by J. Thorn
I am not a writer like the Captain was, but it’s important that I not leave his full story untold, so I will complete this journal to the best of my ability.
That day, as the Mahdi’s men came forward, it was clear that he was making his big move. There were at least fifty of his child soldiers in front, firing blind, stumbling along under the influence of drugs. Behind them came an equal number of his men, taking cover and shooting at our positions whenever we revealed ourselves by firing at the kids. The Captain had almost all of us come down to the city at night, other than a small guard to keep out any wandering Moreko. As he had instructed, we didn’t stand and fight but retreated, bringing more of the Mahdi’s men into the small alleys leading to the hill.
Then we set it all on fire.
We had rigged up many of the buildings with cans of fuel, and sometimes just splattering fuel all over the floor. That meant no more fuel for our generator, but if we did not survive that day, the Captain said not having electricity was the least of our worries.
As the buildings burned, the Moreko came streaming out. I have never been in the middle of so many Moreko before, and we shot a couple of them as they passed, but there was no need. They were not trying to attack us, simply get away from the flames. I saw the Captain standing, a grin on his face as he showed me a thumbs-up sign. Then he shouted at me that his undead friends would do all the fighting for us.
The Moreko swept through the kids, many of whom were so doped up that they didn’t realize what was happening. The Mahdi’s men wisely hid in the buildings, but that meant they were no longer firing at us. We had moved in, and what followed was brutal.
We threw Molotov cocktails through windows, burning men alive. We stabbed, shot and sometimes used bricks and bottles. All through it, the Captain was by our side, screaming, swearing, and fighting like a maniac. I saw him snap a man’s neck with his bare hands. I saw him throw his knife, killing another man with a direct hit to the chest. His actions gave us courage, and we fought on.
Then we heard the sound of the armored car, which the Captain called a BMP. That was when he last spoke to me. He looked at me, told me that it was time to go for a drive and disappeared.
The Mahdi had seen his plan fall apart and had come up in the armored car. The BMP was firing its big gun, and three of our men died from a direct hit. Some of the Mahdi’s men also fell, but he didn’t care. He was bent on crushing us once and for all.
We retreated to a rooftop and saw the BMP sweep through our defenses. I could hear men scream as it kept firing its shells at us. There was nothing we could do. One of the men threw a Molotov but it landed short, and he was torn apart by machine gun fire. Mira ran towards the BMP, shooting dead two of the Mahdi’s men, and when it looked like she was within range of throwing the Molotov cocktail she was carrying, the Mahdi shot her dead.
The Mahdi’s men had regrouped near the BMP and through my binoculars, I got my first good look at the monster called the Mahdi. He was actually laughing as he ordered his men in.
Our people were tired, bloodied and outgunned. We would fight to the death, but it looked like there wasn’t much more we could do to defend the folks up in the bungalow. The kids were up there, along with three men too old to fight and two mothers who had volunteered to be the last line of defense. Everyone else was now down here – and it looked like this would be where we would die.
Then the car came in, being driven so fast it hit a couple of the Mahdi’s men and sent them spinning a dozen feet away. The Captain had rigged several fuel cans to its hood and as he passed me, I could swear I saw him laughing. Some of the Mahdi’s men were shooting at the car and the Mahdi had trained the BMP’s machine gun towards the car and was about to begin firing when I shouted to all our men to protect the Captain. We all opened up with whatever weapons we had at hand, and the Mahdi ducked inside. That was when the car slammed into the BMP at full speed.
There was a huge explosion that sent many of us to the ground. The fireball rose over the wrecked vehicles and when we got closer, we saw that there was barely anything left of the BMP or the car. Or indeed the Mahdi and his men.
Our folks were now out, encouraged by the death of the Mahdi and also enraged at the Captain’s sacrifice. In the ten minutes or so that followed, they fought like men and women possessed. I saw Ashok charge three men, shooting one and killing another with his knife before he was brought down. I saw a woman, a mother of two, rush a man carrying an assault rifle and bring him down with a knife. I saw a little bit of the Captain in all of us, wherever I looked.
As word got around that the Mahdi was dead, his men began surrendering. Several were killed even as they threw down their weapons. After what we had seen them do to the kids, there was little mercy going around that day.
Someone screamed that they had found the Captain, and for a minute, my hopes soared that he was somehow, miraculously alive. But life is not always a movie where the hero rides off into the sunset. The Captain had indeed tried to live, and had jumped out of the car before it hit the BMP, but he had been hit by many bullets and before I got to him, he was no more.
We buried him in the evening, in the garden of the bungalow where he had started this journey. All of us who remained were there, along with a hundred prisoners we had liberated from the Mahdi’s camp. Even among them, word had got around that this had been the man who had freed them, the man who had killed the Mahdi.
