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A Tale of the Dead West
A Tale of the Dead West T.H. Theimer It was a lonely day in hell as my faithful steed carried me across the dead plain for what I knew to be the last hour of daylight; I would endure more heat until the cold night came to reclaim this barren land. One more hour of daylight and I could take the shades off my gasmask, I would still be sweating underneath it and the heat from the hydrogen engine would keep me warm. My steed was a classic American motorcycle that had been retrofitted with a hydrogen engine, made ready for combat, chopped to have wider near indestructible tires, and had the most durable shocks added; I’ve been told that riding across the plains on a bike like this is like how the cowboys of the old west used to ride horses. On my motorcycle I feel like I am on an iron steed, bringing death to the heartless. I was being paid really well for this bounty, half up front, half afterwards, and a bonus for each heartless brain I could bring back. The brain would be the hardest part of this bounty, since that’s my real target. We call them the heartless because you can sink as many rounds as you want into their hearts or any other kill zone and they will keep coming at you. Yeah, the up front pay of this bounty had paid me well enough to get the steed a nice tune-up, a nice supply of hydrogen cells, the adrenaline that slowly diffused into my blood supply to keep me awake this whole time, and enough hollow points to take out all the hollows in the dead lands. The sun was almost even with the horizon, directly in my eyes as I rode west at 95 miles an hour. After the nukes had hit, what had once been grass lands turned into a dead plain of radiated glass and everything else was dust; what had once been the American Midwest was now a dead plain, home only to the heartless. It seemed pure luck that the nukes had hit the locations that they had, apparently everyone had thought they would hit all the major cities, but they had really been aimed at the food supply; this left the populations stranded in their cities to starve. The chemical weapons that had also been launched had taken out enough of the surviving population to make survival easy enough, but the heartless made it worse. But really, it was sheer dumb luck that the nukes had left the major train route intact. Before the satellites fell, we still had communication with cities outside our own, now it was all done old fashion style. So when the mail didn’t come through, or a cattle drive didn’t show up at an outpost along the train route, well, that’s when I get work. Right now, I was after a missing messenger. He was supposed to come to Old York from Denver, but he was stopping in Houston on route. My bounty had come from the top; the Post Master General had called me himself into his office at the city center and he had helped me acquire the expensive ammo that I would use on the heartless. Over the past few years since the one day war I had made a real name for myself taking out hordes of heartless. I had been the sole survivor of the first known heartless ambush, that’s why I use the adrenaline to stay awake while I am on a bounty; to sleep on the dead plains is to be dead already. I had scanned the land for any sign of heartless this whole time, but I saw nothing which concerned me greatly. Was it possible for them to organize? The heartless were already dead, that’s what we think a least because when you see one you know that there is no possible way life as we know it exists inside that shell. The heat of the sun dries them out, their skin flakes up and exposes the entire jaw, or maybe they eat their own flesh out of their unknown hunger. Their eyes are a horrible sight to behold, even I feel terror when I make eye contact with them, the sun has burned their eyes to appear blind; we think they work mostly by the sense of smell at hearing. It seems that they exist to feed a wicked hunger, anything alive is as good as dead to them and if whatever they bite manages an escape, it is doomed to suffer their fate. It seems that their bite is fatal to anything, but only humans come back as one of them, that’s one reason people like me don’t ride horses on these missions. My right hand gripped the throttle harder as my left hand came up long enough to flip up the shades on my gasmask; I quickly brought my left hand back down to grab the firing mechanism. Dead ahead of me I saw the silhouettes of a small group of corpse thin heartless, I slowed down considerably, I wanted to hit them and keep moving. I was a stone’s throw away when I pulled the trigger, the ammo box on the front mount fed the gattling gun; the quick burst of hollow tips fired ahead of me, clearing a path of total destruction. I knew that nothing remained of the heartless’ heads, my real mission was the brain matter and I knew that the destructive hollow point ammo I had in all my guns except one would not help me get the brain matter. It would come down to a good shot from my magnum, I would have to aim for the lower jaw and sever the brain stem straight through. I would have to find a group of them and find the newest of them, I have already been on this mission a dozen times already this year, and apparently nothing could be determined by the wasted old brain of long term heartless. The real deal here was that I had to find the courier, freshly turned into a heartless and fire the kill shot. It was a needle in a haystack suicide mission. I had about 12 hours to find him and turn around, if I had to run on the adrenaline any longer than that I would fry my own brain and my heart would burst from the stress. This was the shit that I lived for. I rode for another hour with no more disturbances, just the sound of the steed and my thoughts of how I would go about this. I ran through all the