Alien 1979 Review

 Alien 1979 Review 

Science Fiction is about merging technology with any given aspect of humanity. In the case of Alien, it’s a merging of technology with horror. Horror has three major conventions. Confrontation with evil, the uncanny, and a final sublime moment when the evil is defeated. Science can be fun, but science has a dark side and can be used for evil. People have used science before to make deadly gasses and to make malware. We see evil merged with technology this in the film as the evil Company Weyland Yutani assigns an android to front as an on board doctor with orders to capture and retrieve an alien lifeform. Their goals are unclear, but they want the most dangerous alien they can find and are willing to see the crew killed off to bring him home. The android facilitates the birth of the alien and even protects him. We see the uncanny merged with technology when the crew finds the ruin of an ancient spaceship helmed by an alien skeleton. We see the sublime merged with technology as Ripley escapes in a lifepod and enters cyrosleep after defeating the alien.

The horror of extraterrestial life is merged by sci fi in the film Alien. The alien is a powerful creature that turns our strengths into weaknesses and thrives where we are most vulnerable like air ducts and vent shafts. Emotions are one of the things that make our brains so powerful over the millennia. Lambert freezes, overcome by her emotions, when she sees the sheer power of the alien. Before that, the crew gets so worked up after bringing the injured Kane aboard, that they begin fighting because Ripley was going to leave him quarantined outside the ship. We think we are ready to meet aliens until their blood turns out to be acid. The spaceships that once inspired hope and wonder become moist, greasy, poorly lit tombs. What we discovered out there doesn’t bring us love, it ushers in our doom.

Science has a dark side, and it can be very beautiful and scary. In the time of HP Lovecraft scientists were making huge discoveries that challenged how humans had seen the world. We thought the whole universe was one big galaxy, but we discovered different stars of different shaped galaxies, young galaxies, growing galaxies... dead galaxies. Black holes. Dead stars. We began exploring the bottom of the ocean because of the advent of the submarine and diving suits. We discovered amphibious predators of the deep sea where it's so dark that the lack of light deprives the human brain of its senses and causes permeant damage to the nerves of the mind. Anthropologist also discovered enemies of ancient hominids when they  disinterred the extinct breeds of human. We would identify these creatures as monsters, not human. They had cone shaped skulls because their brains were so small, or teeth so giant they couldn't close their  seething mouths, or thick ridges on top of their skulls which held together an extra layer of muscle around the face. Anthropologists considered these some kind of human, but agree that these species were cruel, stupid, and ugly. They cannibalized their own young, and terrorized the early humans by sneaking into their caves until the humans finally had the power and intent to destroy them.... or interbreed with them. HP Lovecraft was inspired by these terrible discoveries. 

The real question of the day: What terrible thing will we discover next? And do you really want to know? If you said "ew" when you read my introduction, then you are not ready to confront the Cosmic Horrors. In HP Lovecraft's view, humans are weak, small, defenseless, self centered, and ready to be eaten by bigger, smarter, cooler, more interesting, more powerful... and wiser entities. 

The best quote in Alien is in the scene when they receive the mysterious signal. Ripley asks if it is human, captain Dallas says "Unknown". This movie is Cosmic Horror manifested in its most perfect form. HR Giger created a wondrous monster who embodies everything we fear about the "Unknown". We don't know where the Xenomorph came from, it's history, how it breeds or how it eats. It seems to be an animal only interested in killing, but at some point these thing were flying around in spaceships. We don't know what it is feeling, we don't know what it's thinking. We assume it has no emotions or conscience because of its hostility, but with an elongated head like that- its possible that the Xenomorph is actually capable of thoughts and feelings that our minds can not even fathom. 

The thing about horror that people who aren't fans of the genre don't understand is that it's not just about thrills and danger and violence. You can get that from a spy movie. It's about the confrontation of the very real threat of evil, the ensuing battle, and the final sublime moment when the viewer overcomes their fears, and the evil is destroyed. It's scary because we don't start off strong and equipped to deal with this. It's a process. In this movie, we see the Cosmic Horror challenged and defeated by Ellen Ripley. Ripley is the first true female hero in any film up to this point. In most old movies, the roles of women are limited. They are either running away from a monster or running into the arms of the male protagonist.  It's a shame that the "cinema as high art" crowd of the 70s didn't embrace the ground breaking Sigourney Weaver who did not get enough attention for her role. The irony is that at the same time the Government was trying to pass the ERA *equal rights amendment* which even Richard Nixon wanted to see passed. It's a shame because of all the Cosmic Horror this film projects, it is countered by the very existence of this woman and her cat. 

If I have one more thing to offer in this discussion, it's that the human emotions in this movie overwhelms and dooms the crew of the Nostromo. Emotions on Earth helped us survive and evolve over the millennia but they are useless in the cold darkness of outer space. Emotions are our greatest strength, our empathy, our compassion, our fear, our curiosity, but they are also our most fatal weaknesses. 

Omon Ra Review:

 Omon Ra Review 

Graham Swanson

 The stereotype is that Science Fiction is for nerds so they can be entertained but I think it can be for creative minded people so that they can learn science. I was a nerdy day dreamer for a long time. Thinking of my own sci fi stories, I began to wonder how space worked, how time worked, how minerals and moisture worked in the vast vacuum of space. I learned no science from school, it all came from sci fi stories. Omon Ra spoke to me because I was a little communist who dreamed big and thought he had big things coming just like how Omon played with a toy jet and dreamed of being a pilot. I ended up growing into an adult who listened to Kino and Molchat Doma from Eastern Europe. Omon expected big things for him too, but the real world is unfair. Other peers get good jobs because the party likes their names, Vladnen, Seven. When a door finally opened for him, it was a glorious suicide mission. Then it turns out to be a conspiracy to fake a Moon landing. Likewise, no one ever called me with a job offer, when it did happen, it was for a job moving “hazardous waste” (which I would kill for now). Omon once saw the USSR as a world of wonder that was destined to send men to the stars. He believed the propaganda and thought he’d be a flying among them. The books ends with him escaping the Metro, and ascending to the Moscow ghetto. He can finally see life on Earth for what it really is.

Almost everyone can admit to life being unfair, and in Omon Ra we see that even sci fi can persuade us to believe in a dream that someday the world will be better. The USSR used sci fi to persuade it’s people into believing a bright future was one rocket blast away, when really they were still trying to figure out how to hook your house to a sewer, how to industrialize the struggling sectors, and how to bring backwater villages in Turkmenistan into the 20^th century. The novel came out after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it never achieved those things. The USSR did invent sputnik and send a man into space, but just as depicted in Omon Ra, their technology was hastily put together patchwork likely stolen from a science facility in the West. People at the time of the Cold War didn’t know the USSR had these weaknesses. The USSR reached an economic peak in the 60s and 70s, and spread it’s message of the future so effectively that few even in the West doubted that the USSR would one day prevail. Not that long ago everyone thought that the internet would make everyone equal, that there would be no rich and poor, and that we’d all share the same information. Then one day, the internet turned out to be a big ghetto over the Metro of Amazon, Social Media, and news commentary shows.

The USSR used propaganda to make its people look into the future of Communism to distract them from the reality of the present. Afterall, Communism was an ideaology of the future. There is a very popular misconception that the Soviet Union was communist. It wasn't. It was ruled by a Communist Party that wanted to ACHIEVE communism, and never did. Every Premeir took office with a plan to achieve Communism in their lifetime but it never happened. Marx didn't think people could force Communism. He believed it would occur naturally over time just as Monarchies and Capitalist Empires did. The USSR would become convinced advancements in science would lead them to the Communist Utopia, and so they invented their own genre of Socialist Sci Fi to create the idea that the People of the USSR were on the brink of a glorious future. However  the contradictions of Soviet society created a dystopian vision that mixed science fiction with the squalor of East European slums. Omon Ra is heavy with this imagery. The young cadets sit with their friends over a small fire, drink fluid from chipped bottles, smoke inferior cigarettes, while looking up at the stars and discussing space flight. They play with toy spaceships in their youth, but as they train to leave earth, their equipment is described better as kitchenware. Saucepans, handles, pedals. The small pilot they discover in their toy ship reflect an eerie fate that they are expendable agents who will be sacrificed to the dream of a futuristic utopia. 

