couldn’t be away for a whole night. And Josephine had to stick with her. Jake would not have left his wife’s side for the old world. So it was that they gathered by the doorway and gave sleepy goodbye hugs and kisses.
Daniel was not sleepy. He was scared, but did his best to hid it. He was terribly conscious of the fact that with each leave-taking they were likely more vulnerable to the forces at work in the house. Still, he said his goodbyes, told them he loved them, gave his hugs, kept himself from crying. After a moment of debate, he hugged Natalie and told her thank you—love you would not have fit, but he was definitely thankful for her—but he made it brief, afraid a hug any longer would make her mad. As it stood, it seemed to have been just long enough. She moved the hair out of his eyes, which was perhaps her verison of hair ruffling: instead of making chaos of his head, she put it in order. He had received an affectation from her, and he liked her more for it.
Then, bedtime.
He had his covers over himself, like a cocoon. The house around him, too—in a way, an even greater cocoon.
Could mere walls protect against the great expanse of night outside? What good did they do against what was inside?
Probably nothing. Walls were a deterrent against physical things, like people and walkers. A ghost could move through them.
He listened to the wind and the house’s interior noises for a long time before he fell asleep.
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Hope
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by Hope on Oct 9, 2018 16:58:23 GMT
Previously, on Monument:
Mei Xia—a Chinese woman residing in Colorado Springs, Colorado, ten months into the apocalypse—is doing her nightly run, which takes her close to the wall, where she stumbles across a body of guard. Evidently, he was murdered—stabbed and then pushed off from the wall, down into the community. Mei, noticing that his assault rifle is missing, suspects she is in the murderer’s sights. Feigning ignorance, that she did not see the body, she calmly jogs on. When she thinks she’s safe, she alters her route and heads to the police precinct to report the murder. She is certain, as she runs, that it is going to be a long night.
Colorado Springs — 302 days in — 16-10:
Mei Xia
Sometimes—hell, even Mei had to admit to herself—you miscalculate. You expect one thing, you get another. This was her expectation when she went to the police: She would be stuck in a room until morning, relating every detail of her encounter, down to the littlest, over and over again, while the officers, who were stalling to keep her there, would take their sweet time to examine the validity of her claims, secure the crime scene, and rule her out as a suspect. Then she would be freed, and the sun would be up, and she would have to find someone to fill in for her at her guard post. She thought, as she neared the precinct, she was in for a long night. She had no idea it would be her longest, and the dawn hours especially—those would feel the longest of all.
No stranger to bureaucratic slowness—having been a government agent in China before she immigrated—she weathered the slog of questions and paperwork better than any of the officers. Which perhaps reflected poorly on her, what with her calm demeanor and total composure. These American men, they could not comprehend a picture of femininity like hers. That she was not in tears or at least visibly shaken struck by the sight of a dead body struck them as suspicious, nevermind the fact that they were in the midst of an apocalypse; sexists never moved sexism to the backburner. They kept her in a room, and after long boring intervals of isolation, someone would come in to question her before leaving her again. As the night went on, this route began to annoy her. She regretted her approach now. She wished she had put on an act in the beginning, just to get to bed sooner. Not that her stamina was flagging. She had counter-interrogation training. The police were amateurs at best.
But eventually, they stopped coming, and annoyance brimmed over to exasperation. An hour passed by herself—the longest interval of isolation yet—and then another. It had to be six in the morning. She sighed. She stood and tested the doorknob. Finding it unlocked, she poked her head through, prepared to play clueless if it meant this would be over. Yet there was no one in the hall. She wandered from the area given over to witness processing and holding, into another section of the building. A man in uniform dashed past her, without remarking upon her unaccompanied presence. He was gone around the corner before she could call him to tell her what was happening.
Evidenced by the general disorder of the desks, the officers had made a hasty response. Such an urgent matter, too, for no one was left to hold down the fort, at least as far as Mei could tell. She found her way to the lobby, and out the front doors. The sun wasn’t up yet, but to the north, the dark clouds glowed a fluctuating red. An incense of smoke-tainted the air she breathed.
