Category Archives: apocalyptic fiction

May 1, 2013

NSFW Horror: A grisly excerpt from This Plague of Days

By rchazzchute
Turkey Vulture

Turkey Vulture (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Spencers walked into the yellowing sun. Jack hoped the weak heat would dry them and the sunlight might somehow purify them. Though Jack’s breath was soon as heavy as her backpack — she cursed herself for not taking better care of her body — she found fatigue was easier to dismiss in the presence of horror. She wanted to get beyond the block of cars. They had to get beyond this dam of metal and flesh, find a vehicle, and continue to Maine as quickly as possible.

What if Lieutenant Carron found a way to get to the Corners faster?  Jack saw herself open the door to the kitchen at the farm, relieved to have finally found a haven. What if the man who had pointed a rifle at her face, at her daughter’s face, waited there, a shotgun now aimed at her midsection? He was so angry, there was no reasoning with a monster. Carron would warm himself by the wood stove. Papa Spence would be dead on the floor at his feet. She wouldn’t have time to plead before he pulled the trigger and cut her in two.

On the road beside them, two seagulls squabbled over ribbons and scraps, staging a tug-of-war over white meat. Despite her promise to avert her eyes, Anna did look. The face was gone. The torn scalp stretched out in the birds’ beaks, a long tangled splay of string across black and red pavement. The long hair suggested to Anna that the thing lying before her, exposed and obscene, had been a woman. A vulture went about its work, its head in the corpse’s ruined belly, ignored the screeching gulls. Intent on its meal, the bird raised its ugly bald head, ratcheting back and forth and up and down, to tear and to swallow. 

Anna knew she should turn away but found she could not. The dead woman’s abdomen had bloated and burst in a riotous stench of busy maggots. The bird’s head and neck disappeared into the gore to its hunched shoulders and came up again to tilt its head back to feast again, forcing a large, pink chunk into its gullet.

The girl bent to throw up. The moment she was empty, Anna turned to walk on. “Mom,” she said. “If we ever see Carron again, I’ll kill him right away. I won’t hesitate if I can find a way to do it. He’s a vulture and he wants to turn us into that.”

Her mother trudged forward and said nothing for a long time. Finally, “If you can do it, it won’t be wrong.”

~ I’ve been ill, so I’m playing catch up with revisions. However, things progress. For a more positive life outlook, have you subscribed at www.DecisionToChange.com yet? Or bought a book? Mere suggestions. No! Strong suggestions! If you can do it, it won’t be wrong.

 

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April 29, 2013

From the revision well: Chapter 2 of This Plague of Days

By rchazzchute

The moon lit the boy’s face as he peered over the fence into the next yard. Jaimie Spencer watched the couple on the lawn chair. The chair’s squeak had drawn him closer, curious. He wasn’t allowed in the neighbor’s yard, but moon shadows amid thick hedge leaves concealed him. A  woman he’d never before seen sat in the older man’s lap. The man, Mr. Sotherby, lay still beneath her. Jaimie could not see the man’s  face, but there was something grim about him, as if the couple were reluctant joggers in a cold wind. 

A cool hand slipped to the back of the boy’s neck. Without looking, Jaimie knew it was his sister, Anna. “Ears,” she whispered, “You’re being creepy again.”

The woman froze and turned her head. The couple whispered to each other, too. Sotherby’s voice was insistent. Hers was afraid. 

Anna guided her little brother away from the hedge line. Anna did not speak again until she and Jaimie stood by their own back door. “Mr. Sotherby has brought home another one of his flight attendant friends. You shouldn’t spy on them. It’s wrong.”

Jaimie did not look at Anna directly. He never met her eyes and he rarely spoke. Her brother cocked his head slightly to one side. That questioning gesture was a rare bit of Jaimie’s body language that few outside the family could read easily. Anna told Jamie that when he cocked his head that way, he looked like Fetcher, the cocker spaniel they’d once had. In every picture they owned of that pet, the spaniel’s head was tipped slightly sideways, perplexed by the camera. Jaimie thought the entire breed must cock their heads slightly sideways, hence their name. The boy abhorred instances of imprecision and illogic in language, and so he was frequently disappointed.

This Plague of Days III“Mr. Sotherby brings home his friends. Remember Mr. Sotherby’s a pilot? He gives rides to lots of people, Ears. He was just giving her a ride. That woman you saw thought she was part of a couple, but they were really just coupling.”

