Dune of the Dead
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- Alien Overlord
- Posts: 5680
- Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2007 4:24 pm
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Dune of the Dead
EPISODE I:
It was well past 10 am and Kevin was late for his first book signing in Tacoma. He had to have the driver turn his car around because he actually forgot his dictaphone. "Imagine that," Kevin thought to himself, and chuckles noiselessly. That thing was part of him, he relied on it so much. He barked out for his driver to turn the car around at 9 am, fifteen minutes away from home. By the time he got back and found the confound thing on a tray next to his treadmill by the stereo, he had already forgotten much of the plotting he had come up with to Chapter 721 of Paul of Dune on the way out of the house earlier. "Oh well," he thought. "Not like it matters. I'll just rewrite something from an X-files book and change the name 'Mulder' to 'Moneo'."
Back on track to the signing, Kevin decided to read something dense while he thought up new ideas for the next Dune book. As he opened his copy of Rose Madder, the sunlight shone through the trees and onto the page so brightly that he was briefly dazzled. Kevin looked up to blink his eyes and noticed his limo was passing by Restful Acres, the cemetery where Frank Herbert was buried. "Not only that," thought Kevin, "but a bunch of my personal SF heroes are interred here." Kevin had been by to place flowers on Frank's grave each time a new Dune book came out. He suddenly had a strong recollection of putting roses on Frank's plot not one month ago, as he silently whispered a prayer for the continuing health of his accountant.
Kevin decided to do the honorable thing and stop and pay his respects. Especially since Brian was in the car with him, he thought it would be a nice gesture to start the day with. He picked up his phone and called the driver. "Hey, Brian, pull the fuckin' car over. I wanna stop."
"Where?" Brian asked quizzically.
"Right here." Brian felt his temperature start to rise. It was getting so hard to get Brian to do his bidding lately. Its not that Brian was starting to chaff at his bit. Its just that he was getting stupider and stupider as time wore on. Kevin thought it had something to do with marijuana, but he really wasn't sure at all.
"Right in the street, like right here, you mean?" Brian asked over the car phone.
"No Brian. Pull over and apply the brakes once you're on the shoulder."
"Oh," Brian deadpanned from the cockpit. "Hey, have I ever been here before?" Brian asked Kevin. "Hey," Brian quipped before Kevin could hang up in disgust. "Is this where my father is buried? I sure miss him. He's made me one rich mother-fucker, hasn't he?"
"No, you moron," Kevin replied. "That was me!" He slammed the phone down, but before he did, "get out and open my door."
Kevin and Brian entered the cemetery from the side of the road. They crested the first hill on the way to the grave walking double-time. Kevin was in a hurry and now wanted only to get this done with. Brian was walking slowly, as he had forgotten to move his arms as he walked. "Come on, moron!" Kevin yelled. It sure didnt help that Brian had lost his train of thought while following the flight of a bumble-bee. "Bee," Brian mumbled to himself and moved faster.
As the duo approached the access road that wound serpentine through the cemetery, Kevin looked to the north and noticed a two elderly people shambling towards a grave. The thought came to his mind go over to them and ask them if they had ever heard of him before. He really wanted to tell them about how hard he works and how he likes to hike, but it was almost 10:20, and the signing was going to start in 10 minutes. He had almost decided to just walk on and find Frank's grave, when he looked up and saw one of the old people looking at him and pointing. "Well, heck," Kevin though, "Maybe they have something they want me to sign!" To Kevin, this was a perfectly reasonable thought.
"Brian!" he barked, then thought better of his tone. "Brian," he said again, this time pleasantly. "I'm going to stand right here on this gentle rise, just above all the ground around it. You go get those fogies and corral them over here. I think they're fans."
Brian just looked at Kevin for a moment, squinting in the late morning sun. "What's a fogie?" he asked meekly.
"You know, an old person. Over there!" his voice rising again as he noticed Brian looking in the wrong direction.
"I don't see any old people," Brian said without turning his head.
"No, no, Brian. To your right."
Brian turned to the left and expelled an exasperated gasp. "Now what am I looking for again?"
"Goddammit you dipshit! Over there!" Kevin yelled, pointing the exact opposite direction Brian was looking. Brian looked at Kevin, and followed his finger. By now Kevin saw that the fans were making their way slowly to him. "Never mind, Brian. Just say put and introduce me when they get close enough. I'm just going to stand tall on this rise and smile down on them"
"You don't look very tall, even on that rise," Brian noted. Kevin glared hopelessly at him and said "just do what you're told," while shaking his head.
"You mean you still want me to go get them, right Kevin? I'm confused!" Kevin was really starting to lose his cool. "Goddammit, just fucking stand there you retard!" Brian just looked helplessly at Kevin, and the two locked eyes. "Why you have to keep speaking to me like that, Kevin?" Brian asked, breaking eye contact and looking at the two different colored shoes he had accidentally put on that morning. Kevin just shook his head and looked down again, chin on his chest, and rubbed his temples. "I thought of the Mutati all by myself, you know," Brain muttered almost under his breath.
"No you didn't," Kevin snapped back, again glaring at the top of Brian's head. "Those are my face danc...I mean your father's face dancers with a different name." Brian looked more confused, so Kevin just dropped it, when he realized that the old people had closed the gap much more quickly than he thought they would. Kevin looked up at the fans and froze in panic. Both of them were dressed in filthy rags, and the first one, a man, was not only missing an arm, but bone was poking out of a bloody stump just below his left elbow. The second, another man, was moving towards Brian. "Hey!" Kevin had time to yell just before the second man, wearing the remnants of a black tuxedo jumped onto Brian and bit into his skull. "Mutati," Brian mumbled again as he and the second man fell to the ground. Kevin watched as Brian's head struck a tomb stone and spilled its wet, jelly-like contents onto the ground. The second man reached out past Brian's shaking body, grabbed a handful of Brian's brains, and shoved them into his mouth. Kevin watched as shock turned to horror, then to the very real feeling that he was in Hell.