The USSR did launch a man into space, not for science, but for propaganda. In Omon Ra everything the cadets are taught is some kind of indoctrination. It even seems that their value is determined by the kind of message they provide to the advantage of the party ideology. Truth is not the goal, but an illusion that someday the hammer and sickle will be carved into the face of the moon. Scientific truth is a cold thing to find. Oman Ra ends with a surreal question of if the journey to the Moon was even real. For propaganda purposes, all they need to do is put the idea in people's heads that the USSR made it to the moon, but the actual accomplishment is not necessary. People do not need to know the truth, they just need to believe. Reality in this sense is perception, not experience. Truth exists in our consciousness, and its often manipulated, if not challenged. Science is hard to believe because it challenges many of beliefs humans have possessed for about as long as we've been alive. Humans of the modern age must face that we are a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos, not the center of the universe. They must face that fossil evidence suggests that life on Earth derives from Tiktaalik, it didn't come here on a spaceship with fully developed brains and spinal chords capable of speech and a desire to perform dance concerts. Fantasy grasps the perceptions of reality and plays with them to create a new reality that seems wondrous yet plausible like the Nordic Wonderland of Skyrim. Science Fiction plays with the what science considers to be true to merge reality with technological concepts. 

I heard once about a man who was from Ukraine, and spent ww2 in a POW camp. During his confinement, he wrote a science fiction novel, but he threw it out after the war. "The science had changed" is how he explained it. There was things that he didn't know going into the camp that he knew when the war had ended, and the facts and measurements no longer held up. Personally, I say the scientific errors are what makes Sci Fi so great. We aren't watching documentaries when we watch Star Trek, Omon Ra is a not an instruction manual on how to drive a Lunokhod. It should be CONSISTANT to the world it takes place in, but the ending of the novel creates as much joy as seeing junk explode in outer space in Star Wars. Before we know he is beneath the Moscow metro, he is essentially riding a tricycle on the moon, turns the moon red, and tries to fire a gun in outer space. I must say, I preferred the propaganda. 

Socialist Sci Fi Propaganda

One America. Now and Forever: Fallout and the New Millennium

 

One America. Now and Forever:

Fallout and the New Millennium

The Fallout series takes the technologies that bind us to a globalized industrial capitalist system and eradicates our dependence on them with the post apocalypse sub genre of Sci fi. There are no smart phones and no internet because they were never invented. The timeline is a retrofuturistic alternative history that resembles the early cold war. Even the impressive technology that does exist looks like something they might imagine in the 1950s. The remains of big, bulky, atomic powered super suits and rocket cars litter the radioactive wastes.

Imagine Washington DC, but it’s now a warzone of ruined monuments that once stood for America’s promised liberty. The Congress is now fortified by a race of Super Mutant cannibals who feast on the bones of the fallen survivors of nuclear war. It’s no accident that in the dawn of the New Millennium the generation following the end of the cold war welcomed the promise of a post apocalypse. It was called Fallout 3, and in 2008 it blew the hinges off the post apocalyptic genre. Ever since then, a post apocalyptic dystopia has been the prominent setting for video games, movies, novels, tv shows, and there is no end in sight. The Fallout video game series is an experience in which its audience confronts concerns over the instability of the 2000s, the merging of devices that bind our lives to tech companies, and the rise of Reactionary political parties across Western Democracies.

The Cold War ended 30 years ago. The Berlin Wall went down. Soviet leaders drained Vodka in hidden bunkers and committed suicide as one East European republic after another declared it’s independence from the USSR. The promise of a glorious socialist future never came true. Communist countries like China opened up their markets and joined the globalized industrial capitalist system.

Many believed a bright future of peace and prosperity now awaited them. Instead the 2000s gave us meth, 9/11, wars, economic decline, oligarchy, the reemergence of Nationalism, outbreaks of deadly diseases, riots, social isolation, distrust and division of society, the theft of our private information by tech companies, and limited job opportunities that often fail to cover the ever rising expenses of living, most of which involve soul sucking long hours, no weekends off, in industrial dungeons, while AI programs make art and write poetry. The effect has divided people, caused the birth rate to drop, and wrought havoc to the globalized industrial capitalist system that not so long ago looked like it would last for one thousand years.

That is why in 2008, a mere sci fi video game became a hit, and it was no accident. It was Fallout 3. Despite it’s dreadful tone of a future without a social contract, morals, terrorized by monsters and deformity, and juxtaposed destruction with wholesome imagery of the American 1950s, many people welcomed it. The series provided an escape from the swift transitions of the New Millennium. No debt, no health insurance payments, and no anxiety created by the volatile era.

The re imagining of a world where we can start over and carve our own destinies became a popular fantasy in the New Millennium. Fallout not only brought the science fiction genre to its next phase, it also merged technology with the fear, anxiety, and promise that even in the Post Apocalypse, we can overcome these issues. We see this throughout the entire Fallout series. “War never changes,” is the first line spoken in every Fallout game. New societies emerge with their own social contracts and visions of the future, but just like today, these partisan factions won’t stop fighting, and they seldom address the needs of the people they claim to serve.

The only manufacturing that seems to exist is small scale, independent “chem” labs that keep the bottle cap currency alive. Drug use is rampant, if not depended on, among the people. The player gets a chance to end the faction conflicts, gets opportunities to help addicts, but at times the drug use seems to be the right thing to do when encountering injured people who can’t go on with broken limbs without a dose of morphine or “Medx.” These player actions are a reflection of social problems that members of modern society can face in real life. In Fallout, as today, we turn to technology for answers.

By the 2010s, technology had been merged into the lives of the New Millennium like nothing before it. Smartphones, pocket sized computers, had been merged with their jobs, their food, their friendships, their money, even their love lives. They weren’t just using technology, that began to depend on it, and it created a huge changes in their culture and imaginations. This assemblage challenged long held traditions, and arguably had as negative of an effect on their society as it had created positive changes. On one had, smart phones stole user’s information and sold it without their knowledge, on the other hand, they ended phone booth kidnappings.

Technology only helps us as much as it hinders us. It’s convenient to believe that any technological progress is good, welcomed, or miraculous. Elizabeth Holmes convinced billions of dollars worth of people to invest her “technology” which she made sound like it was destined to change the life of every single diabetic forever. Really it was a box that spilled their blood in a warming tray. A microwave!

It may seem to be a cruel joke, but this relationship the New Millennium has with technology is reflected in the Fallout series as well. They don’t have the internet, smart phones, or AI dance clubs, but they do have strong messages about technology and its (mis)use. Fallout is world where that hyper connection to Silicon Valley Technology is removed from our lives. We are still experiencing this on a video game console, but it is a liberation from these technological confinements nonetheless.

Technology as seen in Fallout has led to the destruction of the world. War may never change, but the weapons did. The nuclear bomb feared in the mid 1900s was the ultimate symbol of how our creations could turn on us. In this world, the fears came true. Now humans must learn to grow food again. They must learn what water is good to drink and water isn’t again. They must learn to read again. They must learn to build shacks again.

One of the iconic factions, the Brotherhood of Steel, a knighthood that lives underground, dedicates their very lives to the principle that technology must not advance, and that people should be kept away from it. They however believe that with guidance and discipline, technology can be used. Another faction, Ceasar’s Legion, agrees, but to an extreme. They think that technology corrupted people and caused the war, but that all technology since the Bronze Age should be destroyed. They want to bring back a society that depends on slavery, pillaging, and magic spells.

The reactionary view that technology has harmed people is consistent throughout fallout, but it is challenged by the presence of the the PIPboy. A wristbound computer that can manage inventory, analyse health condition, play songs on the radio, generate a GPS mapping system, detect hostile entities, write notes, and detect radiation. It’s extremely helpful, essential to survival, and does nothing but support it’s user. In a world of technology gone wrong, it is a hopeful reminder that technology can be our friend.

Though it may seem to be inherent to the beliefs of the reactionary that technology should be removed in order to prevent the corruption of traditions and culture, one of the things that led to the rise of Right Wing parties in the New Millennium was technology itself. Since the early 1990s, far right political parties organized in small groups around the Netherlands, centered around deporting immigrants. After 9/11, the FBI took their thumb off far right groups and began to keep an eye on international terror, more than domestic threats. The result was the far right being free to assemble, spread messages on the internet, and to run for political offices.

They used the internet masterfully. A lot of them had already been communicating in codes and with inside jokes for decades. They were ready to spread their messages when Memes became popular. Far Right commentary shows popped up all over Youtube. Some of these people have been disgraced, but many are still on the air. They didn’t challenge technology, they saw what it’s power was, and they took the opportunity to use it.

