Group Hex Vol 1

by Andrew Robertson

  Ain’t nobody living through to see the other light.

  One lone zombie, how much more can he go?

  Slumber, sluggish fitful sleepy headed meandering,

  Amongst the urban jungle, there is no escape.

  One lone zombie, what else can he end up with?

  Searching, always searching, looking for food.

  He is hunger, he is death, he is the zombie returned.

  One lone zombie, does he wonder, does he woe?

  The darkness holds no mystery for our intrepid foe.

  Master of the lumbering spirit, humble dead thing knows.

  One lone zombie, can he ever know about love?

  Fodder for the lost, soothing balm for anger’s core.

  Silence rules the host as our leading light ponders.

  One lone zombie, does the screaming ever end?

  A moment lost, infinity that remains behind the eyes.

  He holds for a time, wondering, watching and waiting.

  One lone zombie, set against an ambivalent world at large.

  Behind him rises the newly converted to the dead world plan

  A wave of the fallen zombie hordes that eat those who remain.

  One lone zombie, that’s arrived out of the darkness.

  We exist between each frame, each note, each word,

  As writ upon the story that wreathes our lives.

  And yet, the very nature of the zombie gestalt,

  Leaves us breathless with horror and disbelief.

  We crumble within the confines of our houses of

  Illusion and misery and creature comforts galore.

  Saturated by the insanity that rains upon us from the

  Corporations and governments of a world gone insane.

  Seek not the path of the righteous, nor that of the forlorn.

  Freedom and truth are cornerstones of a bygone time.

  Survival. It is the only choice now, now that death has been born.

  Unleashed, the beast has been, free to work it’s toll.

  Heavy the burden is, heavier still that of finding solutions.

  Alone, and shuddering in the dark, can Man pull together?

  One lone zombie, an apocalypse unleashed without regard.

  Pure and simple, the nature to consume has driven deep.

  A knife twist thrust, one to sever, one to serve.

  One lone zombie, will humanity strike back?

  Can it?

  Part Three: Apocalypse

  One lone zombie, within an army of the dead.

  Moving freely, across the lands of the living

  Reaping, rending adding ranks to their tread.

  One lone zombie, adrift upon a see of frightful content;

  Born of depravity, vile existence, and vicious intent;

  No stratum of humanity is safe from this villainy.

  One lone zombie, buried in a debt of inequity and trust.

  Brother, sister, mother, father, friend, foes and strangers.

  Pain without measure spread throughout the entire fold.

  One lone zombie, the press of the lifeless legions behind,

  Pressing forward, forward, seeking the warm, fresh blood.

  Always in constant motion, constant struggle, repeat strife.

  One lone zombie, the struggle against bright pyres of the dead,

  Leading to the fulfillment of the promise, of every living’s end.

  Ruination, cessation, desiccation; the cesspit of life finally finished.

  One lone zombie, mountains of mayhem following in his wake;

  A ruinous machine of remorseless destruction and woe unleashed;

  Plodding ever father, ever deeper into the morass known as life.

  One lone zombie, slicing through the constructs of man and beast,

  Reworking the previous world to make anew the lands of the dead.

  Peril, thick upon the horizon, where once the living strode freely.

  One lone zombie, breaking through the boughs, the wave of humanity;

  Rivers of blood running through forests of bone and broken bodies,

  Emptying out to the gluttonous hordes of dead walking empty souls.

  One lone zombie, frightful in both demeanor and hunger and execution;

  Barren of desire or of purpose greater than the momentary hunt thrill;

  But ruled by the overwhelming movement that has made the dead real.

  One lone zombie, twilight’s last glimmering fitful, fright filled menace.

  Down broad avenues of forlorn escape, twisted, confused and denied.

  Scattering bodies like logs littering the broken, bedraggled countryside.

  One lone zombie, the poster child for the new apocalypse.

  Havoc, widespread and rampant, raging through the streets.

  Through towns, through valleys, through mountainous heights.

  The death knell for humanity, stricken by clenched teeth.

  Into the ravenous gaping maw of raw blackness and despair;

  Evil gazes back from those bleak, loathsome charnel depths.

  Secrets and silences from ancient enemies long time slumbered.

  Awakening now and set forth across crimson skies unencumbered.

  Rage, the infinite beast of no body, and many heads of dark spite;

  Lashing out deep into the heart of humanities’ greatest toils.

  Civilization shattered, crumbling into the dust of its’ birthplaces.

  Spin, spin, spin the dance of the dead consuming the world of life.

  The ripe bowels of darkness hold us, whole and complete;

  To what end, to what bleak landscape shall our species fall?

  Beauty and grace, magnificent wonder, all expunged, by those not of this life.

  One lone zombie, the reaper of millions, by violence born;

  Blood stained music of eternal strife, splattering constructs of man.

  Serenity rules, where once was there were the clutches of civil life.

  One lone zombie, will any of the living escape his grasp?

  Does it matter?

  Part Four: Hope and Redemption

  One lone zombie, a bilious sea of inhumanity,

  That had risen against the rage of improbable odds

  And covered all the lands in despair and dead clods.