A fire. Well, the police’s disregard for her made sense now—a fire demanded everyone’s full attention effort if they had any hope of fighting it. Mei couldn’t argue. Her apartment lay in that direction, and judging the light on the clouds alone could not assure her that her home wasn’t also in flames.
Mei studied a speaker that was mounted to a nearby streetlight. It should have been screaming at her. It loomed silent instead. Odd. Could be it was broken. But this did not seem to be the issue, because, in any case, she should have heard the fire alarm anyway. The speakers were loud by design and strewn plentifully about the city, yet the only sound the wind carried was of distant shouts. Somehow, the whole system was down. It reeked of sabotage. Perhaps it was in her wiring to jump to fantastic conclusions. She was more inclined to believe her instincts, which told her thus:
They were under attack.
In which case time was short. She had to assume that the slain guard, the fire, and the broken PA system were of one systematic assault on the community, and that swiftly or at the leisurely pace of the self-assured, more would follow. In her mind, it was a question of if so much as when. The people of the Colorado Springs were a hardy bunch, but save for the large military population, they lacked the preparation to deal with an attack on the inside, and even then, Mei knew of no plan among its militant citizen beyond rolling with the punches and shooting back—some plan. If she wanted to live—and yes, she wanted to fucking live—she would have to tackle the problem of survival on her own terms.
She needed a weapon. Being a guard, she knew that she couldn’t get a gun from the police precinct; if they were diligent about one thing, it was keeping the gun room under lock and key. In any case, though she was well-trained in their use, she disliked guns. She preferred fighting hand-to-hand or with a melee weapon. A knife was unideal but doable. She wondered about her apartment. Not about her all possessions, lost to flames; she was not materialistic by nature. But about her bo staff. If there was one thing she wanted above else in her company, beyond competent people, one weapon that might see her through this, it was her bo staff. A few problems lay in the way of retrieving it, however: namely the fire, and the people who would be attempting to put it out. Not to mention that it might be wiser to count her loses, beat an early retreat before everyone realized how screwed they were, and pick up something along the way.
[Travel across the city, facing any number of obstacles and threats, to reach your apartment, to retrieve your bo staff.]
[Improvise.]
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Post by Tales93 on Oct 10, 2018 16:24:59 GMT
Hmmm... She might just have to [Improvise.]
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Post by Kal on Oct 11, 2018 6:33:37 GMT
Gonna agree with Tales here and say [Improvise]
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Post by LiquidChicagoTed on Oct 11, 2018 11:29:34 GMT
[Improvise.]
I see no reason to disagree with Tales and Butter Beans. Improvising sounds preferable here, when compared to a near suicidal run through the city all for the sake of retrieving a wooden stick. Yeah, I know a proper Bo staff is actually quite nicely done, but that won't change the fact that it is anything but the ideal weapon for a zombie apocalypse and even without the dead rising from their graves, it would not be the kind to risk her life for.
Also, I had no chance to comment on the last part, so let me share some thoughts on that one as well. First of all, it is interesting to hear that half of the newly arrived are not actually part of the Rosa Drive community. Natalie leads them, Josie and Jake are part of that community out of necessity. I am admittedly a bit concerned for them leaving again, but to be fair, I would be always equally concerned regardless. I suppose that will be where we'll see the other characters again, Stephen, Tommy and (yikes) Freddie Gomez, as well as perhaps a couple new ones. I was curious how you'd bring them back into the story, but it now seems likely that they are simply part of this central community and with Natalie, Josie and Jake being there, we'll have enough familiar faces among them. Though, I say it time and again, even when not appearing much, Josie and Jake are simply adorable. So, they are officially married now? Or is it more one of these unofficial zombie apocalypse partnership things? I doubt a formal marriage is high on their list of priorities, but it is small things like that that make me so utterly happy for them. I got a bad feeling for obvious reasons, but still, fingers crossed they'll make it through. I have no doubt it will be hard, I have no doubt the worst is yet to come (and we know, that means quite something considering what Josie has been through in the first two acts), but oh man, may I actually place my hopes in Natalie? It feels weird, but she is growing on me.