Reactionary leaders in Europe, Brazil, Argentina have used the internet to achieve success in leadership. American President Donald Trump is famous for his effective Twitter posts. He even made alliances with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon, and Elon Musk of the Cybertruck. It’s very reminiscent of the Far Right in Fallout. If there is progress in Fallout, there are elements that want it removed.

In the Lore of Fallout, before the war that ended the world, America was ruled by a Nationalistic government. They invaded Canada, sucked Europe’s resources away, and while it’s ambiguous who started the war that destroyed the world, signs imply that it was a political party called the Enclave.

The Enclave was the government, and they might have caused the war because they were ready to protect themselves when it happened. They already had the best bunkers ready to go. They made sure all the food had radiation and preservatives so they could eat it, and they made sure to flood the country with guns so they could use them. When they arise again, it’s to conquer the former United States, destroy any lifeforms “corrupted” by radiation. They mean to wipe anyone mutated from the war, or anyone living in it’s poverty, from the face of the Earth. They plan to do it by taking over the only known water purifier and hooking poison up to it.

The Enclave is led by President John Henry Eden. Though he is never seen, his speeches will sound familiar to anyone alive in the New Millennium.

“We live in an age of poverty, greed, violence, destruction. Indeed, the very seat of the federal government, Washington D.C., has been reduced to what is now known as the "Capital Wasteland." The Capital Wasteland... How did it come to this, America? How did your leaders allow the most powerful nation on Earth… to die? The answer is really quite simple: Incompetence. Incompetence at the highest echelons of power. We put our trust, our faith, in halfwits. Our intrepid leaders had everything they wanted! Power. Wealth. Prestige. And it made them lazy, America. Oh yes, and laziness breeds stupidity. Rest assured, I will not make the mistakes of my predecessors. When John Henry Eden builds a country, he builds it to last. The American way. Don't you, my darling America, deserve that? Don't you deserve a future free of war, and fear, and terrible uncertainty? Of course you do. As President of the United States, you have my solemn pledge that I will never rest, NEVER rest, until we all have what we deserve: A place to truly call... home.” (Enclave Radio. Fallout 3).

The players in Fallout must confront and defeat the in game Nationalism that is rising in the very real world around them. They overcome this threat by bringing peace to the waring factions, and getting them to join forces. They help the people of the wasteland, providing water, protection, medicine, everything the Enclave claims to provide but never does. They must use technology for the greater good, like turning on old power plants and distributing energy across the grid, getting Hoover Dam back online, by powering on the water purifier. The player always has a choice though with this power.

It may seem like black humor, but the option is always presented to the player to use technology for evil. You can launch a ship into space, or you can cause it to crash because it would be funnier that way. You can turn on the power plant for everyone, you can send it all to a satellite that aims a deathbeam back at the planet, you can send it all the Casinos so you can gamble 24/7. The reminder of how technology can be misused tempts us everyday in the New Millennium. What keeps the world alive and growing is the mindful use of the technology we possess. In the end of things, most will use it’s power for the greater good, if we fail, the world will bring destruction to us.

The Horror of AI

The Horror of AI

The Horror of AI

*note from author. I write with my heart, and usually whatever attitude I am feeling at the time. When I wrote this I was frustrated with how people embraced smart phones and social media so fast and then all of a sudden didn't' like AI even though AI does what smart phones and social media have been doing for years. 

I do detest AI. I do not use it. It does not touch my writing, I am not advocating for AI artwork, this is just something I wanted to get off my chest.

Hating AI will not help artists. Most people who make a living with their art have silver spoons in their mouths. Most talented artists who have overcome adversity will never get to make a living doing what they work so hard on. It happened to photo developers when the digital camera was invented. It happened to silent film stars when talkies were invented. It happened to writers when the internet came to be. People say they want something made by a human, not a robot, and yes human made stuff is superior (so far) because we can understand emotions, a machine cannot. Yet how many people can you name who purchase art on the regular? Society doesn't value it's own art and culture and THAT is the real tragedy of AI. Whenever someone says they want to support art and not AI, I say, "Great. My work is for sale." And their brains leave the planet. 

Lets be honest, how many people are truly comfortable with emotions? When's the last time you cried in public? If you type a long angry spiel in the morning and post it on Facebook, no one will read it. They will step over you like you’re a madman ranting on the city street. People say they prefer human made stuff because it has flaws, feelings, so on. But do they? I think they prefer the AI generated material. It’s boring, generic, formulaic. The algorithm knows it. THATS what people are comfortable with.

If you take someone out of their comfort zone they won’t buy your art. They may even deem it offensive have it it pulled down. Ask anyone who works in media. It was true when TV was new, it’s even more amplified with social media. People don’t want to be challenged. They want their biases confirmed, they want to feel like they're getting a peak behind the curtain, and they want it fast. Now. Me #1. That’s what they want. Within a generation, AI art will be all there is. It’s coming. It’s a huge bubbling cauldron, and we are the teensy weensy spiders dangling by a thread over it. Breath in the steam and tell me I’m wrong. Lionsgate has already spent 20 million dollars opening an all AI studio.

They say AI takes no skill. This is not true. You have to have computer skills. You have to be able to describe to the computer EXACTLY what it needs to produce down to the finest detail of the finest detail of the big picture of the finest detail. Ever tried to make a video game? It’s brutal, painstaking, hair splitting, repetitive, boring, frustrating, and overwhelming. It takes forever, and that’s just to render one single image of a floorboard. Creating AI art will be worse than that.

A lot of the skepticism of AI they said in the past to. In the 1700s they thought novels would corrupt the youth, cause illiteracy and crime. They were wrong. In 1899 they thought moving pictures would cause a decline in moral character causing women to leave their husbands and sons to become alcoholics. Well, maybe, but probably not. In the 1920s the radio they said would bring about age of equality and fairness where we all share the same facts and there won’t be rich and won’t be poor. Hasn’t happened yet. In the 1980s, they said Pong would cause boys to lose their social skills and never get married (it’s quite possible that people just were not aware of Autism and were not diagnosing kids with it) and that Japan would take over the world because they invented a calculator that could do algebra. Let’s not even forget that not too long ago the whole of the United States assumed that the world would end in a shower of nuclear fire. It didn’t.

So what is everyone so worked up about? The real fear is this. AI MIMICS. It STEALS what we have made, doesn’t pay us for it, and replicates it on the internet so that it becomes worthless. Since when did artists care about money? These tech companies are BUILT on intellectual property theft. Bill Gates stole Microsoft. Zuck stole Facebook. I don’t even want to know what Musk did. What did people think was going to happen? Most artists don’t even receive esteem or respect until long after they’ve crossed to the other side. Their work gets hoarded until they die by the leisure class for the leisure class so that they can trade it for the highest possible profit. AI art will put an end to that once and for all. That’s who is afraid of AI art.

I was always a kid that drew in the sand with a stick. I would not do my assignments in elementary school, instead I’d drew elaborate battlefields on them. Once you’re an adult, other adults will bully you into quitting. It’s sad but true. Fantasy football is more respected than an adult who paints or writes or makes video games in his bedroom. If AI is going to be this nuclear bomb that destroys art, then I say that the bomb fell long ago. It’s not in our computers, it’s in the fault of man, it’s his failure to grasp what he goes not understand, it is his failure to protect his creation, and he is millions of men and women all over this planet.

Nebraska Gothic: Doom Tree of Arach

 Nebraska Gothic: The Doom Tree of Arach

by Graham Swanson

Far from the green river and its steamy valley shacks twists the lost roads once fabled among exiles and bandits to a place of dark clouds and sharp hills. Behind the white trees on the hiss crest are muddy fields occupied by mounds of machinery and salt. Goats wander among trenches dug by large fog moles while families of vultures rest on the radio tower. As the sun breaks the shield of clouds, they raise their wings over the roofs and shadows of Arach town. Quiet. Deserted. Except for the lone quiet street leading to the Doom Tree. 

Roots and cracks in the earth contorted the ancient brickwork. Boots flexed as feet paraded down its narrow path. Ivy and hanging branches veiled the hooded faces joining the moving shadows. The trees along the path curled up and died long ago. Before the floods and fires came there had been nothing. Then one wild summer, thunder and tornados buried even the ruins under the hills. With the black clouds came a red lightning. Where it struck the clay, a pillar arose, and as time went on, it took on the properties of the trees around it.