  One lone zombie, a commander, a king, a common corpse,

  All and sundry, having succumbed to the siren’s silky song

  The sweet release of death’s broken promise, sundered, rent.

  One lone zombie, who fought the mighty hordes of Man

  And stumbled back into history’s gory blackened graces,

  Nothing left but a world full of borderline pasts and dust.

  One lone zombie, the king of this improbable bloody empire;

  Putrid, pestilent and past the point of pungent normalcy met,

  Yet still buried deep within the clarion call of sudden frailty.

  One lone zombie, searching deep into the recesses of living lands

  The long path of anarchy and destruction rent deep within his hands,

  It was a song of departure, of rending, of deadly, violent intentions.

  One lone zombie, full of the task at hand, of cleansing all the land,

  From shore to shore, sea-to-sea, and all that beckoned at his command,

  Scoured each and every last hiding hole, safety nets available to their foe.

  One lone zombie, standing front and forward, pinnacle of success.

  The heights of glory, of the battle won, spread forth amongst the mass

  Of zombie decimation, covering the land bloated and fearful and free.

  One lone zombie, the harbinger of the end times, now upon us;

  Final sign of the apocalypse that we had spent so much avoiding,

  Has arrived and brought low the race once known as Man.

  One lone zombie, the source of something lost so long ago.

  Born of desperate needs and darkened, dismal embraces


  Crafted out of loathsome lore, pain and horrible choices.

  One lone zombie, tragic in the extent and cost to life’s defenders,

  Seeks the completion of his terror filled journey to its’ fearful end.

  Yet, mere moments away from that awful truth, his destiny fulfilled.

  One lone zombie, struck deep by the vagaries of fate and misfortune.

  Hope, the single, most powerful tool in the arsenal of Man.

  Arisen, and taken form, for that which must be for survival.

  Hearken back to olden days to remember words of forefathers past.

  Our destiny lies in wait, at the beck and call of gathered weal.

  Crying softly, past care, past worry against the zombie zeal.

  Rally, the troops, the remaining and fitful few souls of living.

  And strike back the deadly tidal wave of horror and the hunt.

  Gather to us, the survivors many, locked away in their prisons

  Of fear and solitude and distance and disdain and personal gain.

  It is with these mighty wonders, that Mankind can once again

  Rise, to claim dominance across the land both great and varied.

  And now, the hunt is returned back to where it once had started.

  The dead again reduced to ash and char and sludge once parted.

  Alive, we scream, alive again, the hordes of Man once again.

  One lone zombie, splattered against the wall of waste and ruin.

  One lone zombie, broken, battered, ripped asunder.

  Is that the end?

  Part Five: The Return

  One lone zombie, scattered, ripped, dissected and pulled apart.

  The remains of the ravening hordes of death were torn asunder.

  Broken by the ingenuity of men of courage, steel, and honor.

  One lone zombie, laid to rest uneasy within a tomb of many frames.

  Preserved for scientific scrutiny, for future generations to explore.

  The mysteries of existence, of life, locked away in its’ DNA core.

  One lone zombie, hacked apart by an existence mundane.

  Stripped of everything that gave them purpose and merit,

  From boot heel to hair tip, everything they had made plain.

  One lone zombie, a monster in the eyes of those called Man;

  The simple cleaning solution for the scourge known as the living;

  But, in the end, the table was weighted in favor of those more fragile.

  One lone zombie, a speck against the enormity of time and tide;

  A firefly brief moment against the backdrop of historical reference;

  Ultimately, the final resting place of the deadly infectious plague.

  One lone zombie, the black swing of momentum and stride,

  Plowed into the turf, like so much maggot mulch and fertilizer.

  Wherefore now, run the seas of the walking dead made men?

  One lone zombie, an unfathomable quest for domination of the living land,

  And an integral part of some demented, ancient design from one so insane.

  The walking whip of the recently departed formed from an untimely span.

  One lone zombie, ground into the dust of distant pages, of words not writ.

  Once wrapped, unconquerable, except for his silent, biting, excoriate wit.

  In the end, laid low by common sense, and gray matter much more dense.

  One lone zombie, technology, both the bane and boon of Man’s works;

  By weapon, by tactic, by strength of arms and the instinct of years learned,

  It was but a simple matter to whittle away at the heart of the infection.

  One lone zombie, a combatant against a foe of death and destruction,

  Fraught with the rage and retribution and assailed by Man’s single-minded

  Display of commitment, tactical implementation and practical organization.

  One lone zombie, the scourge of the living, the scourer of the insane;

  Now, nothing but a footnote in the annals of the morbid and restrained,

  Merrily collecting dust in the dormant halls of scientific chastisement.

  Electrical hum and the acrid stench of experimentation run rampant.

  The overzealous machination of exploration and theorization is ablaze.

  Quick, quick, seek, seek out the meaning, the manner and the formation.

  It shines, ever brighter, the spark of life within the firmament of creation.

  And from the ashes of death, the greedy maw of the once living dead, Arises the specter of glory and possibilities, of new learning, of life unbound.

