The Dead Of Winter 5: Foley’s Dead Leaves (© 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 The best way to spend the winter safe from the zombies might
be to assemble a well-stocked, private little train and find a siding high in
the mountains, away from everything, until the Spring thaw. Stumbling across a
small, snowbound, but completely deserted town might even seem like a stroke of
luck, since nothing can come in. But that makes you the only intruder, and what
you can’t see – yet -- can be a lot scarier than what you can. The accident involving a train and a lake is based on one
that really happened in New England during the Depression. The crew lived, but
the hoboes riding in the boxcars didn’t, revealing themselves to local
townspeople the same way as in the story. I’m having a lot of fun using Google Earth to tour
the locations for the stories. This one was fun to write, and I hope you like
it.
Throughout history, politics has always been a showcase for
man’s inability to think. Many would argue that religion plays that role, but
when religions get big enough, they become politics. The politicians’ inability
to think has always ultimately manifested itself in war. The struggle was never between the haves and the have-nots,
or the free and the oppressed, or even the believers and
the infidels. It was always people versus the people with power
in other countries, and especially the people with power over them in their
own. The Constitution itself defines that balance of power in America by making one nationally-elected official the equal of about 200 million citizens. People have never started wars – leaders have, and usually
for the basest of reasons and with a certain disregard toward those who would
ultimately do the dying. No president or congress has ever voluntarily reduced
or ceded their own power, and this mostly holds true throughout the history of
the entire world regardless of government or social structure. Leaders who
won’t abdicate or resign usually have to be deposed or killed before they’ll
cede power – a dead giveaway as to their priorities. Leaders are usually the
ones who define for their people just who the aggressors (ie, bad guys)
are, too, to make sure their taxpayers and potential draftees know who to be
mad at this year. It’s as meaningless as when television shows and magazines
routinely declare who the sexiest person in the world is, and just as
believable. At least the sexiest people are never killers -- in spite of the
media’s ongoing flirtation with that possibility. But then, some presidents
have killed – legally, of course – and one was even an executioner. Blood has
spilled in torrents over the freedom to own slaves. It was in this kind of gross body politic that the greatest
calamity to befall human beings on the planet Earth occurred. People got sick,
died, and then got up again to kill and eat other humans. It was a disease, a
plague, The Plague, and at least half the earth’s population was
wiped out in the first round by simply being susceptible enough to it that the
germ itself could do all the work without recruiting any human henchmen.
Someone later discovered that it seemed to have a link to a nearby comet or
asteroid, but by then it was too late to make any use of the information or
even evaluate it properly. When it began and countries around the world started to end,
the sitting American president – already thoroughly and proudly incompetent --
was a widely acknowledged and globally recognized horse’s ass. It was an unkind
thing for his critics to say, but they were quick to point out that it was, in
fact, a very kind thing to say, given his record. For the sake of
decency and respect, however, they apologized to horses everywhere. In his last televised address regarding the emergency, the
President was unaware that the cameras were running as he stared at news
updates on an adjacent bank of monitors. At least one-third of them were now
blank, the stations having gone off the air. The viewing audience could hear
his aides in the background trying to get his attention with loud whispers: Mr.
President! Mr. President! You’re on! Mr. President! [ Continue to page 2 ] |