Season one, Episode Sixteen, “Infected”

05/15/21 • 26 min

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Sixteen, “Infected”

The old man pushed himself to a sitting position, his back against the far wall of the pit. He reflexively clutched at his shoulder and massaged the side that had taken the brunt of the impact. He could hear the steady drip of water falling from the cliff face and the wind pushing dead leaves around up above.

He slowly lifted his gaze to the surface level to assess the real enigma: the woman.

...

Outro Thoughts – S1E16

May 15th 2021

Hello, my Apocalypse surviving friends. How are we doing this week? Are you managing to stay one step ahead of the evil undead as civilization crumbles around you? If so, in the immortal words of Bill Murray, “So – you got that going for you.”

This week, 16 chapters in, we finally bring our two protagonists together. The old man and Janet. I was going to title the chapter “Meet Cute” as a satire on all the Hallmark movies ever made. You know the one’s...Somewhere in act one the slightly attractive woman who has had to go back to Christmas Valley because her family’s cupcake business is in danger of being taken over by an evil developer and her father is sick? Anyhow, somewhere in act one she stumbles into traffic and almost gets run over by a slightly attractive man who she immediately hates, but you can tell there’s a spark there?

Yeah, except in my meet cute she wants to bash his head in. Spoiler alert, I’m not a big fan of shoehorning romantic subplots into science fiction. I don’t see these two ever having that kind of relationship but I’m willing to write it if you want! It would be a challenge.

A couple of questions and announcements for you. First, I have set up a Facebook group for this show and I will start populating it with these outros and a whatnot. The link to find it is OldManApocalypse – all one word. https://www.facebook.com/groups/oldmanapocalypse It’s a private group so I have to accept you, I think, but if I set it to public it just gets too spammy.

Go out and join up so we can trade stories and I can get some feedback. My first order of business is to post some fan art that my buddy Dave’s daughter drew for us. I think she did a pretty good job. Take a look and tell me what you think.

So, I had a question, did any of you get lost in the timeline here? Meaning, I left the cliff-hanger in episode 13 where the old man gets pushed into the pit. Then I dropped back for two episodes to fill us in on what Janet’s been up too. Then I brought the timeline back together at the pit. Did I lose you? I had one of my readers get confused. Go to the Facebook group and tell me if I lost you.

Also, over the last two weeks I figured out how to manage the integration of Acast and Patreon. I set it up so I can create bonus episodes and if you are a Patron you get them exclusively. I have already dropped one bonus episode from another apocalypse universe I play in called “The Dead Frontier”, and I’m dropping a reading of a early Vonnegut story “2 B R 0 2 B” which is in the public domain. I’m going to keep creating these bonus episodes for patrons so go to the patreon page, sign up as a member and get the extra, good stuff.

This week I’m going to refer you to a Apocalypse movie from 1962 called “Day of the Triffids”. Based on a novel of the same name by James Wyndam from 1951. It was very big in the UK. It was remade and modernized in 2009 as a BBC series with among others Eddie Izzard and Vanessa Redgrave. You can see both versions for free on YouTube.

I remember seeing this as a kid on one of the B-movie Horror and science fiction shows I liked and it always stuck with me. It’s basically a zombie apocalypse but instead of zombies there are carnivorous plants walking around England. In the original novel the plants were created by the Soviets and kept in thrall because they produced Oil. In the 2009 version the Soviets are replaced by mindless corporations.

The interesting twist in this movie is that there is meteor shower that makes 90% of the population go blind. You get this interesting apocalypse with wandering killer plants and disabled people.

This move had some of the classic apocalypse tropes...

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Season one, Episode Sixteen, “Infected”

He slowly lifted his gaze to the surface level to assess the real enigma: the woman.

...

Outro Thoughts – S1E16

May 15th 2021

The interesting twist in this movie is that there is meteor shower that makes 90% of the population go blind. You get this interesting apocalypse with wandering killer plants and disabled people.

This move had some of the classic apocalypse tropes...

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The Dead Frontier - Patrons

After the Apocalypse

A pandemic survival story

Patreon Member Episode - The Dead Frontier

The haze of acrid smoke hung low over smoldering hulks of cars jammed in the road. They were left scattered and crashed like they had been thrown carelessly by a malevolent giant. Trucks, cars, school buses and ambulances were jammed randomly together at odd angles, frozen in a catastrophic act of panicked flight.

It seemed to the survivor that it rained more now. He didn’t know why. Was it just one more petty malevolence of an unfeeling God? Or maybe it was the sudden introduction of so much death, burning and general holocaust into the Earth’s ecosystem that caused the weeping of these sooty tears?

He stood in the overhang of a portico. Some building of forgotten purpose. He watched the grey water form a dark drizzle drip into the wrecked landscape.

At least the rain helped with the smell. That awful smell. Like the smoldering offal of a million dirty slaughterhouses.

A burst of machine gun fire echoed from a few blocks over to the east. The staccato deadly type- writing of a Thompson he thought.

He checked methodically that his rifle had a full clip. There had been plenty of situations in the last weeks where his agility and endurance had not been enough. The grim, certain hammer of pure fire power had slowed the hoards enough to allow him to attain an outpost. A sanctuary.

A shuffling and a moan broke the silence and roused the survivor’s attention. He tensed.

One of them, what had been a man, shambled in full mindless awfulness around the corner of the building. It was horribly burned but somehow still managed forage. Still managed its cruel echo of life in its mangled form.

The survivor froze, waiting those few seconds where it would either smell him or not. It would ei- ther attack or stagger on.

The zombie froze too, as if sensing something and turned.

As he had done so many times before the survivor slowly backed away from the now excited un- dead and shouldered his rifle. This one wasn’t one of the bad ones or the mutated ones. No need to panic.

Just another day at the office’ he smiled inwardly with gallows humor.

The survivor backed a few paces into the grey drizzle of the street, tightened his aim and discharged a finger-sized slug of jacketed lead.

The zombie was stood up straight by the impact and stumbled backwards a few steps before re- gaining its balance.

Now it was mad.

With a great gurgling scream it attacked. It rushed the survivor with mad intent. The survivor continued to carefully back away and chambered another round.

Another deafening rifle crack broke the unholy silence of Fairview City. With a great, wet smack of rendered meat and bone the thing that had been a man spun and crumpled twitching to the pavement.

The survivor hitched up his backpack of loot, chambered a fresh round and took off down the wet street at a jog. He knew that more would come. They would be drawn by the noise. They would come.

There were always more.

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