The Captain died, but that day, his legend was born. Already, parents tell their children his stories, and as happens, they grow in the telling. If we survive that long, I imagine in the years to come, the Captain will become almost a figure of myth more than a man.
One of the Mahdi’s prisoners is a professor, and he tells me that where history ends, legend begins. But I want people to remember the Captain as more than a legend. I want him to be remembered for the man he was. An imperfect man, a man who made mistakes, yet a man who was able to rise above it all and sacrifice himself so that we might have a chance to live. Perhaps that is the highest form of heroism- to make mistakes but be able to pick up the pieces and make amends. Our life is still tough and uncertain – we have occupied several neighborhoods in the city, and have begun to plant crops. But barely a day goes by without some sort of contact with the Moreko, The knowledge that they fear fire helps us keep them at bay, but life is still hardly something any of us take for granted. There may well be other men like the Mahdi out there, and they may well ride in one day, trying to steal our lives and freedom. We cannot stop evil from emerging in the world, but what we can do is to make a stand against it. That is what the Captain taught us.
The Captain never told us his name – so we just called him Captain. In his pocket, I found an old wallet that contained a photograph of his wife, and a business card. We buried the wallet and photo with him, but I’ve kept the card, so that we can remember him by the name he had before he became the Captain.
Maloy.
He wondered if anyone would publish books any more or not, and I don’t know if they will. But here’s what I do know – this book will be published. We found a working photocopying machine in the city, and I am getting a dozen copies made of this journal. Our people must know and remember the price we paid in blood for our lives. They must remember never again to take our lives and freedom for granted. They must understand the true value of a life well lived.
The Captain thought that he would be little more than a chronicler of the undead, sitting in his study, watching the Moreko rampage below. Through his actions, he ended up being much more than that. He captured his own struggle to rise above himself and our collective struggle to cling onto life when death and the undead seemed to lurk around every corner. I will do my best to honor him with how we begin recreating our world, and I will try and carry forward the true role he ended up playing through this journal – as a chronicler of the living.
ABOUT MAINAK DHAR
Mainak Dhar is a cubicle dweller by day and writer by night
, with thirteen books to his credit. He has been published widely by major publishers in India like Random House and Penguin, but took the plunge into independent publishing with the Amazon Kindle Store in March 2011 to reach readers worldwide. In his first year on the Kindle store, he sold more than 100,000 ebooks, making him one of the top selling independent writers worldwide. He is the author of the Amazon.com bestseller Alice in Deadland and you can learn more about him and his writing at www.mainakdhar.com.
Books by Mainak Dhar
Fiction
Alice in Deadland
Through The Killing Glass: Alice in Deadland Book II
Off With Their Heads: The Prequel to Alice in Deadland
Zombiestan
Line of Control
Heroes R Us
Vimana
Non-Fiction
The Cubicle Manifesto
Brand Management 101
CREDITS
Coming up with the idea for a novel and writing it is often a solitary exercise, but bringing it to readers as a finished book is always a team effort. I’d like to thank the following for their help in producing the book you now hold in your hands. They, and others like them, make independent publishing much more enriching and rewarding for both authors and readers.
Cover design by Joseph Simmons
(http://www.jsimmonsillustration.com)
Editing by R.J.Locksley
(http://www.rjlocksley.blogspot.com)
eBook and Print formatting by Rebecca
(http://indiemobi.wordpress.com)
THE
PAINTED
DARKNESS
BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN
CEMETERY DANCE PUBLICATIONS
Baltimore
2010
Copyright © 2010 by Brian James Freeman
Introduction Copyright © 2010 by Brian Keene
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Cemetery Dance Publications
132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7
Forest Hill, MD 21050
http://www.cemeterydance.com
First Digital Edition Printing
ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-238-5
Cover Photograph of the Winter Forest
Copyright © 2010 by iStockPhoto.com/AzureLaRoux
Cover photograph of the Boy in the Rain Jacket
Copyright © 2010 by iStockPhoto.com/iacovou
Cover Images Assembled by Desert Isle Design
Digital Design by DH Digital Editions
For Kathryn…
With many thanks to my parents, the Hockers, Richard Chizmar, Mindy Jarusek, Andrea Wilson, Norman Prentiss, Douglas Clegg, Matt Schwartz, Stewart O’Nan, Peter Straub, William Peter Blatty, David Morrell, Bentley Little, Tess Gerritsen, Richard Matheson, Norman Partridge, Andrew Monge, Serenity Richards, Mark Sieber, Nanci Kalanta, Robert Mingee, Robert Brouhard, Jill Bauman, Russell Dickerson,
and Brian Keene.
