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Tonight, Harm Carter encounters a new obstacle to remaining alive in a world dominated by a homicidal epidemic.
The Skinner Co. Network
141 - The Murder Plague: Community, Part 1 of 3
(upbeat music) - Welcome to FlashPulp episode 141. Tonight, we present The Murder Plague, Community, part one of three. This week's episodes are brought to you by the ladies' pen dragon. (gentle music) A redneck midget with a baby and a shotgun. A farmville addict majored in psychology to make people worse. A disgruntled cosplayer with degrees in biochem English and shredding arguments. A velvet-throated herald of astrological deviants, whose grandmother offered to contact a rat from the beyond. A verbose in sea living in Japan was occasionally possessed by Gollum. And a single librarian with a cat named Darcy and a penchant for zombies and barbecue sandwiches. These are the unlikely writer heroines of pen dragon variety, an audio literary magazine and round table discussion podcast for genre fiction and poetry writers. Plug in your earbuds every Thursday for Sage Advice. I will give my Sage Advice to anyone that asks and my advice is just don't suck. - Ineffable eloquence. - Deckway, character development. - Yes. - And relevant examples. - Say, so you can be dream record and Raven can be reality checker and you even rhyme now. - I was gonna say, yeah, we need a theme song. - Oh God, Scruffy, promise me if we ever write a graphic novel. Those are going to be our superheroes. - Have you seen the penis trap? 'Cause that one's scary. - What? - All right, if we promise not to put it in the podcast, we'll tell us about it, right? - Visit pen dragon variety.com to learn more and try not to suck. (upbeat music) - Flashpulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age. Three to 10 minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. Tonight, Harm Carter encounters a new obstacle to remaining alive in a world dominated by a homicidal epidemic. The Murder Plague. Community. Part one of three. Written by JRD Skinner. Art and narration by Poponex and audio produced by Jessica May. (upbeat music) The exhaustion from my initial foray into murder plague survival was overwhelming. And when sleep finally found me, I was out like a college freshman on the opening day of spring break. The rest did me good. When I awoke, my immediate thought was for my wayward daughter. I knew Dark Henley, rotting away in his living room, had little use for the Escalade he had once used to put her between his home and his practice. So I stepped into the crisp morning, noted that I had no paper awaiting me on the doorstep, then crossed the street. On my way, I caught a strong whiff of smoke and had an opportunity to get a sunlit look at the blackened plank teeth that made up the remnants of the residents fired down from my own. I didn't realize then how lucky I'd been that the place had gutted, instead of sharing its fiery bounty with its neighbors. I started my search of the doctor's bungalow by ransacking every room that didn't contain the man I'd killed. Then, once I was sure that it was the only option, I entered his death chamber. His corpse lay across his white leather couch, just as I'd left it. And he put up little fuss as I rifled his personal materials, even when we were forced to become more intimate than I was comfortable with. Now, so long after, I can still tell you with confidence that his keys were in the right-hand pocket of his khaki slacks. The second excursion was nothing like the first. I'd learn my lesson. I didn't allow myself to get caught up in the business of others. In truth, while passing the few pedestrians brave or sick enough to risk the sidewalks, I had a terrible urge to gun the engines, but I was just as worried that someone might take it as an act of war and start tossing bullets my way and plague-fueled paranoid reflex. It's also worth mentioning, however, that politeness seemed generally at an all-time high, as a survival instinct. There were no tailgaters doing hitchcocks, or if there were, they'd been quickly eliminated via unnatural selection. The house in which my daughter had been squatting was empty when I arrived. I loited for a while hoping she'd return, but it was obvious that Becky had taken everything of use and departed. I sat on her borrowed bed for a while, considering the situation. Had Rebecca left because, somewhere in her infected brain, she knew that I would return and she didn't want to be responsible for my death, or was she lurking, awaiting an opportunity to do me in? Eventually, the thoughts chased me home, where they were immediately displaced by an entirely different set of concerns. When I'd stepped onto the roadway that morning, I'd assumed the tickle at my nose was the smoldering pile down the street. As I approached, this poor reasoning was corrected by a wall of smoke marching out of the west. I parked the Escalade on the pavement facing east. The issue was the wind. The smoke and the flame were being carried along by a stiff breeze, and as I clambered over my rooftop with the gun hose, hoping to dampen things enough to keep my suburban castle safe, the exploding propaintanks of my neighbor's barbecues provided a sort of, from the lightning to the clap method of measuring the time I had till the fire was upon me. It was obvious, within an hour of my return, that the situation was getting out of hand. As I stood on the soaked shingles pondering my predicament, Mr. Baldy came boasting from his home. Not his real name, of course, but I'd never introduced myself to the family on the side of the house opposite the Hernandez's. As I raised a hand in greeting, I realized that he was alone. That is, without his wife or trio of sons. In response, his own fingers went to a gun tucked into his belt, and it took no further encouragement to send me hurtling to the far side of the peak. I was pleased when the next sound to reach me was as car starting, and not the clanking of a ladder. Once he was well gone, I picked up my rubber spout and took stock of my corner of the apocalypse. The air was getting thick, and dancing red was clearly visible beneath the gouts of black that blanketed the western horizon. Before I could decide it was a good time to follow Baldy's exit, I noticed a cluster of five prowling down the road like traumatized cats. They moved slowly, with a motley array of weaponry in their fists, and their heads were constantly craning about to scan the surrounding doorways. It says something about how quickly I'd become acclimatized to a terrible situation that I was surprised to see a group of people not occupied with attempting to kill each other. With Baldy in mind, I damned my idiotic need for company. Then, bellow to hello. (suspenseful music) FlashPulp is presented by HTTP colon slash slash Skinner dot FM. The audio and text formats of FlashPulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial 2.5 license. (suspenseful music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)