Kevin's senses opened up just then, and he noticed that the first man was getting very close to him. For a moment, just as Brian's brains spilled out, Kevin noticed the first man take a sniff of the air and look over to Brian's corpse. That was all the time he needed. He pinweeled back off the small rise and fell on his backside. Kevin pushed himself up, got to his feet, and ran as fast as he could in the direction he was facing without looking back. He dropped his dictaphone in the grass, and just left it. Even though panic had seized him completely as he ran, he could not stop running the last few seconds through his head again and again. He figured, with some self satisfaction, that the ability to have a clear thought during a time of panic was one of the gifts of a good writer. As that thought passed his mind, he hit a tall tombstone with his hip and went sprawling. As he rolled from the fall and came up, ready to run again, he looked over past the small rise and saw both men bending down over where Brian's body should be. Nobody was following him! Suddenly a wave of chills washed over him, as he realized what must be going on just fifty feet away. Kevin wanted to run, but also wanted to see what was going on. He could not believe what he had seen just before he fell the first time, and needed to prove to himself that what was going on over there was not what it had looked like. Kevin stood up again and strained to see Brian's body over the rise. He never got up high enough to see anything but the soles of Brian's shoes, but the feet definately were not moving. The one-armed man looked up and noticed Kevin staring agape at the scene. Kevin suddenly had a flash of recognition. His eyebrows creased and he lowered and pushed his head forward, staring at the one armed man. "Holy fucking shit," Kevin mouthed The one armed man was A. E. Van Vogt, he was certain of it. "What the hell is going on?" Kevin thought. He then became certain that someone was looking at him from behind. Instead of turning and putting Van Vogt directly behind him, Kevin pivoted and backed away so he could look from the right to the left and hopefully keep everyone in his sight. Kevin looked right into the sun when he looked behind him, but saw a bearded figure standing on the hill he and Brian had crested not five minutes ago. Suddenly a thought, in a voice not his own, pushed into his mind. "CRIMINAL!" it said. Kevin had no idea how he knew, but that new person was talking to him mentally.
As he figured out that he heard the voice with his mind, he realized that his ears were hearing footsteps running his way across the hard ground. Kevin whipped his head around just in time to see Van Vogt and the second man take their third or fourth steps in his direction. "Shit!" Kevin spoke breathlessly as he realized the second man was L. Ron Hubbard. That was all he needed. Kevin turned an ran, never realizing that he was running away from the limo, and a telephone. He glanced around and comforted himself with the realization that Hubbard and Van Vogt were some slow old men, and would likely never catch up with him. "Good thing I'm an Olympic level hiker!" Kevin thought as he ran away. As he turned back to his path he "heard" again, "CRIMINAL!" in his mind. This time the power of the voice was strong enought to make his step shake a little bit.
"I'd better get some cover," Kevin thought as he ran forward. Within two minutes, he found an old but nicely kept caretaker's house in the cemetery. He ran up to the door and yanked the handle, but it was locked. Kevin turned around and saw Van Vogt and Hubbard about 200 yards away, so he turned to try to force the lock. Without warning, a shotgun was poked through the mail slot right at Kevin's hips. "What's your name?" a voice on the other side of the door yelled. "NGHH!" Kevin said, and the shotgun cocked. "KEVIN!" he yelled. "My name's Kevin!"
"OK," the voice replied, pretty calmly Kevin thought. "Hold on." The latches were thrown and the door opened slightly. Kevin pushed in and fell to the floor, then scurried across the carpet on the floor to a vacant corner, away from any people in the room. He heard the door shut and latch again. He looked up and saw an African American man holding a shot gun, a pretty young girl in a polka-dot dress with blank eyes, and a hard looking white man in shirt sleeves. "My name's Duane," the black man said. "I guess you know something wierd is going on? How many did you see out there?"
Kevin's voice would not come to him. He again looked down and rubbed his temples.
TO BE CONTINUED.......
EPISODE II:
Although Kevin got into the cottage just over twenty minutes prior, he was still twitchy and breathing hard. "Calm down man, you're making the girl jumpy!" the hard man in shirtsleeves said. Harry his name was, and Kevin already didn't like him. Harry spoke critically to Kevin with every word he uttered, and Kevin just could not abide by that sort of talk. But he kept his peace, and intended to until he had sized up the situation. "OK, OK," Kevin said to Harry. "I think I can get a grip. What are those things?"
"I think they're actual zombies," Duane said. They look dead to me, and they kind of act like what I've seen in movies. All except for that tall bearded one on the hill who keeps trying to talk. Can you all hear him?"
"I've been hearing him since before I could see him," Harry said. "Right after I heard something about a criminal, Judy started acting like she is now; like she's almost catatonic."
"Silly cunt," Kevin thought, but did not say.
"I think that there is more to it than that," Duane said to Harry. "It's like I hear that one in my head, but I have yet to see his mouth move. I can't believe what I'm saying...but what the Hell? Were sure that they're zombies, right? I think that one is talking to us psychically."
"Look, I have some experience with this," Kevin said. Both Duane and Harry turned to him with their eyes wide. "I once wrote a few hundred chapters about a zombie upris..."
"Shut the fuck up!" Harry yelled at Kevin, and rose to stand in front of him, eclipsing everything behind him. Harry was big. "You've been mumbling for the last twenty minutes about some fuckin' book signing and I don't want to hear any more."
"Just calm down, calm down, Harry," Duane said in soothing tones. He's only trying to help." Kevin was so shocked by Harry's display of aggression that he was shocked silent, but he did manage to nod his head in affirmation of what Duane said, while staring at Harry's chest. Harry looked from Kevin to Duane, then turned to the window and strode across the floor to peek out of it.
"Hey, I see four of them now!" Harry yelled after staring out the window for a few seconds. Both Kevin and Duane rose, but Duane motioned Kevin back to the chair in the corner he had set up for himself just after he clambered into the house. Duane turned soundlessly from Kevin, still motioning him to sit down and stay away from Harry. Duane walked to the edge of the window opposite Harry, and peeked out for himself. Outside the bearded figure was still on a hill to the east. The one-armed zombie and his companion in the tux were a 50 or so yards from the house to the north, staring at the figure on the hill with what appeared to be rapt attention. A fourth figure with a red and a blue sneaker on and a fresh head wound was busy trying to eat the bark off of a tree. "I think that new one thinks that the tree has brains," Duane muttered to Harry.
"What did you say about a fourth one?" Kevin asked Duane.
"Come over here and see," Duane said. Kevin rose and skirted around Harry to Duane's side of the window. Harry glared at Kevin as he passed, but did not reach out to him. Kevin waited until Duane had backed up, then bent down to peek out from the bottom side of the window frame. Sure enough, Brian was out there, covered in blood, gnawing on a low hanging tree branch. "What the fuck is that idiot up to? He doesn't even know how to be a good zombie," whispered Kevin so only he could hear. "That's Brian, my driv...my writing partner," Kevin said. "Those other two attacked and killed him on the other side of the cemetery, up by the main road. If they really are zombies, I guess Brian has risen to join them." Just as Kevin finished that thought, Brian noticed something moving in the bushes and dove to get it. He obviously missed, and scrambled into the thicket in pursuit.