Couple: a noun and a verb. Jaimie had read these words in his dictionary. Overlaps of meanings and terms irritated. He wondered if his sister was trying to bother him. She often called him Ears when she was angry with him, though sometimes she called him that when she hugged him, too. More confusion and imprecision. 

“Dad says it’s a terrible thing what’s happened to flight attendants,” Anna said. “He says when they were called stewardesses, they were cuter. Now the older ones have a waxy look.”

Jaimie wondered how the change in the name of their occupation could have changed the way they looked. He’d heard there were magic words. “Flight attendant” must have powerful, and dangerous, magical properties.

Anna pulled her little brother into the house. “Let’s keep this between you and me,” Anna said and then burst out in a giggle. “Mom would worry you’re getting corrupted. I won’t say anything and I know you won’t.”

Jaimie followed Anna up the back stairs into the kitchen. She pulled out a box of cereal and poured a bowl for herself and one for her brother. He never asked to eat but was usually cooperative if a bowl and spoon was placed in front of him. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Sotherby and the woman. Jaimie liked to watch colorful patterns that flowed around people. He had seen the colors around living things all his life. He assumed everyone saw them. The boy had seen something pass between Mr. Sotherby and the flight attendant he had never before seen. It was disturbing because it muddied their colors and made them less vibrant.

Jaimie stood at the sink and gazed out of the kitchen window as he ate.  The moon hung so low and full, the tip of a distant church spire reached, its tip stretching to split Clavius, a large crater toward the base of the moon’s face. The boy’s mind wandered over the words spire and aspire. Surely, the terms shared the same arrogant word root. But the spire would always be bound to the earth, many miles short of aspiration’s heights. The gap between hope and doomed reality turned the boy’s mind back to the naked woman in the next yard.

Small black spots had hovered between the pair like greasy flies. The black smear spoiled the usual pleasing weave of colors. There had been many of them, like a cloud of feeding insects, around the woman. They spread over Mr. Sotherby, too, reaching for him. Jaimie didn’t know what the black spots were, but he sensed a yearning and purpose in their movement. They aspired to reach Mr. Sotherby and overtake him. He sensed the black cloud’s aspirations would be fulfilled. 

That was Jaimie Spencer’s first glimpse of the Sutr Virus at its deadly work. He was sixteen. He might have mentioned it to someone, but Jaimie Spencer was a selective mute. 

“A very selective mute,” his father, Theo Spencer, called him. “Jaimie has something we all lack: A super power. My son can shut up until he has something to say.”

But Jaimie’s ability to communicate well still waited on a distant time horizon then. Billions would have to expire — and one death would have to transpire — before Jaimie found his voice.  

~ This Plague of Days will be ready to launch in roughly a month. In the meantime, please check out all the links to books by Robert Chazz Chute at AllThatChazz.com.

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April 29, 2013

What do we really need to survive disaster?

By rchazzchute

I just ran across a great website called Survival Cache!

Follow this link to their 100 suggestions about stuff you need and what disappears first in a disaster. 

It’s a thorough and fascinating list. In the first four episodes of This Plague of Days (to be released soon!) the Spencer family is under siege from the world flu pandemic.

Until the Sutr Virus hits here, you could read these books by Robert Chazz Chute. Just sayin'.

Until the Sutr Virus hits here, you could read these books by Robert Chazz Chute. Just sayin’.

They stock up on what they can as prices soar and canned goods are flying off the shelves. 

I’ve seen that happen personally on a small scale. During the SARS crisis, you couldn’t buy a bottle of hand sanitizer for any price where I live. The supplies were all gone in the worry and panic over SARS.

Then, at the end of the first season of This Plague of Days, the crisis shifts. Over the next four episodes, The Spencer family loses a lot, including much of their cache of emergency supplies. Once they’re on the run, they can’t take everything they need. Then they can’t carry everything they need. When traffic jams block all escape routes, survivors have to get innovative.

So we need to think carefully about our go-bags.*

What do we absolutely need and what luxury will feel like it weighs a ton by the fifth mile of our hike to safety? Individual capacities will vary. Maybe you’re a Marine who can huck a heavy ruck 25 miles a day, but what weight can your ten-year-old daughter carry? Is the weight in the harness rig on your dog balanced? Can grandpa walk out of the flood zone unassisted or should he stay behind and hope for a helicopter? Do you have alternate escape routes and fallback positions? What’s the backup plan behind the backup plan behind the backup plan? 