Also, it is nice seeing the Colorado community again. I am still very curious what happened to them and I have no doubt, this will affect the endgame for our expedition group, featuring characters such as Jerry and Maria. Oh man, so much to happen and I am super excited for what is in store. Excited and worried, aye, but at the very moment, the excitement grows stronger.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Oct 21, 2018 16:37:17 GMT
Voting is closed!
(!) Mei will *guitar flare* improvise
If you'll excuse me, the story shall continue in a few days, a week at most. Been busy. I've been working on Silicon County (a combination of planning and writing), and I've also been having a blast writing short stories (there's one in another tab right now, waiting for me, expectant, exasperated that I would take some time away from it), some of which I'm going to rewrite and polish and might submit to a few anthologies! But recently I've been writing very actively so it shouldn't delay the production of Monument or Silicon County. Both stories should finally begin to pick up the pace, especially as we move toward the conclusions of each respective stories' ongoing chapter.
Do y'all remember when I used to poke fun at you? Tease you with possibilities?
Unfortunately, those days are coming again (though some might argue they never left). There's a lot of stuff in store.
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Post by LiquidChicagoTed on Oct 26, 2018 2:18:22 GMT
Voting is closed!(!) Mei will *guitar flare* improviseIf you'll excuse me, the story shall continue in a few days, a week at most. Been busy. I've been working on Silicon County (a combination of planning and writing), and I've also been having a blast writing short stories (there's one in another tab right now, waiting for me, expectant, exasperated that I would take some time away from it), some of which I'm going to rewrite and polish and might submit to a few anthologies! But recently I've been writing very actively so it shouldn't delay the production of Monument or Silicon County. Both stories should finally begin to pick up the pace, especially as we move toward the conclusions of each respective stories' ongoing chapter. Do y'all remember when I used to poke fun at you? Tease you with possibilities? Unfortunately, those days are coming again (though some might argue they never left). There's a lot of stuff in store. Ah, I do remember these days! I wouldn't even say it is unfortunate, because it has been part of what I consider the Monument experience. I might seem like I get a panic attack at times, but honestly, most of the time I had a blast with the speculation it allowed me to do. I don't doubt there is a lot of stuff in store for the parts and chapters to come and well, I got no doubt it will be crazy exciting and quite definitely terrifying, in a positive way. I'm looking forward for it  |
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Mar 3, 2019 19:35:01 GMT
Daniel Martinez — Rosa Drive, Central Texas — 383 Days In — 16-11:
Over the course of the following week, they worked to secure Rosa Drive. Daniel was not permitted to help in this matter. Danger was the reasoning: sharps objects, things that could crush him. Daniel was stuck in the house with Jefferson, cooking and doing things around the place. Thankfully, “batshit weird”—as Ashley laughingly described Jefferson’s intermittent delirium—was not Jefferson’s default mood, and most of the time, he was a pretty cool old dude. Smart. Witty in a way that always struck Daniel’s funny bone. So it was alright, although Daniel yearned to help erect the wall that was rising around them.
Atlanta, Ashley, Lindsay, and Keith—as well as the occasional hand from the other communities, more often than not Jake, who had taken to sleeping on the couch during his long visits—worked from dawn to dusk on the wall. They dismantled everything around them. Took apart fences. Stripped the roofs off of barns and houses for the sheet metal. Scavenged unused building materials. Towed back a variety of trailers: flat ones, for cars; a few for cattle. Towed back an RV, too, which Keith and Lindsay were gunning for. Some discussed began about leveling the surrounding structure, too; Daniel learned about this when the day was winding down and people were groaning about their soreness at the dinner table.
Everything they gathered took up residence on the lawn and on what had once been corn fields. It brought to mind a plane graveyard, but instead, it was the place barns and whole towns went to die. It disturbed Daniel, for the field, his supposed friend, was being crushed. But he was too scared of being—what? laughed at? or told that, yes, the field had to suffer—so he didn’t raise his voice on the issue. He apologized to the field when no one was watching, and hoped it took his words to heart.
Or whatever it had in lieu.
No. He decided a field could have a heart.