"CRIMINALCRIMINALCRIMINAL!" everyone heard in their heads. Judy moaned a wail of pain, and the three men tried to cover their ears, to no avail. Kevin looked up to the hill. The sun had risen above the figure now, and Kevin got a much better look at the silhouette of the more distant man now. Recognition gradually crept over him. It was Frank. That hairy beard could belong to no other. Suddenly, Kevin put it all together. These were not random ghouls risen from the dead to chase whoever happened by. These were authors whose works Kevin had perverted over the years. Even Hubbard had a beef with him, Kevin knew. When Kevin snapped back to the present from his mind, he realized that Harry had taken Judy to the kitchen for something. He could hear them moving around in there.
"I wonder if George Lucas is out there too?" Duane asked Kevin. Kevin started and looked at Duane helplessly, his jaw working but no sound coming out. "I know, I know," Duane said. "He's not dead yet, but with the crap he's been putting out lately, one can never tell for sure, hmmm?" Duane watched Kevin's panic reaction start to rise. "Relax," he said, laughing with a big smile. "I'm not going to put you out. But you'd better not tell Harry who you are. He is a regular poster at Dunenovels, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't like you." Kevin stopped sweating so hard, but he'd been in panic mode for going on thirty minutes, and it was hard to calm down.
"You're damn right I am," Harry said from the doorway. "You're that fuck that turned Bellonda into a joke, aren't you?" Harry yelled. "And now those four are out there looking for you."
"Wait a minute," Duane snapped at Harry. "You mean he's that guy? Shit, I thought he was Lawrence Kasdan!"
"SENDHIMTOME!" spoke the voice suddenly, in a tone that was just bearable. Judy moaned from the kitchen. "SENDHIMTOMENOW!" and Judy whined again. "Somebody shut that whore up!" Kevin yelled, and instantly realized after he saw Harry's face that he had let his panic get the better of him.
"Out you go, asshole!" Harry said as he grabbed Kevin by the left arm and hefted him towards the door.
"NO! Wait a minute, please," Kevin implored Duane pleadingly. "Stop, Harry," Duane said.
Before anyone else could speak, Kevin said to Duane "Come on! You can't let him throw me out to them like this. Please! You are the voice of reason! Please, man! Please! You can do the right thing here!"
"You're right, I can," Duane said. He looked to Harry with moist eyes, put one hand on Harry's shoulder, and the other on Kevin's free arm, and said in his calmest tone yet, "Throw the fucker out, Harry."
Kevin started to scream, and so did Judy. One scream could not be told from the other outside the house.
TO BE CONTINUED.
EPISODE III:
"Well, that's just about all of them," Kevin thought as he crouched in the bushes.
After being thrown from the house by the shot-gun toting ass and his hoodlum friend, Kevin ran into the nearest copse of trees he could find. Unfortunately he was in a cemetery, and the whole property was landscaped. Even the woods were planned, and as a result, thin. But Kevin found a thick bush, and after pushing into its core, was pretty well hidden. From his vantage he could see Frank, Hubbard and Van Vogt, as well as many others. There were a bunch of the dead about 25' from him, and he could also make out now Jerry Siegel, H.G. Wells and Dean Koontz. "Shit, I thought that Koontz was still alive!" Kevin thought. "And Siegel!" immediately thereafter. "Fucking Jews," Kevin thought, not for the first time in his life.
Kevin tried to rationalize what was going on. He just didn't get why he was being singled out. As far as he was concerned, he had made everything he touched better. Kevin knew that his special skill was taking the mediocre words of others and adding a luster and shine to them; making them better. He just knew he had done it with Dune. He knew he had done it with Slan. He knew he did it to Frankenstein, Superman, Star Wars, X-Files; Everything! He was so good he even had his wife call him "The Great Re-Doer." He thought that was funny. He had gotten mad once when he heard her tell a friend that she gave him the nick name because he couldn't do anything right the first time, but after yelling at her for a few hours, he felt much better.
But this Frank Herbert thing. That could only be about one thing, especially since Frank kept calling him a criminal. Ten years ago when Kevin met Brian for the first time, Brian showed him his first edition, first printing of Dune, specially inscribed to Brian from Frank. Kevin stole it and gave it to L. Ron Hubbard's ghost in exchange for fifty characters and a broad plot for the new Dune novels. He just went down to the Dianetics Center in La Jolla, put the book on the "dedication plate" in the back room, and woke up the next day after having dreamed all the characters. Kevin felt bad at first about stealing the book, but when he wrote about the Cogiters, Cymeks, and Manion Butler, he knew it was worth it. Besides, Brian didn't give a shit. The day after Kevin stole it Brian woke up from a bender. Kevin told him that he traded it for a bag of weed. Brian wept over the loss, and Kevin consoled him with stories of the wealth they soon would realize.
"That stupid mother-fucker forgot about that book within a week," Kevin thought to himself while crouched in the bush. "Besides, the stuff I came up with was so much better than what Frank left us, the old codger." At the tail end of that thought Brian realized that he was dealing with a psychic zombie, so he had better stop thinking antagonizing thoughts, even though he knew he was right.
Kevin sat in the bush, watching the various zombies amble around the caretaker's cottage. He suspected that the zombies could smell brains, but for some reason none of them were paying him any attention. He wondered if he was being set up for something, or if he really was hidden so well that he was safe. Soon his legs began to ache from being confined and kept motionless, but before Kevin could do anything about the comfort of his legs, he realized that he had another problem. He had to take a dump! He looked at his watch and realized it was getting to be that time of day any how. But what to do. Assuming that the zombies were not able to smell his brains, there is no way that they would miss the stink of his droppings. Kevin looked around again and saw that there were ten or eleven zombies within a few long stride's distance of his hidey hole. He began to panic, but that only made him have to shit worse! "C'mon, c'mon," Kevin thought to himself. "If there is anything I should be good at by now, its shitting in the woods. Think! Think!" But nothing came to him. Soon he was desperate, and had to do something or mess his pants. He had not done that in weeks, and was not looking forward to asking Becca to help him clean up again. That was just too shameful to go through again.
Kevin slowly and quietly undid his belt, opened his fly and pulled his pants down as far as they would go. He would just take a dump and run fast if any of those things noticed him. He cut a little fart and froze in panic for two reasons. First, he was afraid that one of the zombies would hear or smell him. Fortunately, none did. Second, he felt a little drop of liquid ease around his left butt cheek as he passed gas, and began to be concerned that the stress of the day had affected his bowel health. Just then his rear exploded so violently that it startled him. He heard his liquid feces strike a branch behind him, and felt it deflected back onto his own tush. In the rush to get out the feces erupted in every direction, including at an angle almost perpendicular to the direction things like that usually travel. Right away Kevin realized he had a huge problem: He had just shit all over his shoes and his own shirt tails, leaving a nasty stain of fear that any zombie would have no trouble at all following. Kevin was so frustrated with himself that he almost cried out in panic and rage! He glanced away from his shit stained heels and noticed that two zombies were ambling in his direction, sniffing the air and retching a little bit. "Time to run, now," Kevin thought in a panic.