possibilities in my mind, the chance that I’m dead wrong and that the messenger was eaten completely and that the horde of heartless would not be attracted to the cattle drive existed, but that chance was slim. The drip of adrenaline was like fire in my blood, my internal clock, in my mind I counted down the drops that remained until my heart stopped. This whole bounty was planned really well, I was riding under a full moon and a clear sky, I could see clearly for a good distance and cleared the miles quickly without slowing down. I could see the dust of the cattle drive on the horizon, an hour west of here if even. The steed whined as it carried me to the top of an esker of land, I let off the throttle, seeing my mark ahead a mile west of here and a few clicks to the south. Through my binoculars I could see the large truck was on its side, in the moonlight I could see a couple dozen of heartless, shambling about the area around it. Secretly I hoped they had broken into it and got the driver, bitten him and left him alone long enough to change into one of them; if he had survived the crash it would be almost impossible for me to get him back to the city alive, his own adrenaline feed must have exceeded its limit, he would be dead I reassured myself. The dust had caked up on my gasmask, I smacked it to clear the ventilators of dust and air came easier to me. I would do the majority of this slaughter with my classic Remington fast action, this was the same gun that had won its fame in the old west, the native Indians had used them in their ambushes against the soldiers who had sought to put them on reservations; this gun could fire off five shots in the time of any other rifles’ single shot which meant increased accuracy and rate of fire. The only automatic weapon I used was the gun mounted on the front of the steed, and that was only used to clear a patch when I was in a hurry. No use trying anything fancy on this group, I would ride circles at a slow speed and pick off head shots. The museum piece Remington had been modified enough to let belt fed ammo slide into the chamber and to pass the spent cartridge along the belt to be reused at a later time, copper was expensive and if I didn’t have to leave empty shells I would take them with me for a refill. I pulled the rifle from its holster on my back and linked it up with the crate of ammo behind me. I would have to fire from my left side, so I would circle them with my right side on the inside, the rifle across my body and the smooth shocks would steady it enough for good clean headshots. The air would have chilled me to the bone, but my combat armor kept me warm, I had suffered the heat of the days for moments like this. My body had catalyzed the nutrient supply I had hooked to me, I would be starving as I came rolling back to Old York but hopefully I would have the brain I needed in the cryo-unit. I knew the heartless had heard my approach, hopefully this was the only group in the area, and I wanted this to be quick and easy. The engine roared as I made a quick acceleration down the slope of the rocky esker, the rifle shouldered and already across my right arm. The heartless numbered greater than I had observed, it seems some had been behind the truck or over the ridge of land; I had to deal with twice as many as I had originally thought. The closer I got to them, the more of the horror that is the heartless became apparent; they groaned, their charnel forms shriveled corpse thin stood out from the dead land as if hellish fingers clawing at the eyes of god. Their blood would be like the dust that swept this land, in the moonlight their dead eyes seemed to reflect the light. I just had to stay moving and not let any of them get their death grasp on me. Being corpse thin, one would imagine them to be weak, but they have a death grip that nothing except a bullet to their head can stop. People like me have a saying, well it’s not like we made it up but it holds true “don’t fire until you can see the whites of their eyes”; usually their flesh is dead white like their eyes so some young-bucks will fire off shots at great distance, take one down and go in to kill more only to have their former targets stand up and take them out. Thinking about all the hunters who never came home to the city I held my shot, but as soon as the glimmer of moonlight changed to the dead eyes I knew to be that of the heartless, my shots rang out one after another. My body leaned with the turn, my hand holding the throttle, my foot had downshifted enough that I could not get my speed up too high; in that time I became a mix of man and machine in perfect harmony, we rained a circle of death down upon the heartless. These things had once been people like myself, how many of them had tried this same maneuver I wondered. It became apparent that a rescue party had come from Houston, I saw their steeds first, from what I could tell by the way they were parked the team had stopped and been ambushed. This thought in mind I scanned the outward perimeter, nothing, this was my horde, they had not yet moved to meet the cattle drive which was good for me; cattle drives usually come with more armored guards than I would want to have to have fire at me first and ask questions later. Together the heartless and I danced this fatal waltz of death; I fired headshot after headshot, craniums exploded in dusty explosions of bone. Their number became enough to count on one hand, I finished the dance by charging them head on with the automatic firing a quick burst of destruction. In the moments that seemed like forever, but had been but mere moments I had not seen the real target. The adrenaline made my muscles burn with and my heartbeat came as fast as the gattling gun had seconds before; that fucking messenger better be stuck in the back of the truck, heartless and undead like the ones I had