It has been a snow filled week here. Once again this morning the snow is coming down hard and I am wondering if the climate change is bringing an ice age closer still. Maybe soon I might see Jean Auel’s Ayla and Jondalar walk past my window on the way to hunt woolly mammoth.
My cat has refused to make peace with winter. If he had a Congress cat I’m sure he’d be on the phone trying to get winter recalled/repealed something. I have a huge picture window in my office that looks out at his favorite place, the back yard and the woods beyond, and he sits on the window ledge and just stares out at the white that is everywhere as if he is in shock. Maybe I will need to get him into therapy. When he does go out it is the same thing every time. It’s as though he has convinced himself that the door will open and the snow will be gone. Yet the door opens and the snow is still there. He tests it with his paw and then decides whether he will risk the run to the shed where the snow has not built up along the sides yet. If he does that he sits and contemplates whether he can make it back alive before I close the door or not. Hopefully he will just give in to it and accept his fate along with the rest of us.
My Writing Schedule:
I am working on the Earth’s Survivors books. The Zombie Plagues Book Three is in the pipe. That will be spring. I am hopeful to have the Earth’s Survivors books out by then, sooner if I can, but with new material and editorial work it may be later rather than sooner. I began today to work on Hurricane which will be the second White Trash book. The series is held together by one character, Rebbeca Monet. If you have read White Trash you met her; a small time weather girl working in Mobile but unhappy with the place she has in life. By the end of White Trash things have changed. If you haven’t read White trash I won’t tell you what changed, if you have you already know. But she is the glue. Every book will feature her, every book follows her life. Book Two is in the works between Amber and I, so, look for it this late winter early spring.
I think that is it for today. I will leave you with a new scene from the latest Earth’s Survivors book not yet entitled…
The Earth’s Survivors: Working Title: World Stop
Published by Writerz.net. Geo Dell, Dell Sweet, W. W. Watson 2023
All Rights reserved
This material may not be copied and or distributed via traditional print or electronic means without express written permission from the copyright owners. There is no allowance for critique in this copyright notice. This copy is provided strictly as a preview for readers of Geo Dell’s blog and may not be displayed or posted anywhere else. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
This preview is rated: R
Explicit language and depictions of graphic violence
KATIE
March 2nd
Market Place: Old Towne: Early Morning
“I don’t give a fuck what you think, girl. Get that fuckin’ money in the bag and get it in the bag now.” He shifted away, leaning back from Kate, but with the mirrored sun glasses it was hard for her to tell whether he was still looking at her or away from her. She picked up her cash drawer and dumped it into the green plastic garbage bag he held. The ground trembled a little under her feet causing her to sway, and they both paused… Waiting…
There had been earthquakes. A few aftershocks in between the major jolts, and then the power had gone out. This was, Katie hoped, only a tremor.
It had been the new assistant manager’s bright idea to stay open. To be a gathering place for people in the neighborhood until someone in charge showed up. It was three A.M. and no one in charge had shown up. Twenty minutes ago three people had walked through the front door: All dressed in military fatigues; all wearing the mirrored sunglasses and some sort of scarves or bandannas tied around their heads and below their noses. Hair, eyes, all the features you could look for and remember were gone. They would probably never get caught, there was nothing to remember. Never mind the fact that the alarms were out, the cops hadn’t been seen for hours, and they were robbing the market in the middle of some kind of disaster. Katie only hoped they made it fast and didn’t hurt anyone. The oldsters, her nickname for the older folks that lived in the area, couldn’t handle a lot of shock. Already some of them were overly frightened and shaking.
Her eyes swept around to the other two. The one guy seemed slightly heavier through the upper body. But the fatigues were outsized, so it was hard to tell. The last had a deep booming voice that he had only used once when they had come into the market, kicked the chocks that held the doors open out of the way, and announced the robbery. None of the three had spoken since then.
