ZOMBIES, EVEN IN THEIR UNDEAD SLEEP, HAVE A DREAM, TOO!

                                             (Image taken from: Zerohedge.com)

“We need to stop being treated like second class citizens!” Evan Osgood shouted into the microphone. He stood in front of a podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This was the same spot that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his monumental, “I Have a Dream” speech. There was only one key difference—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t give his speech to zombies.

            The crowd groaned in unison at Evan’s words. They numbered in the thousands and swayed from side to side in the cool November wind. Some of them couldn’t keep their balance and leaned into each other for support. Zombies weren’t used to standing in one place for too long. Their bones needed constant movement. It’s why they never slept.

            Evan himself had been up for the past five years. Shortly after he was dug up and reanimated, he literally fell to pieces. His left arm became detached at the elbow after being forced to lift a rock on a farm that was too heavy, and a crow stole his right eye. His once beautiful skin had suffered, too. It turned green and stiffened considerably, becoming so tough one winter that his right ear broke off when he banged it against a bathroom stall. But ever since he started fighting for his brothers and sisters, he became reinvigorated. He was a lighter, healthier shade of green now, and he barely dragged his left leg anymore when he shambled. You could almost say he walked! This fight for equal rights saved him from total deterioration. He should have died (again) at least a year ago. The zombie’s life expectancy was only three years max if they were kept in a safe and controlled environment, and a lot less if they weren’t, mostly due to lack of self-preservation and maintenance. But the zombie’s lifespan was getting shorter and shorter with this freedom movement. Some were only lasting a few days before some punks came along and took them back out.

            “Too many of us are being set on fire or bashed over the head with cinderblocks, just to see what would happen,” Evan continued. “But we’re people, too, dammit; albeit, undead ones. Just because our hearts don’t beat and our blood doesn’t flow anymore, that doesn’t mean that we don’t feel pain. I mean, we don’t feel most of it, sure, but that’s beside the point! What we’ve gone through over the past twenty years is unjust and we’re tired of living in fear! Are you with me, my brothers and sisters?”

            The audience groaned again.

            Evan wasn’t much of a public speaker, but he thought he was doing a pretty decent job.  He stopped reading from the speech he had prepared almost instantly when he realized that a number of blood stains made it unreadable. He should have checked that pocket for blood.

While peering through the crowd with his one eye, Evan noticed that more than a few of the attendants gnawed on each other’s arms and necks. Evan cringed, as this wasn’t the best representation of zombie-kind. This was being televised, after all, and people, both undead and alive, would be watching this. But he certainly understood where they were coming from. Very few zombies only ate animals like he did. Most devoured human flesh. But ever since their protest began three years ago, Evan had coerced them to stop consuming humans altogether. If they wanted to coexist with the living, then they had to stop eating them. It was as simple as that. The thing is, animal flesh just didn’t have the same taste as human flesh, and it’s been hard for many of them to switch over. Heck, it’s been hard for Evan to switch over. Every day he thinks about human intestines with some cocktail sauce. So biting one another was their substitute. As much as zombies craved human flesh, they craved freedom even more.

 “I know the hardships many of you have had to go through to be here today, so I’m happy to see that so many of you are present. I—”

“Go back underground, ya worm eatin’ scumbag!” a voice shouted from within the crowd.

The police officers who stood at the foot of the stairs didn’t make a move. The other officers, who were stationed all around the area, didn’t move, either.

Evan’s eye darted past the officers’ backs in front of him and combed the crowd like a hawk. He finally saw the problem. It was a man with a twirly, Hipster mustache. He wore a long, colorful poncho that looked like a rug with a hole in it, and he was alive. Very alive. The zombies shifted aside but their eyes grew wide and hungry as he made his way through the crowd. Seven living people followed him. They snaked their way to the front and held signs like “Go back to Hell!” and “Eat dirt, not humans!”

