Tag: zombie movies

Whiskey Delta

Night_vision1“Ambulans mortuus: noun. Lit. “moving dead” (lat.). A viral strain that appeared in Western Hemisphere in the early 21st century. Origin unknown. Characterized by high fever and death in infected subjects, followed by reanimation and extremely violent behavior. No known cure.”

-Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2021 Edition.

Green and black. Always the same. Nothing ever looked different through NVGs. No other hues, just different grades of green and black. Some brilliant, some muted, but it didn’t matter. At night, all that mattered was what moved, and these days, it moved en masse.

Dezba lowered his scope and rubbed his eyes. After minutes spent looking at the green and black, even pitch black looked good. Less eerie, less filtered, less fake. The arms also had a way of stiffening after holding up an A1 for minutes at a time.

The headset crackled, the voice calling on over the squad’s general frequency.

“Hold your position. Keep your eyes peeled.”

He heard a sigh from beside him. At the other side of the foxhole, Mill was also taking a break. In his case it was to stretch his neck.

“Are we even sure about this intel?”

“The Mage said it’s tight, so it’s tight,” he replied, repeating the mantra. That seemed to be enough, since Mill went right back to sighting down his gun again.

Bringing the scope back into place, he got another eerie view of the landscape. There were the glowing patches nearest them, bright from the moonlight, and only small slices of black where shrubs cast their shadows. He scanned slowly left and then right, checking out the side scenery. He spotted the other shining Humvees, the LAV, and the other foxholes that were cast in grey. Plenty of mottled green helmets and dark weapons profiles filled them.

Beyond them was the relative dead of night and the line of Ponderosa pines that was black except for the few spots where the canopy opened to let things through. Not much seemed to be going on in there, but they wouldn’t know that for sure until it chose to step into open…

He looked back to the roadway next; the thin stretch of dirt and gravel that the old man said was their spot. Others had dismissed him as a coot, somebody who had nothing better to do but tell stories of doom and apocalypse. But the Mage thought otherwise.

For months now, they’d been spotting Whiskey’s inside the perimeter. Somehow, somewhere, they were making it through to 2nd Rattlesnake’s territory. Preying on the livestock and scaring the good folks, making them think their children would be next. No one knew where they were getting through, but where that was, it had to be sealed.

This place, he reasoned was the perfect spot for the Whiskeys to be walking in. Inconspicuous, unimportant, and with a natural canopy that made it inaccessible to the UAV’s. No one suspected that the Whiskeys were capable of reasoning that out, but it made sense to the Mage. The man’s word was law so long as they they had to contend with the presence of those walking nightmares.

And so, 2nd Battalion was sent in. No mistakes, no mercy. The Rattlesnake would bight back hard tonight. Assuming, of course, there was anything to bite at.

The call came in. “Eyes up”.

Dezba’s raised his gun into position. His heart began to pound and his hands tightened around the grips. Slowly, he scanned the horizon. No signs of movement. Mill didn’t see any either.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t see em,” said Dezba.

“What, man, I thought you Hopi fuckers could smell an enemy a mile away.”

Dezba smiled. “Wrong nation, asshole.”

He scanned left. Something seemed to be moving by the tree line. He sucked in a breath and centered the scope there. Another stirring. The bushes at the edge were moving.

Damn coyotes, he thought. If they had come all this way because of some mangy little scavengers, plenty of people would be pissed. Not the least of which would be himself. And while they waited, the real hole in their line might very well be filling with Whiskeys, on their way in towards town to find fresh victims. Tonight might even be the night that the damn things escalated and grabbed someone’s kid.

“Contact,” the Captain’s said, deep and low. He had to be right. He never lowered his voice except in the presence of the enemy. Somehow, knowing they were out there made him speak cautiously, like he worried they’d hear him.

Mill began to scan around too, moving his weapon back and forth. There was no time to reprimand him for breaking the basic rule. You move your head, not your SAW. One of the first things they taught you in basic. Spot your target, then point and shoot. Waving was for FNGs and fucking civilians.

“Shit… where?” Mill whispered. Dezba was wondering himself. As if on cue, the next call came in.

“Eleven o’clock level, in the treeline, coming towards the dirt road.”