There were twenty eight people in the market, mostly the oldsters from the Old Towne neighborhood who had come to the market area because the lights were still on and there were other people there. Old Towne was a far suburb of the city of Manhattan. Some young couples lived here, but getting into and out of the city was sometimes too much and before you knew it a face you had gotten used to seeing was gone. The oldsters with their pensions and fixed incomes stayed. The commute into the city, as rarely as they had to make it, meant nothing to them. Crime was usually low, it wasn’t a bad place to live.
A tremble passed through the floor once more; weaker than the last. It felt like a heavy truck passing over a bridge, no more than that, she thought.
Three earthquakes had hit so far, each one stronger than the last. Katie herself had watched the lights of Manhattan dim and then wink out. All of those tall buildings that had lit up the sky over Harlem every night for as long as she could remember gone in the wink of an eye. The flat screens that hung above the checkouts had winked out, and the two televisions at the front of the store that were on every hour of every day blacked out, and then came back with snow and static.
Katie had grown up in the Grant projects over in Harlem, and up until a few weeks ago she had still made the trip back and forth every day. But she had found a place, a small walk-up, not far from the market. It was okay for now. And living in Old Towne suited her, or had. She didn’t know how this was going to change the equation.
The lights ran by generator. The generator was necessary for the meat department at the back of the store. It wouldn’t run forever, but it was on now keeping the meat freezers, and the cold cases working; running the low powered emergency lighting system inside the market.
The man that had been in front of her moved down the line to the next register when the shaking stopped, bag in hand. The other two stood silently at the front of the store, some sort of rifles with clips held in their hands, watching, Katie supposed, through their mirrored lenses.
The man with the bag had reached the end of the line when a much heavier earthquake hit and things began to tumble from the shelves into the aisles. Above her she watched the ceiling lift from the painted cinder block walls and then slam back down once more. One second she had been looking outside at the massive bare limbs of the oaks that lined the other side of the street, and the next she had been looking at the backside of the corrugated panels that made up the roof of the market. It had happened so fast that she wondered to herself if it had really happened at all.
Her eyes swept quickly around the inside of the market. Most of the oldsters were screaming, cowering where they stood, trying to melt into the floor, but a few were standing stoically; watching parts of the ceiling begin to fall. Katie held the side of the dead conveyor belt of her checkout lane as the floor rose and shook. The robbers scrambled to stay on their feet, the stock tipped and tumbled spilling across the floor.
The looks on some of the oldsters faces said, “I knew this is how it would end,” and Katie believed in that split second that they really did know all along that the world would come to an end in Old Town’s Market Square just like it was right now. They had been children playing in the school yard, young lovers chasing after one another through the tall grass, parents watching their first born go to school on that first day: Pensioners walking to the box to get their check as the little girls that lived next door played hopscotch on the sidewalk; old folks coaxing the cat into the house through the back door, and they had known. They had known all along. Her eyes swiveled back to the front of the market, and that was when the roof at the front of the store collapsed. The robber, the one with the bigger upper body screamed and jumped back, and Katie understood then that he was a she. It seemed like a signal to everyone and a fraction of a second later they were all, oldsters, employees and robbers, running for the back of the store as the ceiling of the market collapsed onto the tops of the aisle shelving.
The doors to the back stock room slammed open and the crowd poured into the rear storage area, coming up against the stacks of boxes and crates and stopping. Just that suddenly the situation had changed. They were no longer running for their lives, they were being herded like cattle by the three and their waving, motioning rifles, holding the doors open, motioning the last stragglers, cut and bleeding, into the area as the last of the shaking stopped. Large clips depended in a curve from those rifles, Katie noticed. They were in their hands, but they also had other weapons depended upon their backs by straps that looked every bit as capable as the ones they held in their hands. The one with the thicker chest, the one who at least screamed like a woman, kicked the doors shut and they stood, choking and sneezing as the thick clouds of dust swirled, and billowed in the emergency lights.
Outside:
The old Chevy began to rock on its springs, lunging first right and then left. It took a harder lunge to the right and then jumped forward and slammed head on into the side of the building.
“Fuck, Calvin. Fuck,” the woman driver screamed. She held a rifle with a long banana clip that slammed into the ceiling. Her finger squeezed the trigger tightly for just a brief second and spat a burst of bright white light and noise; a jagged hole appeared in the roof of the car.
