One Night In Hell, A Short Story

A bit of a note before you read this story:

On 27 May 2012, this blog hit 1,000 pageviews. I was (and still am) absolutely flabbergasted that that many people would view my stories, even if it is a cumulative number across the entirety of my offerings. So, in appreciation of that mark being hit, I did a drawing on my official Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/cpriestbrumley), with the winner receiving a custom-written story starring themselves, in the genre of their choice.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

The chosen winner, Chris Reid, opted instead for me to write a post-apocalyptic war story centered upon a few of his popular characters from the site "Last Days Journal", Richard Faust and Cpt. Alan Dryfter. So, in the spirit of the contest, I reimagined the characters, trying my best to remain true to their core, all the while incorporating new life in to the Zombie mythos surrounding them.

I hope you all enjoy.

Cheers!
-C. Priest Brumley, 31 May 2012

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"These earplugs aren't working for shit, Faust."

"Nor mine, mate."

The sound of a thousand human voices hung in the air, an orchestra of pain and mortal danger in an unstopped crescendo surrounding the two men. The first to talk hefted his gun, an un-modified AK-47, on to his lap and threw his head back in frustration.

"Jesus H, if I have to hear this non-stop moaning bull all night, I'm gonna lose my cool!"

"Same, I'm afraid."


Clink. Clink.

"Well, you can take solace in knowing that I'll stop you and burn you before you can turn."

"You'd really do that, Alan? Shoot me, I mean."

A tired sigh floated through the dark air between the two men, unheard. "No, I wouldn't. Just trying to cheer you up some."

"Good soddin' luck. My nerves are on edge here, mate."

"Hard to argue right now. Still no word from H-Q?"

The second man's voice sounded strained, his accent thickening from stress. "None yet. I've tried fixing the receiver best I can, but the most I'm still getting is white noise and the occasional snip from a football replay. Apparently, Man-U's up on Galaxy three to one."

Clink. Clink.

Alan looked up, eyebrows raised in surprise. "They're still playing football?"

"Replay, mate. From what I can get, this one's three years on."

Another tired sigh. Alan shifted in his spot to relieve the numb feeling caused by the rubble they were perched on. "Damn. I was hoping they still had a spot safe enough, too."

"Same here, I tell you."

Clink. Clink.

"What the hell are you doing over there?"

Faust smiled for the first time that evening. "Counting."

"Counting what?"

"Bullets."

"Oh."

"According to my estimate, you have about sixty-seven left."

Alan broke out in a wide grin. "I like the sound of those words!"

"You're not going to like the next ones, then. I'm skint, mate."

Alan cursed under his breath, a sound lost under the continual stream of moans that issued from beneath them. He ran his hand through his coarse, short hair as a gesture of contemplation, then looked up, an idea gleaming in his eye.

"How are we on fourties?"

"Haven't got there yet, but I know we have six or seven loaded clips in your bag. Speaking on, chuck it at us, will you?" Alan slid the pack off with one smooth motion and threw it, one-handed, to Faust. "The faster I count, the faster we can institute a cunning plan of escape."

The desk, set on end in the corner of the room to block the stairwell, gave a shake, a fresh stream of moans pouring in through the gaps.

"Guess the first and second floors didn't take, eh?" The false chipper note on Faust's tongue did not go unnoticed.

"Guess so." Alan patted his chest, followed by his pockets, then cursed again. "Hey, while you're in there, see if you can find a pack? I can't find mine." A half-used pack of cigarettes flew through the air between the men, and was caught just before impact by Alan's quick hand. "Thanks. Where were they?"

"Front pocket. Hang on--" The red glow of the lighter flared as Faust started one for himself, then threw the lighter on the same trajectory as the pack before it. "--There you are."

The same glow illuminated Alan's face for a moment, grizzled features thrown in relief by the dancing light. He pulled a deep drag, letting the nicotine run its course, then turned his mind to the pressing issue.

"So. You're out, but I'm good on both of mine. Brilliant."

"Technically speaking, yes, but even with you being 'good', I think we can only count on half for kill shots. So I'm thinking we can hold off the horde out the door, but we're right screwed after, mate."

"Damn it. We need something, Faust. At this point, I'll take anything."

Faust shifted on his pile of rubble and returned to sifting through the rucksack set between his boots, flicking the dead ashes from the end of his cigarette on occasion. Alan, for his part, stayed silent, finishing his cigarette well before Faust and flicking it out of the open hole in the wall to fall to the hording mass below. After a few more minutes of sorting, Faust straightened out, a triumphant gleam in his eye.

