Jacob And Two Women And Other Oddities

Jacob And Two Women

by David N. Brown

Smashwords edition copyright 2011 David N. Brown

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Night of the Yahoo

Leaning into the cave, Carlos Wrzniewski fired his first shot. It was a flare shell, which burst on the ceiling and scattered a dozen sparklers that lit the cave with a dull pink glow. Carlos sidled his way inside. There was a chittering, and the shadow of a retreating form. The light of the sparklers began to flicker. Carlos loaded another shell, and proceeded around a bend in the passage.

Here, the light of the flare was joined by sunlight coming down from a hole in the roof. The sunlight was suddenly eclipsed, and Carlos fired at the hole. There was a sharp screech and a shower of rock, but no body fell, and as the light came down again, there was a chittering like malicious laughter from above. The nearest sparkler sputtered out, and another followed. From just beyond the patch of sunlight, a strangely reverberating voice said, Help me.

Help yourself, Carlos said, and fired.

Castaway

The Flea and the Tick, perhaps the most battle-hardened pair in the ranks of the finbacks, stared in shock at the figure, which continued to advance despite the total loss of its head. Okay then, said the Flea. Hands behind where your head used to be! The Tick fired both barrels of his wrist grenade launcher, just before the intruder and his partner opened fire on each other.

The Tick, seeing that his partner was at least approximately intact, ran to see what had happened to the attacker instead. The thing, whatever it was, had been not so much shot to pieces as blasted flat. Strange tubes, cables, bulbs, bladders and exotic pieces of plumbing were strewn everywhere. Only the pelvis and one leg were in their approximate original shape and configuration. The skin was stretched out in ragged shreds.

As he surveyed the carnage, he thought he saw a movement. Looking more closely, he saw a large piece of skin move. It appeared only to rustle in a breeze, but he zoomed in with his visor. On the inside of the skin, he saw what looked at first like a fine wire mesh, and on higher magnification was an exquisite tapestry of circuitry. The circuitry was moving. Tendrils shuttled across a gaping hole in the hide, and as he watched the webbing tightened, and the hole shrank. Looking about, he saw more of the same: ruptured tubes sealed themselves, sundered fibers met and fused, and a half-severed foot slid back toward the ankle. "Oh, kaka," he said.

Shoe Shopping

The figures before Austin were clearly not zombies- after all, two of the three had guns- but he could not bring himself to consider them human. Not when what he could see of their faces were covered in lesions. These were lepers- the unknown fraction of a percentile of the infected who did not become violent, nonverbal psychotics. Let me pass, he said. I don't have anything you want.

But perhaps we have what you need, said the central figure, who was clearly a woman. A dust mask hid most of her face. It was clear enough that she was blind.

I don't need any help, he said. Please, leave me alone.

We were told you saved a sister, Austin, said the woman. He had not volunteered his name, real or assumed, to her or the woman he had saved, but he was not surprised. The lepers were notorious for crude but well-executed mind-reading tricks, which they used to convince others of the common delusion that their survival had conferred psychic or spiritual gifts upon them.

Yes, well, I didn't do it for any favors, he said. I don't know if I should have done it at all.

Your reasons do not matter to us, the woman said. We know a good deal about you. You have great courage, but you think yourself a coward because you also have great fears. You have great knowledge, but less wisdom. You have known great sorrow and little love. Long before the Pestilence, you already knew what it is to live as a pariah and a fugitive. You remember the hands that were turned against you, but never saw the hands that have reached out to help...

Her sonorous proclamation had a kind of hypnotic quality. He broke the spell with a shout: * me! What are you trying to do, make me listen to my own life story at gunpoint? Here's something you probably didn't know: Yesterday I killed eight zombies in the dark! I don't need anyone's help then, and I don't need it now. He strode between the lepers, flinching as he brushed against one of them. The lepers did not suffer the same effects of the virus, but could still spread it, and anyone they infected would become a zombie.

The woman laughed. Do you value pride over your life? And do you know why there were only eight? He froze, then kept walking.

Jacob and Two Women

Krista opened the door, to see Austin stepping forward to meet the town sherriff and his small but stern-looking band of deputies.

Hi, Sheriff Dobbs, he said. It's good to see you... are taking care of us out here in the country. Is there a... situation I should know about? He rocked nervously on his heels.