Dezba zeroed in with his scope. He nearly swore out loud when he saw the hovering pair of eyes float into his field of view. Somehow, those eyes… they always glowed green through NV. He had never seen anybody else’s eyes do that before. Even coyotes didn’t get that sheen, and they glowed just fine in ambient light. Something about those dead, milky globes just loved to show up on night vision though.

By now, they were making their way out of the forest and into the moonlight. He had to zoom out just to get an idea of how many there really were. Luckily, the LT had a count ready just then.

“Whiskey Deltas at five hundred meters. Count two dozen plus Tangos, more coming…”

Sure enough, more followed. They moved slowly, as usual, but were gradually converging on the dirt road. Just like the old man said. Seems he was a lot less crazy than people suspected, and the Mage had been right once more…

“Standby,” the Captain ordered. Dezba did a quick check just to make sure his safety was off. At times like this, leaving it on could was just as deadly as forgetting to put it on when stowing it. With what he knew to be an armed rifle, he watched the glowing ghouls walk until they reached the road. Well over two dozen passed from the treeline, and more were coming…

 “Standby,” the Captain repeated, a note of urgency creeping into his voice.

The LAV’s and Humvee’s began moving their turrets into position. Their motors humming happily as their guns and cannons to target the dirt road. He could imagine how the crews felt because he was feeling the same way. They all were. Every finger poised, every heart pounding…

“Get some,” came the order.

Their line erupted in a blaze of muzzle flashes and tracer fire. For several minutes, nighttime disappeared as white phosphorous and hot lead turns the entire filed into another starry sky. The field opposite began kicking up dirt and fleshy bits too. Through his scope, Dezba saw nothing but bright flashes, pausing between shots to make sure his crosshairs were poised over a still-moving Whiskey.

“Get some! Get some!” came the calls over the line. Every soldier screaming into an open line to announce a kill. Dezba watched another one drop. Movement from an arm sent him a few degrees to the right, until he watched it fall and hit the ground. A 20mm round had turned one of them into a limbless freak, but the damn thing was still moving. A well placed sniper round hit it square in the brain pan and sent it to the ground a second later.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” came the order.

It took a second, but silence overtook them. The last of rifle fire burst like firecrackers in the night, then died out, replaced by the sounds of empty magazines being popped and fresh ones loaded.

“How you doing?” he asked Mill. Mill checked his ammo belt just to be sure.

“Good one-hundred rounds left on this drum.”

Dezba nodded and peered through his scope again. Everyone on the line did the same, staring through whatever Night Vision gear they had on them. All wanted to see what had become of the horde.

“Oh shit!”

Mill saw it through his goggles. Dezba saw it too through the scope.

Milky globes. More of them. Way more…

“Holy shit, why the hell have we stopped firing?”

“Be quiet!” Dezba ordered.

More still came. They didn’t appear too concerned about the pile up of bodies that lay directly in front of them. Only the smell of fresh flesh ever seemed to get them in the killing mood. And they seemed to have that now, judging by the way they were moving right at them…

“Standby…”

Dezba took a deep breath.

“Standby…”

Mill took one too.

“Count four dozen Whiskey Deltas. More on the way. Standby…”

It was the biggest group Dezba had ever seen. This was no mere breach in their perimeter. This was a big ol’ clusterfuck heading their way! Whoever the old man was, he’d be sailing high on a wave of credibility after this, assuming any of them made it home to tell!

“Standby…”

The horde seemed to be picking up speed now. They were onto the smell of fresh flesh. And at least a dozen more moved from the tree-line into the open field. That made at least sixty that were now on the roadway. They moved with a purpose now, just like they had seen in the footage. And at this rate, they’d be upon them in less than a minute. What the hell were they waiting for? They could already see the whites of their eyes!

He could hear voices yelling from the other foxholes, cries of disbelief and panic. And yet, they held their fire, waiting for the order. The Mage didn’t tolerate no wayward scum in his battalion.

“Get some!”

The Lieutenant didn’t even need the coms this time. He yelled it loud enough for everyone to hear from his Humvee, and everyone happily obliged. Their line opened up again and another hail of glowing metal began to litter the field with bodies. Between the constant drum of Mill’s Saw and Dezba’s own rifle firing in three round bursts, all his ears should have been able to register was the steady thump, thump, thump of the LAV’s cannons.