just killed. Parking my steed next to the others, I surveyed the field of the massacre, nothing moved here or on the horizon; if need be I had enough time to get back out here safely. Being cautious I left the engine running, the cryo-unit needed its power anyways; from my pocket I pulled a small baggie of C4. The C4 would bust open the backdoor of the truck quickly; it worked by fire and impact, most people are so terrified of it when you throw them a brick of C4 that they will shit themselves as they catch it or it slips through their grasp. Holding a small bit of C4 on my gloved finger tip ready to be flicked, I struck a match on the leather of my combat armor and touched the flame to the explosive; in an instant it was out of my hand, striking with enough force to blow the doors in, smashing the internal lock, the force of the implosion rocking them back out. The groan from inside came as quick as my magnum was out of the side holster, I back peddled a few steps; young heartless are fast since their muscles haven’t atrophied and they still benefit form blood flow. We think it takes about a month to go from fully living human to full blown heartless. The red light inside the mail truck still had power, I could see the outline of the courier as he stood up and ran towards me; I back peddled a few more feet so that I could see his face in the moonlight. The moon illuminated the grim face of the messenger I had known in life. He had been a good friend of mine, we had helped each other out many times, but now he was one of them. His light blue uniform top was shredded and soaked in blood; he had been bitten a few times from what I could tell and he had been moderately injured in the accident. The skin around his mouth had been eaten away, his jaw hung open in a wicked mockery of a smile. The magnum felt heavy in my grip for the first time as his dead stare locked on my own, the sands of time dripped slowly, thoughts of shared jokes over a hard drink clouded my mind; in this slow motion life and death hug on the edge of a razor. Instinct overtook my being, the one thing that saved me in that moment was my muscles tightening; the bullet hit him first in the jaw, then the throat twice shearing his head clear off his body and once in the shoulder as I brought my arm down. The dead form his body spun with the force of the final shot to his shoulder and he fell to the ground, his head fell to the ground with a sick wet thud. On the horizon I saw a flash of heat lightning, in the distance I saw forms of another group coming my way but I would be gone before they made it here. The man who I had known as well as anyone else in life, he lay dead at my feet and I was putting his head in the cryo-unit. The scientists would experiment on his brain, searching for a cure, or at least something new that had yet to be discovered about them. I would be drinking for two when I got back to Old York, my friend liked his whiskey as much as I did and I would miss him; he would be replaced by someone else willing to make the long dangerous journey across the dead lands. Putting my guns away, I got back on my faithful steed. It was a lonely night in hell as I made the beginning of my trip back to where I came from to collect the bounty. The Post Master General would be glad to pay me well, but nothing could take the look in those dead eyes out of my mind. Another drip of adrenaline, my internal clock told me to hurry up or die out here like the rest of them; the dead lands were a place of the quick or the dead. This entry was edited on February 14, 2008, 12:11 am.
Filed under: Literature	02/13/2008, 12:00 am | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments
Midnight syndicate - Gates of Delerium
Midnight syndicate - Gates of Delerium http://www.zombiefriends.com/zlog/zlog.asp?vi=2160#1955 I just wanted to share with everyone the music that i have been listening to constantly recently. this is an amazing album, i love these guys. This album sets the mood of a haunted asylum or something similar to that; the ambience of it is haunting. listen to it loudly while driving, you will see what i mean. The midnight syndicate have opened the doorway for haunting classical music; many others have followed suit and created similar music, but these guys are the founders of modern classical horror music. Anyone who works in the haunting industry is sure to at least one of their cd's and maybe a poster if they play their music at their haunted location. These guys fully support and embrace the haunting industry, the posters my haunt recieved to show our support of their music and their support of our haunt are beautiful. the posters glow in blacklight, standing out in even the darkest passageways. Looking at my itunes, i see i have listened to this album 87 times since i bought it last month. i love this album, i love this band. these guys sit in my pantheon of favorite bands: Immortal, Ulver, Burzum, Darkthrone, Emperor, Cannibal Corpse, Satyricon, and the Midnight SYndicate. do yourself a favor and check these guys out. here is my amazon.com review of this album: perfect haunt music, September 14, 2007 By Thom "Badhammer" (www.zombiefriends.com/badhammer) - See all my reviews the midnight syndicate's "gates of delerium" is an amazing album; this is perfect for all haunters and anyone who enjoys the dark gothic classical music that is the midnight syndicate. the haunted house i work at will be playing this album for our 2007 season, we have contacted the midnight syndicate and recieved posters for the haunted house; these guys fully support the haunt community. I have friends who are classical piano players who love this album for it's amazing musical quality. please, do yourself a favor, buy this album. if you have never heard the midnight syndicate, i recomend you look at their myspace page and listen to their music.
