Coming soon: Far more free fiction. As in, I am fairly sure, a story every month. I will work out this month’s story soon. But more free stuff soon. Between free fiction every month and a webcomic and … well. You won’t be able to escape. Muah-ha-ha!

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Here is a 64-part (still just one guy) a capella version of Thriller.

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So I am starting a new novella this week. I’m excited. It promises to be full of action and adventure and hope and fun. A lot of fun. A ton of fun. More fun than you can … no I can shake a stick pretty good, but I feel confident that if you are bad at stick shaking this might be more fun than you could shake that stick at. It depends on how good you are with a stick, really.

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“There they are,” Edward said over his shoulder. “They don’t move too fast, and slower still when they have captives, but there are at least three of them for each of us. I am reminded of Custer, except he wasn’t on the move and the Brainers don’t have arrows. Also, we’ll win.”

“That is the general idea, Eddie,” Franklin said and then turned to face us, stopping our walk. “Here’s the thing. The captives won’t be much help to us. They’ll want to be but they’re weak and hungry by now. Which makes them a threat to themselves, really.”

“So we should separate them and get them clear,” Edward put in, “except that leaves us down a few men, doesn’t it?”

“It does. So here’s what we were thinking. If we can break their circle and round up the captives then…”
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The sun set and the temperature started to drop. We marched on, regardless, for a while. Our feet hurt from walking all day, our backs shared the pain lugging the packs and our very skin crawled with sweat and grit. When Edward discussed something with Franklin, they were far enough ahead that I couldn’t hear ‘em. When they turned and gestured to us that we were stopping for the night Sally puffed a gust of relieved air from her cheeks.

“All right, drop the packs and let us get set for the night,” Franklin said, “unroll the fence and get out the wood and wire and staples, will you?”

We did as asked, as quickly as we could, which wasn’t half as fast as they wanted us to I’m sure. Everything got laid out of the ground in front of us. Edward and Franklin walked around the supplies, nodding. Travel and packing hadn’t seemed to have damaged a thing.
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“Eddie’s right. Everyone had a theory, but no one had seen it in action. So we went and looked. They tie them up and march them out across the desert. The Brainers ride some Brainer horses and corral them, like so many cattle.”

“Although traditionally you don’t tie cattle when you go on a cattle drive. Then again, I suppose that cattle don’t often want to escape. They might, granted, but they seem to be fine just walking.”

“Yes. Thank you, Eddie, for that brief, yet fascinating, look into cattle herding,” Franklin said with a roll of his eyes. “When we saw that we realized we couldn’t ignore it. Humans suffer, they die and they do what they need to in order to survive. We get that, better than a lot of people, probably. This is different.”
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It happened late one night, out back of the bar. Edward was setting up his cook pots and slicing roots into a bucket. Franklin was busy starting a roaring fire. The men had taken to cooking late nights, Edward seemed to insist, and feeding whomever was still awake. It didn’t invite conversation, much other than thanks, but it warmed some of the locals to the two.

Johnny Boots saw it different. He felt that his woman, Betsy Klein, was paying that Bones man far too much attention. Betsy didn’t see it that way at all, but then she also didn’t see herself as Johnny Boots’ woman, either.

Boots was out back watching the fire grow along with his ire. He shot Edward a look, trying to warn the man off through sheer force of will. None of us knew, then, that battle was a losing proposition. Johnny Boots learned it soon enough though, and learned it for all of us.
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Now this was back in the early days of the dead west. Back then it didn’t have a name or anything, It was just where man was losing the fight to survive. The desert was bad enough on its own, but add the Brainers and their mounts to the mix and, well, to be blunt we were losing bad. Most civilized areas had already collapsed. The future wasn’t lookin’ too bright.

By then, this was only ten or so years after the Brainers had come in you understand, the whole of what used to be called Texas and most points west of it clear to the ocean had already fallen. The Brainers moved fast, faster than anyone thought they could. The disease they spread with them affected mammals of all sorts and made ‘em hunger. It made ‘em kinda stupid too, at first, but they got smarter as they adapted. That was our mistake in the first days, we showed ‘em all what we could do and they learnt from it like children.
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Last night was a bit kooky. At one point I was on the phone, online doing work on a project - the work required me to talk to two different people at the same time online mind you, and also in a chat room. All at once, you see.

Then I ended up on a different call, which was fantastic and reaffirmed that I work with some great and smart people. Some of who may be laughing nervously the entire time, but I can’t quite prove it, yet. Soon.

Past that, nothing much going on I can talk about.