And yet, there was something else approaching. A different kind of thumping accompanied by the high pitched whine of jet engines.  Dezba looked to the sky but couldn’t see a thing with the trees over their heads. But he heard it, the unmistakable sound of Cobras. And soon, he could hear their guns mowing too! Everybody else seemed to as well, because a cheer began to go up all along the line.

The only ones who didn’t know what hit them were the Whiskey’s. They continued to run, right through a hail of metal which began to chew them to pieces. Given the size of the bullets and the rate at which they slammed into them, no head shots were necessary. Every bastard who was hit was down for good.

And that’s when they let the rockets fly. The Platoon hollered once more as the night was lit up by fiery HE rounds exploding into the Earth and turning anything still moving into mush. The yelling kept up even as the thunderclap subsided and the coms became active.

“Viper, be advised, Voodoos are on station and bringing in air support, over.”

 The Lieutenant signaled back, his voice grateful and jovial.

“Voodoo, this is Viper actual. Damn glad to see you guys, over.”

There was what sounded like a chuckle at the other end, followed by more of the airman’s measured tone.

“We have eyes on target area, Viper. No further movement or indications of infiltration. Returning to base, over.”

“Roger that, Voodoo, thanks for the assist!”

The sound of rotors began to fade into the distance. Dezba could hear himself breathing again and realized he was breathing pretty hard. His heart was moving pretty fast as well. It couldn’t be helped. What started as a simple tip had turned into the biggest firefight of his career; the biggest of anyone’s on the line, he guessed.

“Shit,” Mill said, pointing to the tree line opposite them. “Look at that.”

Dezba looked across the field, saw nothing except from some flaming bushes and plenty of chunked up Earth. Mill could tell he wasn’t seeing it.

“No, further man. Use the scope. I see fires over at the forest there.”

Dezba raised the Starlight and saw what he meant. From the looks of it, some of the Cobra’s fire had caught on some of the trees. Mainly underbrush was catching, but chances were, it would be a full flame-up by morning. The entire field of Ponderosa’s would be nothing but ash.

“Relax, Gordy,” he said. “Fire’s good. Fire cleans up a Whiskey’s mess. By morning, any undead fuckers in there will be toasted!”

Mill scoffed. “Too bad we can’t eat em!”

The Zombie Graph

Hey folks, remember this infographic from a few years back? I seem to remember posting about months ago, possibly in reference to 28 Days Later because I thought it was just so clever. Well, yesterday as I was typing out my zombie story, I got to thinking about this graph and how it applied to the basic rules I’ve seen in zombie movies.

As you can see, they not only classify zombies based on how fast and how smart they are, but also what form their zombie-hood takes. The basic breakdown they use involves three categories – undead, diseased, or possessed. This is one more than I acknowledged and I wonder if its apt. Can you really distinguish between diseased and undead when so many examples are both?

For example, the dead in The Walking Dead were the result of a disease, but they were totally undead creatures. A lot of time goes into explaining just how undead they are when they show that even dismembered and beheaded zombies are alive so long as their brains are still intact. This puts them apart from the zombies in 28 Days Later who were also the result of a virus but were still very much alive.

And then you’ve got the zombies in Dawn of the Dead (the 2004 remake) which were clearly the result of a virus (since the infection spread through bites) but were also undead. Shaun of the Dead follows the exact same pattern, with zombies who can withstand getting a pipe through the chest and losing a limb, but who won’t die until you shatter their brain pan. And even though I’ve never seen any of the Resident Evil movies, my understanding was they too were both undead and the result of a virus.

Am I picking nits here, because I’ve been known to do that. Or this could all just be the result of over-analysis as a result of over-research. I tend to do that as well. Yeah, it really doesn’t matter much, unless you’re trying to write for the genre and insist on understanding all the ins and outs of zombie creation. Mainly I just wanted to share the graph again because its fun and it puts people in mind of their favorite zombie flicks.

One question though… where would a Bath Salts zombie fall into all this? And how about that drunken weirdo in China? Do we need to revise this graph to take into account “substance abuse zombies”?

