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Tonight, Ruby Departed walks a hard road as she comes to grips with the realities of the zombie apocalypse.
The Skinner Co. Network
124 - Ruby Departed: Local Hero, Part 1 of 3
[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Flash pop, great audio fiction in small bites. Available on iTunes or download a dose today at skinner.fm. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to FlashPulp, episode 124. Tonight, we present Ruby Departed, Local Hero, part one of three. This week's episodes are brought to you by The Walker Journals. Cut back on the Beyonce videos a little and enjoy one man's tales of zombie survival, as told to YouTube. Find it at http colon slash slash youtube.com slash user slash walker zombie survivor. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] With the shadows I live with are number nine. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] 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, Ruby Departed walks a hard road as she comes to grips with the realities of the zombie apocalypse. Ruby Departed, Local Hero, part one of three. Written by J.R.D. Skinner, art and narration by Opoponats, an audio produced by Jessica May. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] July 27th. I'm trying to get used to the new rhythm of things. I'm out on the highway now, and it hasn't left me with much chance to write-- or reason to, frankly. At least, not until a family passed by today. At first, things weren't all that different than when I'd been in the city. The road spent a long time rolling past suburbs, industrial complexes, and housing investments by people who were preparing for an urban expansion that'll probably never happen. There seemed to be a lot of pseudo-manions near the end. Spokes who'd been building cheap, so they could look like big shots in 20 years once the sprawl had begun to encompass them. Eventually, there were only trees, fields, and pavement. Well, there are occasional homes, but somehow, now that there are fewer of them, they feel riskier to approach. I tried poking around a square bungalow, a shabby white paneling, two front bay windows, and a big deck in the back. I cut my hands to the glass of the rear sliding door, and I couldn't tell what was inside. Just hear it. A sort of wet, flapping, and thrashing, like a dog shaking a damp towel furiously, or a torn-up animal attempting to escape a trap. Since then, I've been sticking to the blacktop. There's plenty of salvage from cars, anyhow, and the shambler population is pretty low. Some of the vehicles have wrigglers in them, though. People who must have been bitten, then strapped down before they turned. Kids mostly. And all they can do is sit there under their belts, squirming. I've also had to fight the temptation to get on top of one of the trucks to see ahead. I'm concerned that I would be waving a free buffet sign by being the only humanoid for miles that can still climb. But the real problem with the current leg of my trip is the lack of choice. Everything is in front of me now. If I walk into a wall of undead, I can't duck into an alley or run through a school playground. The only options are to go back the way I came, or to risk a broken leg in the woods. I keep having this daydream worry that I'm going to get to a point where the four lanes are blocked straight across by a chain-link fence. And beyond that, from barrier to horizon, will be nothing but the dead. Number 71 was a lady whose face had turned to leather from too much sun. She was in rough shape, so it was hard to tell how old she was. But I'm guessing she was someone's grandma who'd been buckled down during the family's efforts to escape the city. I hope she died of a heart attack, mid-nap while waiting out the traffic. Whenever the case, she was seat-dancing until I put Bethany through the rear passenger window. And I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the pristine pack of camping gear that was sitting beside her. I looted the food and kept a warm sweater to help against the nighttime cold. That was a round noon today. And maybe an hour after that, I started hearing giggling. There were five of them. Ma, pa, bro, sis, and granny. Pa was pushing granny in a wheelchair and the elderly woman was cackling. It wasn't like I was trying to avoid them. Honestly, I didn't think it was even going to be possible given that we're both trapped on the same strip of pavement. Still, as they approached, I didn't. I sat beside a silver BMW. I waited. Sis was giving bro guff about his complaints that his shoes were getting ratty and granny was prattling away on some bus pulling championship. Pa's father had won in the late 1960s. I wanted to stand up. I wanted to approach that smiling family unit and make friends and share coffee and maybe even give them pointers on what they might meet ahead. There was something about grand, though. Stuck in her seat. I couldn't get the image of her doing number 71 shimmy out of my head. I let them pass. They were going in the wrong direction and there were five of them. Who knows if they were crazies? That's not fair. I did it because it was obvious from all their noise, the steel and leather chair and their smiles that none of them were going to make it. I didn't avoid them. I just didn't go out of my way to talk to them. Damn it. In the old days ignoring someone walking on the other side of the road didn't make you feel like a monster. ♪♪ 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. Questions, comments, or observations can be emailed in text or audio format to skinner@skinner.fm or you can call in to our voicemail line at 206-338-2792. But please be aware that your message will likely be included in the next episode of our companion show, Flashcast. Big thanks go to Highland and Wood for the introduction at the top. You can find their fantastic "Bother Some Things" podcast at bothersomethings.com. Thanks for listening and if you enjoyed the show, tell your friends.