    The surviving people stepped over the holes in the street. Haggard elders watched on from their porches as pale children looked on from windows. They stayed quiet and avoided looking at each other. The beginning of the old street of the tree looked like any except for its size and the shape of the branches. It could be a thousand years old. The tree limbs themselves seemed to grow towards the ground, away from the light, but its branches then pointed up like stakes. The holes where limbs trickled with protoplasm. The bark that covered the tree changed color depending on the light. In the dark it looked like cool glass, in the sun it looked like crisp flakes of bronze. Beneath the thin paper bark was hard, wet, green cells. Beneath those bubbling cells, jaws and crowns of human skulls protruded.

    The blindfolded maiden was hauled off the cart by masked members of the procession. This one was the youngest yet. 6 years old. The girl belonged to the disgraced Sydow clan. Her father was in jail during the naming ritual. Osmond Sydow, detested by the society of the town, got sent there to sober up. It didn’t matter, in a week he’d be out, and find a new substance. Clever man, they all knew he smoked it and cooked it up, even sold it along with guns and stolen knives, but they never caught him in the act. He was a smart man, he just used those smarts for evil. He fumed in his cell and pounded his head against the concrete. He rapped the cage on the window and kicked until the bench fell to the floor. The other silent men in the jail with him gave him space and left him in silence. Not in fear of his wrath, but in respect for his reaction. They paid no interest to the idea of escaping. The world had changed too much for them, and they had been transformed by the cramped darkness of the dungeon. They preferred the confines of their jail, laying where they last rested, their ribs housing nests for rats.

“They’ll pay for this!” Sydow vowed to skeletons shackled to the drain rack in the next cell. He almost collapsed from exhaustion, hanging to the bars, his stomach dropping. Acid and backwash pumped up into his mouth. Heavy plague covered his remaining teeth already so he didn’t notice it. Abscesses bled on his gums. His fingernails chipped off, and he had dropped his glasses. He sank and rested on the stone cold floor. All he could do was watch out the window as the hooded procession was swallowed by the enchanted lane of dead wood.

Sydow understood the brotherhood and their magic worship of the Doom Tree. As a boy he watered its roots and tended to its fallen branches just as had the other children, sons of lords and peasants alike. However the masters of the Arach insisted they made their selection by lottery. Those who counted the lottery made a little profit by excluding certain names. When they determined his daughter’s name in the drawing, he smoked all the glass he had, and tried to burn down the court house. Police tackled him, bruised his face up and tore his ear. He had fought the police officers many times, they knew him by first name and even knew what his kind of pop he liked to drink since he spent so much time in their custody. All night he waited for the sacrifice to commence. 

The procession gathered in rings and rows. They took the girl out of the cart by her delicate arms. They covered her face in a white shroud, and guided her to the mantle of roots. Heavy branches swayed and moaned. Sap bled from the eye holes in the bark. Pieces of teeth and bit of jaw bone stuck out from depressions in the wood. Knots and creases where branches once grew wept with a stinking sap. A thick hide of flesh grew over the wounds on the tree. The slender branches on top almost seemed to have  thick tendrils of gray hair hanging from them. 

They had one masked spectre stand behind her with a shotgun. Another spectre stood at her shoulder bearing a long knife. Both wore black coats and covered their faces from the rest of town. The spectre with the knife guided the girl by the shoulder to the spot where the sun light reached the doom tree. Sensing her presence, the hairs lifted and a hiss escaped from the tree. The longest hairs descended from the highest boughs while the smallest ascended. When they couldn’t reach anymore they created a strange vibration that created a high pitch whine that made all the animals flee, while people’s pets desperately tried to escape their ropes and chains. 

The spectre with the knife brushed the girls hair off her shoulders, held it up high so not to tarnish her locks, then held the blade against the side of her throat. With three clean slices the skin opened, blood drained, her spinal cord separated from her head, and the muscles peeled from the vertebrae of her skull. Blood washed down his hand, arm, and feet. He held her small head by the hair, one eye semi closed, the other bulged out and turned wet and purple. He set it in the empty empty gap while other hooded spectres began chopping her body apart and disposing the pieces into the mulch bed where the roots twisted and curled around her remains. The hairs of the tree went from gray to red. The branches lifted to the torch light. Thorns protruded from the trunk. Thorns so robust and sharp that other smaller thorns grew from them sprouted and impaled her limbs and head. A veiny film developed over the bark of the tree. It grew like a pulsing crust over the wounds of the trunk, then it reached the branches and the ground below. It grew around the thorns and the remains of the dead girl.

    All evening long the tree exhausted hot air. Storm clouds cycloned over the falling sun. Some trees in the gallery combusted and burned. Some strange creatures the likes of which on one had ever seen emerged from the pond to lay eggs in their front yards. All night long the wind howled, and as the procession removed their hoods and sought shelter in their basements. A convention of hideous creatures emerged. They gathered around the tree and wailed into the night. Scales, utters, and wings fluttered aloft. The moon itself shined silver light upon them. The beauty of the midnight hour was magnified by the everlasting splendor of their suits and weapons.

    The people of Arach huddled in the safety of their hovels. Deep basements nailed shut and boarded up. The cars on the street melted as their computers spat out sparks. The monsters of the tree devoured any living thing they caught in the street. People covered their ears from the terrible songs the abominations sang into the night, for the beauty of their voices caused human ears to go deaf. Smoke and chemical vapor filled the air. Amid floating candles, the brotherhood of darkness swarmed the streets. The bloody knife in hand, the hooded spectre walked alone. A heavy torrent of freezing rain fell upon him. The streets flooded, the fields flooded, the sacred grove flooded. 

In the morning the sun rose and its golden light sparkled in the early fog. Heavy drifts of moisture sank back into the mud. Only scant echoes of the creatures remained in the early hours. The rest of the town awaited the signal. The spectre with the knife stood in the orchard until the light reveiled it to him. All the blood had washed from his robes, he bared witness to its deformities and its adornments. A groan of relief escaped from the mask. The spectre smiled as it developed in the exposing sunlight. A young branch emerged.

In the past so many folk of Arach lost their lives by a sudden and terrible transformation. Fruits grew in their bodies like tumors as their flesh hardened. In an agonizing and slow process, they twisted around, lost their eyes, their voices, as hard amber formed in their blood. Contorted, arching in ways the human body mustn’t bend, their heads split, their legs curled, thorns grew in their throats and mouths. Oozing sap from their eyes sealed their faces and blinded them.

They discovered that when a branch broke off, someone who breaths the oxygen of the tree is claimed by this fate. But as long as they provided the tree the flesh and blood of a young maiden, a new branch would appear. The old crones of town who sat on heaps of hidden gold, the ancient farmers that carved apart the land, the witches who had been in their estates since time before the hills formed, they all lived longer days in the comforts of their bedroom apartments. 

When the guards came to release Sydow, they found the drain rack broken open. The cell flooded during the bewitching. It poured in from the cell door, the windows, and the drain on the floor. Black mud covered the walls, the floor, the bedding. 

“If he went down the pipe he’s a goner.” they recovered blueprints of the town’s waterways and pipe routes and canvassed the woods until they found where the drainage pipe exited the ground. They crawled inside until they lost daylight. They corkscrewed and climbed as the pipe narrowed. They squeezed in until one man got stuck, and the only way he could breath was by breaking his ribs. 

“He’s not in here. If he is, he’s dead.” 

“We have to find him.” 

“Oh my GOD!”  Someone screamed around the grove. 

They ran to their car, and drove there. When they got out they fell to their knees and turned so white that their constricted throats choked on their own tongues. They only made baffled groans like the primitive neanderthal they descended from. The spectre with the knife lay slain in the orchard. The tree trunk lay on the ground amid debris and chunks of heartwood. An axe covered in red carnage stuck out, lodged in the jagged ridge of stump.

Nosferatu (2024) Review

 Nosferatu (2024) Review

It's refreshing to see a scary vampire again. It's also fascinating how the story is essentially the novel Dracula, but overtime Orlok became a completely different character than Dracula. Dracula is too cool to be scary. The Twilight Kid was infamously glittery. Orlok however possesses a cruel inhumane danger with his mere presence. Though the 20s version is iconic, its so cool to see a horror classic brought from the silent movie era to a new.... and darker... generation.

Director Robert Eggers says he has always loved Dracula and vampires, but this movie is really about Ellen. Even without Orlok she suffers from sleep walking and seizures. There's nothing the doctors can do. They tie her up, drug her, drain her blood. Nothing works because the first Psychology labratory didn't exist yet, so they turn to sorcery. The movie takes place in Germany, where the school of psychology began.  