"Talk to me."

"My dearest Captain, we are saved."

"How saved are you talking, Faust? Napalming the 'Cong saved or 'Shot heard 'round the world' saved?"

Faust gave a soft laugh, barely audible in the cacophony. "How dramatic do you like your victories, Alan?"

"Yes!" Alan stood up, punching the air in excitement, the AK-47 laying across his lap falling to the ground with a metallic clatter. "You found one?"

"Just the one. If you can clear out the surrounding horde a mo, I can eyeball the bastard and call this one a win, eh?"

Alan scooped down and grabbed the strap of the AK-47, hefting it on to his shoulder. "Cut 'em or kill 'em?"

"Kill. If I miss the runt, we're dead off. We need as many down for good as we can get."

Faust straightened up, tossing the backpack to Alan with one hand while he unshouldered his sniper rifle with the other. Alan caught the bag, shouldered his gun, and started to root for clips. "Can do. Where do you think he's at?"

"My guess is the slight break in the mass, right--" Faust stood and walked to the gaping hole, scanning the gathered horde below until he spotted what he was looking for. "--Right there." He pointed at a small gap in the midst of a tight-packed group, barely visible in the light of the full moon shining overhead.

Alan strode the few steps to stand by Faust, pocketing the loaded clips in his hand, and scoped the area below, picking out the opening almost at once. "Right there. You loaded?"

Faust slipped the length of dark metal off of his shoulder, opened the chamber, and loaded the sole round in the span of a single second. "Done. You?"

"Ready when you are."

"Then give me an opening, Cap--"

CRASH.

The oaken desk that had been blocking the stairway in the corner gave way, spilling the oncoming horde in to the war-ravaged room. Alan and Faust both spun at the same time, Faust grabbing the semi-automatic pistol strapped to Alan's side as it passed and dropping the sniper rifle in a single movement.

"Kill shots only!" Alan's voice rang out over the moans of the horde as he and Faust levelled their weapons at the creatures' heads, gunshots ringing in rapid succession dropping the horde as they approached en mass, bodies crawling over bodies crawling over more bodies, blood painting the brick surfaces around them in a grisly shade of putrefied black as the stench of the reanimated dead still approached, a hundred corpses moving toward the only fresh food in a hundred miles, the wall of bodies growing taller...

"I'm out!" Alan's voice rang out a minute later, barely heard over the ringing in their ears from the utter din of the weapons and assailants. The wall of bodies had grown too tall for the horde to climb over, but the movements behind the wall were growing in intensity as the horde continued to push, unabated, knowing that nothing is entirely unmoveable.

"We have to off that controller, Alan!"

"And how do you propose we do that? Want me to pull a Nathan Lane, dress in drag, and do the hula?"

"What?"

"It's a joke, for Christ sake!"

"Now is not the time for a sodding joke! Take this!" Faust flipped the handgun through the air at Alan, who caught it by the hot muzzle and flipped it to grip the handle, dropped the clip, and slammed in a new one brought up by his other hand from his pocket. "I need space to get to the controller, mate. Make it happen!"

Alan brought the sight up to his eye, took aim, and fired, again, and again, the protective cluster around the controller being reduced one by one. On the fourteenth shot, Alan turned to Faust, intending on cracking wise.

He opted for silence instead.

The long, dark sniper rifle was set up and being aimed directly at the exposed controller: a child, no more than four feet in height, the result of evolution's sickening attempt at protecting the ruling caste of these mindless creatures. Faust had done this before, dozens of times, but it was a mark of his humanity that it unsettled him each and every... and now was not the exception. Fighting the rising bile in his throat, he squeezed the trigger, loosing the sole round they had left for the gun.

His aim was true, and the head of the child exploded outward, crumpling the controller's body as Faust lost the fight against the combined force of his conscience and stomach.

The effects were immediate. The horde that had gathered around the building dropped, one at a time at first, then by twos and threes, then more, a ripple of reanimated corpses falling dead again from the loss of their reanimator, originating from the center point of the controller and working out from there.

The wall of bodies stopped shifting as the remaining horde beyond it fell down. Alan holstered his gun and clicked the strap over the back end, then scooped to grab the AK-47 from its resting place below on the ground and reshouldered it next to his rucksack. Faust spat out the remnants of the vomit in his mouth to the rubble pile, trying to ignore the sharp stench wafting up to his nostrils, and reshouldered his rifle. Both men met at the center of the room, watching the sky lighten through the gaping bombshell hole in the wall.