ENTERTAINING ART:
AN INTRODUCTION
by Brian Keene
If you spend any amount of time perusing online discussion forums devoted to literature—especially genre literature—you’ll sooner or later come across the standard debate regarding art versus entertainment. Each side has its proponents…and its detractors, as well. The argument usually goes something like this: Good literature should be a work of art, just like a painting or a sculpture or a film or a song. It should strive to transcend human boundaries and give us a glimpse of some universal truth. Genre fiction and bestsellers, as typified by books like Twilight, The Da Vinci Code, and the works of such popular authors as Nora Roberts, Zane Grey, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King, are not art. They are written for and marketed to the masses as entertainment, and therefore, they are not art.
Well, fuck that noise.
Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot is an entertaining read, but it subtlety goes beyond merely spinning us a good yarn, and provides a fascinating and illuminating examination of the Death of Small Town America and thus, the death of the American Dream. Or how about Neil Gaiman? The man wields words the way Monet wielded a paintbrush. Read American Gods, The Graveyard Book, or any issue of Sandman and you’ll certainly come away entertained—but you’ll also emerge challenged and enriched for the experience. That’s because they are art. Entertaining art, but art nonetheless. Or how about J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove? Are you going to tell me they don’t deserve to hang in a museum of literature as the classics they are?
Sometimes you want entertainment and sometimes you want art. And sometimes you want both. Art and entertainment can be synonymous. Not everyone achieves this, of course. But those that do—you never forget them.
Which brings me to Brian James Freeman. I am an entertainer. Brian is an artist. I first met him nearly ten years ago, when he was a bright-eyed young man fresh out of high school and I was an already embittered thirty-something struggling to make a living as a writer. In the decade since then, I’ve gone on to write over fifteen books and a metric fuck-ton of short stories, comic books, and other assorted works of fiction. In that same ten year span, Brian has written one novel (the excellent Black Fire) and one novella (the superb Blue November Storms). He is not prolific. He is not quick. He takes his time, laboring over every word and nuance. He is not merely a craftsman, giving the people what they want. Brian James Freeman is an artisan. Yes, his stories are entertaining. Atmospheric, gripping—fiction that will give you immense enjoyment, but they transcend that, as well. You can spend a satisfying weekend with them. You can take them to the beach or out onto your patio deck and have a good time. But if you look beyond that, if you view them as works of art hanging in a museum, you’ll see truths revealed—about the human condition and creativity and life and death and all the little things that we take for granted each day. They aren’t always pretty truths. They aren’t always welcome truths. But they are truths nevertheless—some of the most important truths of all.
The printed page is Freeman’s canvas, and he is painting darkness.
Lose yourself in it.
Brian Keene
The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
—Henry David Thoreau
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
—Michelangelo
There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
THE BIRTH OF THE ARTIST
(1)
Just start at the beginning, Henry’s father once told him, and the rest will take care of itself.
These words of wisdom came during the waning hours of a beautiful March day when Henry was five years old—a day that began with a gift from Mother Nature and ended with the little boy running home as fast as his legs would carry him, bounding through the snowdrifts and dodging the thorny branches lining the path through the woods.
Once inside the safety of his family’s home at the end of Maple Lane, Henry fell to the hardwood floor in his bedroom, exhausted, his skin scratched, the wounds burning like they were on fire. His hands were bruised and bloody.
Henry crawled under his bed and closed his eyes and he prayed like he had never prayed before. Not the type of praying he did at bedtime every night as his mother watched, and not the generic prayers he said every week in church with the rest of the congregation. For the first time in his life, he was directing his message straight to God Himself, and Henry’s request was simple: please send a mighty angel to undo what had been done.
An hour later, the room grew dark as the sun vanished behind the mountains to the west, but Henry hadn’t moved an inch. Exhaustion and fear wouldn’t allow him. He still wore his
yellow rain slicker; his clothing was soaked in sweat; his face was damp with tears. The snow melting off his winter boots had trickled across the hardwood floor, forming a puddle of dirty water.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Henry heard the house’s front door open and close. A few minutes passed, but he didn’t dare move. He held his breath as he listened to the floorboards creaking through the house. The footsteps stopped outside his room and Henry almost couldn’t bring himself to watch as the door swung open.
A pair of heavy work boots crossed the room, every step a dull thud, and Henry let out a small cry. The boots stopped. The man’s pants were stained with grease and grime and bleach. He took a knee next to the puddle of melted snow and, after a brief moment, he reached under the bed with his weathered, callused hand.
Henry grabbed onto the giant hand and his father pulled him out in one quick, smooth motion. He hadn’t turned the lights on yet, but there was a bright beam of moonlight creeping past the curtains, slicing the bedroom in half. Henry stared into his father’s big eyes, which seemed to glow in the sparkling light. His father was a bear of a man, but he gently lifted Henry and sat him on the bed like someone moving the most delicate of antiques. Henry sobbed while his father rocked him in his enormous arms—and for a while, this did nothing to make the little boy feel better.
His father whispered: “It’ll be okay, Henry. Just start at the beginning and the rest will take care of itself.”