The Witch, Eggers other historical period horror, is the Puritan Nightmare. In Nosferatu he takes another dark period of history set in the mid 1800s. Men and women in the 1800s are nicely dressed, but besieged by things that want to kill them. Even without a vampire, they still had disease outbreaks, leaving your family for long periods of time just to get a signature, loved ones striken by metal illnesses for which science knows little about, and the untimely deaths of their children. Ellen is one such character terrorized by what we now call Epilepsy. They had important jobs too. Killing vampires and healing cursed.

This version of Count Orlok does not try to mimic the appearance of the 1922 version. Many scenes themselves are reimagining of classic moments and fan favorites of the original, but the vampire in this has a voice, he has flesh, a body, and an accent. In many regards at no point is he seductive or glittery Nor at any point is his love of a young maiden welcomed. He is impatient, tyrannical, commanding, abusive, brutal, morbid. He is undead, there is no mistake from the unveilings of his naked corpse.

There is a fair amount of sex in this film, but it's not going to make your date horny. It's going to traumatize you into never thinking a vampire is sexy ever again. Well done! Vampires aren't sexy, they're corpses. Their flesh is rotten and you can see their bones through the folds of decomposing muscles. They will rip your head off and eat your baby. That's how they stay alive.

TOXIC ENVIRONMENT

 TOXIC ENVIRONMENT 

Graham Swanson

I

Whispers of the Undead

Lila awoke at 4am and swallowed her pills without eating breakfast. She had a cigarette with her coffee. Fluid swelled up in her eyes, stomach acid burned her throat. She flipped through her stack of bills and ignored the messages on her phone demanding payments. She swallowed pills for the ulcers in her guts and for the headaches and for the anxiety and for the infection in her tooth. Her little boy awoke early to play video games with his friends online. 

    The news broadcast went on about politics, war, fires, and a new plague infecting the city. She looked out the window over the shadows over the trees and grass as the sun rose behind them. She didn’t care about any of this when she was younger, but after having her boy, getting tied to a chair and shoved into a frozen pond by his father, trying and failing to get back into school, not only did she age incredibly and gain weight, but she started listening. 

The new plague evolved quickly. It resisted antibiotics, extreme heat. The only thing that slowed it down was the extreme cold, but the entire state was in a fire advisory. The winds picked up, and the drought entered its second decade. Trees blew down and crushed houses and cars. Entire counties out west caught fire. The smoke still covered the morning sky. The damage caused farms to fail, animals to flee their habitats, and even destroyed artefacts like John Wayne’s Saddle. 

Worse yet, the disease caused conditions in the city to get worse. Power outages, unemployment, gun violence, more and more Zombie Response Task Force vehicles went to the city. More journalists entered the city, but fewer and fewer made it out alive. Some damning reports even claimed that the bodies disposed off in the mass graves crawled out and attacked the National Guard. Some said that those who rose from the mass grave walked the streets around it’s many sums and skid rows. They found places like morgues and beat on the doors. They tore down graveyard gates and started digging dirt with their hands until they found the lids of caskets. Some even said they discovered frozen bodies of homeless drug addicts who died in the night, and drug them off to places unknown. The broadcasters kept advising people to stay home, and wait for the emergency broadcast to give them instructions. 

Fake News. Lila shut it off. They just want to scare us for some reason, and she couldn’t miss work. She started scrolling through her social media. Her friends posted pictures of their kid’s birthdays, funny memes, the occasional cry for help. Yet none of them sent her any messages or said good morning. A few of her friends that left town for the city stated they were safe at home with their parents or elsewhere away from the turmoil. One friend who lived in the city made a post about feeling sick. Some videos appeared from smart phones. She thought she saw a horde of burned bodies and walking skeletons marching in the street when she heard her child cry to her.

“WHERE’S BREAKFAST I’M HUNGRY!” 

Lila turned around and went inside.

“I taught you how to make cereal.” 

“There’s no milk.”

“Ok, how about toast?”

“We’re out of bread too.”

“Don't we have any food in this house?” She opened the fridge to see a box of baking soda and a carton of orange judge with a tablespoon or two left at the bottom. “Ok we’ll get breakfast from McDonalds on our way to school.”

‘No way. They will give us pizza for breakfast at school if we give them two dollars.” 

Lila dug through her purse. She found empty med bottles, her VAPE, but no cartridges. Deep inside, she picked out some change but didn’t bother counting it. She dropped it for him to take. 

“Will we have to move again?”

“No. The City is far far away, whatever is going on there can’t bother us. When I have time off, we’ll go to the pumpkin patch and pick out a pumpkin for Halloween. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“School says that if we get attacked then we can’t leave. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

“No one is going to attack you.”

At work, Elysium Grove Nursing Home, Lila the Charge Nurse cleaned up shit with a rag while an old man beat her over the head. Fog covered the windows. Despite the Home being full staffed and at full capacity, it was so quiet you could hear the girls giggling in the break room. Footsteps echoed down the hall. The girls talked about how they wanted off work if the new plague was so bad. 

“I mean, how can they expect us to come to work if we catch this?” 

“It sucks but we can’t change it.” 

A sign posted said IF YOU ARE SICK DON’T COME TO WORK! But anyone who skipped work for any reason got fired… if they were lucky. 

The Director of Nursing, Nurse Stevens, not only pressured her CNAs to come to work sick, she expected them to rat on each other for the slightest infraction. One time Lila got written up because she was vaping on the curb. Rules state that you can’t smoke on the sidewalk. The nurse who reported her got rewarded with extra time off work. Lila had to cover for her time off, and was doing twelve hour days with no time off for two entire weeks. 

Lila called her “Bird’s Nest” when she wasn’t around, because her hair was dyed poorly and flat in the middle like a bird’s nest.

Bird’s Nest also made the immigrants working there watch anti union propaganda tapes which featured bad accents and outrageous lies about what their rights REALLY were. “Younions Jest WANT my Mowney!” The women in the video insisted. 

The Nurses rolled their eyes at the young and often uneducated CNAs. Lila left the old man’s room with her ears swollen and her forehead red and beaten. Bruises went up and down her arms. Her knees and scrubs were covered in piss, shit, and other fluids that came from god knows where. The breakfast bell rang. Lila sighed because she’d get in trouble if she wasn’t ready by then. She went to the bathroom to scrub off the filth. She was late bringing in the old people. Nurse Stevens, scowled at her from across the room. The old people often complained. Meat right out of the cooker is too cold. My plate is too far away. I can’t unfold my napkin. Bird’s Nest stormed over to Lila, her teeth cracked and gritted in anger. 

“Where is Ms. Jenkins? Did you forget about her?”

“I didn’t forget, I was cleaning up after Mr. Snodgress.” Her head still throbbed in pain. She balled up her fists. 

“If I hear another excuse from you, I’ll put you back in the dementia ward.” 

“Get off my case. I’m getting her right now.”

Lila stomped down the hall. Stale air trapped in the building tasted bitter. She breathed out of her mouth as she passed corridor after corridor of closed doors cursing under her breath until she found an open one. Ms. Jenkins sat against the window with her chin in one hand, smiling at something outside. The fog began to dissolve but clouds shielded the sun. A shadow staggered in the courtyard. 

“Ms. Jenkins, you’re missing breakfast.” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean to trouble you. I was just watching the birds when that funny man appeared.” 

Lila looked out the window. The man wore a mail carrier uniform, but his pants were falling down, his shirt was open. His head wobbled back and forth. A mail bag still hung over his shoulder. He limped, fell down, then stood back up. Mud covered his knees and bare feet. He staggered back and forth in one direction, then turned around and shifted a few feet in the other direction before tripping again. 

Ms. Jenkins laughed, but Lila stood silent. She held her apron by the strap, and stared until the man looked towards the window, and straightened his neck. He drifted lazily through the fog towards them. Lila reached over and snapped the lamp off. She watched, counting her breaths, as the man lost his concentration again and turned towards the bird feeder. The birds all flew away, and he stood there waiting for them to return. 

“C’mon now it's time to get you to breakfast.” Lila took the old woman by the hand and helped her out of her room. All the while wearing her most accommodating smile, but before she went down the hallway she looked outside once more. The man stood perfectly still, his arms hanging at his side, his vision fixed on the window. His clothes disheveled and ripped, his face vacant, his mouth open. 