  Bring out the bones, the plasma, the DNA, the fetters and clothes of those dead.

  From amongst their tattered remains, we shall find, their answers, their sins;

  Of a life everlasting, of knowledge both distant and near, and of simple things.

  From the wreckage that had been wrought, the apocalypse that had been fought;

  The machine of Man’s science moves forward, to describe, to try and understand

  Each and every facet of the fallen foe’s dread journey, its’ unholy dark purpose.

  Reach deep, into the maw of the forbidden, and pull out the minute blackened spark

  A tiny little pinprick, and that’s all that is needed to re-start that silent engine dark.

  One more lone zombie, reawakened with rage and the un-life of older generations,

  As a testament to the folly of Man and his quest for the mysteries of the hidden.

  Shadows of an existence, a pariah of the working, a devourer of the living.

  One more lone zombie, to carry on the gestation, the plague once again.

  Will there only ever be just one?

  THE LAST GARDENER

  Crystal Bourque

  “Good morning, Mother.”

  The Mother is in her garden on hands and knees. The tips of her shoes bury deeper in the fine sand as she slowly leans back on her heels to look at me. Her skin is sallow. Arms that were once plump, now struggle to support her upper body. Her collarbone protrudes sharply from the base of her neck. She averts her eyes, smoothing the front of her dust-stained blouse.

  “Good morning, Elijah,” she says. Her once inviting mouth is now too big for her face. “Tell me. What do my children require?”

  I lick my cracked lips, but my tongue is too dry to be of much use. “The Mayor requests strawberries, Mother. Large and juicy. Most importantly, sweet.” I clasp my hands together in front of my body. “He says the strawberries were too sour last time. That everyone refused to eat them at the festival.”

  The Mother nods her head. “What else?” she asks.

  “Wheat,” I say. “The Mayor wants you make sure that the kernels are large. If you can’t manage, he’ll need twice as much.”

  A light breeze sprinkles me with sand. The grains cling to the tiny beads of perspiration peppering my skin like freckles. I shield my eyes as the sun, taking advantage of my silence, peeks over the horizon. Its deep shade of red means that today will be even hotter than the day before.

  “He also wants tomatoes, zucchini, potatoes and peas,” I continue. An earthy taste fills my mouth as my teeth crunch down on the grit that has found its way past my lips. “Hundreds of baskets worth; I brought an extra cart. The Mayor wants me to remind you that there wasn’t enough last time.”

  I clear my throat. “The Mayor wants enough food for three servings a head. Two will no longer be adequate.”

  “And you, Elijah?” The Mother asks. She lifts her head and looks at me through red-rimmed lids. “What would you request of me?”

  “Nothing, Mother,” I say, as always. “What you grow for the village will be sufficient.”

  “As you wish.”

  “One more thing. A question.” I pause, rubbing my chin with my hand. “Have you seen any people, Mother?” I ask.

  “Only you,” she replies with a slight shrug.

  Her words put me
at ease. The Mayor had heard rumors of desperate neighboring villages hunting for our gardener. I am relieved that I won’t need to hide her in a new location. The Mother is happy here. I also don’t want to miss tonight’s festival. In recognition of my dedication and commitment to the wellbeing of the village, the Mayor has invited me to dine with him at the head table. I suppress a grin thinking about it. It all seems a little silly. We are childhood friends, and yet he insists on complimenting me in this way.

  The Mother’s attention returns to the small mound of sand in front of her. She places one hand over the other so that they resemble the shape of a triangle. They hover, shaking, as she closes her eyes.

  As always, the tiny green sprout that forces its way out of the sand fascinates me. It unfurls, rising upwards until several vines break away, growing in every direction. Round, speckled buds form beneath tiny, leafy caps. A moment later and they are stretching downwards, like an upside down drop of water. The fully formed strawberries are now a deep red, each one more perfect than the last.

  “Try one,” the Mother says.

  I bend down, pick a medium sized strawberry from the vine, and raise it to my lips. Juice runs down my chin as I bite through the fleshy meat of the fruit. The sweet flavor fills my mouth, growing stronger with every chew. I swallow and take another bite, chewing slowly, not wanting the experience to end.

  When it does, I stand, licking my fingers, only to find that the Mother has grown another five plants. “Thank you for your gifts, Mother,” I say.

  The Mother pauses in her work for a moment, then continues, as if I hadn’t said a word.

  My carts rest in the sand to our left, near the mouth of her cave. I retrieve a basket, sling the tight strap over my neck, and begin to pick the fruit.

  We work our way across the garden. The Mother has it marked out with large stones. The space is big enough to fit one hundred strawberry plants both length and width wise. She is always very careful not to grow anything outside of these lines. I have asked her why, but she has yet to answer the question. Each time I fill a basket, I return to the carts to get an empty one. We work in silence, the kind of quiet that I have come to associate with being companionable.

  The sun is directly above us when the Mother produces a tomato plant a head taller than I am. I pick the last strawberry and look up in time to see her collapse beside it.

  “Mother!” I run towards her. The strawberries in my basket tumble back and forth, as I get down beside her. “What happened?”