He pulled up his pants as best he could and jumped from the heart of the shrubbery he was in. All the zombies in his area turned to stare at him. Fortunately none were close. A few, too deteriorated with rot to run, started to shamble towards him. But the newly dead ones ran in his direction. Kevin's heart practically jumped into his heart as one reached for him. He turned and ran as fast as his feet would carry him. Before too long Kevin realized that the shit in his shoes was starting to make his feet slide around in them. He was afraid that he would lose his footing, so he decided to ditch them and run in his socks. He turned around and saw that few of the zombies were following him, and none could really keep up. Kevin ran into an area of the cemetery that was more heavily treed and had some footpaths. He ran faster, and started taking unpredictable turns on the paths, but tried not to make a full circle. Soon he came upon a tool shack built up against a steep hill. He ran behind the shed and lay down on the slope, hidden completely from the path he had just come off of. As he stopped his own stink caught up with him, and he almost vomited himself. He had been eating a lot of microwaveable hamburgers lately, and even though he loved them, they really did not come out well later on. Kevin reached down to untie his shoes, but before he touched them he saw that they were absolutely covered, from the tips of his toes to the tops of the heels, and even all over his pants cuff. "What the fuck?" Kevin muttered to himself. He was too disgusted to use his hands, so he just pulled his shoes off with his feet and left the shoes there. He was considering throwing them up on top of the shed so as to divert the zombies for a time, but was still too disgusted to even touch them. Still, it seemed a good idea to him, so he began to look for a stick to do the job with. As he calmed down after his spring, he started to look around for a suitable stick, and realized that he could hear voices in the distance. He could not make out what they were saying, but they sounded human to him; intelligent, and not zombie-like. He remained deathly silent for a full minute, and while he could not make out what was being said, he did realize that they were coming from certain direction.
He started to creep towards the voices, praying that they would be from men who could help him. Kevin went around the steep hill, over another rise, and around the back of a giant mausoleum. When he got around the memorial, he stopped to listen again. There was no doubt that the voices were intelligent, and were near by. The more he listened, the surer he became that there was actually only one voice. Naggingly familiar, Kevin struggled to place it. Whomever was talking was doing so in a very low voice, not quite a whisper, but not much louder than one either. He definately could not make out the words no matter how hard he tried, so he advanced slowly around the next monument, certain that the voices were coming from there. As he edged slowly around the last corner, he found nobody. But the voice was clearly coming from the intersection of two paths right in front of the mausoleum he was using as cover. This confused him greatly, but seeing no zombies in the area, Kevin walked out into the clearing and listened. Now he could hear what the voice was saying. As he listened he heard, "You are NOT a crappy author. You can change ANY universe you want and make it better!"
"Shit!" Kevin thought as realization dawned over him. It was his own daily affirmation tape. The one he recorded for himself during the hated "Jedi Incidents" from the early 90's. He looked down to the ground and stared at the gleaming case of his own dictaphone, slowly turning and speaking his own words back to him. Kevin felt two cold hands grab his neck from behind, then felt his bowels go loose again. A powerful voice pushed into his mind and said "CHANGE ANY UNIVERSE YOU WANT, HUH?" Kevin felt two violent pops in his neck, then felt darkness wash over him.
Epilogue, Six Months Later.
The thought "Brains, NOW!" came to the naked thing as it thrashed around in its chair. The clinking of the chain around its neck distracted it, probably for the thousandth time, from its rage. It stared at the chain which connected his neck to the floor, uncomprehending for a full minute before the ringing of the telephone startled it and sent it into a rage again. Before it could smash the phone a voice emanated from a speaker, again shocking the beast into calmness and wonder. "Mmmmmrrrooouuuugggghhhhh! Groogoble! Aaaaaaarrrrrrrr," the voice on the speaker screamed, then a loud beep that frightened the beast.
Then another voice, this one saying, "Hi Brian, this is your agent, Lurton Blasingame, Jr. I got the draft chapters your wife faxed over to me. I think that they are going to take a little work. Actually, I wanted to ask you if this is a foreign language or something? Are you planning on releasing Paul of Dune in Kazakhstan or something first? I'm afraid that I just don't get it. Anyway, you know that I like dealing with you, man. Hey, we're buddies, right? But, is Kevin going to come back soon? If you're planning on releasing this thing without his help then we may just have to renegotiate the contract with Tor. But hey, whatever the HLP wants is fine with me. I'm sure we could publish this just the way it is, you know. Your fans tend to be VERY accepting of anything you put out. Just....give me a call and clue me in to the HLP's plan, huh? Bye!"
As the machine clicked off, Brian started to remember who he really was. It was hard, what with the animal part of his mind always crying out for fresh brains to eat. Brian remembered vaguely being corralled by members of the HLP and brought back to the Mukitelo home, then chained up in the basement. Now Brian wanted nothing more than to break the chain holding him to the desk and smash everything in his site. But he knew he had work to do. He had managed to put out one new short story in the last six months, and the reading public had not even noticed that he was a mindless zombie and that Kevin's name on the author's line was a complete sham. "They stupid!" Brian thought, as he hunched over the typewriter on the desk and started pushing keys at random.
It was well past 10 am and Kevin was late for his first book signing in Tacoma. He had to have the driver turn his car around because he actually forgot his dictaphone. "Imagine that," Kevin thought to himself, and chuckles noiselessly. That thing was part of him, he relied on it so much. He barked out for his driver to turn the car around at 9 am, fifteen minutes away from home. By the time he got back and found the confound thing on a tray next to his treadmill by the stereo, he had already forgotten much of the plotting he had come up with to Chapter 721 of Paul of Dune on the way out of the house earlier. "Oh well," he thought. "Not like it matters. I'll just rewrite something from an X-files book and change the name 'Mulder' to 'Moneo'."
Back on track to the signing, Kevin decided to read something dense while he thought up new ideas for the next Dune book. As he opened his copy of Rose Madder, the sunlight shone through the trees and onto the page so brightly that he was briefly dazzled. Kevin looked up to blink his eyes and noticed his limo was passing by Restful Acres, the cemetery where Frank Herbert was buried. "Not only that," thought Kevin, "but a bunch of my personal SF heroes are interred here." Kevin had been by to place flowers on Frank's grave each time a new Dune book came out. He suddenly had a strong recollection of putting roses on Frank's plot not one month ago, as he silently whispered a prayer for the continuing health of his accountant.