Some of the officers formed a barricade in front of the steps, while others made a perimeter around the crowd, but they still didn’t make a move. They had their shotguns—their dreaded shotguns—ready and Evan grinded the few teeth he still had. He knew that if anything went down, the cops would start beating the zombies, and not the troublemakers. Over the years, Evan had seen the boys in blue literally bash his people’s brains in with their nightsticks or run them over with their cars. The cops didn’t want to be here, but they had to be, President’s orders.

            Stay calm, Evan, stay calm, He thought, but it was hard to stay calm with this recent development. His unbeating heart wanted to tear these humans to shreds, cops included, as he hated humans. All zombies did. But his brain, his fully functioning brain, told him to stay focused on everything that they’d worked toward these past few years. He knew that he was his people’s leader, and that he had to stay strong for them.

Evan taught Zombie Studies at NYU and was also the founder of B.R.A.I.N.Z—the Brotherhood Regarding Any Indecent Negativity toward Zombies. He had stood with his brothers and sisters when they had been threatened with flamethrowers, and he ambled right along with them when the cops sicked their dogs on them. It had been a long journey, but a worthwhile one. He had even spoken to the president (that delectable, juicy, blood-filled, Democrat) on a number of occasions. Together, they fought to end the illegal necromancing trade that had been running rampant for years, but the bill had been shot down. To this day, people in every state were still allowed to bring people back to life and put them into cheap labor to avoid breaking immigration laws. It had to stop, and no lousy protestors were going to ruin it for Evan. Especially not one wearing a filthy poncho.

“My brothers and sisters, let’s not be antsy,” Evan said, but it was too late. Three hungry zombies who apparently had had enough of nibbling on each other, dragged down the woman in the rear of the group and began tearing her to pieces and eating what they could. The gushing viscera and bloodshed flew everywhere.

The group of humans didn’t even turn back to save her. Instead, they began bashing zombies over the heads with their signs. These people had an agenda! The zombies went into a feeding frenzy when they saw the carnage. They clawed and grabbed at the people and the cops began firing their shotguns. But not at the living who caused the problem in the first place. Oh, no, no, no, they started firing at the zombies, blasting heads off at whim and shooting holes in them the size of Kentucky.

“My brothers and sisters,” Evan said, trying to calm his people down. “Brothers and sisters!”

But the bloodshed continued no matter what Evan said. Zombies were killed with impunity, and Evan saw red. Who was he kidding? Things weren’t going to change between the undead and the living. As long as zombies were brought up from the dead to work on farms or in the back of kitchens, then there would never be peace.

 “Ahh, screw it,” Evan finally said. He pushed the podium aside and lunged on top of the cop right in front of him. He chomped into his throat and blood gushed. The taste of human flesh and veins filled Evan with fire.

If this is how they wanted it, then this was how they were going to get it.

The zombie apocalypse would begin today on November 14^th, 2063. Evan Osgood would see to it. His people would fight back and take over the world. He would make certain of it.

He was their leader after all.

END

"Gorilla" Marketing this Saturday

I'll be rocking a gorilla suit this Saturday in NY to promote my book. "Gorilla" marketing, y'all. (Ah hur hur hur!) Come by. I'll be around Union Square and Strand.

(Image taken from: gorillasuits.com)

I'm going to be rocking this in NY with one of my DotW t-shirts soon. I'm going to be the "Gorilla Marketer"! (Terrible pun, right?). If you're in the area, catch me on the streets!

New shirt designs will be available soon. If you want one, find The Darkness of the Womb on facebook and inbox me. Thanks for the support, gang.

Here's some progress of the next chapter. I'm really excited about this one. This would be page 50 of the book, which is where the reader truly knows the trajectory of the book. It's wordy, but I feel necessary. Please spread the word. Thanks, y'all. Love you.

Here's a shot that won't be used for the book. It's of Jeff Haunt's first encounter with his "mother." (Notice the quotation marks around the word, "Mother.") I can't seem to find my computer guy, but more comics will be up soon. Eagle scout's honor. Much love to the fans.

Merch!