II

All Is Good

“Don’t be afraid of him. That’s just Old Henry. He’s lost again.” Ms. Jenkins laughed.

The other CNAs joked about it.
“I think I see your next boyfriend, Lucy.”

“Well, he can’t be worse than my last boyfriend.” 

Not Lila. She gathered the residents and hurried them back to their rooms. Call lights went on and off. Bells rang. She ran back and forth between rooms. 

“I’m hot.”

“Okay let me take off that blanket.” Lila rushed to the other room to clean up pissy sheets only to hear the bell ring again.

“I’m cold.” 

“Okay, I’ll put the blanket back on.”

“I want two blankets.”

“Okay.”

“Now I’m hot again…” 

She wiped crumbs from blood swollen lips. She hurried with trays of drugs. 

“Lucy, I thought I told you to bring these drugs to South Ward.” Lila told one of her CNAs. 

Lucy facetimed with her boyfriend and shrugged amid bells ringing and dirty laundry heaps. 

Lila took the tray and hurried into the flurry of bells and blinking lights. 

“I can’t take my pills without water.”

“Okay, let me get you some water.” 

Nurse Stevens marched up and got into Lila’s face. 

“Why are the residents' lights on?”

“I’m doing as much as I can, the girls aren’t helping me.”

“Mr. Johnson hasn’t gotten his pills yet.”

“I was just about to take his pills to him.”

“Good! Because you need to set up an arts and crafts hour next.”

“I don’t want to take my pills.” Mr Johnson threw them to the floor. 

“They help you sleep.”

“It’s god damn near 10 am why would I need pills?”

Mr. Johnson was new. .

“Everyone needs to take them. They help with your mood and your-”

“You mean they dope me up so I just sit here like a zombie until the next stupid game or the dinner. Well, no thanks!” 

Bells and lights went off. Lila hadn’t heard a word from the school or her son. Everytime she looked out the window, the strange man was vacant, yet she thought she saw his shadow peering around corners. Lila picked up the pills as quickly as she could and carried them out to the dump. While carrying a new tray of drugs she heard the shrill calling of an old person in pain. She raced down the hall to see Mrs. Rutters laying on the floor of her room in a puddle of what looked like coffee grounds. 

“Help me, I'm sick.” At first Lila hoped she could stand up on her own, but the crying and screaming only got louder as more fluid surged from her mouth. She cleaned up her face, and inspected her body. Bruising and pus ran down her leg. She put on a glove and ran her fingers through the substance. Digested blood. 

“Oh my god, we need an ambulance!” Lila ran out of the room to alert the nurses.

“Please don’t leave me alone!” The shrill cries echoed down the hall behind her. 

First she ran to the nurses office, but no one was there. She ran to the front counter and asked the girl to radio the nurses. Meanwhile the cart of drugs sat unattended, and Lucy walked by. She noticed an open bottle of pain killer. She knew it by the shape and color. They induced a pleasant trip with euphoric hallucinations. She took the bottle and put it in her pocket. 

Bells, lights, screaming. As the old lady cried and screamed, the  shadow of the strange man came through the fog and rested against the window. He leaned with his forehead scraping against the glass. When he raised his hand, a fractured wrist tapped the glass. 

The fog rolled over the grass. His hand was crooked, his fingers twisted and dangled like a keychain. The familiar soiled clothing, and the vacant pale face seemed to be searching. While the old lady screamed in pain and covered her stomach, the man outside seemed to hear. He raised his second hand to the glass and pressed so hard that he left muddy prints through the screen. 

Mrs. Rutters looked closely, concerned it was a resident who had gotten out, until she noticed his eyes. Glazed over and crooked. Both laser focused on the screaming woman. His open jaw widened. Black fluid pooled in his lips and dripped down his shirt and the window. 

“Nurses, where are you?” 

As she called on the nurses, the man outside started scraping his face against the screen back and forth back and forth until his cheek cut open. Small smears of dark blood stained the window. One of the man’s eyes hung out of its socket by a thread. 

Lila ran out of the room to find the Nurses. Not in the North Ward, not in the South Ward, not in the Dementia Ward. Not in the laundry room. The front counter didn’t know. The front office didn’t know. No one was in the break room or the nurse's room. She hurried into the kitchen where felons with motley tattoos worked. Outside she found Nurse Stevens smoking a cigarette with the rest of the nurses by the garbage.

“You’ve got to help! Mrs. Rutters needs an ambulance!”

“The nurses can’t help right now they’re on break. Put her back to bed. She’ll be fine.” Bird’s Nest said. The CNAs didn’t get a break. If a bell rang on their “lunch” they were expected to leave the breakroom. 

“We’ve got to do something! There’s blood in her stomach!” 

“Just do your job. You’re here til after dinner, so you better hope your relief shows up or you’ll be here all night too.”

The nurses always got to go home on time. If the CNAs had a slow day then the nurses had to stay longer, and they raised hell about it. Zombie outbreak or no zombie outbreak. 

“What if she’s got that disease from the city?”  Lila protested. “We can’t have her around the girls. Everyone will catch it.”

“Now, what? That little sniffle that’s going around? I don’t want to hear about it. I was a little girl during the Zombie outbreak of ‘68. This is no big deal. Now get back inside and do your job.”

“I have to go find my son.” Lila wanted to grab Nurse Stevens by the hair and pound her face into a pulp. “and  I can’t stay here if he’s in danger. I’m calling the school.”

“No phones during your shift.”

“What of Mrs. Rutters? We need to call the paramedics and get her to the hospital.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, miss. Now get back inside, and don’t say a word about this this anyone. Everything is fine.”

Lila knew that nothing was fine. Lucy already got into her car and left the parking lot. She didn’t do a damn duty assigned to her, so Lila was expected to pick it up. 

The other CNAs attended to Mrs. Rutters and curiously leveled an eye at the damage to the window. Something, perhaps the wind, tore the screen off and even nibbled at the fleshing. Mrs. Rutters kept whimpering as the nurses held her legs and head. 

“Where’s the paramedics? When do they get here?”

“They’re on the way. Just  stay calm. Everything is under control. Do you want a glass of water?”

“I think I’m dying.” Her eyes turned ruddy and glassy, she bit her lips to pulp, and huge bruises serpentined down her neck and stomach.

The nurses looked around at each other in doubt. 

“We don’t have the supplies to tend to anything like this. We couldn’t even tell what was wrong without a blood test.”

“Just leave her in this room.” Bird’s Nest insisted. She kept wiping her nose on a tissue and rubbing sores on her neck. “I don’t want anyone mentioning this to anyone. Do not say anything about the fake disease. I won’t have it tonight. Everything is fine.”

III

Nothing is Fine

Lila called the school from the break room. She kept watching the dim fog outside as the phone rang. The clouds got heavier and darker. The forest and fields blew apart in the wind. She thought she saw someone standing in the grass.  It rang and rang as sweat dripped down her neck. Her heart beat so hard that the ID badge around her neck trembled. She tried to control her breathing. The dial tone rang and rang. A fear gripped her, she kept holding her breath , until a secretary answered and told her that everything was fine at the school, and the emergency lockdown would end after the police secured the building. 

“What happened?” 

“Just a normal routine for when the threat level rises from a 3 to a 4. But we are asking all parents to come pick up their kids.” 

A CNA cracked through the door. The secretary hung up.

“Lila, there’s this really weird guy outside. You should come see him.”

The CNAs behind her giggled. “Yeah it looks like he’s lost or something.” 

“Shut up, Sara. You’re afraid of one little zombie.” 

“Oh I am so not.”

“Where is he?” Lila asked.

“The front door. He’s just standing there. It’s weird.”

Lila walked fast down the hall because running was against the rules. He kept squeezing her fist and swinging them against her chest. 

 Lila's teeth grinded and her neck muscles stretched. The school should’ve called me! My son is in there with those things on the loose! 

Lila never talked much about it to anyone, but the child’s father died of a disease that crippled his spine and rotted his brain. Though alive in a hospital bed for weeks, his body slowly died. First his feet turned black. Then his organs turned to liquid. Then spinal fluid drained into his body. A feeding tube and a ventilator got attached to his mouth. Finally at the very end his brain slowly degenerated so that the hemispheres came apart. He languished in this condition for days kept alive by special machines that whirled and shot lasers through glass capsules. He moaned and groveled until his finals hours. Lila never forgot seeing his face age like a squash or the way his rib cage protruded. It looked like he had tiny, veiny arms and a shrunken skull on top of a huge mass of bones. 