What’s in your backpack?

When many people think of prepping, they picture a fortress, panic rooms, a bunker, a defensible Wal-mart or a castle with a moat. They picture infinite supplies and relative comfort. But what if the hurricane takes away your supplies and screws up your plans for holing up and waiting out the flood, fire and armies of crazed zombies?

To be zombie-ready, we have prepare to be mobile, too. Get out your clipboards, pack and repack and weigh. Start crossing stuff off your awesome list. Figure out what gets packed in the basement, the family van and what you can carry on sore, aching shoulders to safety.

*More on go-bags in a coming guest post by friend and fellow author Jordanna East.

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April 27, 2013

Extended, special sneak peek: How This Plague of Days begins

By rchazzchute

“Basically,” Dr. Julian Sutr said, “Viruses are zombies. They are neither classifiable as living nor dead. When given the opportunity, they reproduce using a host. Their molecules form complex

Until the Sutr Virus hits here, you could read these books by Robert Chazz Chute. Just sayin'.

Until the Sutr Virus hits here, you could read these books by Robert Chazz Chute. Just sayin’.

structures but they need hosts to reproduce. Nucleic acids, proteins — ”

The Skype connection froze for a moment and then the doctor understood he was being interrupted. “—preciate your summary, doctor.” Two men in uniform and one woman in a suit, each with their own screen, regarded him with impatience.

“The virus has grown more…opportunistic. What fooled us early on was the varied rate of infection and lethality. I suspect individual variance in liver enzymes accounts — ”

The woman cleared her throat and Sutr lost his place in the notes he’d prepared for this meeting. She sighed as he fumbled with his iPad. He had too many notes and not enough time. The woman sighed and tapped a stylus on her desk. “I’m meeting with him soon, doctor. I need the bullet, please. What do I tell him?”

Sutr removed his glasses and closed his eyes. This was too important to stammer and stutter through. Finding the correct words had never mattered more. He took a deep breath but kept his eyes closed and pretended he was speaking intimately with his beloved Manisha. His wife’s name meant “wisdom” and she shared her name with the goddess of the mind. He needed her and her namesake now. “My team and I…” He took another deep breath. “The virus has jumped.”

One of the men in uniform, an admiral in white, spoke, which automatically muted Dr. Sutr’s microphone. “First it was bats, then birds, then migratory birds, then pigs and cows. What animal do we warn the WHO about now? What animal do the Chinese have to slaughter next to keep the cap on this thing? A vaccine won’t help billions of Chinese peasants if they starve to death first.”

“I’m very aware of the stakes, sir, but the virus has jumped to humans. I asked my contact at Google to watch the key words. The epidemiological mapping of the spread is already lighting up in Japan, Malaysia, Chechnya and I already have confirmation it’s in parts of the Middle East, I’m afraid.”

“What’s your next step, doctor?” the woman asked.

Sutr opened his eyes. “I’ve sent my team home. They should be with their families now. As should we all.”

The man in the green uniform, a four-star general, leaned closer to his camera, filling Sutr’s screen. “This is no time to give up the fight, doctor. We’ve got a world to save from your…what did you call it? Zombie virus?”

“Pardon me, general. It was a clumsy metaphor. My point was that viruses are dead and I can’t kill dead things. I’m afraid we lost containment. I suspect we must have lost control sometime in the last two to three weeks. Perhaps less. Maybe more. There are too many variables. This virus is a tricky one. Something new.”

The general paled. “Are you saying this disease was engineered?”

For the first time, Sutr showed irritation toward his inquisitors. “I don’t know! I told you, there are too many variables. The loss of containment could have been sabotage or someone on my team made a mistake. Maybe they were too afraid to admit their mistake. It’s possible I made a mistake and I did not recognize it as such! I’ve identified the virus signature, but the work will have to be taken up by someone else. In my opinion, we need a miracle. As a virologist who has worked with Ebola, my faith in miracles is absent. Nature doesn’t know mercy or luck. That hope was beaten out of me in Africa.”

The admiral cut in. “Look, you’re already headed for the Nobel by identifying the virus. There’s time. We have to hope — ” but the woman in the suit held up a hand and he fell silent.