Stickers, t-shirts, and cards are in. If you want some, let me know! And come back to the website soon. A new chapter is going to be put up today! Sorry for the delay.

The Hallway of Tongues

Very soon, we're going to be following Marigold into the, for lack of a better name, "Hallway of Tongues." If you'll notice, this is the first fully colorized pic since the first chapter. That's because Marigold's finally entering the Internal Landscape that exists within each and every one of us. I was going for a Wizard of Oz style, where the real world is in black and white, and the Landscape is in color. It really pops. I hope you dig it!

Love the Land, Or Leave It (Short Story)

(Image taken from: en.wikipedia.org)

Daniel Cornshire could tell the moment Jo-Jo walked through the door that he didn’t settle things with the sheriff.

He knew because his brother’s thick lips wouldn’t stop trembling, and his shirt was soaked with sweat.  He even had a soiled spot on his trousers, right by the pistol he had holstered on his hip. This was not the kind of task for one as feeble-minded as Jo-Jo, but what choice did Daniel have?

“Well, what happened?” Daniel asked.

 “He didn’t ta-ta-take the money, Danny. He knew.”

“What do you mean he knew?” Daniel asked, but he understood exactly what his brother meant. It was the reason why he didn’t deliver the money to Sheriff Heavensby himself. It was dirty money, stolen from one of the banks under Heavenby’s protection.

Sheriff Heavensby, who had taken control of Daniel’s late father’s ranch, would of course have caught wind that one of his tenants was a wanted man; especially when that same man was already an enemy of the Heavensby family.

 “You ain’t mad, are you Danny?” Jo-Jo asked.

“Naw, I ain’t mad.”

But Daniel Cornshire was mad. He had been hiding out in an abandoned shack just south of town since the robbery, and he felt closed in. Things would have been so much easier if the Heavensby’s were simply wiped off the face of the planet.

It would also be easier if the brothers didn’t have to worry about the land. Their recently deceased father, Samuel Cornshire, made the brothers promise that Sheriff Heavensby would never take the ranch. It was a family feud that spanned back to their great-great grandfather, Artemis Cornshire and his rival, Reginald Heavensby. The two men, the story goes, were once friends who settled the territory, bringing in hundreds of western bound souls. An expanse of land divided almost equally amongst the founding families began to change as more money started to pour in.  Acre by acre, Cornshire land was lost to the Heavensby’s. 

It started with simple quarrels over a moved fence post, but the feud drew more sinister with forged documents and backroom deals, forcing the Cornshires to yield more and more property. Over the years, the Heavensby’s swallowed up the land, becoming part of the local elite, while the Cornshire’s lost almost everything they owned. It got to the point that the town itself was now called Heavensby.

But the Cornshire’s, while not as educated and sliver-tongued as the Heavensby’s, were a proud and resilient bunch. Unable to even the odds in court, the Cornshires resorted to brawling, burning crops, and poisoning livestock. The bitter back and forth among the families escalated over the generations into mutual bloodshed.  Years of hostilities left both sides depleted, specifically with the sheriff being the last in the line of Heavensby men. Being the smart one, he made sure that if he was going to be the last to bare the Heavensby name (his attempts at having children with his wife had been fruitless), then he was going to make the last of the Cornshire’s as miserable as possible for killing off his kin.

The last thing the Cornshire’s owned after Sheriff Heavensby seized everything else from them was a modest ranch at the outskirts of town, and before he died, Samuel Cornshire would be damned if Sheriff Heavensby got that, too. In years past, the Heavensby’s wanted the property to connect towns. However, Samuel, who never indulged in any of the killing, refused to sell his ranch and what remained of his family’s land. 

The sheriff’s influence over the town and managing to secure the water rights to the land forced the Cornshire’s to pay him for use of the water or allow the land and livestock to die. Samuel fought feverishly to prevent the sheriff from taking the land until the mayor, who had ancestral ties to the Cornshire’s, said that the area was off limits as long as the Cornshire’s could afford it.

