Friday Snippet: The Atomic Weight of Aluminum

After joining up with Sven to sweat for the next 70 days, this Friday Snippet almost slipped my mind. Without further ado, here is the Friday Snippet. We rejoin Dell in the back alley lot with Mrs. Tailor and Caleb after a nuclear blast has laid waste to Columbia, Missouri.

Copyrighted, do not reproduce, material liable to change. You know. Etc.

Dell helped the older woman down to the ground and dropped to the dirt beside her. Before she could stand, Mrs. Tailor had her by the shoulders, fingernails biting through her jersey.

“Where are my children?” Her eyes were wild and bloodshot. Tears tracked white streaks down her ash-smeared face. Dell disentangled herself. Panic was infectious.

“I’m not sure,” Dell said. She gripped the mother’s wrists, forcing her to focus. “I’ll stay and look for them. But you can’t keep Caleb here too long. You need to get out of the city! Find a FEMA station or the National Guard. They’ll take care of you.”

“My children!”

“Look! If he stays here, he will die. You have to help him. You have to get him out.”

“You take him,” she said. She shoved her son toward Dell. “I have to stay and look for my children!”

She staggered toward the sagging apartment. Caleb buried his wet face against Dell’s stomach, his sobs muffled. She stood helpless, her hands at her sides. She choked for just a moment, and scrambled back from the fear creeping up in her chest. As she gripped the boy’s arm, her expression hardened. The apartment shuddered. She dragged Caleb after her, his fist pounding against her ribs. He screamed.

Daniel lay in the grass, his blood like paint splattered on the green stalks. His eyes mirrored a mercury sky. The fires crept closer and dying embers flared like cold stars.

Dell took the baseball bat from Daniel’s hand. The aluminum was still warm from his grip as she slung it through her belt loop. Her pants leg was heavy with her own blood. Fire lanced up her leg.

A few sharp cracks, like bones breaking, tore the air and Dell heard the east wall of the apartment cave. She slung Caleb in front of her, shielding him against her. The apartment collapsed in a roar of rolling dust and debris. Dell felt the boy’s heartbeat through his back.

She closed her eyes, breathed. She stood and the pain in her foot hissed. The boy clutched her hand, his fingers clamped on her wrist. Corleone mewed and the pillowcases swung heavy from her shoulder. In a haze of shock, Dell stumbled through the ruined streets toward wailing sirens. The boy on her arm followed, choking back his sobs with ragged hiccups.

Next week will probably be the last section with Dell for a while. We'll have a scene of Iris and Dell in college, and then we'll jump to Iris in the present, a few days after Doomsday. Let me know what you think! Also, if you're doing Friday Snippets, leave a link and I'll check it out!



So say we all.
Bri

Post-Apocalyptica Magazine Reveals New Fashions!

My good friend Joce drew these for me last night and this morning. She's been keeping up with the Friday Snippets and has offered amazing input for Iris' character. The story A Handful of Dust focuses on the estranged friendship of these two characters and I draw on my real life friendship with Joce to write those moments when they are happy and how it might feel to lose that.

Also: I got out of jury duty. They picked all the jurors they needed from yesterday's pool, so my services were not required. Three cheers for the justice system.

Dell O'Sullivan

So far, I've only introduced you guys to Dell O'Sullivan, the baseball-loving nuke-dodging heroine who eventually travels across the wastelands of the US to find her friend and find a place to call home on the coast. Joce got everything into this pic - Dell's looks, outfit, (notebook, pencil, mail bag, baseball bat, WWII helmet and the cutest haircut ever). Yay! Dell in a rationalist, a minimalist and someone focused on survival.

Iris Garrick

Joce also drew up a sketch for Iris Garrick - the more artistic of the two friends. Iris comes to embody the "mother-nuturer" in the story and is much more focused on living - not just suriving. That is a 12 gauge flare gun she's holding, and Joce drew her perfectly. Nice coat too. I'm a little jealous. Iris doesn't have as much survivalist gear as Dell because she doesn't travel much. She stays in Ashville and Greenville in North and South Carolina, holding together her small community. Hence the not so minimalist approach.

So say we all.
Bri

The Horror, The Horror

Thanks to MerylF for the Rockin' Girl Blogger Award! It's pretty, don't you think? I'll tag Annie (I'll answer the other four random things you tagged me with later this week!), Joce, Pam, Staci and Joely!

The Horror, The Horror!

I always get high-strung during this part of the summer: I feel like I should pack, that I shouldn't get too comfortable here at home. In just a few weeks, I'll move me and mine back up to Little Rock for another school year. With classes and thesis, applications to grad schools and the GRE, as well as my job at the Writing Center, this looks to be a busy year.

Designed for Living in the Writing World!

In the writing world, I've been working on a couple of projects at once, building up word count and coming up with some pretty cool ideas. I've had the urge to turn one of my sci-fi short stories into a novella or comic. My novel,XIII,needs to be revised with the addition of fifteen more scenes and I'll definitely continue A Handful of Dust for a possible short story.

PSA: Don't Use It As A Knapsack Or Pillow!