Kevin decided to do the honorable thing and stop and pay his respects. Especially since Brian was in the car with him, he thought it would be a nice gesture to start the day with. He picked up his phone and called the driver. "Hey, Brian, pull the fuckin' car over. I wanna stop."
"Where?" Brian asked quizzically.
"Right here." Brian felt his temperature start to rise. It was getting so hard to get Brian to do his bidding lately. Its not that Brian was starting to chaff at his bit. Its just that he was getting stupider and stupider as time wore on. Kevin thought it had something to do with marijuana, but he really wasn't sure at all.
"Right in the street, like right here, you mean?" Brian asked over the car phone.
"No Brian. Pull over and apply the brakes once you're on the shoulder."
"Oh," Brian deadpanned from the cockpit. "Hey, have I ever been here before?" Brian asked Kevin. "Hey," Brian quipped before Kevin could hang up in disgust. "Is this where my father is buried? I sure miss him. He's made me one rich mother-fucker, hasn't he?"
"No, you moron," Kevin replied. "That was me!" He slammed the phone down, but before he did, "get out and open my door."
Kevin and Brian entered the cemetery from the side of the road. They crested the first hill on the way to the grave walking double-time. Kevin was in a hurry and now wanted only to get this done with. Brian was walking slowly, as he had forgotten to move his arms as he walked. "Come on, moron!" Kevin yelled. It sure didnt help that Brian had lost his train of thought while following the flight of a bumble-bee. "Bee," Brian mumbled to himself and moved faster.
As the duo approached the access road that wound serpentine through the cemetery, Kevin looked to the north and noticed a two elderly people shambling towards a grave. The thought came to his mind go over to them and ask them if they had ever heard of him before. He really wanted to tell them about how hard he works and how he likes to hike, but it was almost 10:20, and the signing was going to start in 10 minutes. He had almost decided to just walk on and find Frank's grave, when he looked up and saw one of the old people looking at him and pointing. "Well, heck," Kevin though, "Maybe they have something they want me to sign!" To Kevin, this was a perfectly reasonable thought.
"Brian!" he barked, then thought better of his tone. "Brian," he said again, this time pleasantly. "I'm going to stand right here on this gentle rise, just above all the ground around it. You go get those fogies and corral them over here. I think they're fans."
Brian just looked at Kevin for a moment, squinting in the late morning sun. "What's a fogie?" he asked meekly.
"You know, an old person. Over there!" his voice rising again as he noticed Brian looking in the wrong direction.
"I don't see any old people," Brian said without turning his head.
"No, no, Brian. To your right."
Brian turned to the left and expelled an exasperated gasp. "Now what am I looking for again?"
"Goddammit you dipshit! Over there!" Kevin yelled, pointing the exact opposite direction Brian was looking. Brian looked at Kevin, and followed his finger. By now Kevin saw that the fans were making their way slowly to him. "Never mind, Brian. Just say put and introduce me when they get close enough. I'm just going to stand tall on this rise and smile down on them"
"You don't look very tall, even on that rise," Brian noted. Kevin glared hopelessly at him and said "just do what you're told," while shaking his head.
"You mean you still want me to go get them, right Kevin? I'm confused!" Kevin was really starting to lose his cool. "Goddammit, just fucking stand there you retard!" Brian just looked helplessly at Kevin, and the two locked eyes. "Why you have to keep speaking to me like that, Kevin?" Brian asked, breaking eye contact and looking at the two different colored shoes he had accidentally put on that morning. Kevin just shook his head and looked down again, chin on his chest, and rubbed his temples. "I thought of the Mutati all by myself, you know," Brain muttered almost under his breath.
"No you didn't," Kevin snapped back, again glaring at the top of Brian's head. "Those are my face danc...I mean your father's face dancers with a different name." Brian looked more confused, so Kevin just dropped it, when he realized that the old people had closed the gap much more quickly than he thought they would. Kevin looked up at the fans and froze in panic. Both of them were dressed in filthy rags, and the first one, a man, was not only missing an arm, but bone was poking out of a bloody stump just below his left elbow. The second, another man, was moving towards Brian. "Hey!" Kevin had time to yell just before the second man, wearing the remnants of a black tuxedo jumped onto Brian and bit into his skull. "Mutati," Brian mumbled again as he and the second man fell to the ground. Kevin watched as Brian's head struck a tomb stone and spilled its wet, jelly-like contents onto the ground. The second man reached out past Brian's shaking body, grabbed a handful of Brian's brains, and shoved them into his mouth. Kevin watched as shock turned to horror, then to the very real feeling that he was in Hell.
Kevin's senses opened up just then, and he noticed that the first man was getting very close to him. For a moment, just as Brian's brains spilled out, Kevin noticed the first man take a sniff of the air and look over to Brian's corpse. That was all the time he needed. He pinweeled back off the small rise and fell on his backside. Kevin pushed himself up, got to his feet, and ran as fast as he could in the direction he was facing without looking back. He dropped his dictaphone in the grass, and just left it. Even though panic had seized him completely as he ran, he could not stop running the last few seconds through his head again and again. He figured, with some self satisfaction, that the ability to have a clear thought during a time of panic was one of the gifts of a good writer. As that thought passed his mind, he hit a tall tombstone with his hip and went sprawling. As he rolled from the fall and came up, ready to run again, he looked over past the small rise and saw both men bending down over where Brian's body should be. Nobody was following him! Suddenly a wave of chills washed over him, as he realized what must be going on just fifty feet away. Kevin wanted to run, but also wanted to see what was going on. He could not believe what he had seen just before he fell the first time, and needed to prove to himself that what was going on over there was not what it had looked like. Kevin stood up again and strained to see Brian's body over the rise. He never got up high enough to see anything but the soles of Brian's shoes, but the feet definately were not moving. The one-armed man looked up and noticed Kevin staring agape at the scene. Kevin suddenly had a flash of recognition. His eyebrows creased and he lowered and pushed his head forward, staring at the one armed man. "Holy fucking shit," Kevin mouthed The one armed man was A. E. Van Vogt, he was certain of it. "What the hell is going on?" Kevin thought. He then became certain that someone was looking at him from behind. Instead of turning and putting Van Vogt directly behind him, Kevin pivoted and backed away so he could look from the right to the left and hopefully keep everyone in his sight. Kevin looked right into the sun when he looked behind him, but saw a bearded figure standing on the hill he and Brian had crested not five minutes ago. Suddenly a thought, in a voice not his own, pushed into his mind. "CRIMINAL!" it said. Kevin had no idea how he knew, but that new person was talking to him mentally.