But once pa died, Daniel wanted to leave. After both his mother and wife died from stray gunshot wounds down at the market, he wanted to head out east. There was nothing left for the Cornshire’s in the town of Heavensby.

Daniel’s brother, Jo-Jo, wouldn’t have it.

In fact, Jo-Jo lived his whole life by their father’s last words: “They can never have this land. The Heavensby’s can rot in hell.” Daniel couldn’t leave his brother behind. He worried if he was capable of taking care of himself, much less take care of the ranch, and besides, he was the last bit of family he had left.

            “Please don’t lu-lu-lu-look at me like that, Danny,” Jo-Jo said. “It’s not my fault. I tried to give him the money. Honest, I did.”

            “So why didn’t you just shoot him then?” Daniel asked, palming the weathered grips of his uncle’s old revolver. He hadn’t worn a piece before his recent bank robbery, but now that he had one, he refused to take it off. 

            “But Danny. I couldn’t do that. You know I c-c-c-c-c-c—”

            Daniel put up his hand. He knew that when Jo-Jo got this nervous and couldn’t stop stuttering, he wouldn’t be able to finish the sentence.

            “Well, what are we gonna do now then, Jo-Jo?”

            Jo-Jo nervously raised his eyes from the floor, fumbling with his holster until he retrieved his gun.   Trembling and sweating now, it was obvious that Jo-Jo never drew his weapon before, much less shot a man, but it was in his hands now pointed directly at Daniel.

            “Hey, what’s the big idea?” Daniel asked.

            “Mr. Heavensby said if I t-t-t-t-took you in, he’d let us keep the ranch. He said your bounty would be enough for the property’s deed.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            Behind Jo-Jo, the door slowly creaked open, and there stood the sheriff, brandishing a loaded shotgun in the doorway.

            “Now that’s a good imbecile,” Mr. Heavensby drawled beneath his thick, blond mustache. “You’re a wanted man, Danny. Your brother did the right thing.” He looked around. “Kind of far away from the ranch, aren’t we?”

            Daniel didn’t say a word.

            “I’m sa-sa-sa-sorry, Danny.”

            “You’d betray me, your own flesh and blood, to keep that dump?”

            “Now don’t yell at the boy,” Heavensby said with a smile. “He’s doing what’s best for both the ranch, and this county. We can’t have a criminal running around freely. Now if I were you, I’d put my hands up away from that pistol you got hidden underneath the table and come along peaceably.”

            Daniel didn’t move.

            “Boy, you do know that you’re a wanted man, don’t you? I can shoot you right here where I stand if you don’t come along with me. It would all be legal, not like a Cornshire would understand the concept. Is that what you want?” He took a step forward, “Because I can deliver ya to your pa if you’re itching for it. That ain’t a problem, and I have the protection of the law.”

            That step forward was his last. It was too late when he felt the cold steel of a .45 pressed against the base of his skull, courtesy of Joseph “Jo-Jo” Cornshire—the one everyone always called, “The slow boy.”

            With a short pull of a trigger, Sheriff Heavensby fell forward and landed on the table, face down.

            “Was that good, Danny?” Jo-Jo asked, the smoke still curling from his gun.

            “Yeah, Jo-Jo. Damn good! Pa would have been so proud of you. You really followed the plans to the letter.”

            “Are we ga-ga-ga-going to lose the ranch now, Danny?”

            “Probably. But not to any of the Heavensby men, which is what dad cared about the most, so stop feeling guilty. He was the last in the line and he didn’t have any kin. But we’re still going to have to take a train out of here when wind catches that the Sheriff ‘s missing.”

            Jo-Jo sighed.

            “Is Sheriff Heavensby at least going to hell, Danny? Was it ra-ra-ra-really worth losing the ranch?”

            “Hell yeah, he is, Jo-Jo, and damn right it was worth losing the ranch. At least we’re still alive and the Heavensby’s are all wiped out. Now c’mon, we have to hide the bastard. You’re sure you brought him here alone? He didn’t bring his posse?”