Today, I've been digging into what someone would need to do to survive a nuclear disaster. Surprisingly, if you know what you're doing, your odds of survival don't suck so bad (not that they're very good in the first place). If the initial blast doesn't get you, odds are, you'll survive.

What will get you is living in a world with fallout and radiation poisoning, where rule of law has failed and where meds, ammo, food, fuel and water are scarce.

I think what's most frightening in these "post-apocalyptic" books and movies is that, sure the environment is hostile and resources are low, but what we have most to fear is each other. Remember that scene in 28 Days Later when our zombie slayers meet up with "law and order"? I knew that while the infected were psychotic red-eyed rage-machines, the military men were infinitely more dangerous.

Same thing applies in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. You would think meeting other men, other sentient life, in a devastated world would be a good thing. But the most horrifying moments in that book (emphasis on horrifying), are those when the father and son encounter various bands of men roving the wasted countryside.

Speaking of Horrifying!

I've got jury duty on Tuesday.

So say we all.
Bri

Friday Snippet: Calm Like a Bomb

In this week's Friday Snippet, we continue the adventures of Dell. The story finds her in the back alley lot after the nuclear blast she narrowly avoided by calling in sick to work. Daniel's fate still hangs in the balance. Hope you enjoy! Let me know!

Copyrighted, do not reproduce, material liable to change. You know. Etc.

She choked on heat and death when her first breath after the bomb rattled in her chest. Rolling onto her stomach, she clutched her screams in her fists. Grit groaned in her mouth, muddy with blood and sand. She wretched, quivering as she wiped her mouth on her soot-blackened sleeve. She hooked her fingers through the chain link fence, pulling herself to stand. Her bones ached and blood squelched in her left shoe.

But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the smoke swallowing up the sun and sky, and the buildings like skeletons staggering through the flames. She couldn’t hear. She saw the flames and the crumbling buildings, but all was silent as a snow-dusted sky.

Water gushed from a broken main in the street near her apartment and the walls slumped in as though exhausted. Debris blocked the door. On the balcony, Dell saw Caleb Tailor howling. His mother rocked him, but her face was empty. Up the drainpipe and over the wrought iron railing, Dell climbed. She crouched beside them, but neither looked at her. She shivered. Stumbling through their apartment, she couldn’t seem to keep her balance.

Out in the hall, she used the wall for support. A dull ache throbbed behind her eyes and thick white dust coated everything. Blood tickled her temple and sweat stung her eyes. Each step was a cranberry smear along the floor. It was difficult to think, difficult to breath. She was vaguely aware of the panic hissing just behind the pain.

When she found her apartment door jammed, she shouldered her way through. The place reeled like a drunken nightmare; all the angles leaned just enough to add to her vertigo. She reached for Daniel’s pack and saw the ash and blood on her jeans. Her knuckles clinched white on the doorframe.

Corleone meowed, crouching where she left him asleep near the fridge. She knew she was in shock but it was a distant thing. The cat stretched: dust drifted off him like a cocaine cloud. The apartment moaned. In splintered frames, the windowpanes squealed and shattered.

Dell blinked. And then she moved. She slung her pillows from their cases, threw open the cabinet, and swept the canned goods into the first pillowcase. Snatching up the second, she threw in bread and what was left of the bottled water from the fridge. Knotting the two cases together, she slung them over her shoulder. With her sheet and blanket bundled under her arm, she ducked into the hall. Corleone followed.

Up the stairs and through the Tailor’s toy-strewn apartment, she hobbled. On the balcony, Caleb still whimpered. Dell tied Corleone against her with the sheet; he squirmed, but she ignored him. Kneeling, she gripped the eight-year-old’s arms and in her best shut-the-hell-up voice, snapped at him to be quiet.

The balcony trembled and Caleb screamed. When Dell pointed to the drainpipe, the boy shimmied to the ground without question. Fear quickened in her blood. Biting her lip, she waited until he was well out of sight. When she slapped Mrs. Tailor, the woman’s head rocked back as though on a hinge. Color rushed back into her clammy face and her breath came in a gust. She stared up at Dell, actually seeing her for the first time. Dell smiled.

So say we all.
Bri

SOS - Doing Swimmingly Well - SOS

Yes, that picture is of me. I made it when the loa of the net decided to turn against me. And yes, that link does lead to an article on Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy because the two subjects are related.

Anyway, on Friday CableOne cut off our internet (read: civilization), even though we paid them six months in advance. Now it's back, and I have returned from the wilds. Rejoice!

To the actual post:
My hands hurt very badly. I think it's a combination of this horrificaly wierd weather and too much typing. Texas, most of the Tri-State area and the Okies are living/swimming in the Second Flood and still the clouds pile up in angry smoke-blue mountains. But! Other than witnessing a spectacular lightning show with earth-splitting thunder in hi-def surround sound, I finished the first draft of XIII!

And now I'm a little overwhelmed. I've established the fifteen most important scenes to the story, but now that I'm revising, I sort of want to curl up in a fetal position. Generally, I work by creating a long list of scenes I want to see in the story. Then I summarize, asking specific important questions. After that, I write the scenes out until I have a workable story line and prose draft. Anybody have any revision techniques or ideas?

Probably by Friday, I'll have a few pictures I've sketched up for the story and I'll post them.

So say we all.
Bri