"Did it again?"

"I think I'll be worried when I don't, Alan."

"And that's why I keep you around, man. Best shot in the world and you're still more humane than anyone back at camp."

"Speaking on, let's start moving this pile, mate. Haven't eaten since we left to scout."

"I heard that, brother."

The sun broke out over the horizon in the distance.

Reminiscences Of My Childhood, An Autobiographical Essay

You want to know why I am who I am today?

First and foremost, I blame my parents. They did this to me, you see.

My parents were a weird sort. Not weird like, "Granola and TinFoil hats" weird. Their particular flavour of weird was closer to "Let's strap on hand-made armour and/or hand-made period clothing and re-enact the middle ages using modern conveniences such as bathrooms, running water, electricity, etc."

(For those of you who just guessed I was an S.C.A. Brat, you get bonus points. For those of you who said Renn Fair Brat, close this blog, go outside, close your eyes, and play in traffic. Or deep-throat a cactus, take your pick.)

The S.C.A. was, at the time, the greatest thing that could ever happen to my life. Once a month, I was allowed to get dressed up in costume and run around huge campgrounds and recreation areas, meeting new people constantly, learning about everything from sword fighting to calligraphy and back again. I learned how to cook, to barter, play the djimba and didgeridoo, and so much more before I even hit puberty. I learned of a myriad of alternate lifestyles and religions, all of which seemed awesome and exciting to a child my age. Hell, my S.C.A. name, Kveld Ulfr Des Fjords (Old Norse for "Evening Wolf of the Waters"), was so synonymous with who I was that (at times) I answered more readily to Kveld than Chris!

It was a great time of my life. But the weird influences did not even begin there, and they certainly did not end as we packed up from events.

While I was in the womb, my mother would put earphones on her baby bump and play Queen, Jethro Tull, and Alice Cooper. Immediately out of the womb, my father's influence was added, with Pink Floyd, Heart, Huey Lewis and the News, and more joining my previous affiliations. To this day, I maintain that these are the reasons music has been such a big factor in my life, and the foundation given to me in those formative days has only led my natural progression to current tastes, such as Dommin, Megadeth, and Iced Earth.

As well, through the interactions of my parents and their assorted friends, I was exposed to Elvira, early Doctor Who (we used to man the phones during Doctor Who marathons for LPB), and Mystery Science Theater 3000 (colloquially known as MST3K), as well as other cult features such as Army Of Darkness and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. My father, upon seeing my enthusiasm for these features, proceeded to feed them to me on a regular basis, which included all-night viewings of TNT's "Monstervision" where I viewed some of the greatest (and worst) horror movies ever made weekly, further shaping my tastes for decades to come.

And there's more. My parents and their friends also gave to me what I now consider my greatest assets: my "geek cred", as it were. I watched, intrigued, as men I had known my entire life played the original Beta release of Magic: The Gathering on our kitchen table, learning the rules for the first time. I listened to and watched games of D&D unfold before my eyes. I marveled at my father's dedication to playing and beating (with my mother as his "navigator") Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior 1-3, and more. Star Wars was omnipresent alongside Excalibur and Labyrinth and The Princess Bride. Comics were ingrained in my DNA.

This is all not to say I was not interested in typical things in my youth; on the contrary, I was a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Masters Of The Universe, Voltron, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, same as every child in those days. I played Nintendo, had (and still maintain) a massive Lego collection, and used my father's flashlights as lightsabers. My childhood just had a few extra... perks.

After leaving the S.C.A. in my teen years (long story, but let's just say my personal involvement ended with my cursing out an entire e-mail list full of adults with language that would make a sailor blush), I found myself the odd man out. No one else I knew was interested in Norse mythology, or sword fighting, or cheap Sci-Fi. They were far more interested in professional wrestling, and cars, and heavy metal. So I tried to fit in, coming to appreciate wrestling (at the time). But the fundamentals instilled in me during those formative years in the S.C.A. never disappeared.

I still believe in chivalry.

I still believe that every man should learn how to handle a sword properly.

I still believe that cooking a feast and eating a meal together with dozens of your closest friends and family is tantamount to what others would call "Heaven".

I still believe in friends being family.

I still believe in faded "Highlander" shirts and B.Y.O.E. (Bring Your Own Everything) parties and multi-day games of Uno and proudly displaying that sword you found that goes great with your persona.

I still believe in my childhood.


Cheers!
-C. Priest Brumley