            “No,” Jo-Jo said, staring at the body. “He sa-sa-said he’d let me keep the ranch if we came alone. He wanted to surprise you and take you in hisself.”

            Daniel Cornshire shook his head.

            “You mean take my dead body in.”

            A distant howl of a steam whistle echoed through the dust-coated window panes behind Daniel’s head.  His eyes briefly glanced behind his left shoulder, acknowledging the familiar sound.

            “Well, come on. We gotta get things moving.”

            The ranch was important to Jo-Jo, but so were pa’s—and every other Conrshire’s—last, dying words.

            The Heavensby’s can rot in hell.

               

A new chapter

            I found that I needed to write a new chapter for the book to add more detail, so here it is. Please let me know what you think. Thanks, everybody for the love and support.

           

             Orange, sparkling light exploded across the crystal room like color through a prism. Logic materialized in her throne. Her chest heaved and her head throbbed like thunder.

She was still alive, but barely. The orb in her chest pulsed weakly, and her body had withered to that of a centenarian. One thing was for certain—Her days as Logic were numbered.

With slow, wheezing breaths, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her throne. Her scepter slipped through her fingers and clanked on the crystal floor, the gold substance in its bulb depleted. If she didn’t die in the next few minutes, then Instinct would finish the job; If, that is, he was still alive. There was no telling how many casualties she caused when she melted Imagination’s tower. There was only speculation. And hope.

But the one being she was certain survived the incident was Imagination himself. It didn’t matter if his plans had gone to hell or that she had gotten the jump on him. Imagination was too crafty and too selfish to perish with her scheme. He would have found another way out of his crumpling tower, even if it meant leaving the family and Instinct behind to die.

It pained her to think that that bastard escaped, but he did. She knew he did. Destroying him was her last valiant act to save the Landscape, and she couldn’t even do that. She had lost. Sure, she didn’t see him escape after she disappeared from his room like a wisp of smoke, but logically, Imagination would have gotten out of there. No one knew that tower better than him, and he probably teleported all the way to the bottom floor, using as much magic as necessary, even if it meant wiping out his entire system. Like her, he must be totally depleted of energy, too. But he wasn’t dead, that she was certain.

            With effort, she tried to push herself up. She wanted the solace of at least seeing that eyesore of a tower disappear from the skyline, but she was too weak to sit up.

            She sighed. It rattled her chest cavity.

            Killing the baby really was the only way. Imagination had gone power hungry. If he had taken the baby out of the Landscape…well, it didn’t matter now. The baby was dead, right? Or at least, if the baby had survived, then at least the mother was surely dead.

Right?

No, it didn’t matter now. She did her best and didn’t have to think about it anymore. She simply wouldn’t exist within an hour. She’d be nothingness, a shadow without a body.

            It didn’t bother her in the slightest that she wouldn’t exist anymore and refused to believe that one could be “stuck” in eternal darkness. She would simply lose consciousness and not be able to enjoy her senses anymore. Thus was the fate of all people when the mind shut down. Why Imagination felt, no, believed, that there was anything after life, she didn’t know or care. But why he had to spread that nonsense onto mankind about an afterlife is what made her feel slightly happy that that bastard now had no place to call his own.

            Even so, she might have not made the wisest decision in taking down his tower since it wiped her out completely. But it was all she could think to do. Besides, she wasn’t worried about Imagination right now. She was worried about Instinct. Did HE survive was the question? And if he did, how much of the Haunt family survived with him? She shifted in her crystal seat and her whole body ached. She wished she could just die already. She never minded waiting before, but now, it was torture.

            When she closed her eyes again, the only thing she took pleasure in was the slurping noise of Imagination’s sinking tower.

            Her sandpaper lips smiled.

Melting his tower with pure logic might not have been the wisest move, but it was the only move she could come up with. If she could do it all again, she would.

            She welcomed the darkness that encroached upon her line of vision.