As he figured out that he heard the voice with his mind, he realized that his ears were hearing footsteps running his way across the hard ground. Kevin whipped his head around just in time to see Van Vogt and the second man take their third or fourth steps in his direction. "Shit!" Kevin spoke breathlessly as he realized the second man was L. Ron Hubbard. That was all he needed. Kevin turned an ran, never realizing that he was running away from the limo, and a telephone. He glanced around and comforted himself with the realization that Hubbard and Van Vogt were some slow old men, and would likely never catch up with him. "Good thing I'm an Olympic level hiker!" Kevin thought as he ran away. As he turned back to his path he "heard" again, "CRIMINAL!" in his mind. This time the power of the voice was strong enought to make his step shake a little bit.
"I'd better get some cover," Kevin thought as he ran forward. Within two minutes, he found an old but nicely kept caretaker's house in the cemetery. He ran up to the door and yanked the handle, but it was locked. Kevin turned around and saw Van Vogt and Hubbard about 200 yards away, so he turned to try to force the lock. Without warning, a shotgun was poked through the mail slot right at Kevin's hips. "What's your name?" a voice on the other side of the door yelled. "NGHH!" Kevin said, and the shotgun cocked. "KEVIN!" he yelled. "My name's Kevin!"
"OK," the voice replied, pretty calmly Kevin thought. "Hold on." The latches were thrown and the door opened slightly. Kevin pushed in and fell to the floor, then scurried across the carpet on the floor to a vacant corner, away from any people in the room. He heard the door shut and latch again. He looked up and saw an African American man holding a shot gun, a pretty young girl in a polka-dot dress with blank eyes, and a hard looking white man in shirt sleeves. "My name's Duane," the black man said. "I guess you know something wierd is going on? How many did you see out there?"
Kevin's voice would not come to him. He again looked down and rubbed his temples.
TO BE CONTINUED.......
EPISODE II:
Although Kevin got into the cottage just over twenty minutes prior, he was still twitchy and breathing hard. "Calm down man, you're making the girl jumpy!" the hard man in shirtsleeves said. Harry his name was, and Kevin already didn't like him. Harry spoke critically to Kevin with every word he uttered, and Kevin just could not abide by that sort of talk. But he kept his peace, and intended to until he had sized up the situation. "OK, OK," Kevin said to Harry. "I think I can get a grip. What are those things?"
"I think they're actual zombies," Duane said. They look dead to me, and they kind of act like what I've seen in movies. All except for that tall bearded one on the hill who keeps trying to talk. Can you all hear him?"
"I've been hearing him since before I could see him," Harry said. "Right after I heard something about a criminal, Judy started acting like she is now; like she's almost catatonic."
"Silly cunt," Kevin thought, but did not say.
"I think that there is more to it than that," Duane said to Harry. "It's like I hear that one in my head, but I have yet to see his mouth move. I can't believe what I'm saying...but what the Hell? Were sure that they're zombies, right? I think that one is talking to us psychically."
"Look, I have some experience with this," Kevin said. Both Duane and Harry turned to him with their eyes wide. "I once wrote a few hundred chapters about a zombie upris..."
"Shut the fuck up!" Harry yelled at Kevin, and rose to stand in front of him, eclipsing everything behind him. Harry was big. "You've been mumbling for the last twenty minutes about some fuckin' book signing and I don't want to hear any more."
"Just calm down, calm down, Harry," Duane said in soothing tones. He's only trying to help." Kevin was so shocked by Harry's display of aggression that he was shocked silent, but he did manage to nod his head in affirmation of what Duane said, while staring at Harry's chest. Harry looked from Kevin to Duane, then turned to the window and strode across the floor to peek out of it.
"Hey, I see four of them now!" Harry yelled after staring out the window for a few seconds. Both Kevin and Duane rose, but Duane motioned Kevin back to the chair in the corner he had set up for himself just after he clambered into the house. Duane turned soundlessly from Kevin, still motioning him to sit down and stay away from Harry. Duane walked to the edge of the window opposite Harry, and peeked out for himself. Outside the bearded figure was still on a hill to the east. The one-armed zombie and his companion in the tux were a 50 or so yards from the house to the north, staring at the figure on the hill with what appeared to be rapt attention. A fourth figure with a red and a blue sneaker on and a fresh head wound was busy trying to eat the bark off of a tree. "I think that new one thinks that the tree has brains," Duane muttered to Harry.
"What did you say about a fourth one?" Kevin asked Duane.
"Come over here and see," Duane said. Kevin rose and skirted around Harry to Duane's side of the window. Harry glared at Kevin as he passed, but did not reach out to him. Kevin waited until Duane had backed up, then bent down to peek out from the bottom side of the window frame. Sure enough, Brian was out there, covered in blood, gnawing on a low hanging tree branch. "What the fuck is that idiot up to? He doesn't even know how to be a good zombie," whispered Kevin so only he could hear. "That's Brian, my driv...my writing partner," Kevin said. "Those other two attacked and killed him on the other side of the cemetery, up by the main road. If they really are zombies, I guess Brian has risen to join them." Just as Kevin finished that thought, Brian noticed something moving in the bushes and dove to get it. He obviously missed, and scrambled into the thicket in pursuit.
"CRIMINALCRIMINALCRIMINAL!" everyone heard in their heads. Judy moaned a wail of pain, and the three men tried to cover their ears, to no avail. Kevin looked up to the hill. The sun had risen above the figure now, and Kevin got a much better look at the silhouette of the more distant man now. Recognition gradually crept over him. It was Frank. That hairy beard could belong to no other. Suddenly, Kevin put it all together. These were not random ghouls risen from the dead to chase whoever happened by. These were authors whose works Kevin had perverted over the years. Even Hubbard had a beef with him, Kevin knew. When Kevin snapped back to the present from his mind, he realized that Harry had taken Judy to the kitchen for something. He could hear them moving around in there.
"I wonder if George Lucas is out there too?" Duane asked Kevin. Kevin started and looked at Duane helplessly, his jaw working but no sound coming out. "I know, I know," Duane said. "He's not dead yet, but with the crap he's been putting out lately, one can never tell for sure, hmmm?" Duane watched Kevin's panic reaction start to rise. "Relax," he said, laughing with a big smile. "I'm not going to put you out. But you'd better not tell Harry who you are. He is a regular poster at Dunenovels, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't like you." Kevin stopped sweating so hard, but he'd been in panic mode for going on thirty minutes, and it was hard to calm down.
