There are some changes coming to the Windale brand. There’s been some thoughtful contemplation with morning coffee and some decisions have been made which will help to hone and improve our craft. Some titles will be updated and moved around a smidge, all improvements, I assure you. In the meantime, in observance of Reformation Day/Halloween, we here at the Windale Estate would like to offer a glimpse of The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War which is available on Amazon both on Kindle and in print.
In addition, NaNoWriMo is upon us again and I’ll be adding 50K words to my Reformed Space Opera currently with the working title of Terra Jovia. Feel free to follow along and add me as a writing buddy and we’ll all get through this together!
Without further, here’s a snippet of The Delirium.
A shadow walked past the window, a human figure. It was making its way around to the back of the church, but it was alone thankfully. Unfortunately, he was armed, his rifle slung across his back.
“We’ve got a straggler,” I said picking up my rifle.
“Have you got him?” Charles asked sounding like a recruitment poster.
“Naturally,” I said coming to my feet. I didn’t want to make too loud a sound, and so I slipped my bayonet over the muzzle of the rifle and went to the back door to wait for the German to show his face. I crouched down, ready to spring onto the man as I heard him shuffling about. It was a rather strange scene as he did not seem to have a care in the world, just walked about aimlessly as though he were drunk.
I flung open the door and charged out onto the rear stoop. The sudden movement caught his attention and he growled at me, his eyes were sunken and drained as if he had been long suffering from some sickening ailment. I lunged at him, the bayonet on the end of my rifle jabbing into the centre of his chest straight to the hilt. Blood ran down the front of his uniform soaking through and running into a puddle on the ground at his feet. The man looked at me without expression, only his sunken eyes suddenly realising that I was in front of him. He offered no cry or wince of pain, only an open mouth and a blood tinged gurgling moan that escaped his mouth as he raised his arms and tried to grab at me. His fingers like claws I saw the visage of a man who by all rights should have been dead, yet apparently unfazed by the bayonet protruding from his chest. His skin was splotchy with a purple hue and his eyes bore no apparent life to them. They simply stared at me with what I could only have surmised was… hunger.
With a ferocity he lunged at me, nearly knocking the rifle from my hands as I wielded him like a fish upon a line. He growled at me and gnashed his teeth, trying to pull me close in order to bring his jaws to bear on my body. I pulled the trigger on my rifle and he lurched, his torso wrenching backwards, but not falling wholly off the bayonet.
He remained there a moment and we both collapsed to the ground. I worked to catch my breath not wholly believing that I had encountered a man with such dexterity as to take a bayonet to the chest and not flinch! If all the Kaiser’s men were of such breeding I feared for the war effort. We would be done for.
Suddenly my fears were once again realised when the German on the end of my bayonet picked his head up and brought me into focus with his empty eyes. His mouth opened again and he pulled at my tunic, trying desperately to bring me to his jaws. This frightened me terribly as I had already run him through with the bayonet and then shot him through the heart. There could be nothing viable left in the man’s chest and yet he still came for me!
I put my boot to his chest and thrust him off my rifle. He rolled onto the ground and flailed about, and to my horror began to find his feet and come to a standing position. Expelling the spent round from the chamber I advanced the next, aiming once again for his chest.
“Surrender, damn you!” I warned him. “Put your hands in the air and you’ll be given quarter!”
He put his hands up, but not to surrender. Reaching for me he hissed and lunged, his teeth gnashing at me. Utterly alarmed I swung my rifle about and offered his teeth the stock, which he bit into with some ferocity. We toppled over, landing on the ground by the church door. His teeth were covered in a film and his mouth wept with a putrid yellow fluid. He tried to remove the gun from his mouth, presumably to bring his teeth into my flesh. I know not why I thought of this in the moment, but he had a perfectly good rifle slung weakly over his shoulder, as well as a knife tucked into a sheath on his belt. He could have also bludgeoned me with his helmet, but it seemed that all he was interested in was biting me. Perhaps devouring me whole.
A commotion by the steps was my saving grace, but not from whom I expected. Our prisoner, Sergeant Schroeder, charged and hit the man atop me, flinging him off and causing him to land with a crunching thud on the tall grass. My assailant then made for one of his own while Schroeder crouched, lunging at him taking the knife from the man’s belt. He grabbed him by the throat and toppled him over backwards. Holding the man to the ground he thrust the knife into the eye of his own countryman. The man twitched and then lay still.
The next sound I heard was the sound of gun metal being raised. Charles and Buckley were at the door, their Lee-Enfields raised and leveled at Sergeant Schroeder.
“Drop the knife, mate,” Charles warned. The sergeant nodded and released it, dropping it to the ground with a quiet thud.
“We need to get indoors,” Sergeant Schroeder warned. “Immediately.”
(C) 2016 by James Windale, Red Drum Press.
James Windale 