 

My First Zombie Story: Whiskey Delta!

Hello all! The other I decided that it was high time for me to try my hand at some Zombie literature. I’ve had an idea kicking around in my head, right next to where I was keeping “Frontera“, and it’s time to let it out! And so I give you the first draft of my post-apocalyptic zombie tale, “Whiskey Delta”!

Due to plenty of exposure to zombie flicks of late, zombie series, and zombie literature, I’ve come to learn a few things about the genre and what works, at least for me. Much like with Vampires, there are basically two big questions which determine what kind of film, book, series it’s going to be.

First of all, the zombies can either be the result of viral infection or the resurrected dead. This is what I would call the “paranormal vs. biological” realm and most franchises these days tend to go with the latter approach. Somehow, zombies that are the result of a viral infection are a lot more plausible than a biblical allegory.

Second, they can either be hotblooded living creatures that are consumed with the desire to kill, or slow, dottering undead creatures that look and smell horrible! This is what would be referred to as the “Infected vs. Undead” factor. The former is the kind of approach 28 Days Later took, while the latter is epitomized by such series as The Walking Dead.

Examples abound, and I hope people like the direction I took. Here is the first installment in the story, the prologue to the rest of the piece. And keep in mind, it’s a first draft so be gentle. And there’s naughty language too. And violence and zombies. But you already knew that last part didn’t ya? Enjoy!

Green and black. Always the same. Nothing ever looked different through a Starlight. No other hues, just different gradients of green on black. Some brilliant, some muted, but it didn’t matter. At night, all that mattered was what moved, and these days, it moved en masse.

Dezba lowered his scope and rubbed his eyes. After minutes spent looking at the green and black, even pitch black looked good. Less eerie, less filtered, less fake. The arms had a way of stiffening after holding up an A1.

The headset crackled, the voice calling on over the squad’s general frequency.

“Hold your position. Keep your eyes peeled.”

He heard a sigh from beside him. At the other side of the foxhole, Mill was also taking a break. In his case it was to stretch his neck.

“Are we even sure about this intel?”

“The Mage said it’s tight, so it’s tight,” he replied, repeating the mantra. That seemed to be enough, since Mill went right back to sighting down his sights again. Equipped with the SAW, which held no scope, he was the heavy gunner in their foxhole and couldn’t make a move until Dezba did.

Bringing the Starlight back into place, he got another eerie view of the landscape again. There were the glowing patches nearest them, bright from the moonlight that touched down on it, only small slices of black where shrubs cast their shadows. He scanned this way and that, checking out the side scenery. He spotted the other shining Humvee, the LAV, and the other foxholes that were cast in grey.

Beyond them was the relative dead of night. The line of Ponderosa pines that was black except for the few spots where the canopy opened to let things through. Not much was going on in there, until it chose to step into open…

He looked back to the roadway next; the thin stretch of dirt and gravel that the old man said was their spot. Others had dismissed him as a coot, somebody who had nothing better to do. But the Mage believed him, and so here they were. Sitting in wait, expecting that this was the point where the Whiskeys had been getting through the perimeter…

Finally the call came. “Eyes up”.

Dezba’s raised his gun into position. His heart began to pound and his hands tightened around the grips. Slowly, he scanned the horizon. No signs of movement. Next to him, Mill began to stir anxiously, waving the end of SAW around.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t see em,” said Dezba.

“What, man, I thought you Hopi fuckers could smell an enemy a mile away.”

Dezba smiled. “Wrong nation asshole.”

He scanned left. Something seemed to be moving by the tree line. He sucked in a breath and centered the scope there. Another stirring. The bushes at the edge were moving.

Damn coyotes, he thought. If they had come all this way because of some mangy little scavengers. And while they waited, the real hole in their line might very well be filling with Whiskeys, on their way in to find fresh victims. Tonight might even be the night that the damn things escalated and grabbed someone’s kid.

“Contact,” the Captain’s voice called. Deep and low. He had to be right.

Mill began to move his weapon back and forth with jerky movements.

“Shit… where?” he whispered. Dezba was wondering himself.

“Eleven o’clock high, by the treeline, coming towards the road.” Dezba and Mill both looked to their left. Small spots of bright green, black patches in their wake. “Confirmed, Whiskey Deltas at two hundred meters.”