"You're damn right I am," Harry said from the doorway. "You're that fuck that turned Bellonda into a joke, aren't you?" Harry yelled. "And now those four are out there looking for you."
"Wait a minute," Duane snapped at Harry. "You mean he's that guy? Shit, I thought he was Lawrence Kasdan!"
"SENDHIMTOME!" spoke the voice suddenly, in a tone that was just bearable. Judy moaned from the kitchen. "SENDHIMTOMENOW!" and Judy whined again. "Somebody shut that whore up!" Kevin yelled, and instantly realized after he saw Harry's face that he had let his panic get the better of him.
"Out you go, asshole!" Harry said as he grabbed Kevin by the left arm and hefted him towards the door.
"NO! Wait a minute, please," Kevin implored Duane pleadingly. "Stop, Harry," Duane said.
Before anyone else could speak, Kevin said to Duane "Come on! You can't let him throw me out to them like this. Please! You are the voice of reason! Please, man! Please! You can do the right thing here!"
"You're right, I can," Duane said. He looked to Harry with moist eyes, put one hand on Harry's shoulder, and the other on Kevin's free arm, and said in his calmest tone yet, "Throw the fucker out, Harry."
Kevin started to scream, and so did Judy. One scream could not be told from the other outside the house.
TO BE CONTINUED.
EPISODE III:
"Well, that's just about all of them," Kevin thought as he crouched in the bushes.
After being thrown from the house by the shot-gun toting ass and his hoodlum friend, Kevin ran into the nearest copse of trees he could find. Unfortunately he was in a cemetery, and the whole property was landscaped. Even the woods were planned, and as a result, thin. But Kevin found a thick bush, and after pushing into its core, was pretty well hidden. From his vantage he could see Frank, Hubbard and Van Vogt, as well as many others. There were a bunch of the dead about 25' from him, and he could also make out now Jerry Siegel, H.G. Wells and Dean Koontz. "Shit, I thought that Koontz was still alive!" Kevin thought. "And Siegel!" immediately thereafter. "Fucking Jews," Kevin thought, not for the first time in his life.
Kevin tried to rationalize what was going on. He just didn't get why he was being singled out. As far as he was concerned, he had made everything he touched better. Kevin knew that his special skill was taking the mediocre words of others and adding a luster and shine to them; making them better. He just knew he had done it with Dune. He knew he had done it with Slan. He knew he did it to Frankenstein, Superman, Star Wars, X-Files; Everything! He was so good he even had his wife call him "The Great Re-Doer." He thought that was funny. He had gotten mad once when he heard her tell a friend that she gave him the nick name because he couldn't do anything right the first time, but after yelling at her for a few hours, he felt much better.
But this Frank Herbert thing. That could only be about one thing, especially since Frank kept calling him a criminal. Ten years ago when Kevin met Brian for the first time, Brian showed him his first edition, first printing of Dune, specially inscribed to Brian from Frank. Kevin stole it and gave it to L. Ron Hubbard's ghost in exchange for fifty characters and a broad plot for the new Dune novels. He just went down to the Dianetics Center in La Jolla, put the book on the "dedication plate" in the back room, and woke up the next day after having dreamed all the characters. Kevin felt bad at first about stealing the book, but when he wrote about the Cogiters, Cymeks, and Manion Butler, he knew it was worth it. Besides, Brian didn't give a shit. The day after Kevin stole it Brian woke up from a bender. Kevin told him that he traded it for a bag of weed. Brian wept over the loss, and Kevin consoled him with stories of the wealth they soon would realize.
"That stupid mother-fucker forgot about that book within a week," Kevin thought to himself while crouched in the bush. "Besides, the stuff I came up with was so much better than what Frank left us, the old codger." At the tail end of that thought Brian realized that he was dealing with a psychic zombie, so he had better stop thinking antagonizing thoughts, even though he knew he was right.
Kevin sat in the bush, watching the various zombies amble around the caretaker's cottage. He suspected that the zombies could smell brains, but for some reason none of them were paying him any attention. He wondered if he was being set up for something, or if he really was hidden so well that he was safe. Soon his legs began to ache from being confined and kept motionless, but before Kevin could do anything about the comfort of his legs, he realized that he had another problem. He had to take a dump! He looked at his watch and realized it was getting to be that time of day any how. But what to do. Assuming that the zombies were not able to smell his brains, there is no way that they would miss the stink of his droppings. Kevin looked around again and saw that there were ten or eleven zombies within a few long stride's distance of his hidey hole. He began to panic, but that only made him have to shit worse! "C'mon, c'mon," Kevin thought to himself. "If there is anything I should be good at by now, its shitting in the woods. Think! Think!" But nothing came to him. Soon he was desperate, and had to do something or mess his pants. He had not done that in weeks, and was not looking forward to asking Becca to help him clean up again. That was just too shameful to go through again.
Kevin slowly and quietly undid his belt, opened his fly and pulled his pants down as far as they would go. He would just take a dump and run fast if any of those things noticed him. He cut a little fart and froze in panic for two reasons. First, he was afraid that one of the zombies would hear or smell him. Fortunately, none did. Second, he felt a little drop of liquid ease around his left butt cheek as he passed gas, and began to be concerned that the stress of the day had affected his bowel health. Just then his rear exploded so violently that it startled him. He heard his liquid feces strike a branch behind him, and felt it deflected back onto his own tush. In the rush to get out the feces erupted in every direction, including at an angle almost perpendicular to the direction things like that usually travel. Right away Kevin realized he had a huge problem: He had just shit all over his shoes and his own shirt tails, leaving a nasty stain of fear that any zombie would have no trouble at all following. Kevin was so frustrated with himself that he almost cried out in panic and rage! He glanced away from his shit stained heels and noticed that two zombies were ambling in his direction, sniffing the air and retching a little bit. "Time to run, now," Kevin thought in a panic.
