*.fiction

Friday, 18 July 2008

The Rising - Chapter 8: Final Test

Doctor Forrest stepped out of his lab and walked across the stone floor of the corridor to the metal door that held his test subject in solitary confinement. He stood at the door for a long time, admiring his handiwork.

The doctor had expected his guinea pig to turn within an hour. His predictions were accurate. Now the naked man was lying in the corner of the brightly lit room among the splinters of the chair he had been sitting on, crying out in agony for help from the emotionless face that was looking down on him.

A bite from even the most powerful vampire takes a matter of hours to take hold on the weakest human, but I have developed something much more powerful. More potent than anything God himself could ever have created.

The rising vampire army had been in dire need of the missing link in their plan. Something that would allow them to increase their numbers at such a rate the human community could never comprehend. Something the humans couldn’t hope to resist, even if they were to find out about it before it’s too late.

The human race had expanded rapidly since great leaps forward had been made in the field of medical research, but the terms of the treaty that was signed five hundred years ago refused to allow the vampire numbers to grow at the same rate. The size of the vampire community was secretly growing but their numbers were still small. The Brotherhood and the World Health Organisation always found a way to curb the growth.

But now that we can multiply quicker than ever before, there will be no stopping us, Doctor Forrest thought to himself. It is written that we will rise to take our rightful place as the dominant force in the world. The Rising is inevitable. This treatment is the catalyst.

The sound of footsteps echoed around the stone walls. Doctor Forrest looked down the corridor and saw the imposing figure of Roxy limping towards him. As ever, she was dressed in black combat gear and her awkward movement coupled with the flaming torches on the walls lighting her way made her look meaner than ever.

‘How is he doing?’ she asked.

The doctor pulled his stopwatch out of his pocket and showed it to her. ‘Fifty-three minutes.’

‘Excellent,’ she said, ‘Any side effects?’

‘None that I can see. I’m about to prepare the treatment for your operation. How many syringes do you need?’

‘At least two hundred, but make up as many as you can.’

‘When are you going ahead with the plan?’

‘We’re moving ahead earlier than we originally planned. Tonight, just after midnight.’

The doctor turned to his guinea pig.

‘Unless you’ve got any use for him, there’s only one more test to do.’

Roxy looked through the window in the door. The pitiful figure in the corner was curled in the foetal position with his hand reaching out to her. She heard a voice in her head.

Help me, please!

She turned to Doctor Forrest. ‘Do it.’

The doctor flicked a switch on the wall and the lights inside the room went out. He then flicked another switch and they both stepped back as a second set of spotlights lit up the room. He restarted the timer on his stopwatch.

Ultraviolet light filled the prisoner’s cell, the purple glow illuminating the faces of his audience but the sealed doorway ensured the man in the room only felt the ill effects.

His arms and legs started to twitch. His movements became more aggressive. Within seconds, his body was convulsing violently. Blisters were beginning to form on his skin, which was quickly turning an angrier and angrier shade of red. One by one, the blisters burst and more and more began to form in their place. As they burst and pus oozed down his limbs, wisps of smoke left his skin and small flecks of dust fell to the floor.

He crouched on all fours, screaming in unimaginable pain as his skin turned to flakes of dust. The reactions in his body cut through his arms and they gave way, splitting at the elbows and throwing him face down onto the floor. He stopped moving. He lay still on the floor until every cell in his body that had been human just on hour earlier settled into a pile of ash among the splintered chair.

Doctor Forrest stopped the timer and turned the lights out.

‘Just over sixty seconds,’ he said.

‘Thank you for your hard work, Doctor Forrest. I guess we can’t expect miracles.’

‘Not yet,’ the doctor replied, ‘but anything may be possible if I have time to complete my work.’

Buy Rebirth and The Rising in print

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

Sample: The Curly Situation by Jason Davis

Regular visitors who enjoy reading fiction online may like to consider The Curly Situation by Jason Davis, which he started publishing last month. In the author's own words...

It's a blog novel (or "blovel" if must blestroy the blingo). It's also an experiment. I write, you read, and we all get a laugh along the way. The story centres on Curly Gibson, an Aussie cricketer whose talent for accidental sporting success is surpassed only by his talent for getting shot at. I'll post twice a week, as long as I get nice comments and a few bucks in the tip jar. Puh-leeese. - JD

Here's the first chapter to whet your appetite...

