The Dead of Winter 4: Flakes on a Train (© Kurt Warner) This contribution is part of a series:- 1. The Dead of Winter: A Christmas Short (10-Dec-2003) 2. The Dead of Winter 2: You Died (25-Apr-2004) 3. The Dead of Winter 3: Foley’s Last Stand (1-Apr-2005) 4. The Dead of Winter 4: Flakes on a Train (13-May-2007)
| When the caboose of a rescue train making its way west through upstate New York in a blizzard loses communication with the engineers up front, it’s discovered that all of the train in between is undead. The situation’s exacerbated by a fast-moving derelict engine coming up behind on the same track for an inevitable collision, leaving few options for the protagonists to save their own lives. | 5. The Dead Of Winter 5: Foley’s Dead Leaves (11-Sep-2007)
| A snowbound, empty town might look like a safe winter, but sometimes what you can’t see can be a real killer. | 6. The Dead Of Winter 6: The Ice House (1-Oct-2008)
| A small group of inmates have taken over an isolated prison already virulently infected with The Plague that's sweeping through the area. They set up sporting events between the zombies and anyone under their control they don't like. The warden's locked up and is joined by one of the repeating characters in the series and both are slated to be entertainment. They lose their chaperones, but the warden refuses to escape unless he can take someone with him the inmates are holding hostage, but where? | 7. The Dead Of Winter 7: Chilly Con Carnies (20-Jul-2009)
| Ice House aftermath leads to another rescue. | 8. The Dead of Winter 8: Deadman's Hand (3-Sep-2010)
| Can a serial killer be content with killing zombies instead of making them? Would you bet the lives of your friends on it? |
Page 1 FOREWORD
After I began patching this story together, Gus (the real
Gus; the model for the cat in this series) died, which is why this contribution
has been so long in coming. She was by my side for much of my life and was the
best relationship I ever had, animal or human. I was teaching her to talk.
Clearly, she was never going to tell me what it's like to be a cat, but we had
conversational exchanges in which she expressed herself in her own way better
than I ever will in mine. I didn't want to do any more fiction after she died,
but then I started thinking about what she might want. All of the main, speaking characters in this are based on
real people who are probably still alive and running around loose today, and
would have no trouble recognizing themselves in the story. Most of the
non-zombie-related events actually occurred in real life, and the truly bizarre
automobile accident aftermath happened almost exactly as written. Aside from all that, however, the story itself kind of
started out as Dawn of the Dead meets Runaway Train, but when it
became apparent there wasn't enough there, it turned into Dawn of the Dead
meets Under Siege: Dark Territory. When it became apparent there was too
much there, it was re-oriented to Foley's Last Stand meets The Polar
Express. That was quite beyond my reach, so it turned into Resident Evil
2 meets Microsoft Train Simulator meets Van Helsing.
Unfortunately, even that degenerated into Harry Potter and Foley's
Last Stand meet Algebra for Dummies and the certificate of
authenticity for the Wendy Whoppers Inflatable Love Doll. So I burned it
all and started over. My friends -- the branches of creativity may occasionally
bear some tasty fruit, but the tree itself can be one gnarly mother of a
stump.
Foley woke up in the cornfield, face down and freezing in
the snowy night in the middle of nowhere. He must have fallen off the reaper,
which he couldn't even hear now, let alone see. Deadman – the former undertaker
and thwarted prefabricated makeshift memorial mogul – saved all their asses
with that giant piece of machinery, barreling through the field like some
infernal ancient juggernaut, mowing and slicing the decaying cornstalks and
bodies alike. He had the floodlights on, too, which – combined with the sheer
size of the thing – presented an almost Wagnerian end-of-the-world Gotterdamerung
spectacle staged, perhaps, by Jethro Tull (the man), musical accompaniment by Jethro
Tull (the group), and starring the Marx Brothers (in all roles). Aboard the reaper with his friends, Foley almost wished the
floodlights were off as they raced through the fields toward the rendezvous
point with the rescue train. How many cartoons had he ever seen in which a
character is neatly, efficiently, but mercilessly sectioned into limbs, a head,
and a trunk? Here, he was watching it happen for real and there was nothing funny
about it. He saw whole limbs being thrown straight up, with severed hands
traveling even higher. Heads – when they were whole – went somewhere in between
and a little off to the right. No trunks were tossed, but the spray of blood
alternately wafting and jetting up from directly under the blades pretty much
told what was happening to them. When Foley saw what appeared to be a hand land on the upper
part of the boarding ladder, he reached out to flick it off, but lost his
balance and fell. Apparently, no one noticed. Upon regaining his senses, at least he could remember what
happened. He quickly got to his knees and brushed off the snow on his arms,
looking around. There was no large swath of mowed stalks or carnage within
sight. That was bad. Foley stood up and checked for his gun which, he
discovered, was probably still on the reaper. He still had a knife under his
coat, though, and one of his notorious lengths of pipe. It was a foot long and
just right for a spinning, tumbling throw, which was, in fact, deadlier on the
things than any knife. He had a flashlight, too, but only for emergencies, and
this wasn't an emergency yet. Suddenly aware of a breeze, Foley walked into it, correctly
guessing he was either near the swath or near the edge of the field. It was the
swath, and over a rise about a mile away was the reaper, as evidenced by its
lights. He started walking quickly toward it and soon found that the mowed
stalks also held hundreds of body parts of Deadman's victims who couldn't or
simply wouldn't move out of the way of the deadly blades. Surprisingly, they
reeked in defiance of the cold and the snow. [ Continue to page 2 ] |