One day, Jefferson emerged from the shed with two hoes. He handed the smaller of the two to Daniel. “We’ll scrape off the plants at the top, so we’ll have cleared ground to work with. We’ll turn it into a garden. Won’t that be nice?”
“Yes, Mister Jefferson.”
“Let’s get on it, boy.”
“Yes, Mister Jefferson.”
And they hoed, hoed until they had worked up a sweat. It was cold, it being fall, but nowhere near enough to keep them cool throughout their labour. They took a break and watched the others, off across the field, carry a piece of sheet metal to the fence to be attached to the wall. It was just beginning to wrap around the property.
“Food, water, and walls,” Jefferson said. “The building blocks of living.”
“And roofs,” Daniel murmured.
Jefferson laughed. It put Daniel to ease. “Right. We’ll be looking good once we’re protected.”
“Hmm-hmm.”
“Do you know what 'long-term’ means?”
“For a long time.” He meant it double; both as a definition and a rebuttal, cause he knew things.
His wit, it seemed, was lost on Jefferson. “Yep," the old man said. "It’s what worries me.” Jefferson leaned on his hoe. “We’ll so intent on buildin’ somethin’ to last, I’m afraid we haven’t quite grasped how the world works now. Sit around long enough, and your walls fall, and the inertia you’ve built up might as well be a death sentence. Maybe the wanderer’s life is the best. You keep movin’, never beddin’ down in the same place twice, scavengin’ the overlooked. If you keep on your toes, maybe it’ll keep you alive. Or disaster will strike you dead.”
“Is it? The best?”
“Well, not for everyone Not for me, with my leg, or lack thereof.” He shot off another laugh, and Daniel emitted what he hoped sounded like a sincere giggle. He was learning that while Jefferson could be funny, the one who laughed most at Jefferson's jokes was Jefferson himself.
“So,” Daniel said, trying to work this out, “it’s better for some to keep moving, better for some to keep still.”
“That’s the theory.”
“Which is better overall?”
“Neither. Both lifestyles have their shortcomings. It just depends on the person, on which way of life suits them best.”
“How can you know which is for you?”
“Can’t, I guess. Not ‘til you experience both.”
Daniel had, he supposed. After the gated community fell—what was it called? Harvest Hills?—he had lived for a time on the road. In the camper. Atop the roof of a rest stop while a herd passed. In other cars. In Calvin’s house. In retrospect, he seemed less like a participate, more like an observer. He had not survived; people had survived for him. So, he didn’t really know which he was, which life suited him: wanderer or sitter, or whatever you wanted to call it.
“Can you be both?” he asked.
“Guess so. Could be any configuration.”
Daniel chewed on this as they resumed work.
______________________________________________________________________________
In the dark of night, the ghost would come out, and a chill would sweep through Danie’s room. It did not come out every night. Only occasionally. But when it did, Daniel covered himself in his blanket and waited for it to go wherever it did. He knew it was gone when the chill left the room. He looked for some sign of its passage and found nothing. Once the ghost had performed its nightly walk, it returned to whatever place in the walls it called its bed and was gone ‘til its next walk.
______________________________________________________________________________
Couldn’t keep it to himself.
A ghost!
Daniel tried to run it by Lindsay and Keith—they were, after all, the closest thing he had to peers—but he hadn’t been able to explain what was happening because they made fun of him for entertaining the notion of spirits as soon as he broached the topic. That shut him down fast. The two teenagers were good for games and fun and jokes, not for anything remotely metaphysical. Same problem with telling Jake.
He had ruled out his parents from the git-go. He valued what they said too much. If they dismissed his belief, it would destroy him. Better not to risk that at all.
Yet all the same, he was hesitant to talk to the one person who would surely believe him: Jefferson, who he had previously spoke to on the subject. At least, he might speak to a sleep-sobor Jefferson—a sleep-drunk Jefferson would have entertained the belief of anything. But Daniel didn’t want to speak to him. Maybe, on some level, he was also scared to have his theory corroborated. If what he believed was true, it meant they had left so many friends by the wayside, trapped in their death-places, abandoned and lonesome.
Too horrible to consider.
But lacking options...