He pulled up his pants as best he could and jumped from the heart of the shrubbery he was in. All the zombies in his area turned to stare at him. Fortunately none were close. A few, too deteriorated with rot to run, started to shamble towards him. But the newly dead ones ran in his direction. Kevin's heart practically jumped into his heart as one reached for him. He turned and ran as fast as his feet would carry him. Before too long Kevin realized that the shit in his shoes was starting to make his feet slide around in them. He was afraid that he would lose his footing, so he decided to ditch them and run in his socks. He turned around and saw that few of the zombies were following him, and none could really keep up. Kevin ran into an area of the cemetery that was more heavily treed and had some footpaths. He ran faster, and started taking unpredictable turns on the paths, but tried not to make a full circle. Soon he came upon a tool shack built up against a steep hill. He ran behind the shed and lay down on the slope, hidden completely from the path he had just come off of. As he stopped his own stink caught up with him, and he almost vomited himself. He had been eating a lot of microwaveable hamburgers lately, and even though he loved them, they really did not come out well later on. Kevin reached down to untie his shoes, but before he touched them he saw that they were absolutely covered, from the tips of his toes to the tops of the heels, and even all over his pants cuff. "What the fuck?" Kevin muttered to himself. He was too disgusted to use his hands, so he just pulled his shoes off with his feet and left the shoes there. He was considering throwing them up on top of the shed so as to divert the zombies for a time, but was still too disgusted to even touch them. Still, it seemed a good idea to him, so he began to look for a stick to do the job with. As he calmed down after his spring, he started to look around for a suitable stick, and realized that he could hear voices in the distance. He could not make out what they were saying, but they sounded human to him; intelligent, and not zombie-like. He remained deathly silent for a full minute, and while he could not make out what was being said, he did realize that they were coming from certain direction.
He started to creep towards the voices, praying that they would be from men who could help him. Kevin went around the steep hill, over another rise, and around the back of a giant mausoleum. When he got around the memorial, he stopped to listen again. There was no doubt that the voices were intelligent, and were near by. The more he listened, the surer he became that there was actually only one voice. Naggingly familiar, Kevin struggled to place it. Whomever was talking was doing so in a very low voice, not quite a whisper, but not much louder than one either. He definately could not make out the words no matter how hard he tried, so he advanced slowly around the next monument, certain that the voices were coming from there. As he edged slowly around the last corner, he found nobody. But the voice was clearly coming from the intersection of two paths right in front of the mausoleum he was using as cover. This confused him greatly, but seeing no zombies in the area, Kevin walked out into the clearing and listened. Now he could hear what the voice was saying. As he listened he heard, "You are NOT a crappy author. You can change ANY universe you want and make it better!"
"Shit!" Kevin thought as realization dawned over him. It was his own daily affirmation tape. The one he recorded for himself during the hated "Jedi Incidents" from the early 90's. He looked down to the ground and stared at the gleaming case of his own dictaphone, slowly turning and speaking his own words back to him. Kevin felt two cold hands grab his neck from behind, then felt his bowels go loose again. A powerful voice pushed into his mind and said "CHANGE ANY UNIVERSE YOU WANT, HUH?" Kevin felt two violent pops in his neck, then felt darkness wash over him.
Epilogue, Six Months Later.
The thought "Brains, NOW!" came to the naked thing as it thrashed around in its chair. The clinking of the chain around its neck distracted it, probably for the thousandth time, from its rage. It stared at the chain which connected his neck to the floor, uncomprehending for a full minute before the ringing of the telephone startled it and sent it into a rage again. Before it could smash the phone a voice emanated from a speaker, again shocking the beast into calmness and wonder. "Mmmmmrrrooouuuugggghhhhh! Groogoble! Aaaaaaarrrrrrrr," the voice on the speaker screamed, then a loud beep that frightened the beast.
Then another voice, this one saying, "Hi Brian, this is your agent, Lurton Blasingame, Jr. I got the draft chapters your wife faxed over to me. I think that they are going to take a little work. Actually, I wanted to ask you if this is a foreign language or something? Are you planning on releasing Paul of Dune in Kazakhstan or something first? I'm afraid that I just don't get it. Anyway, you know that I like dealing with you, man. Hey, we're buddies, right? But, is Kevin going to come back soon? If you're planning on releasing this thing without his help then we may just have to renegotiate the contract with Tor. But hey, whatever the HLP wants is fine with me. I'm sure we could publish this just the way it is, you know. Your fans tend to be VERY accepting of anything you put out. Just....give me a call and clue me in to the HLP's plan, huh? Bye!"
As the machine clicked off, Brian started to remember who he really was. It was hard, what with the animal part of his mind always crying out for fresh brains to eat. Brian remembered vaguely being corralled by members of the HLP and brought back to the Mukitelo home, then chained up in the basement. Now Brian wanted nothing more than to break the chain holding him to the desk and smash everything in his site. But he knew he had work to do. He had managed to put out one new short story in the last six months, and the reading public had not even noticed that he was a mindless zombie and that Kevin's name on the author's line was a complete sham. "They stupid!" Brian thought, as he hunched over the typewriter on the desk and started pushing keys at random.
Something is about to happen, Hal. Something wonderful!
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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- SandChigger
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Im planning on doing more.
Something is about to happen, Hal. Something wonderful!
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
The Omphalos Umbrella Page
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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- Alien Overlord
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I think so. Fuck em.SandChigger wrote:Shall I remove the password protection over on Hoary Tales?
Something is about to happen, Hal. Something wonderful!
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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Brilliant, utterly brilliant, I love it!!!
Although, I did spot one error:
But you got it right later on:
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon/lol.gif)
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon/biggrin.gif)
Although, I did spot one error:
Ummm.... what brains?The second man reached out past Brian's shaking body, grabbed a handful of Brian's brains [...]
But you got it right later on:
That's better.He suspected that the zombies could smell brains, but for some reason none of them were paying him any attention.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon/lol.gif)
"I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite." -- Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
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Thanks! I guess I should have been clearer. My theory has always been that Brian was born with brains (he is FH's son, no?) but along with some major head trauma from his dad and some skunked weed, they no longer work. They are, however, present. As to KJA, well, I think I said it all already.Liege-Killer wrote:Brilliant, utterly brilliant, I love it!!!![]()
Although, I did spot one error:
Ummm.... what brains?The second man reached out past Brian's shaking body, grabbed a handful of Brian's brains [...]
But you got it right later on:
That's better.He suspected that the zombies could smell brains, but for some reason none of them were paying him any attention.
Something is about to happen, Hal. Something wonderful!
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
The Omphalos Umbrella Page
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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Oh ok.... so he has damaged, non-functioning, but still edible brains... gotcha!Omphalos wrote:My theory has always been that Brian was born with brains (he is FH's son, no?) but along with some major head trauma from his dad and some skunked weed, they no longer work.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon/lol.gif)
"I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite." -- Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
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I guess I shouldn't have had them be wet or jelly-like, huh? Probably they are hard, small and atrophied. Like a walnut rattling around there.Liege-Killer wrote:Oh ok.... so he has damaged, non-functioning, but still edible brains... gotcha!Omphalos wrote:My theory has always been that Brian was born with brains (he is FH's son, no?) but along with some major head trauma from his dad and some skunked weed, they no longer work.
Something is about to happen, Hal. Something wonderful!
-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)
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