Chapter 1.1 - Curly as car wreck

Friday, March 2, 2007

The day my life imploded, so completely did things head south that I later reasoned it must have been a horrific thing of beauty to behold. Like a fire in a fireworks factory. Or Britney Spears.
From where I stood, however, caught in the crossfire of my own personal shitfight, it struck me as a tad less than amusing.
Another thing that struck me was a pair of flippers, followed by my unused guitar, although I managed to sidestep the suitcase that followed close behind and thereby avoid serious brain injury. I watched as the case hit the concrete beside me and burst, spraying a geyser of underwear and dirty shirts across the carpark.
At the window two stories above me, was my (former) live-in girlfriend and trainee banshee. Live-in girlfriend, or was I now a live-out boyfriend? While she was frisbeeing my crockery out into the carpark, I’d walked upstairs and tried my front door. Locked. Possibly barricaded. So you could say she currently held the position of power in the relationship.
We’ll call the banshee Karen, because that’s her name.
Her head bobbed out of the livingroom window. “The beauty of this is you’ll get a nice taste of sleeping around too – in your fucking car! Shitwit!” That Karen. A real way with words.
That bright Friday morning began with me capering around like the fifth Wiggle, scraping semi-soiled sporting gear into a bag.
My name is Ashley Lawrence Gibson, but everybody calls me Curly, given that I’ve been semi-bald since my mid-twenties. As nicknames go, it’s a million miles from hilarious, but you don’t get a choice in these things, it seems.
At 35, I still call myself a professional cricketer, although, if asked the same question three weeks ago, the phrase “trainee hobo” may have figured in my reply.
My career had been reduced to club cricket on the weekends interspersed by serious sessions of thumbing through the Saturday job ads and wondering why I’d used my high school careers guidebook as kindling on camping trips.
Financially, things were looking dire. My saving were just about kaput, with the few hundred my club slung me every week hardly enough to finance the lifestyle I was after, like one that included living in a room. And eating.

To read more, head over to www.curlygibson.com

The Rising - Chapter 7: Seeking Shelter

Doctor Owen called Jane to tell her and Skinner to return to the helicopter. They hadn’t ventured far so it didn’t take them long to get back. The air was cold but I was certain the temperature dropped by a few degrees as they arrived. They didn’t look pleased to see me.

‘How do you feel, Tom?’ Jane asked when she saw me.

‘Okay. Not as bad as I did after the treatment yesterday.’

‘Good for you. Now, do you want to tell us why we’re here?’

I was taken aback by how cold Jane was with me. Just the day before she had been very warm toward me and we had worked well together. However, that was yesterday and this was now. The faint metallic taste in my mouth reminded me that things had changed.

Even though I’d been out for a few hours, I realised that we were still in crisis mode. The Brotherhood were almost certainly already looking for us. No one else had taken a break from worrying about our position. I had been out cold without a worry in the world.

‘My partner has a cabin at the lake. I’m sure he’ll let us stay there as long as we want. There are hundreds of holiday homes up there so it should give us some time to work out what we’re going to do before The Brotherhood find us.’

Jane weighed up my proposal. The look on her face told me she thought it might be a good idea but she tried her best to hide it from me.

‘Well, it’s the best idea we’ve had yet,’ was her less-than-enthusiastic appraisal.

I picked my mobile phone out of my pocket and called Dave’s number. He answered almost immediately.

‘Hey partner,’ he said in his perpetually upbeat tone, ‘you’re on the news.’

‘I know,’ I said, brushing his comment aside but wondering just how bad the report about me was. ‘I need your help.’

‘What do you need from me? I’ll do what I can but I’m still on holiday, Tom.’

‘Good. I was hoping you’d say that. I need to ask you a huge favour.’

‘Sounds ominous. What can I do?’

‘I’m at the lake with some people who have been helping me with this case. I need you to put us up for a few hours while we work out what we’re going to do next.’

‘What, you’re here now?’

‘We’re only a mile or two away from the cabins. We can be with you in about half an hour.’

‘I don’t know what to say, Tom. You’re not giving me much of a choice, are you?’

I didn’t know what to say either.

‘Anyway,’ he sighed, ‘thanks for calling me first.’

‘Thanks, Dave. I owe you one. You should send your family home.’

‘Are you in danger?’

‘Yes. We’ll be as quick as we can.’

‘See you in half an hour. We’re in cabin sixty-six, but give me a chance to break the news to she-who-must-be-obeyed.’

I hung up and Jane snatched the phone out of my hand.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ I asked.

‘The Brotherhood will use our phones to track us down. We have to keep the doctor’s phone with us in case Doctor Forrest calls again but we have to throw the rest of them away. Get everything out of the helicopter; we have to get rid of it as well. We can be certain it’s being tracked.’

‘How are we going to get rid of this helicopter? It’s huge,’ said Doctor Owen, ‘We can’t blow it up. Everyone will see the smoke from miles away.’

After keeping quiet, Skinner decided to pipe up. ‘I know what to do,’ he said, ‘Let’s empty it first and I’ll get rid of it.’

We pulled all of the metal boxes out of the helicopter and piled them up on the grass. Skinner then got into the cockpit and fired up the engine.

‘Stand back,’ he shouted to us before the whirring rotors became too loud to hear his voice.

The gunship rose into the air. Skinner floated it over our heads and hovered high above the water level of the lake. The door opened and I witnessed a sight I never thought I’d dream of seeing in my entire life.