“Bitch! What the fuck?” Calvin screamed as he tried to roll with the shaking car, hanging onto the dashboard. The four in the back added their own comments, and in a second the entire car erupted in to cursing and yelling. The ground movement tossed the car once more, picking it up and slamming it sideways into a truck that had slid over three spaces. The screech of grinding metal and breaking glass silenced the screams and yells from the car. The car bounced away from the truck, jiggled from side to side and then settled onto the ground; one tire flat, the nose bent upward.
“Get out… Get out of this motherfucker,” Calvin screamed. Bricks and pieces of concrete block began to tumble from the roof line as the main wall of the market bulged out and the false roof structure that fronted the store titled backwards and tilted into the store space. A few of the huge glass windows that fronted the market cracked with loud audible clicks: Spiderwebs running like bolts of lightening top to bottom, and then shooting off to the sides. Huge walls of glass that were now held together only by the aluminum frames they rested in.
”Jesus… Jesus, those bitches will go… I know it,” one of the men that had been in the back seat muttered as he tumbled from the car and staggered away. One tall window groaned, splinters of glass shooting onto the sidewalk, and the front passenger side of the car, and then collapsed in a small pile onto the concrete as if to prove him right. Screams surged out from inside the store mixing with their own. A thick cloud of dust billowed out through the opening. The glass glittered like gemstones in the sparse light from the interior of the market.
“Out… Out!” Calvin yelled. A small section of brick bonded to concrete block fell over and crushed the nose of the car, pinning it to the ground. Steam erupted from the buried nose of the car and rose into the cold air, mixing with the dust as it did. Calvin skipped backwards, the hard heels of the combat boots he wore getting little purchase on the asphalt. He fell backwards with the momentum, his hands splaying behind him, immediately cut on the glass, and other debris that covered the asphalt. He wrenched himself forward and began to pluck at the pieces embedded in his palms. His eyes rose and swept across the others as his fingers worked. Murder, Shitty, Chloe, Tammy, he ticked off the faces mentally. “Who? “ he asked. His quick head count had come up short.
“Rosie,” Tammy said. She was a thin girl with a shock of kinky pink hair. The name was picked up by the others.
Rosie had been in the front with him. She had been the one that had shot the roof of the car. She was nowhere to be seen. Calvin stood, dusted his bleeding palms against his fatigues and walked around the edge of the car. Rosie’s feet protruded from under the car. Not moving. A pool of spreading blood seeping past the wheel that rested partway onto her body, and out into the lot. He stopped. “Rosie’s done up,” he said aloud. He raised his eyes from the pavement as a gunshot came from inside the market. He swore to himself. “Better see what’s happened inside. Stay right here,” He frowned as a second shot rang out. “Fuck… Listen, if it goes bad, get the fuck out… Just run.” He waited for Murder to nod. Murder was his first. The one he trusted the most. He trotted toward the front entrance, his rifle in his hands, safety off.
The Stock Room:
Things moved fast after the doors swung shut. The one with the thick chest tore off her bandanna and shook her head as if to get some of the dust out of her hair. White-blond hair flew about her face. She bent over a second later and vomited. Katie smelled it on the air instantly and fought the gag reflex that started in her own throat. A few of the oldsters didn’t make it, and the small floor area was covered with sprawled and bent double bodies a second later as more became sick. Katie kept her eyes on the the three. A second later the other two tore off their bandannas and Katie’s heart sank.
The one with the deep voice spoke again: A tall pimple faced white boy, Katie saw. He couldn’t be more than fourteen. “Get these,” he said as he passed long pieces of plastic to the other two. The plastic made no sense until a few seconds later when the other two began slapping the zip ties around one of the oldsters wrists and tugging another through the first before pulling them tight.
