Season One, Episode Seventeen - Prey

05/29/21 • 24 min

1 Listener

A pandemic survival story

Season One, Episode Seventeen - “Prey”

It was a bumpy and uncomfortable ride. And the old man chittered on happily behind her like old people...or crazy people do.

Like when your Mom or Granma keeps an entire conversation going regardless if you are even listening.

Those interminable phone calls Janet used to avoid and dread, droning on and on about the flotsam and jetsam of an old person’s life, only to surface from the lily pads every once in a while, to ask some prying or unanswerable...personal question.

Janet felt a momentary pang of sadness.

Maybe she should have taken the time to talk when she had the chance.

Before everyone she knew was taken by the Apocalypse.

...

Outro – S1 E17 After the Apocalypse – Prey

Hello and welcome back by survivor friends! So we have our two protagonists trapped on a roof in the apocalypse! Just like many of us feel most of the time!

Hope you all are enjoying it. We’ve gotten up to 8500 downloads. And believe it or not we’ve managed to knock out 17 episodes, which is about 42,500 words!

My plan is to find a good stopping point in the next 2-3 episodes and end season 1. Don’t worry, I won’t go away, I might take a couple weeks off, but I’ll be back. I’m going to turn the existing words and audio into a book set.

If you think about it, it makes sense. I’ve already got the content built so I might as well leverage it into a book, e-book and audio book. It’s pretty easy these days to self publish and I’ve done it before a couple times, both on Amazon and Audible.

Of course , you, yes you, can help.

First, I’ve started a Facebook group called AfterTheApocalypse all one word. You can go there and chat with other survivors and give me some feedback. Second, while you there you can help me vet some cover ideas. Third, I’m going to need a launch team when I release the book(s) so you can help with that.

And finally, as always, you can help me survive by dropping a nickel in the slot of the Patreon page and telling a few science fiction geek friends about the podcast.

I have been watching and reading some interesting SciFi over the last couple weeks.

First, I watched the new Netflix apocalypse movie “Army of the Dead”. I won’t spoil it for you but it was pretty disappointing. I really like Dave Bautista, especially his role as Drax the Destroyer in the Guardians of the galaxy movies, but he couldn’t save this one.

Second, and on a much more positive note, the new season of Love, Death + Robots on Netflix was incredible. This is a series of animated shorts, but they are all incredibly robust, standalone stories each with a beginning, middle and end. The Drowned Giant, based on a story by J.G Ballard, is an amazing and thoughtful piece that speaks volumes without having to say much.

Snow in the Desert, based on a story by Neal Asher was a really good apocalyptic treatment. I would pay real money and go see a movie treatment of those characters and that universe. It’s a shame there are only 8 episodes in this whole new season.

Moving along down the short fiction video quality scale is a channel on YouTube called Dust. It’s a whole bunch of short...

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season One, Episode Seventeen - “Prey”

It was a bumpy and uncomfortable ride. And the old man chittered on happily behind her like old people...or crazy people do.

Like when your Mom or Granma keeps an entire conversation going regardless if you are even listening.

Janet felt a momentary pang of sadness.

Maybe she should have taken the time to talk when she had the chance.

Before everyone she knew was taken by the Apocalypse.

...

Outro – S1 E17 After the Apocalypse – Prey

Hello and welcome back by survivor friends! So we have our two protagonists trapped on a roof in the apocalypse! Just like many of us feel most of the time!

Hope you all are enjoying it. We’ve gotten up to 8500 downloads. And believe it or not we’ve managed to knock out 17 episodes, which is about 42,500 words!

Of course , you, yes you, can help.

And finally, as always, you can help me survive by dropping a nickel in the slot of the Patreon page and telling a few science fiction geek friends about the podcast.

I have been watching and reading some interesting SciFi over the last couple weeks.

Moving along down the short fiction video quality scale is a channel on YouTube called Dust. It’s a whole bunch of short...

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2 B R 0 2 B - by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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Zombie Apocalypse 300 - Patreon Story

Zombie Apocalypse 300 - Act One

In the darkness the metal of wrecked and shattered cars glinted in his peripheral vision as the car headlights danced past them. They had worked over the months to clear this lane by pushing the abandoned hulks off to the side. He still had to fight the normal reaction of his brain to start at the glimpse of these automotive ghosts lurking and inert, crowded against the side of his open lane.

One had to drive with faith that the one lane was still clear.

The tires hummed on the asphalt. A strong smell of hot rock and dirt came through the window like the center of some ancient forge. The autumn moon hung full and ochre just above the naked trees. It was the harvest moon, partially obscured by stringy clouds, like something from the Halloween cards of old.

He scrunched forward in the seat, pulling himself forward with the steering wheel, shimmying his shoulders to loosen his neck. The landscape rushed by. He had gotten used to, and even started looking forward to his weekly run between the survivor outposts. Something routine and constructive to measure the days of the apocalypse.

The camp engineers, not much more than handymen and auto mechanics really, had welded and bolted a pipe framed cow catcher of sorts to fend off collisions of a non-lethal sort. The occasional deer or stray, but mostly the staggering undead.

It was like something in the old movies he’d watched as kids. They’d turn dumbly with hollow eyes into the onrushing vehicle. His cage would catch them with a surprisingly violent “chunk!” that would shudder through the frame of the truck. The splintered, gaping form would pinwheel, sometimes in pieces, up into the air and off the road.

He doesn’t like these encounters but he knows he has to tough it out and keep going if he wants to make it to camp B alive in the morning. He has to hang tough if he wants to survive. He always survives.

He sees them stumble out of the mist from the side and resists the urge to swerve. One catches low under the guard pipes and drags on the driver’s side, catching weirdly in the front wheel and causing the truck to pull hard left.

Standing on the breaks and fighting the wheel the other catches the side of the cage on the right and slingshots through the passenger windshield with a horrifying crunch. Trapped half in and half out the thing with great flaps of gory skin hanging snaps at him as he loses control and the truck digs into the shoulder.

The world turns in sickly slow motion as the truck flips, he doesn’t know how many times down the guard rail and across the median coming to wrecked and rocking stop against a ruined tractor trailer.

He blacks out.

…

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