When Lila looked at the front door, she saw the zombie from before. Rain started to fall but he stood there and let the freezing cold soak him. His face drooped as one hand fell from his body. His flesh looked more red than green, and his bones looked visible as the bloating went down. A single maggot squirmed in his neck. He died for 8 days ago more or less, he reminded her of her late husband on the hospital bed. 

The CNAs looked fascinated. 

“Ew, look at him.”

“Who do you think he was? Where did he came from?”

“Should we do anything?”

“What if there’s more?”

“Then I’m leaving.”

“If you leave they’ll fire you.” Lila said. “Even in an emergency. We can’t just leave the residents behind.”

Lila didn’t see the amusement. She saw staggering shadows behind him. It’s true, Zombie Outbreaks happen. The whole world can’t stop just because a dead body cannibalizes another person. There’s a homeless guy stabbing someone to death over a pizza crust right now, we don’t cancel Church over that, do we? Many succumb to the extreme cold, pit falls, paralysing rigor mortis, some even decay completely and one day just sit until the sun blows their bones away. But when Lila was a child riding the car she’d look out the window and see them on the side of the road eating road kill, or even other zombies gathered around a tree reaching for a cat in the branches. The blood stains they left never washed away. No matter how much it rained or snowed. No matter how many chemicals the workers applied to the scrub. She hated trees, and had nightmares every night. In them she picked berries from a tree until a zombie came down the road and waited at the bottom. She woke up when the branch broke and she fell. She avoided ponds because zombies don't need oxygen. They floated there at the bottom.

As the shadows emerged from the fog, she noticed gas station uniforms, fast food uniforms, neon vests covered in blood, scrubs, some were even nude or draped in funeral shrouds. Down the hall a bunch of old people shoved their walkers along as others drooled and moaned at their TVs. “There’s good old Henry again. And Tom, and Esther.”

“Ms. Jenkins, we need you to get back into your room. Maybe with tea and a good TV show?”

“Oh that does sound okay but I think we should let those men in so they can play a card game with us.” 

“Oh no, Ms. Jenkins, we mustn't do that.”

“Oh, no. That’s too bad. They look so lonely and bored.”

Lila turned to the CNAs. “We need to get them back to their rooms now.”

“But It’s Arts and Crafts hour. We usually get to sit in the communal parlor.”

“It’s only until those men go away.”

“Those men? Why, look. It’s good old Henry again. And Tom, and Esther…” Ms. Jenkins repeated.

Lila looked out the window. One of the shadows creeping out of the grass had been dead for years. It’s skin looked like a mossy suit slipping off of a skeleton. The ribs and hips and skull were free of flesh. The rest of the decay just hung there like a dirty tarp on it’s shoulders. 

“Look at it.” Lila told the CNAs. “There’s nothing left.”

“That thing must’ve been in the ground for years.”

“Get the residents back inside.”

“Are you really nervous?”

“Are we really in any danger?”

“My dad always said he could just run up the stairs and shoot the zombies from a window.”

“No one is shooting their way out of this. If there’s more than one, then there's more coming.”

“Why would they come here?”

“Because we stay open! They follow the food supply, and though they're dead, perhaps it's magic, they can sense the presence of the disease. They know there’s people here because they know the disease is here.”

“No way. I bet we can run them all over with our cars.” 

“Those were fucking people!” Lila pointed a finger at the girls. “Get the residents back to their rooms now.”

Lila began moving the old people with gentleness and poise, despite the fact that she suffered from aches that got worse and worse. One of the nurses came up to Lila. 

“Excuse me, Arts and Crafts hour isn’t over yet.” 

“There’s ten minutes left and we need to get the residents away from the zombies outside.”

“You know, we don’t call them that anymore. It’s a little inappropriate. Haiti has ‘Zombies’ and it’s a voodoo thing. The correct term might be “undead” or “living dead”. It’s important to distinguish because the word ‘zombi’ or “nzambi” derives from African language and is related to their beliefs of the soul and their Gods. George Romero himself said that ‘zombie’ corresponds to undead slaves of Haitian voodoo, not his monsters.” 

“Zombie. Zombie. ZOMBIE.” Lila cursed at the nurse. “No one’s going to care what they’re called if they rip your arm off! We’re getting the residents back into their rooms now, and then we’re letting the CNAs go home.”

“Stop whining. I’m getting sick of your thoughts and opinions. You can’t follow simple instructions. You can’t just shut up and work like everyone else. Now you’re leaving us to do all that work?”

“We can’t have them exposed to this infection. There’s no choice.”

“They’re just standing outside. What are you so worried about?”

“Until they find what they’re looking for.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The nurse sneered. The ‘Im going to report you’.

Lila punched the nurse in the nose. And brought her into the bathroom to clean the blood up. All the residents hustled as fast as they could after seeing it. No one got water. No one got extra blankets. No one went to the bathroom. Once the doors shut, they stayed shut, and Lila told the CNAs to get out while they still could. 

The nurses now searched for Lila. Bird’s Nest stormed from room to room, but with the CNAs leaving one by one, she now had to address the call lights and clean the poop. Meanwhile Lila hid in the laundry room and pulled her phone back out. At this hour, her clothes and hair were coated in filth. She controlled her panic, she controlled her urge to beat Bird’s Nest to death. Instead she reeled the phone out of her pocket and called the school again trying to reach her son.

IV

Triumph of the Living Dead

A dark wind blew over the land. The clouds of rain buried the sun. Fog rolled in from the fields and enveloped the retirement home. Lila no longer detected the droves of unsteady, feeble corpses walking in the streets of the living. However their moans persisted outside. Louder and louder as the wifi reset itself over and over again and the lights dimmed.

“Old Henry” reappeared at the door. This time cloaked by the fog. 

Bird’s Nest came hurrying down the hall, covered in feces and urine, out of breath, with mucus draining from her ears and eyes. No matter how much she washed her hair the smell remained. No matter what drugs she took, the burning in her guts kept torturing her. Fury overcame her as she saw the CNAs leave in mass. She threatened to fire them as they hurried down the halls with their coats in tow. She called on them all on her radio to return, only to be met with static and the droning yelps of the creatures outside. She saw Old Henry at the door, but in the murk, she failed to understand the dire threat. 

“There’s a resident outside.” He called for her nurses but no one answered her. 

The man just stood there, limped back and forth, and pulled at the door. 

Bird’s Nest took her key card and hovered it over the lock when Lila called on her to stop.

“Don’t let him in!” 

“How dare you? He needs to be in his room.” 

“Haven’t you been paying attention? He’s dangerous.” 

Lila got closer to Bird’s Nest, and noticed black fluid dribble leaking down her cheek. All color drained from her face, sweat pooled under her eyes, and a heavy red veins appeared in the whites of her eyes. Old Henry kicked at the door. He slammed his head against the glass, and even burped out a dreary tone that obscured his face under a layer of condensation. 

“You’re in trouble. You excused the girls.”

“The residents are safe as long as they don’t leave their rooms. I’m leaving too.” 

“If you leave it will be the last thing you do.” 

“If this is how you want to die, then stay here. But this place is infected. If one resident has it, they all have it. I’m not going to stay here any longer.” 

Bird’s Nest’s eyes crossed as her teeth chipped. She rose both fists and started pounding Lila in the stomach, the head, neck. She grabbed her hair and threw her against the wall. Old Henry put both wrists on the glass and pounded it until his bones splintered. With Lila on the ground, the director of nursing landed kick after kick on her ribs until blood burst out of her mouth. Bird’s Nest stood in the corridor, dark fluid dripping down her lips. She wiped it off with her shoulder and forearm. It left a smear of odor that only the undead could smell. 

One by one they idled towards the doors, the windows, the courtyard. Bird’s Nest hit Lila over the head with the radio so hard the batteries flew out.

 Lila lay on the floor, trying to get up, delirious and injured, her teeth turned red with blood. “You’re the one who carried the infection inside. You’re the reason they’re here. You’re the one who never should’ve come to work.”

Bird’s Nest looked around, almost exhausted, her eyes glassy and crooked, then she dove on top of Lila. She pressed her thumbs into her throat as Lila grabbed her hair.“This is the way it has to be. We can’t leave.”

“You’re sick! You need help!” Lila spat out. 

Bird’s Nest screamed into Lila’s face, spewing blood and speckles of brown mucus. The zombies gathered, their interest piqued. Their jaws fell open, some jaws even fell off, their tongues lapped blood on the glass. 