He swallowed his considerations, hid them deep inside him, and went directly to Jefferson in the garden in the afternoon one day, when the sun was at its zenith and hot enough to chase away phantoms.
The wall of scrap was nearly done, since Jake had been staying with them the last few days to help expedite its completion and engineer some moving parts: a reinforced gate that could swing freely without dragging in the dirt under its own weight and that could be further reinforced in the case of a siege; a hidden exit in the back; portholes that opened and closed easily for shooting. There had been a great discussion about building platforms at each corner, but it had been decided that there would be only three platforms: two on either side of the main gate, and a third, larger one atop the house itself, to basically function as a crow’s nest. At night, Jake slept in the living room. At the moment, Daniel could see him, using a hacksaw on some pipe while Lindsay sat on it to keep it still.
Jefferson could read people well. It came as no surprise when the old man, yanking out weeds, said, “Spill it. What’s on your mind?”
So Daniel told him. While Jefferson was turning over what he’d been told, Daniel asked a question: “Are ghosts good or bad?”
“Reckon it depends on the morality of the person who died. If they were bad in life, they might be bad in death, too. But a good person could still become a malevolent ghost if, say, they died unfairly.”
“Have you ever met a ghost?”
“Yeah, you could say I did. After my wife died I think she had trouble lettin’ go of me so she haunted me. Or maybe I was just projecting, makin’ every creak the house made, every chill in the air, into somethin’ it wasn’t.”
“So... you believe in ghosts?”
“Yeah, I do. But just ‘cause I do doesn’t mean you have to, too. Bear that in mind. Decide for yourself what you believe.”
There was a pause, and the conversation seemed to have ended. Then Jefferson spoke up again.
“Take care, boy,” he said. “When speakin’ to the dead. You might think you’re speakin’ to your loved ones, but you really never know who you’re speaking to. I never spoke to her.”
"Your wife?"
"I was so scared of what might answer."
After work, but before dinner, Daniel came up to his room. He had not thought to speak to the ghost. There was a name, faint on his tongue, nearly forgotten: a name he associated with the dead. It seemed fitting to address the ghost with it.
“Santiago,” he said. In a way, he was saying it to his brother, hopefully across the gulf of distance and through the membrane of death.
He listened. Maybe there were guitar strings in the fabric of places. His brother could pluck one, communicate in morse code, tell him what the beyond was like.
But, although Daniel waited a long time, there was no reply.
It occurred to him that maybe Rosa Drive’s ghost could carry a message for him, and so that night he devised to speak to it.
But the ghost didn’t walk that night. Nor the night after. Daniel was getting worried—what if, learning that Daniel knew about it, it had decided not to show itself to him? could ghosts be embarressed?—but on the third night, those worries were laid to rest.
He knew it was waking up from its death-sleep when a chill filled the room. Suddenly his blanket became inadequate, and his skin broke out in gooseflesh. Perhaps by instinct, he drew the blanket over his head and hunkered down, the fright of the ghost’s presence being enough to make him forget, momentarily, his purpose for staying up that night. He had intended to ask a favor of it, to gaze upon it.
He waited, and when he was sure the presence had returned to his room, but before it left the real world, he did just that. Tossed the blanket off, took in two eyefuls of the thing standing in his room. Perhaps hearing the blanket rustle, or his loud intake of breath, it turned to face him. The moonlight painted the man-shape ethereal, glistening off something dark and wet that covered its arms. Yet the wall was not visible through it, and its eyes bore a cognizant message upon him, not encumbered by death. There was a dark willpower behind these eyes, as such of the damned and the living alike. Its lips shaped a word that did not come.
There would be no favors, no seance with his brother. Too late, Daniel realized his mistake.
It was no ghost.
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Post by LiquidChicagoTed on Mar 5, 2019 4:26:36 GMT
Alright, alright, talking about the real ghost story first, this story does, for some weird reason, not appear among my participated threads, which is why it took me over a day to notice a new post, even though I commented on it before. Isn't that spooky? I hope it'll change with this post, but I remember I had similar weird issues with the old Monument thread over at Telltale. But no ghost bug will prevent me from reading this wonderful story, especially now that we got the first part of 2019!