More followed. They moved slowly, as usual, but were gradually converging on the dirt road. Just like the old man said…

“Standby,” the Captain ordered. Dezba did a quick check just to make sure his safety was off. At times like this, leaving it on could was just as deadly as forgetting to put it on. With what he knew to be an armed rifle, he watched the glowing ghouls walk until they reached the road.

And just like that, they changed course, as one. Each and every member of their little party turned and began walking on the gravel and dirt path that had been cleared from the brush. Moving, aiming the shadowy faces and milky eyes in the direction of the forest opposite them. It was almost enough to make one stop and think…

“Standby,” the Captain repeated, a note of urgency creeping into his voice.

The bodies kept moving, their heads coming into full view now as the last of them left the cover of the street for the moonlit path. He could see their milky eyes now, count every hair on their rotting heads.

“Get some,” came the order.

The line erupted in muzzle flashes and tracer fire, the field opposite kicking up dirt and fleshy bits a nanosecond later. Through his scope, Dezba saw nothing but bright flashes, pausing between shots to make sure his crosshairs were poised over a still-moving Whiskey.

“Get some! Get some!” he yelled between bursts.

Another one dropped. Movement from an arm sent him a few degrees to the right. The LAV must have seen it too because several tracers erupted around the downed body a second later. Dezba adjusted his fire again, closer to their line where the first of them had reached the road. Nothing but crawling bodies now, and he was sure to go right for the exposed heads.

“Cease fire!” came the order. “I say  again, cease fire!”

Not everybody seemed to hear, as guns were still going. Dezba shoved Mill with his boot to get him to stop. The last shot echoed out finally and new orders came.

“First Squad, enter the field and dispatch any movers.”

To his left, the Sarge from 1st was quick to respond. “Roger that, sir. First Squad is Oscar Mike.”

“Get to sit this one out, huh Cochise?”

Dezba scowled. How fucking hard was it to remember his real name? But then again not much could be expected from those he called friends. In the grand scheme of things Whiskey Tangos were just a step up from Whiskey Deltas. Dumb as shit and only half as ugly.

More shots rang out shortly thereafter. He brought the Starlight back up and caught a glimpse of 1st Squad doing its thing out in the field. One by one, he identified the six of them as they walked between the corpses, sending bullets from their M9’s into the heads of the downed bodies. The familiar tap, tap, taps of their guns was a reassuring sound at the end of a long night.

He picked out the Sarge just as his hand went to his head set to give the all clear.

“Eleven confirmed, sir. All dead.”

“Dead,” Mill said with a laugh. ”How fucked up is that?”

“You know what he means.”

“Right…”

His headset buzzed again with the final order. “Commence sanitizing.”

Dezba raised the Starlight to his eye for the last time to watch as 1st Squad finished with the last of it. One by one, the bodies were thrown together in the middle of the dirt road. The Sarge came around when they done and poured from a green can until they were thoroughly doused. He was sure to drop the scope before anyone set it all ablaze. Flames weren’t too pretty when seen through NV.

“Whoo, look at em burn,” Mill said. The pile blazed in no time at all, the fire rising to consume the filth and dead flesh.

“Too bad we can’t eat em, huh?” Dezba regretted saying it the second it came out of his mouth. It was all he could do to get the taste of filth out of his mouth now. Luckily Mill seemed to get a laugh from it.

“Cook em long enough, I’m sure it’s safe!”

Dezba suppressed a gag and set his foot on the top of the foxhole. He took a second to safety his weapon again before using it as a counterbalance to hoist himself out. 1st Squad cleaned up, which meant 2nd would have the less unenviable duty of making sure no more Whiskeys came this way again. Luckily, they brought enough motion detectors and frag mines to ensure that wouldn’t happen again.

“Guess the old man’s intel was right on the money,” Mill said, following him as he extricated the hole.

“You know what they say, man. The Mage knows.”