“Oh God. Don’t do that to me,” Annie, one of the new clerks screamed. She bolted forward as if making a break for the now closed stock room doors, and Katie watched as the pimple faced white boy raised his rifle. He squeezed the trigger once. Annie collapsed to the floor in mid stride, like a kite that had spilled all of it’s air at once. One leg spread before her, the other at an angle behind her. Her body skidded along the floor an inch or two and then stopped. She sighed loudly. Her mouth was closed tightly in a grimace as she slowly tipped over to the floor. Her eyes were open, and for a second Katie thought maybe she was seeing, but then something in them shifted, and she knew she was gone. Katie turned away as a few of the oldsters began to mutter between themselves, a few others began to cry. Jason, the new Assistant Manager, stepped forward.
“Listen,” he began in a loud voice. “I don’t know who you people think you are, but you’ve killed someone now… Killed someone!” He stopped, and looked incredulously at the three who stood closer to the doors. His eyes cutting down to Annie and then up once more. The pimple faced boy raised the rifle once more, Jason opened his mouth and the boy shot him in the chest before he could say another word.
The blast was amazingly loud in the closed area. Louder than the other shot had been, and a large section of Jason’s smock turned instantly red, puffing out behind him. He sank slowly to the floor, his mouth working as though he had one last thing to say, but he said nothing. He reached the floor, tipped sideways, and a flood of dark blood spilled from his mouth. After that no one spoke: The other two went back to tying wrists with the zip ties, and time seemed to jump forward in quick little jerks as Katie watched them do her own wrists and then move on.
They would kill her now, she knew it. Nineteen years of living through the violence of the projects: Making it out; all to die in the back of some market stockroom over a few dollars that didn’t even belong to her. And they would do it. There was no reason not to now. They had let them see their faces. No reason to tie them. No reason to remove the bandannas. No reason at all.
A sharp banging came from the side of the stockroom and Katie twisted her head quickly. The door that lead out to the sidewalk, Katie knew. A voice calling, and the pimple faced white boy raised his own voice in answer; turning toward the sound.
“We’re good… We’re good,” he yelled in that voice that didn’t seem capable of coming from him. He turned back, his eyes scanning the crowd. They stopped on Katie.
“Where is that fucking door?” he asked. “Where’s it go to?”
She motioned with her head. “Behind the boxes… There, at the end of the aisle. Goes outside… Out front.”
“Show me, bitch.” He moved forward and his rifle barrel dug into her stomach and then upward, dragging heavily across the edges of her ribs as he lifted the barrel and motioned with it. She stifled the urge to cry out. She could feel blood trickling downward, across the flat of her stomach under the smock she wore. She walked the short distance to the door and found herself suddenly falling as he shoved her hard to one side, and slammed down on the door width bar; swinging it open.
Katie’s forehead hit the concrete hard, and she slid forward on her chest, rolling into a skid of cereal boxes. She was out cold before the boxes tumbled to the floor around her, hiding her.
The Padlock Situation:
“What the fuck? The one called Calvin said as he stepped into the room. The pimple faced kid held up the bag of money as he stepped forward to go through the door, the other two behind him. Calvin caught the edge of his shirt and shoved him backwards hard.
“Why’d you kill some? Why’d you do that? Didn’t we talk about it? Didn’t we make it clear? What the fuck?” His eyes swept over the two bodies that lay on the floor, blood running away in small rivulets toward the floor drain near the swinging doors that lead back out into the store area.
“The cunt on the floor tried to rush us… No choice!” The kids frightened, pale-blue eyes stared up into Calvin’s own eyes. A small smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“The other guy played hero,” the blond said. Her face was slicked with sweat, making it seem even darker than it was. She stepped forward slightly, trying to hold Calvin’s eyes with her own. Calvin’s hand flashed to his waist and a second later he bought it up in a sharp thrusting motion. The kid gasped, his mouth opened, and a small trickle of blood ran from the corner and across his cheek. Calvin watched the life begin to bleed from the kids’ eyes before he released him. The kid slid to the floor as if in slow motion. Calvin sheathed his knife: The blonde stepped forward as if to catch the kid, and Calvin raised his rifle.
“You got something to say?” he asked.