And that was quite a part! You do a great job portraying the mindest of Daniel, which reads highly different from the other PoV's we have in the story and I enjoy it greatly, seeing how his thoughts differ wildly from how the other characters see and experience a situation is always a nice read. And what would be a clear case if experienced by someone as level-headed as Jake suddenly becomes an exciting mystery from Daniel's perspective. Also, I really enjoy his interaction with Mister Jefferson. I always liked the man and I'm glad he gets a larger role in this chapter, especially as he and Daniel work perfect together, the youngest character and (correct me if I'm wrong)the oldest.
But speaking of Daniel's mystery, it might not exactly be as adorable and ultimately unimportant as it seemed at first. Previously, I remember that my thoughts on Daniel's belief in the ghost were that he is essentially just seeing things and that there are a dozen rational explanations for what he experiences. I take that back. The end to this part was genuinely scary, but in a different way than usual. I mean, the story had super scary moments before, but it was mostly coming from characters we love being in a dangerous situation, which is its own brand of horror. This feels more traditionally scary, which I don't think has happened in the story before.
And no ghost? Oh man, oh man, that sentence alone pretty much ruined any chance that he is just seeing things. So, there are basically just two possibilities and the first is kinda impossible, because my first thought was that he is seeing a walker. But then I remembered, he is in an upstairs bedroom. How is a walker supposed to get in there without anyone noticing? Side note, stealthy ninja walkers are officially the scariest thought I had in 2019 so far. It is far more likely that this is a person who has sneaked into Daniel's room. And the reasons for that, well, that is quite legitimately terrifying. What I am particularly scared at is that this would not be the first time this person sneaks into the room, unless the previous times have actually been just Daniel imagening things. So, why would someone sneak into the house at night? This might be a scout for another group, it might be a survivor searching for supplies and I had to remember a very old Supernatural episode, where the monster of the week was not actually a monster, but a human who lived in a hollow space within the walls of the house. What if something similar happens here, there is someone living in the walls, leaving at night to steal supplies from the new owners of the house? Might still be better than some bandit scout. But what I am particularly afraid of is the fact that it is implied this person has killed recently, judging by the dark and wet stuff that covers their arms. That has to be blood. Best case, this is a friendly survivor, who has killed a walker and used its blood to move unnoticed by other walkers and they snuck into the house to see if anyone's living in it. Worst case, this is some deranged sicko. In either case, you got me hooked all over again. I cannot wait to find out what is going to happen next.
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Hope
Junior Member
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Post by Hope on Dec 9, 2019 1:39:31 GMT
Small update/clarification: Daniel and Alex's PoVs have both concluded for this chapter. Mei's PoV will continue in the form of a chapter finale, which will feature several other PoVs introducing characters and plotlines for the next chapter, while also finally illustrating how the Colorado Springs community is destroyed—something that's been hinted at ever since the community was introduced. The finale is due before the end of the month, probably sooner, but no specific ETA. The next chapter's PoVs will feature Josephine, a new character named Hannah (Alex's girlfriend, mentioned this chapter), and various fragments getting us up to speed with the members of the Colorado expedition (Maria, Jerry, and more). Its title is "Feels Like Sand" and, oof, it's a doozy.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Jul 9, 2020 3:07:02 GMT
Update:
First things first, sorry if you clicked on this expecting it to be an actual update to the story. I have fallen into another long, unannounced hiatus. This hiatus isn't likely to end soon; right now I'm just making it known in an official sense. Monument and Silicon are NOT canceled. Ideas for both still bounce around in my head. It's a deeply personal goal of mine to eventually finish them. When the mood strikes me, I do chip away at them, genuinely excited for the directions they're heading, in terms of plot and characters. But the mood to write at all, period, hasn't been striking much. In particular, I've struggled with post-apocalyptic and apocalyptic narratives given the uh nature of current events lol. There's been a lot of distractions, and as Texas becomes a hotspot of COVID-19, my govenment continues to botch its pandemic response, and things worsen in my home county, the number of distractions are growing. Work has been batshit stressful and worrying. But all that scary shit aside, I've been keeping these stories, this forum, and all of y'all who are still active here on my mind. Just today, "Piano Man" by Billy Joel (who is a musician whose work I associate strongly with Monument and Jerry) came on on the radio and I had the idea for a kind of special part for Monument, which I'm going to pursue. I'm abandoning all timeframes on future continuations. Continuations will happen when they happen, and I may experiment and restructure how I release them, maybe omitting less-essential user choices in favor of overall larger continuations, maaaaayybe releasing on a chapter-by-chapter basis, but idk. Whatever I choose, it'll be a process! Anyway, that's all I really have to say, so this concludes the update. I hope to pop in again soon with something to share!