“We do appreciate the complexity of the challenge before us, Dr. Sutr. That’s why we need you. You’re the best and you’re farther along in the research than any of the other labs.” The woman looked conciliatory now and her voice took on a new, soothing note. “We’re very anxious to have you continue.”

Dr. Sutr stiffened. “I’ve already composed and sent an email for the lab network. You’ll have the entire data dump and I’ve made extra notes so your teams won’t waste time with what hasn’t worked. Dan, at CDC will coordinate my latest data to the other nodes. Good luck with it.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You were vague about the virus gaining traction in ‘parts of the Middle East’. Have you line of sight confirmation, doctor?”

“Yes. I’ve seen the virus’s work in person. Here in Dubai, in my own house. Tarun, my baby boy died last night. My wife, Manisha, followed him to see where he went early this morning.”

“We’re so sorry for your loss, Julian,” the woman said. “Are you infected?”

“I have no doubt I will die.”

“How long have you got, son?” the Admiral said. “You’ve said the infection gradient and lethality is so variable…you could keep working. We could still defeat this thing.”

Julian Sutr’s voice came firm and steady. “General, Admiral…Madam Secretary. It’s entirely possible that I brought it home to them. My wife and child are dead by the virus that bears my name. I should have been an obstetrician like my mother. She brought life into the world…” A tear slipped down the doctor’s cheek. “You people ask me what you should tell him. Go to your briefing. Tell him that, in all likelihood, he is the last President of the United States.”

Dr. Julian Sutr picked up the Sig Sauer P220 from his desk, placed the muzzle under his chin and pulled the trigger.

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April 26, 2013

The Sutr Virus: What happened?

By rchazzchute

From this morning’s revisions of This Plague of Days.

Grant Ave. in Chinatown, San Francisco.

Grant Ave. in Chinatown, San Francisco. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seemed it was already too late for most cities. However, many small towns that had survived the plague by brutally defending their borders, shooting trespassers and discouraging strangers. Successful survivors rooted out contagion and walled it off quickly, staying apart from the infected and shooting anyone who would compromise their security. That’s why the hospitals were dead. They took people in. The VA hospital on his own base had become a death house before word of the plague had spread through the forts’s hometown of Helena.

Similarly but on a grander scale of destruction, Carron knew San Francisco had been forced to billet soldiers returning from the Middle East when all the troops were recalled. San Francisco had fallen first and fastest than any American city for that reason. Citizens had welcomed the veterans (some of whom already had Sutr before they deployed from the ships) and so everyone died of compassion. San Francisco had been too kind to survive the New World.

From the safety of a military bunker in Montana, Lieutenant Carron had read the reports, watched the world fall, and passed the incoming intelligence reports to his superiors until his superiors fell sick, too. Some lived through Sutr’s fevers. Most died. Lieutenant Francis Carron didn’t so much as catch a cold and he would not give a sliver of compassion the chance to infect him.

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April 24, 2013

NSFW: Quotes from today’s revisions of This Plague of Days

By rchazzchute

Jaimie and his family try to cross a bridge to Canada as they flee the cities and disease runs rampant. However, they find evidence of a massacre on the Mackinac

English: Mackinac Bridge between Mackinaw City...

English: Mackinac Bridge between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, Michigan, photographed on August 1, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bridge. Here’s an excerpt:

Mrs. Bendam gasped and cried at the sight unfolding before them. She reached out to touch Anna’s shoulder and grasped hard until the girl relented and offered her hand. The old woman gripped too tight all the way across the bridge. She closed her eyes to the carnage, but Anna stared out the window. 

Jack ordered her daughter to close her eyes, too.

“No, Mom.”

“Anna! I don’t want you to wake up screaming with nightmares forever.”

“No,” Anna said. “I’ll look. Years from now, I’ll tell my son or daughter what I saw here.” She gazed at tangled horrors as the van bumped along over a sprawl of bodies. The uncaring Sutr Virus had not done this. People had done this to people.

Many of those murdered had no eyes now, but their gaping jaws suggested anger, fear, pain and surprise. She saw torn flesh. White bones rose. Skeletons emerged from their hiding places. 

“If I don’t look…” Anna said, “it’s not right. Someone has to bear witness. If I don’t look, it’s like saying this doesn’t matter or it means I won’t be around later to pass it on. Someday soon, the animals will be finished eating and what will be left but me and my memory? Not looking is like…”

“Giving up,” Theo said. “Yes. Look, Anna. It’s a heavy load, but someone who can tell the story should carry the memory.” 