The Alien Graph

The Alien Graph

Behold! After a few days of contemplating what I said in the Ancient Aliens post – you know, about how alien’s technology and moral capacity are often interrelated in sci-fi – I realized I needed to put it into graphic form. And as I said in that post, if we are to consider technological advancement as one axis and level of benevolence as another, then the outcome would look something like this:

click to enlarge

The design is based on the Zombie graph that’s been floating around the internet for some time. There, the designer placed different Zombie movies based on two criteria: intelligence and speed. In much the same way, I’ve designed a graph for aliens that is based on two similar criteria: technological advancement and level of friendliness.

I selected aliens that I thought best represented the range of development and behavior in the sci-fi genre. I also included as many franchises as I could think of, just off the top of my head. I certainly wasn’t scientific about it, just relative and to the best of my abilities. And when I was done, I noticed an interesting pattern…

Hostile/Advanced Aliens Rule!:
For example, notice how the vast majority of races from your well-known franchises (Star Trek, B5, Stargate, Star Craft, AvP, Halo, etc) fall into the upper left quadrant. This is the area where malevolence and technological sophistication combine in varying degrees. By contrast, the second largest concentration of races occurs in the advanced/benevolent quadrant, again to varying degrees. Almost no races fall into the nascent (i.e. primitive) quadrants, be they hostile or gentle.

On the one hand, the Xenomorph from Alien and the Arachnids from Starship Troopers both fell into the technologically backward category (technically), and were both classified as malevolent because of their innate hostility to foreign organisms. The Na’vi, from Avatar, were the only alien race that fit the bill for technologically nascent and benevolent. I’m sure there are plenty of examples that could stack this analysis in a different way, but like I said, this was off the top of my head.

The Zerg, I have to admit, were a bit of a conundrum for me. While they are technically a race that does not employ technology per se, they are highly advanced in terms of their biological evolution, to the point where they rely on specialized creatures in the same way that humans rely on machinery. But then again, that’s all for the sake of ensuring that the different factions in the video game are evenly matched. It’s not meant to be a realistic assessment. Much the same is true of the Xenomorphs. While they do not employ tools, fly around in spaceships, or use guns, they are nevertheless an extremely evolved organism that is capable of besting humanity in any contest.

And just to be clear, the middle point of the graph (0,0, where the axes meet) is where humanity stands now in terms of moral behavior and technological development. Sure, some say we’d fall into the evil quadrant, but I tend to believe that humanity is morally ambiguous, neither too good or too evil. Where aliens fall into the spectrum in most sci-fi franchises is meant to reflect this. Much the same is true of technological prowess, where aliens are classified as “advanced” or “primitive” solely in comparison to ourselves.

This all might sound anthropocentric, but that’s the point, isn’t it? These are stories written by human beings for other human beings. All the references, symbols and measuring sticks come from inside us. So in the end, aliens themselves, as represented in our best science fiction, also come from inside ourselves. Their values, their tools, and even their appearances are all constructs of what is familiar and accessible to us. In short, they are merely tools with which we measure ourselves, both morally and technically.

Conclusions:
Well, right off the cuff I’d say the reason we prefer our aliens hostile and advanced is because it makes them seem more threatening and scary that way. Clearly, this makes for a more interesting story. While an alien race that is kind, innocent and backwards can make for an effective tale about the evils of colonialism and imperialism and how one can easily find themselves on the side of evil, these seem to be fewer and farther between. I’d say this is most likely because moral allegories are less intriguing than action dramas. Or maybe just prefer to think of ourselves as the good guys. Let someone else serve as the allegory for evil, selfish and runaway imperialistic behavior!

In addition, there’s the very real possibility that humanity will be making contact with an intelligent life form at some point in the future. And when we do, it’s likely to be the most awe-inspiring and frightening of experiences. When it comes to the unknown, ignorance begets fear and we prefer to err on the side of caution. So it would make sense that whenever we think of aliens, even if its just for the sake of fiction, we would naturally prefer to think of them as both learned and potentially hostile. If indeed aliens serve as a sort of projection for humanity’s own thoughts on itself, than pitching them as potentially hostile beings with advanced technology represents our own fear of the unknown.

In any case, if there is life out there, all these questions will be resolved in the distant future. Hell, maybe even the near-future. If some theorists are to be believed, aliens have already made contact with us and might even be walking among us right now. Granted, most of these people are hanging around the 7/11 with tin foil hats on, but they can’t all be crazy, right?