The blond wagged her head. Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. She stared down at the body on the floor.
The Parking Lot:
Chloe looked from Murder to Tammy. She had already started backwards at the shot. It had taken all of her resolve not to run. Tammy stood trembling, her eyes trapped, and unable to stay in one place for long; lighting first on Chloe, then Murder, then back to Chloe.
Far away the scream of an engine came to her and Chloe’s eyes swiveled back to Murder. “You know he’ll kill us too… You know it.”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up, bitches. Just let me…” Before he could finish the words, Shitty, who had been standing right next to him, had turned and sprinted a few feet away. He stopped and looked back, sweat trailing down his face, panic bright in his eyes.
“That fucking engine, man. It’s coming here… Listen, man. Listen.” They all listened for a second. “It’s cops… I ain’t fuckin’ waitin’.”
There may have been some hope of Murder holding them together, but at the same instance he had that thought a burst of automatic gunfire came from the market and he found his own feet moving. He followed the other three as they ran for the shadows at the back of the lot.
The Stockroom:
Calvin motioned to the blond and the other remaining kid and they stepped through the door out onto the sidewalk and the cold air. The blond started to walk away, but Calvin curled his fist into her hair and dragged her back. She cried out involuntarily as he pulled her around to face back into the stockroom.
“Can’t leave it like this,” he told her. “Your man fucked it up. Unless you want to be in there with him you better take care of it.” Her eyes pleaded, but he pushed her away; turned loose of her. He raised his rifle, holding it on her. “Take ’em out,” he said quietly. “Take ’em out.” She turned to him once more, briefly, and then turned back, raised her own rifle, and began to fire into the stockroom. Things happened fast after that.
Unwelcome company:
Calvin turned at the sound of tires screeching on the wet pavement. A kind of low grade squalling as the tires slid to a stop, muted by the rain slicked roadway. He turned, fully prepared to flash the rifle, and show whoever this was that it might be smarter to take off. He wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted him.
A police van had skidded to a stop halfway across both lanes of the street and cops seemed to boil out of it. A half dozen. All armed. All dressed in riot gear, and bulletproof vests, Calvin saw. He fully intended to keep turning but at nearly the same time he saw them his legs seemed to be pushed out from under him, and he felt himself falling as an eruption of noise and smoke filled the air all around him. The blonde and the remaining man sprinted for the only shelter, the stockroom, but the cops were on both of them just that fast. They fell even as they made the doorway, sprawling on the heap of bodies already there. The rapid shots fell off to single blasts, and then stopped. Two heavily armored cops ran forward, flanking the door, hesitated only briefly and then jumped through the doorway into the room beyond. The silence held for a brief second longer and then one called back. Calvin fought to keep his eyes open, convinced that if he could do just that one small thing everything would be alright.
“Toast… Done up.”
The one that had called out turned, light flashing dully from his black body armor. He started for the door when his eyes fell on a thick padlock hanging next to the door. He grasped it as he leapt through the doorway; the other followed. They both bent and picked up the few scattered weapons that lay on the sidewalk; tossing them into the darkness of the stockroom, and then the first one slammed the door shut. He ran the padlock through the welded plates on the door and snapped it shut.
Calvin heard the click. His vision was lost in the absolute darkness of the space. He had already tried to move. He couldn’t. It was useless. It had seemed so important to try to move though. So important just a few moments ago. A few…. He blinked, but he still saw nothing. A buzzing started in one ear and then that ear seemed to fill up with static, breaking the buzzing sound up into little bursts of confusion that tore away into his brain. He blinked and tried to listen harder, but there was nothing to hear, then…
“Come on, come on, come on!” This from one of the cops crouched back by the van were it idled on the roadway: Vapor curling from the exhaust pipe, and lifting into the air. The two sprinted back, jumped into the rear of the van; holding the doors partially shut with their hands, and the van roared away. It turned two blocks down and disappeared onto one of the side streets. The motor could be heard screaming on the still air for a few moments longer, and then it was gone. Silence held the street, and then snow began to fall a few moments later. Within a short time the entire street was covered in a coating of snow as lightening flashed in the dark skies above Old Towne.
