Zombie Drabble #289 “Today’s Take”




Fantasy Drabble #191 “Geek”

He rolled into town, his great gaudy wagon drawn by oxen rumbling and clattering into the cobblestone square. The ornate hand-painted signs on its sides screamed ‘Potions, Salves, and Curatives for All that Ails’. It wasn’t long before the townspeople were lining up, describing their symptoms, giving voice to their fears, focusing their hopes.

What he sold would help, for a time, long enough for him to be down the road and gone. When they started dying it he would be out of reach of their vengeance, and then when he returned, the empty town would be his to loot.

Zombie Drabble #288 “Life Aloft”

Twenty feet up, he surveyed the surrounding countryside: you could see all the way down to the old highway from where the tree-house hung from the old black oak. Usually there were no zombies within view — there were fences and natural obstacles that tended to isolate this spot — but today he had a visitor.

She was older, well-dressed, and entirely intact; she must have died of the disease, rather than being bitten. She ambled up the hill to stop, looking up and moaning, at the base of the ladder.

“Sorry,” he said, and went to get the crossbow.

SF Drabble #260 “Lifecasting”

She got out of bed, went to start the coffeemaker, mindful to stay where the cameras could clearly what she was doing. The only place in the ship’s lifesystem not completely covered by POV was the head; only the mirror over the sink had a camera.

It was officially for safety, so the Company doctors could monitor her behavior and mental state, but an ancillary benefit was profit: public subscriptions to the feed, increasingly delayed by the lightspeed gap, were helping fund Ground Control. How much of the interest was scientific and how much was prurient she didn’t particularly care.

SF Drabble #259 “Absentee Landlord”

The probe was automated; at least, that was the assumption, since all attempts to communicate were ignored and it didn’t react at all to the crew of Friendship trying to gain entry. Eventually it was decided that having done its job, the probe had simply shut down and was now non-functional.

Below it, Mars was infected. Black vegetation was crawling across the surface, and the atmosphere was thickening. Whatever the probe had released to burrow down into the dust must have contained powerful biotechnology.

For now all we can do is watch, and wait for the new owners to arrive.