Cross-posting in Monument and Silicon's latest chapter threads.
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Sept 27, 2020 18:15:26 GMT
Update!
No more job! I was laid off when the camp season ended and I'm fucking relieved about it. We somehow didn't have an outbreak, but feeling like we were a day away from disaster every day for several months honestly destroyed me. I've been unemployed more than a month or so now I guess and I've been in a better place, mentally, than I have been in a while. Been drawing a lot, making notes for stories/scripts, though writing is still rlly hard to sustain. No new Monument/Silicon rn but I just wanted to share the good news lol
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Mar 3, 2021 0:44:34 GMT
Update
There's still no continuation and no timeline on future installments, but I just wanted to say this forum and its users are frequently on my mind. Forgive me for musing a bit, but admittedly, between the time passing and life changing, I feel somewhat distanced from these stories and the TellTale Community of old. It's strange, and kinda wholesome, to log on here and see the evolution of a writing community I've been a part of since like, 2013/2014. I went ahead and changed my username here to the old one out a kind of nostalgia. Life over the pandemic has been more stable recently. I'm mentally up and down, but overall I'm pretty alright. Anyway, right now I'm considering how I want to continue the stories. I think I want to reacquaint myself with them and close the distance I let widen over my hiatuses by conducting a reread of Monument to the Walking Dead and Silicon County. Idk when I'll do that, or what I'll do afterwards. I'll probably take lots of notes to eventually make a recap to creatively jumpstart the continuation. I'll let y'all know. <3
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Nov 4, 2021 19:12:07 GMT
I watched Romero's Land of the Dead and it was very good/inspiring, also quite funny. Interesting to see another movie that Robert Kirkman, I guess, pulled a lot of his ideas from, especially late post-apocalypse politics. I'm probably abandoning my long-planned setup for Monument's continuation and replacing it with some better plotpoints, once I figure out what those are. I've talked about this a long time ago but I kinda wanna buck the regular zombie apocalypse formula/plotlines and embrace something weirder, like The Walking Dead through a prism of the southern gothic sort of magical realism. Same world, same lore, but different eyes? I think I tapped into that vibe pretty well with Daniel's ghost story. The main plots going forward have always featured Daniel's adventures, Josephine's family, the remnants of the Colorado expedition meeting the remnants of the Colorado community, and that revenge story with the new character Alex that I only setup this chapter. Definitely gonna keep each of them. Also wow I started this chapter in like 2018 and it's absolutely wild that time keeps moving!! 2022 soon wtf. Sorry that I don't participate here, like as a writer or reader, it's been a very difficult few years lol. I do love that there's still activity here. I constantly wish to catch up on other ppl's stories and will when the time's right! <3
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Hope
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Post by Hope on Nov 4, 2021 19:44:25 GMT
I know outside of little updates twice a year I don't talk much about my life/interests but you should all know I have become a werewolf-obsessed GREMLIN in my isolation. Silicon County already has werewolf-y stuff in it. Perhaps surprisingly, Monument will also have some werewolf-y stuff in it... without even breaking The Walking Dead's canon! Also I got really into Alien and its sequels and spin off audiobooks. For the low fantasy inclined, there's a novel called Aliens: Phalanx, which is about a society with nothing but shields and spears fighting off xenomorphs and it's way better than I could've expected lmao. 90% of what i've been listening has been Alien-related. The Cold Forge and its semi-sequel Into Charybdis are also fantastic Alien novels in the regular series sci-fi setting. The Walking Dead vs. Aliens would be a fun but very short crossover wouldn't it? lol
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