The darkness began to suddenly take on more weight and the fear that he might be dying settled in more fully with Calvin’s other scattered thoughts. A puppy he had had… So real… It’s whole body was wagging right along with it’s tail. It was … was… When? What? Gone… A birthday party… Not his… He had no gift… The sound of the lock clicking shut… Echoing, and then as suddenly as the light had left with the slamming of the door it flared back into existence. A bright ball up near the ceiling. A light to be sure, but unlike any light he had ever seen. It flared brighter… Brighter still, and then he felt himself rise, confused at first, and then stepping from the shadows of the room and into the bright lights of a hallway. Panic jumped into him… How could he be walking? How could he be?
He spun, meaning to step back into the darkness, but the darkness was gone. All that remained was the over bright hallway that lead to… Whatever it lead to. He couldn’t make an answer for it come to him. None at all. He stood briefly, still facing what had been the darkness of the back room but now was only a smooth white expanse of flat wall, and then forced himself to turn around… It meant… It meant the end… The end… He slid one foot forward and then the other, forcing himself to walk.
Katie:
She came awake in the dark. She was shivering, the cold of the concrete seeping deep into her body. Her head ached, but when she tried to lift her hands to it she remembered that they were still zip tied behind her back. That caused panic to settle into her for a brief moment until she realized that whatever had happened was over. The stockroom was graveyard silent, a thin blueish line of light seeped under the swinging doors about twelve feet away. Shadows began to emerge from the darkness as her eyes adjusted: Bodies, and then the thick smell of coppery blood came to her. She fought the urge to gag.
She was convinced she was alone, equally convinced that this was just a trick. She waited, and then waited a little longer, but nothing changed as she watched the line of light under the door. Occasionally it would flicker. Nothing else. She made her decision, carefully got to her feet, and stepped around the bodies to the swinging doors.
The roof was collapsed onto the tops of the aisles. The steel of the shelving units held it suspended there. Most of the emergency lighting was out, but a few lights were still lit: Some hanging by wires into the aisles. The space in the aisles to the roof was tall enough that she didn’t have to stoop over as she made her way to the front of the store. She stopped in the darkness at the mouth of the aisle and looked out through the shattered front windows in front of her. Snow fell on the street beyond the glass. Lightening flashed sporadically in the skies, the sound of thunder sometimes close, sometimes far away: The lightening blue-white flashes of light on the snow covered street.
She waited. For what she didn’t know, but nothing came, nothing changed. She stood, listening to the clicking and buzzing from the flickering fluorescent lights of the market. She bumped against the sharp edge of an end cap that had partially buckled, jutting out next to her: Blood trickled away from her arm, rolling to her wrists which were still tied and swollen. Her hands were cold and numb. She turned and used it as quickly as she could to cut through one of the zip ties that bound her wrists. Rubbing until one tie flew apart, making a plastic clicking sound as it hit the aisle floor and skittered away. She bought her wrists around in front of her and into the light.
A thin line of blood ran away from the wrist that had been encircled by the tie. Whether from the sharp metal she had used to escape the zip tie, or the zip tie itself she could not tell. A few more seconds of careful rubbing with the sharp metal edge and the other plastic cuff fell to the floor. She stood and rubbed feeling back into her hands. They came alive with sharp pins and needles, nearly making her cry out. She flexed them, working blood back into them, and looked out at the falling snow.
She stood, looking around the entire front area of the store. It appeared empty, but it was hard to see anything; there were few lights working. The roof collapse had shortened the entire space, trapping what lights remained working inside the aisles, hanging from their wires. There were no sounds, no movements. She was alone, she decided. She stood for a few moments longer, still rubbing her hands, and then walked past the checkouts, stepped through a shattered front window, and walked off down the street into the falling curtain of snow.
###
I hope you enjoyed the preview. If you are a fan/reader you know what that scene is about. There is no actual title, World Stop is the working title, but the more I see it the more I like it.
Get the Earth’s Survivors books from these Book Sellers