Lila tore out a fistfull of Bird’s Nest’s hair, and shoved it into her mouth. She pressed her fingers into her mouth, then her whole fist as the director of nursing bit down and bit the flesh clean to the knuckle. With her other hand, Lila pressed her thumb into her eyeball until green pus squirted out. The director of nursing began to lose strength as her breathing became obstructed with her own bodily fluids leaking from her brain into her nose and throat. Lila ripped both hands away from the woman, and then pressed both her thumbs through the flesh at the bottom of her jaw. Meat snapped, and blood washed down her arms as slowly both thumbs penetrated the thin layers of tissue. The Director of Nursing rolled off, mortally wounded, bleeding all over the floor. 

“You brought them here, you bitch!” 

Lila tried to get back up, but her throat hurt more and more. She held onto the wall while she regained her balance, slowly walking herself down the sterile and muted halls. Against every window a host of battered and partially devoured bodies gathered to watch. They scowled and barked at her. As she exited the north ward and went down the east ward, she thought she saw one of THEM standing in the games area. Every glimmering wall seemed to bear the reflection of another monster. Behind her she heard the wails of Bird’s Nest. Alarm bells sounded as the fire lights snapped on and off. 

The old people began to open their doors. 

“No, no. Stay inside!” Lila called at them. She pushed one old man back inside and slammed the door, but too many began flowing out.

“I don’t smell any smoke” the old people whispered amongst themselves. “Where are the nurses? Where’s the fire?”

Mrs. Rutters herself got up from her bed, her skin turned green, and her eyes almost fell out of her head. She took her tv and hurled through her window. She slipped outside, choking and gasping, as she slowly entered the courtyard. Only to be met by a mass of undead eyes and claws. Yet they didn’t touch her, they flowed past her, and reached out over the window. 

Lila hurried into the dining area with all the dinner fittings ready to go. She ran into the kitchen, and out the back door. She tired to run through the parking lot but now THEY swarmed the yards. At first she felt fear paralyze her as her bones and head pounded more and more where the director of nursing struck her, but the undead moved too slow, too unsteady. When one came close she found him easy to push off balance. Unable to get up, the zombie cried with what sounded like real despair. The others stepped right over him. 

 All her time with the elderly, she found that the frail stood no chance. Too much rot in their spinal cords, too many bugs living in their brains. Even they took hold of her sagging clothes she just tore the scrubs off. So demented the living dead are that they tore the garment to pieces before they discovered that it contained no flesh. The amount of foul stains on it made them think otherwise. Lila

 dove into the back of her truck, crawled through the back window. Some of the undead gathered and wiped their crooked palms over her windows. Some gathered in the warmth of the headilghts. Some just looked on with dumbfounded gaze, playing with the clothes on their bodies, nibbling on some raw chunk they found somewhere out there. Lila backed up slowly, knocking them down and crushing their limbs. Some hung onto the car, and when their arms broke off from their bodies, the limb remained gripping the truck. She turned on the windshield wipers to clear the blood away. The wipers kept striking and bouncing off a severed head that rested on the back of the hood. One of the monsters dropped it. She kept trying to catch a glimpse of who it was. Maybe it was someone she knew. 

On her way to the school Lila stopped at the scene of an accident. Two semis collided with each other. One carried aluminum cans and the other hauled livestock. Caught between them was a motorcyclist. The cops each carried shotguns, and every so often they’d fire a round into the foggy cornfields. They told her to wait until they cleared the highway. 

The dead bodies lay there on the side of the road. The police dragged more bodies out of the wreckage and didn’t hesitate to shoot them in the head, then decapitate the bodies. A stack of heads lay there away from the corpses. They learned a lot from the Zombie Response Task Force since the tragedies of 1968 and 1978. No time remained however to wait for bulldozers and cranes to remove the burning wreckage. Other cars waited at the scene. The severed head on her hood, its ear bitten off, it’s tongue bitten off, a hole in his skull where it once had brains, seemed to wink at her. She reached around her window and pulled it inside.

“Don’t let them burn me.” It pleaded to her. 

“You’re dead and disgusting. I should let those things have you.” 

“Please don’t. I can help you join the Zombie Response Task Force. I was in it until most recently. I’m still technically a member.”

“What would I have to do?” 

“Go tell them right now. The man in the tie is the chief! Tell him that you want to join. It’ll be a better job than the one you have right now.”

“Do they train me?”

“They drill you until you are afraid of nothing.”

“Is the money good?”

“Better than you’re making. They pay you like you could die at any moment.” 

Lila got out of her car, and carried the head to the cop with a battle helmet and a tie. His badge didn’t say state police of county police, it had a large black X over a red hand print that said Z.R. 

“M'am. Get back into your car!” He drew his weapon on her. 

“The head says I’m to speak with you. He says that you’re in charge of the Zombie Response Task Force.”

“Dr. LeRoy? Oh god, what happened?” The cop lowered his weapon as other cops ceased the head. Quite dead, motionless, it said nothing as they carried it away.

“Are you in charge? I want to enlist.”

“I’m just a junior captain but I’m overseeing the areas outside of the hazard zone.”

“This is outside the hazard zone? My nursing home just got attacked.”

“Right now we’re clearing this road.”

“Looks like your guarding a stack of headless bodies I want to enlist.”

“We need people right now. Especially a new medical expert. You want to sign up? Are you afraid of these monsters?”

“No.”

“Then take a business card. Call the headquarters tomorrow first thing.”

The task force burned the bodies and pushed the wreckage out of the way. Lila drove off towards the school to find her boy. In the smoke of chaos, she found an opportunity to find a new role in a transitioning world. She looked forward to the chance to face the roving dead, and purge them from the earth once and for all. As the wreckage cleared a few of the cows survived and walked free into the muddy fields.

.

V

Convergeance

The Director of Nursing, Nurse Stevens,  however opened all the doors in the facility, believing the dead to be her residents. She lay there on the floor, her arteries hanging down her mouth, slowly bleeding out as the zombies walked past her. Her brain, covered in concussions and regression, leaked out of her ears. The zombies kept licking it, sticking fingers and tongues down to her eardrums. She didn’t know how long it took her to die, or how long it took a body to reanimate, but in her dying moments she remembered all the events that made her emotionally stunted. Many people mistook it for being clinical and intelligent, but really she had a fissure in her brain that made her incapable of emotion. Incapable of handling the emotional needs of others. Her mother neglected her and her father whipped her with a belt. She never should’ve been in the medical field. She didn’t know how to take care of people. 

As she died she thought that maybe as night drew near, she’d go visit that old farm house, visit her family and see if any reconciliation was possible. Maybe her body would begin to rise and walk amid the dead, hopelessly searching, seeking, hunting for infected flesh to consume. 

Not everyone fled. Some nurses hid inside of closets. The residents didn’t notice anything peculiar. A hall of slowly, lurching men and women covered in goo and ooz didn’t bother them, and the zombies didn’t seem to notice them either. Ms. Jenkins sat down and played checkers. Old Henry sat right across from her.

“Old Henry, you always told the funniest stories.” she laughed as she waited on him to make his move. Eventually he shifted a red piece diagonally. 

“Gwrrrrssssshhh.” 

“Oh now, don’t be a sore loser.” She took his piece off the board as she jumped a black piece forward. “Why don’t you get me a glass of water?”

“Gragggsssh?”

“Yes that’s right I haven’t drank anything today.” 

Old Henry got up. He came back a few minutes later with a glass of water with a lemon in it. His fingerprints left crud all over the glass but Ms. Jenkins didn’t seem to mind. She drank the water.

“Old Henry, you’re a good helper. I hope they keep you around.”

Even if they did try to bite the old people, most didn’t have teeth anymore. The Zombie Response Task Force started pulling teeth from the dead back in the 90s.Most just lumbered around, followed the old people, seemed to be listening, and folded their bedding. Things went well until the National Guard finally showed up. They shot all the zombies and carted the old people off to god knows where. The nurses crept out of their hiding places and were carried by helicopter to field hospitals. 

The Board of Nursing met days later to decide the fate of the employees. Anyone who abandoned the site was fired and lost their nursing licenses. The Director of Nursing was never found. A new policy was instituted that the Zombie Response Task Force was NEVER to be called on again as they had to pay for the operation conducted by rescue teams. The government eventually mandated that all employees of retirement homes were entitled to sick days and paid time off, much to the chagrin of the owners of Elysium Grove Nursing Homes.