Skinner jumped out of the open door and flew towards us, narrowly avoiding being sliced to death by the spinning rotor blades as the helicopter dropped out of the sky and plunged into the lake. An almighty splash was accompanied by the creak of metal as the huge helicopter sunk into the water. Waves were sent flowing from the centre of the lake and washed up on the shore just behind Skinner’s feet as they hit the ground. The water bubbled as the gunship disappeared from view.

‘Right,’ he said as we stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed, ‘We can’t stand around looking at the view. We’d better get moving.’

Buy Rebirth and The Rising in print

Monday, 14 July 2008

Review: Ultimate Rambo Collection (Blu-ray)

My review of the Ultimate Rambo Collection (Regions A+B) is now online at DVDActive.

The Rising - Chapter 6: Waking Up

I opened my eyes.

I was expecting to be in pain, just like the terrible feeling of a hangover I had when I woke up after being bitten by a vampire twenty-four hours earlier. However, on first impressions I wasn’t feeling too bad.

I sat up and found myself on the seat in the back of a helicopter. The air was cold. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. I shivered and rubbed my arms, which were covered in goose bumps below my torn and bloody shirt sleeves. Then it all came flooding back to me.

The autopsy.

The attack.

Oh my God, I killed three soldiers and the commander.

I chopped his head off.

My eyes caught a metal box sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the cabin. I lowered myself onto my knees and edged over to the box. In an attempt to prepare myself for the worst, I took a moment to try and picture the horror that was held inside.

Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe I didn’t really do that.

I unlocked the catches on the front of the box that held the airtight lid in place. Very slowly I lifted the lid but I heard a shout and jumped, dropping the lid before I had a chance to look inside.

‘Tom!’

I looked up, outside the helicopter. I hadn’t even thought to look outside. We were sitting in a grassy clearing. Ahead of us was a thick forest and behind was a small lake. It was still dark outside, with only the moonlight illuminating our surroundings.

Doctor Owen had seen me and was running back to the helicopter.

‘Tom, you’re awake! How are you feeling?’

After having moved around for a minute or two, I reassessed my state of well-being.

‘Okay I think,’ I said, ‘A bit of a headache but definitely a lot better than I felt when we left the base. How long have I been out?’

‘Just a couple of hours. The treatment must have worked a lot quicker than it did last time.’

‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’ I asked.

I didn’t get an answer and the look on his face didn’t fill me with confidence. The doctor took my head in his hands and looked at my face in great detail.

‘Incredible,’ he said, ‘you’ve completely healed.’

‘Healed?’

‘Yes. When we left the base, the short run from the entrance to the main door resulted in you absorbing a small dose of the sun’s ultraviolet light. Your face in particular was heavily sunburnt. Now, just hours later, you’re back to normal.’

It wasn’t the first time my body had miraculously healed since I had been bitten by a vampire. He looked concerned.

‘I would have expected the treatment to slow down the effects of your infection, but…’ He stopped talking abruptly and his face, that had been happy to see me just moments before, turned into a look of fear and shame.

‘But what?’

‘You fed on Captain Stein’s blood. That would have provided you with a significant amount of energy. The treatment must have reduced the ability of your body to control its movement, hence your unconsciousness, but your blood, which is starting to be self-aware, followed its natural instinct to heal your body.’

You fed on Captain Stein’s blood.

My hand immediately went to my mouth. My fingers probed my canine teeth. They were back to normal.

‘Your teeth only extend when you’re ready to feed,’ the doctor said.

I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I had mutilated Captain Stein’s body and drank his blood. That was surely a fate worse than death. I’d cursed him with the same destiny that I was struggling to deal with. I was still struggling to decide whether I’d be better off dead.

At least I’ve got the doctor to help me.

‘I never thanked you for last night,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When they strapped me down, you talked to me. You told me I could break free.’

‘Really? I had no idea that worked. I tried to project those thoughts, but I never thought you would hear them. Very interesting.’

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘We’re in the hills, near Lake Arcadia.’

‘What are we doing here?’

‘Just after I gave you the treatment, you were drifting in and out of consciousness but you said something to us. You told us to come here. You said you would know what to do.’

I was very confused.

‘Where are Jane and the other guy?’

‘Private Skinner? They got tired of waiting for you to wake up and went off to check the area out to see if they could work out why the hell you dragged us here.’

I started to feel very guilty.

‘Their words, not mine,’ he laughed.

Why have I brought everyone here? What are we going to do if I can’t remember? Wait a minute…

‘If I didn’t say why we should come here, why did we?’

‘Where else could we have gone?’ the doctor asked, ‘The Brotherhood are almost certainly going to go to our homes and we need somewhere unfamiliar to base ourselves.’

Then it hit me.

‘Where did you say we were?’ I asked.

‘Lake Arcadia.’

‘That’s it. My old partner Dave has a cabin by the lake. He’s up here right now teaching his kids to fish. He’ll take us in for as long as it takes to get our heads together.’

Buy Rebirth and The Rising in print