Jaimie reached out and surprised his sister by grasping and squeezing her free hand.

Jaimie and his father held hands, too. “There really are no dictionary words for such atrocities, are there, son?” Theo whispered. “It would be obscene if there was such a word. There shouldn’t be just one word for this.”

The only bridge denizens left were rats and gulls and blackbirds. Their teeth and beaks tore and ripped and their heads shook as they winnowed the dead.

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April 21, 2013

The Art of This Plague of Days

By rchazzchute

TPOD 0420 3 

As I work away on the revisions for my coming serial, This Plague of Days, I have a key supporter in my corner. Kit Foster is the multiple award-winning graphic artist behind KitFosterDesign.com and he does the covers for all my books.

To encourage me to work faster (and because he loves creating art so much) he sends along ideas he’s noodling with for the serial art and advertising. Isn’t this cool? I particularly love the distressed type and the treatment he did with the foreboding sky. The tiny daisy is a nice accent, too. Or do you like the darker version below better? (I grabbed the type to slip into the header for this page, too.) As we go forward with this book, I don’t just see book covers. I see movie posters. 

TPOD 0420 2

And now, with this goose to my bum, I’ll get back to work. Won’t be long at all before the release is here. Click the pics to check out more of Kit Foster’s excellent art portfolio.

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April 12, 2013

A lighter quote from This Plague of Days

By rchazzchute

Last night, I shocked myself. While revising This Plague of Days, I wrote something so dark I was gobsmacked. Worse? It was horror based in reality. I won’t divulge what it is because you should have the opportunity to opt in before I sling it on you in the book. I will say it’s something about what happens to a body after death and it is freakin’ insane! Such problems are common in the Plague of Days universe.

Here’s a safer, lighter quote from the manuscript:

“Things won’t get back to normal until everybody runs out of bullets and they take those masks off,” Theo said. “People act worse when have anonymity and no regulation. All those masks they’re wearing? The apocalypse is like the Internet, only instead of nasty troll comments on YouTube, it’s with gunfire.”

Oh, and a progress report:

I’ll break 100,000 words on this serial’s manuscript today. Closing in on the end, but I think I have a serial in two seasons here! More details to come soon. We’re beginning to close the noose on the publication date.

Have a great weekend. You already know what I’ll be doing.

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April 7, 2013

This Plague of Days: The Serial. The Novel. (The Movie?)

By rchazzchute
English: This plague patient is displaying a s...

English: This plague patient is displaying a swollen, ruptured inguinal lymph node, or buboe. After the incubation period of 2-6 days, symptoms of the plague appear including severe malaise, headache, shaking chills, fever, and pain and swelling, or adenopathy, in the affected regional lymph nodes, also known as buboes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From a recent revision of This Plague of Days (my current work in progress):

It was only four blocks, but it seemed much farther in the dark. They moved slowly, following Jack’s flashlight beam.
A dozen pairs of eyes followed them in turn — wary but fierce — unseen and circling, closer and closer. The ragged creatures, drooling and impatient, ached with hunger.

Only meat could slake them now.

~ I wrote This Plague of Days a couple of years ago. I’m enjoying rediscovering it as I revise the serial for publication. I hope you’ll enjoy it, too. (Coming end of May. Prepare yourself.)

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March 29, 2013

Get ready for the world flu pandemic now

By rchazzchute

Are you and your family ready for the coming world flu pandemic?

This Plague of Days III

Coming soon.

If you’re one of those guys who got into survivalism for the guns, you’ve already got enough guns (assuming you have the standard one arm per shoulder.) You don’t need more guns, dude. You need more seeds, and not Monsanto seeds!

If you want to stay off law enforcement’s radar, protect your family, stay safer and get real,

STOP sounding like a war-hungry, militia-loving, government-hating gun fetishist.

START thinking and talking in terms of off-the-grid sustainability and responsibility.

If you’re interested in This Plague of Days, my coming serial about a world flu pandemic as seen through the eyes of a boy with Asperger Syndrome, you might enjoy some of my research materials:

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss

World Made by Hand: A Novel by James Howard Kunstler

When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes by Cody Lundin

Survive! Ultimate Edition by Les Stroud 

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