After the Apocalypse

A Pandemic Survival Story

Season two, Episode six “Scorpion”

...

Bill the dog was attuned to gunfire. It did not bother him as much as it heightened his senses to what was going on around him.

Bill was trained to save lives. He was trained to sense danger and do what he could to protect the lives of his squad.

He was a soldier first. He didn’t think. He acted in accordance with his training.

He had no sense of bravery or heroism – only a burning sense of duty.

The safety of the squad was his first priority.

...

Outro S2 E6 – Scorpion

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11/10/2021

Hello survivors.

Here we are, Episode 6 of the 2nd season of After the Apocalypse a Pandemic Survival Story.

And we have our friend Bill back in play, so you can stop with the angry messages. But, we’re not out of the woods yet. We left you with a cliff-hanger! Or more like a grassy-knoll hanger.

https://flashfictionmagazine.com/blog/2021/09/26/writing-tip-23-never-kill-the-dog/

Learned a couple things this week.

First, and I already knew this, but it was hammered home by some comments on our Facebook page, is that when you’re reading or listening you create a picture in your head from what the author is telling you. That is the magic of reading or listening. That’s the advantage of reading or listening over TV or movies.

You get to create your own visuals.

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After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Thirteen, “The Dig”

The old man kept a slow but steady pace down the gravel road. It was getting on in the day and he needed to start thinking about shelter for the night.

Bill, the dog trotted about 10 yards ahead as the vanguard.

A small dust cloud rose behind them marking their progress.

The old man thought about that.

...

Hello my survivor friends,

How is the apocalypse treating you? Happy Easter! I figure rabbits will probably survive the apocalypse, right? Cockroaches and rabbits.

There’s a zombie online multiplayer game I play called Dead Frontier, yes, I’m all in on the apocalypse, and for the easter event you get to kill zombie bunnies.

Reminds me of Monty Python – “It’s just a Bunny Rabbit!” – You kids who don’t know what I’m talking about go stream Monty Python and the Holy Grail and you can thank me later.

Did you like today’s cliff-hanger? Maybe it was more of a pit-hanger.

Good news we at about 3500 downloads. We have new listeners in Minsk Belarus, Dhaka Bangladesh and Portoviejo Ecuador. All places I’ve yet to visit. I have been at Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal, but that’s another story.

Send me an email if you are listening form one of these far-flung places. Love to get your feedback.

[email protected]

I need a favor from all you great people, whether Belarusian, Bangladeshi or Ecuadorian. Go into whatever podcast app you’re using and leave a review. Just a quick note. That’s what drives the algorithms. And we all love algorithms.

If you’re feeling super motivated tell a few friends. If we, you and I and Dmytri from Belarus can grow this tribe I can accelerate to weekly episodes and I’d really like to do that.

If you are just beside yourself with enthusiasm you can throw some Belarusian rubles, some Bangladeshi taka or some Ecuadorian dollars – because, yeah, Ecuador switched their currency to the US dollar – and you can do that at my Patreon page patreon.com/aftertheapocalypse.

I listened to a couple interesting SciFi stories recently. I like these short SciFi stories because they have that one really interesting idea that makes you say ‘Huh’.

One is a story called Things by Peter Clark - Have you ever seen a movie called The Thing? It was released in 1982 starring Kurt Russell (no relation) and directed by John Carpenter, based on a book by John Campbell from 1938.

Now you might be thinking, ‘gee all of those names sound familiar’ and you’d be right. John Carpenter the prolific director who brought you the Halloween moves, as well as some other B-movie SciFi classics like Escape from New York, also with Kurt Russell in 1981, just a year before The Thing, and one of my personal favorites, They Live with professional wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper.

And of course John Campbell, who wrote the original story, was one of those giants of the golden age of Science Fiction, both as a writer and the editor of Analog.

I know, I know, I keep doing this to you, but trust me all of these factors come together to make The Thing<...

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Fourteen, “Run”

Janet ran...

...and the obscenities pouring from the man she had just left bleeding in the dirt faded away...

like the man himself.

He was nothing. He was a threat that had been dealt with.

Like she always dealt with threats.

She had the hard skills, built up over years of practice. She could dominate most situations. Her force of will bent others to her path.

And if they didn’t bend, they got run over or shoved aside.

KJ the Killer.

...and she ran.

...

Outro S1E14

Hello my fellow survivors. How is the apocalypse treating you?

This is Chris your host. And a fine Saturday morning it is up here in New England.

We had a storm fly through yesterday with wind and rain and snow.

I was worried about our friend Tim who has been helping with the story ideas and editing. He’s been out on the Appalachian trail for 2 weeks. He’s currently passing through the area near where Janet and the old man are struggling to survive the apocalypse in our story.

Imagine if a storm like this hit out in the Smoky Mountains while they’re out in the trail? I’ll have to see if we can work a storm into the story.

When I was a teenager, I spent a week hiking in the Joyce Kilmer National Forest which is near there, a bit south. It would have been this time of year.

I remember we did get an ice storms a couple days, but you just crawl into your tent and wait it out. I remember waking up an hitting the plastic tarp overhead and the ice shattering and sliding off.