Filed under: Halloween, Music	09/29/2007, 12:46 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments
Terror Field update
it's 12 Hawley St. and we're doing it every friday and saturday night from 7:30 - 11 pm ish... i screwed up all that before.
Filed under: Halloween	09/18/2007, 3:30 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments
Terror Field Update
So today I got together with the guys of Terror FIeld, we did manly man things like built jmore stuff for the haunted house. A lot of fun! I have to say, and this is not at all biased because i am associated with Terror Field, THIS HAUNT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!! we're shooting for every weekend of october, but the first weekend is our run through / practice for ourselves to figure out what is working and what needs work. i just wanted to mention that our main site is getting an overhaul tonight i think... but check it out www.terrorfield.com I think it will link over to our myspace and the zombiefriends.com page.... makes me wonder.... any chance that there could be a thecabinet.com link to section? i was thinking how nice it would be to be able to link to thecabinet from our main page and from our friend site pages.... hmmmmm maybe this suggestion will be noticed without me even having to send a message.... hmmmmmmmm anyway, we built up the exterior walls and facade.... the roof has to be built again becaause of rain, but we know now how not to build a roof! haha
Filed under: General, Halloween	09/16/2007, 2:20 am | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments
Obtrusiveness like a Lush Forest (Eng 221)
Please note: this is a homework assignment i have due for creative writing this tuesday. i was told to write a story about "Obtrussiveness like a lush forest", i think i sort of went sideways with that. Obtrusiveness like a Lush Forest Life in the concrete jungle had begun to weigh down hard upon my mind, the day to day bullshit was like the pressure of the world bearing down upon my aged back. Tomorrow rent would be due, the cell phone bill was late and unpaid so it would be getting shut off. The credit collectors had been calling or so long I knew all their fake names; I almost felt sad telling "Mr. Green" that I would not be able to pay my maxxed out credit card off because I was dead. This really seemed to irritate the man who had been calling my phone for so long, I don’t think he realized how serious I was. I opened the front door of my suburban house and threw the phone out in the street just in time to see a bus run it over; I think that was the best I have felt in I don’t know how long. Still, every sense of my being was not what I had wanted; two failed marriages, a career in number crunching that had made my life as unsatisfying as abridged books on tape, and my only child had died a few years back of a drug overdose. In every aspect of life I was my own worst enemy; I had made my life this way, I could unmake my life if I wanted to and I wanted to very much. Life was supposed to make sense, it was supposed to make sense; go to college, get a career, get married, have 2.5 kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. My life did not make sense, I had tried to pull off the American dream; obviously I had failed miserably. I hated my career, both wives had left me, I only had one son and he died, the dog ran away, and the kids down the street think it is funny to spray paint my picket fence. When the American dream become so cloudy, when did it become a nightmare? I looked around my little suburban bunker, safe from the outside world; I had all the best things: widescreen HD plasma wall mounted TV with over a thousand channels of shit, Italian leather furniture, my clothes were all designer suits, a cabinet full of guns I had never even touched, and even my toilet was more expensive than most peoples’ houses. All these things, these things that I owned, they were my cry for help; I didn’t really own any of them, but no one listened or saw my struggle, they saw the success in my life, but success is not measured in dollars. I should have felt the cool morning dew between my toes as I watched the sunrise. My suburban bunker should have kept me safe from city life, but the drug dealer that killed my son lived down the street. I still got on the bus every morning when I should have been enjoying the sunrise. I was crunching numbers when I should have been spending time with my son, I should have told him not to do drugs; I should have done something to keep him alive. As if I had slipped out of my nightmare and into a sweet dream I felt myself unlocking my gun cabinet. I should have been trying to live instead of shooting hot copper through my skull; I had never even held that Barretta before that moment. Finally, I was living the American dream. Brain, bone, blood, and gore splattered the wall behind me on my nice Italian leather sofa; at that moment... well, I would like to say life flashed before my eyes but one was crushed during the gunshot and the other one was dangling down my cheek, but my life did flash before my eyes. I was finally free from the restrictions of life, I had left the concrete jungle and I found myself in a lush forest. There was nothing to hold me back and I took a long walk, feeling the cool grass between my toes; I smiled for the first time in years. I was finally free.
Filed under: Literature	09/09/2007, 2:01 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments
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