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     "Yeah, Tequila."

     "One more shot and I’ll be on my way to buzzville, thought Brian. Siting in a low-lit bar, an attractive blonde in her twenties came up to him with a frequent question.

     "Aren’t you Brian Keene -- the author?"

     "Yes…and you are?"

     "Carol Montgomery. I was at the award ceremony last week. I recognized you siting here at the bar. I’m an aspiring author and – oops, where are my manners? Hey bartender, give me another shot of tequila for my friend here. Anyway, I was thinking, there’s a --"

     "Boom, boom, boom!"

     At the pounding sound, Brian woke up. He had been sleeping again, dreaming about pleasant times in his past. But now, the banging on the door of the shelter reminded him of the dire circumstances at hand. As the banging kept on, Brian quickly eyeballed the top of his desk drawer. There, along side of three literary awards, sat his draft for his so-called horror novels. If he knew then what he knew now, he would never have wrote them. Only three years ago, he began scripting them, but even then, there was the feeling that some mysterious force was guiding his hand.

     "Heh, it all seemed so easy to me. …It just seemed so damned easy to write!"

     He thought back to a time when he was just a struggling writer, posting his arcane tales on the Internet. But one ominous night, he had the urge to write the book -- that damned book. Now, what was the title again, the first one? Ah, yes…"The Rising". Brian wrote a successful horror series and figured he was the best up and coming author of his time. They’d won several prestigious awards, and now, in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking that he could best most other horror writers. Dean Koontz, Stephen King, even Michael Crichton, he thought he could write with the best of them, but he was wrong -- dead wrong. As he saw the scribbling that titled the collective manuscript, he couldn’t help to recite the obscure heading with pure cynicism.

     "The gospel according to Brian Keene. I was so naïve, I should’ve known."

     In truth, he really should have known, because what Brian wrote in those sordid pages was no parchment of fictitious imagination, but the horrific future of our own reality. In short, Mr. Keene was no author; he was a prophet…a prophet of doom.

     "Bang, bang, bang!"

     The pounding was getting louder, but this time, it was accompanied by the hurling insults of the undead maniacs outside. The soiled dialogue came spewing out in a series of ranting curse words, some so nasty and deprived, that Brian hadn’t heard them used in years.

     "Get out here, you cowardly son of a bitch! We hunger -- give us your flesh, you stinking twat! We promise to kill you in style!"

      Yep, it was them all right, thought Brian. -- There’s always a "them". When he wrote about them, he would go into a trance-like state, typing out the odd misadventures about the rotting corpses outside. But back then, they hadn’t entered our world yet. Just as in his prophetic books, the hoary demons that possessed the dead flesh of the living had come from nowhere…or should it be said nowhere known to man? The first wave came out when some kind of particle accelerator, supped up by the nation’s best eggheads, had suddenly gone bad. From that time on, they were among us; killing and cannibalizing any person they could get their hands on, even animals became possessed when the ancient demons from the void beyond could find no suitable host.

      Despite such gruesome circumstances, he was still waiting for a friend, a very special friend. In the months past, Brian traveled from state to state, witnessing carnage beyond the imagination of most men, but when he met Jack, he new something was odd about him. Not only because he was the only living person he’d seen in years, but because he was a distinguished criminal, or as Jack put it; a "retired" criminal. Despite four hours already having passed, Brian hoped that Jack was still alive, but by this time, he seriously doubted it. From the dark sanctuary, Brian could smell the putrid flesh of the maggot-ridden corpses outside. The evil ghouls were smart and seemed to be born with a sinister craftiness about them. He knew this all too well. After all, he wrote the book on them…literally. Nevertheless, he had found ways to outsmart them, killing dozens within the last year. The world was now a post-apocalyptic nightmare, fulfilling every word he wrote in his first two books. It wasn’t that the books caused this morbid masquerade, instead, they were merely manifestations of Brian’s untapped psychic prowess. But even so, that small tinge of supernatural ability made him a more valued target for the baddies that awaited him in the dark forest beyond.

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