We've been hearing some stories in town, Dobbs said. Weird stories. Stupid, even. But it's the kind of stories we have to check out. Now, we understand that you have lived here for the last year and a half with two women, Krista and Abilene.

Yes, Austin said, my wife and her sister... well, foster sister.

And your sister-in-law is... fifteen?

She turned sixteen last month.

Right. And to clarify, she stays in the trailer?

Only when she wants some extra privacy. She, I mean her bed is in a room with my son's crib.

Dobbs sighed. They say you're honest, Austin. Let's be honest. Have you ever had sexual relations with Abbie?

Introduction

The present work represents my effort to compile the best of my works of fiction in a single collection. Four selections came to mind, three of which have previously appeared in my Kindle ebooks. So, to make this less like recycling, I have decided to include not only introductions, but additional selections that will reveal the history of each piece, which hopefully will be of interest to someone besides me. So, this being explained, I'll dive in.

Of the first pair of selections, the first is an excerpt from the second draft of the story Walking Dead 2, further amended with my idea for an Anglicization of the Aboriginal name Utdjungon. It represents my own treatment of a tale recorded by WE Harney in the book Songs of the Songmen, from a tribe called the Wadaman (aka Warnaman or Wardaman) which has long since gone virtually extinct. (From what I have been able to learn, there are something like a hundred Wadaman left, but even among them, the tribe’s language is spoken only be a few elderly individuals.) I have always found it intriguing, suggesting by free association a combination of Judeo-Christian apocalypticism and the literary tradition of Lovecraftian horror.

The second piece (a new and somewhat condensed draft) is pretty much a straight-up homage to Lovecraft, based particularly on The Shadow Out of Time, and pits my very long-running character Carlos Wrzniewski against an actual figure of aboriginal mythology called Yara Ma Yha Who. The last line from Carlos is a colorful paraphrase of a line from Harney’s translated tale: So people listen, we all shall go As our springs have dried and the seasons changed. We smile, because that day will come When we are gone.

As long as I can remember, I have had a very strong interest in mythology, and frequently integrated it into my writing. For a long time, I let this drop to the level of subtext, especially as I came to focus on science fiction, but over the last few years I have been bringing it out into the open a lot more often. My interest in Australian mythology in particular might be considered something of an accident. When I first came up with Carlos, he was an ethnic anti-stereotype. At that early date, I had no intention of his heritage being anything but a question mark, even to me; I didn't even think of him as necessarily from Australia. Of course, I quickly found that many if not most readers were asking that question and wanting answers. I might have resisted to the last, but as it happened, in letting Carlos develop, I found it necessary at least to start putting together a backstory for my own benefit. Thus, what I might have refused to do in principle, I ended up doing anyway just to suit the practical needs of my stories, which I suppose could be a decent analogy for my own experiences of self-awareness and acceptance. By the time I was wrapping up Walking Dead, my second novel to feature Carlos, I had reached the point where I was ready to put Carlos in an explicitly Australian setting. To that end, I started reading about aboriginal culture and mythology.

When I ran across Yara Ma Yha Who, I immediately decided it was simply too good not to do something with. The tale of Utdjungon presented something more interesting. Even before I came up with anything like a background for Carlos, I saw him as a conflicted character, on one hand constantly displaying humor and bravado, on the other hand having seen or done any number of terrible things. It made sense to me that a story like the Wadamans’ (both mythological and historical) could be part of Carlos’ darker side. One person I shared the tale with asked flat-out why anyone would believe in such a thing. But knowing the fate of the Wadaman, nothing about it is surprising to me.

Uncle Jonny

As the songmen tell, before white men arrived in Australia to preach of the Bible, blackfellows already knew the same faith, but by different names. God was called the Great Spirit, revered by all blackfellows. Mary was known as the Mother, and Christ was known as the spirit which is their son. And the Devil, we called Uncle Jonny.

As the song goes, Uncle Jonny is there when Father, Mother and Son make the world, a lot more orderly than it is now, and every living thing has its place. But just when they are finishing, Jonny throws in two handfuls of stones and mixes everything up. When things settle down, there’s islands and mountains and valley on the Earth where once it was level as a drumskin. The creatures get mixed up too. Emus start walking without flying. Toads start spending half their lives in water, and half on land. Lungfish start strolling in and out of the water as they please. The platypus gets most confused of all: It