Come Monday I will be releasing, serializing here at first, another short story for free. This time it will be High Noon of the Living Dead.

Uhm. Shit, that’s all I think I got right now.

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She crossed the street and walked in a straight line that terminated at my body. Her cream colored T-shirt was tucked into her black jeans and she shook her head as she saw me, but lacked any sort of smile or grin. Slowing the closer she got, eventually she reached me and stood right in front of me. Her hand slid out of her jeans back pocket where it had been resting and moved right between us, holding something. The knife blade flicked out of its handle with a slight metallic snap, blade pointing directly at my stomach.

“Just so we understand each other,” she said with no hint of humor at all. This was off to a great start.

This was, in the immortal words of someone back in the 60’s I’m sure, the most uncool vibe, dude. I refused to back off, no way was she going to intimidate me. I was too smooth for that, too on the ball and too cool. Alright, so I took a step backwards but it was only one step and it wasn’t even that big. More like a half-step really. She laughed when I did it, damn her, and closed the knife replacing it in her back pocket.

“Lighten up, Wit Boy, I just ain’t taking chances with you right now. Got the cash?”

“What is this, Hunt for Red October? I give you the cash you, won’t kill me and I can keep the microfiche and defect?” She sighed and shook her head when I said that, maybe she just wasn’t a Clancy fan. Hell, I’m not a Clancy fan, but when in Rome and all that.

“For the last fucking time, cut the crap, Wit Boy.”

“Will you stop calling me Wit Boy? My name is Thomas”

“It’s Wit Boy or Fuckface.”

“Wit Boy it is.”

“I thought so. The cash?” What was it with her?

“What is it with you?” I asked softly, hoping my sheer honesty would disarm her, figuratively if not literally.

“I just don’t have the time for this ok? Look,” she reached into her back pocket again and I braced for round two of West Side Story but all she did was pull out my ID, “here’s your card, ok?” It was my turn to shake my head as I reached out and snapped the ID out of her hand. I shoved it into my pocket and came back with the cash which I offered out to her. She took it slowly from me and smiled.

“That wasn’t so hard now was it?” She looked off into space for a second, “So where to now?”

“What? What do you mean where to now?”

“Dinner? A bar? Where are we going?”

“What the fuck are you on about, woman?”

“Oh, this was probably your last sixty wasn’t it? Alright, I’ll buy dinner.”

“You are completely bug-fuck aren’t you?”

“How do you mean?”

“You have so far, in the last few minutes only, pulled a knife on me, insulted me and threatened me. Now you want to buy me dinner?”

“Oh, well when you put it like that…”

“There are other ways to put it?”

“Well, maybe?” I was utterly baffled now. I mean what was she on? This woman was hardcore gone. Hard. Core. To think, I was still attracted to this loon. I had to be just as insane, but less MPD, to even be considering this shit. I suddenly felt the need to reexamine my priorities, even as I started to think of decent places to go for a drink with her. I needed to find a woman named Chartrine or something, anything but this. I had to just say no, cut my losses and run the fuck home so she couldn’t follow me. Hell she probably had my address memorized and would find me in the middle of the night and stab me 58 times in the face before washing in my blood and calling it a night. I had to just cut my losses here and tell her no, gently. Very gently, lest she go all stabbity on me again.

“Well, I’ve always been fond of Sidewalk. I can introduce you around to some of my friends.” Why had that come out of my mouth? She smiled at me and pocketed the cash. We went to Sidewalk.

At Sidewalk we found Carlos, who then explained my life story to her, much to my dismay, including his part in lending me the money. It was, though, an easy time. Relaxing and enjoyable, aside from the spine creep I had wondering when her personality would shift again. It did briefly, I think, during a round of pool. She scowled at me and started with the “Wit Boy” shit again, but it passed just as fast as it had come on. All of us hung out till about 3am. Carlos even called Ben and got him to join us near the end of the evening.

Around 3am we all split up and she wrote her number on my arm in ink, after a painful and aborted attempt with a mechanical pencil, and made me promise to call her soon. On the way home, Ben quizzed me about her and I explained the odd personality shifts but he brushed them off as ‘hormones’. No, sorry, that was all a show of pure psychosis if there ever was one. Still, there was something right about the whole thing to me. Maybe a relationship with someone as scattered and random as the City itself was would be good for me. I was in love with my City, it was my first true love and always would be. Then again maybe, like the City, it would incur casualties and calls to the Police. Life would bring me something utterly unexpected, that much I knew. It always did, in this town.

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Never Bite the Homeless is copyright Adam P. Knave.