But we survived. I would have been 16 and just rolling out of wrestling season, so stupid but indestructible.

...

Speaking of hiking adventures in the wilderness, my wife forced me to watch a movie called Into the Grizzly Maze from 2015, mostly because she likes to look at the actor James Marsden.

I’ll be honest it was a silly movie about an angry Grizzly bear who likes to eat people. For some reason they talked some A-list talent into it. Billy Bob Thorton is underused as the bear hunter, think Quint from Jaws.

Thomas Jane was one of the main characters, who is one of my favorite actors, you may know him as detective Joe Miller in The Expanse, which is one of the best hard space Scifi shows to come out recently.

Or, for you Marvel fans, Thomas Jane was the original Punisher who went after John Travolta in 2004.

God knows how these actors got caught up in the hot mess that is ‘Grizzly Maze”. I suspect a paycheck was involved.

...

Looking out my office window this morning, the forsythia is out and my cherry tree is about to bloom.

What did you think of this week’s story?

Janet is discovering or rediscovering her strength and how it can help her in the Apocalypse.

...

I’ve been reading through a SciFi series called the Lost Fleet over the last year. I’m about to crack into the 8th and final book. It’s a Space Epic but I also realized last night that it parallels Xenophon’s Anabasis.

Bear with me, here. Xenophon was a Greek mercenary with a force of 10,000 other Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to help him seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II, in 401 BC.

Note this is before Rome, and a70 years before Alexander the Great.

Anyhow, they march deep into Babylon and Cyrus gets killed in b...

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Twelve, “Partners”

The old man spent the rest of the day with Bill. They were feeling each other out.

Learning each other.

The old man was sore and tired from the day’s digging. He figured another day of rest couldn’t do any harm. Another night of good sleep inside wouldn’t hurt either.

A couple more good meals to refuel.

Bill seemed less concerned now but was still following the old man around. Right on his heels most of the time. Watching him.

...

Outro S1 E12

We are 12 episodes in my survivor friends! You have, ahem, survived this far into the story!

Thank you – this is Chris your cruise director. Now we have Bill the dog and the Old man in a partnership. And maybe the old man is starting to step back from the brink of his fatalism?

What happened to Janet? What happened to KJ the killer? What other characters are roaming the apocalypse with them?

Stay tuned to find out!

We are up to 2,390 listener downloads. That’s great. Up 41% since last episode drop. And I blame you. All of you who took the time to tell a friend or give us a like or a review. Keep it up!

I will work my tail off to bring you a new chapter every other week, or fortnightly, for those of you who like that term.

I commit to a steady release schedule so you can plan for it. I know I hate when podcasts are inconsistent. Or when they fade out after a few episodes.

We’ve passed the one-year anniversary of when this idea of the Old Man in the apocalypse came into my head. It was the week the Pandemic started, and I was at a trade show in Atlanta. This picture of the old man popped into my head while I was running down by the Chattahoochee on a rainy morning.

I wrote the first chapter on the plane on my way back home. That’s the last time I was on a plane!

I have read a couple SciFi books since we last talked. I’m an avid and voracious consumer of books. I do like hard science fiction. I think I found a list of ‘best books’ or something so I bought a pile of them from Thriftbooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Icarus_Hunt The first one was a novel called The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn. Decent book. It’s a bit of a who-dunnit caper in space. The tech was good. The characters were good. The action was good. The story moved right along. It kept your interest by creating tension around the big secrets and slowly teasing them through the narrative until the last act. It seemed a bit rushed at the end with the big reveal and I was left wondering ‘wait, that’s it?’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warchild_(Lowachee_novel) The second was a much bigger book called Warchild by Kiran Lowachee. The characters, especially the main character are very compelling, very deep. It has a bit of ‘Starship Troopers’ in it. It was 400+ pages but quite compelling. I have to admit that the pirate-child-sex-slave themes really creeped me out. On the one hand it’s a testament to the writing, on the other it’s just creepy and I don’t read escapist fiction to get creeped out. This is an amazing piece of work for a first novel.

Links in the show notes, which you can find by looking at them in your podcast player or the website, which points to the website page on Acast, or of course, on the Patreon page.

Both good hard SF novels. I’d recommend them. Tell you what, if you contribute to the patreon for the show I’ll drop ‘em in the mail to you.

Still looking for supporters to help me finance this.

I wanted to thank my friends Tim and Duane for being editors. They pick up stuff that I don’t and it makes the product better for all of us. The show is dedicated to them. And Tim, hopefully you’ll be able to download and listen to podcasts while you’re out on the Appalachian trail this summer.

Hope everyone is enjoying spring, or fall, depending on which side of the planet you’re on. Reach out and say ‘Hi’ at cyktrussell at gmail.

See you next time and Keep Surviving!

Standard outro and links

After the Apocalypse is written and produced by Chris Russell (that’s me) aftertheapocalypse.me

The show is narrated by Robert Weinheimer who’s work can be found at https://commandvoices.com/

The intro and outro music is by Bobby Quinn