The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe - 1842

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The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".

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Thundarr the Barbarian - Magical Mystery Treasure by Sheila Shillingburg

From Thundarr.com, Thundarr the Barbarian - Matical Mystery Treasure is the second of two fan fiction stories by Sheila Shillingburg.

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THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN: MAGICAL MYSTERY TREASURE
By: Sheila Shillingburg

CHAPTER 1
POST APOCALYPSE

In the near future, a comet broke loose from its predetermined orbit, and streaked through space. It passed too close between the earth and the moon, tearing away some of the Earth's protective atmosphere. The moon shattered under the sudden burst of gravitational pull.

Down on the earth, things were no better. The earth quaked, volcanoes erupted, tsunamis washed away beaches, and whatever else happened to have been built there. Every sign of civilization was either destroyed or laid to ruin.

After a thousand years, people re-built their lives from the destruction. Like the mythical phoenix, a bird that rose from its own ashes, civilization began its slow return.

But, the new world that emerged was one rather primitive by our standards. A brutal, savage world of slaves, super-science, and sorcery. One man, a slave by the name of Thundarr, burst his bonds to fight for freedom and justice. Accompanied by the beast-like Ookla the Mok, and Princess Ariel, the sorceress who had helped Thundarr to free himself, he set about righting the wrongs of the future, and challenging the absolute rule of the tyrants. Armed with a powerful, magic sun sword, given to him by Ariel, and a hair-trigger temper, Thundarr was well equipped for battle.

Unfortunately, his knowledge of the past was limited to the few remnants he saw about him. A broken streetlight here, a priceless BMW--now smashed to bits and pieces--there. Although Thundarr and Ookla appreciated the learning of the past, and those who remembered it, they were ignorant of it. Only Princess Ariel knew anything at all about the vanished world. Her grandfather had taught her to read, and she had read almost every book in the library of her stepfather, the evil wizard Sabian. So, it was Ariel who knew the tales whispered by the ruins.

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Thundarr the Barbarian - How to Catch a Vampire by Sheila Shillingburg

From Thundarr.com, Thundarr the Barbarian - How to Catch a Vampire is the first of two fan-fiction stories by Sheila Shillingburg.

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THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN: HOW TO CATCH A VAMPIRE
By: Sheila Shillingburg

CHAPTER 1
ENTERING LAS VEGAS

Horse's hooves pounded the ground, and a trio of riders crested the hill. The lights of the desert oasis were beginning to come on, creating a twinkling labyrinth. The blond leader of the trio looked over it all. The beast-like creature woth him growled a question.
"People of the past enjoyed a sport called gambling," the raven haired woman with them began in explanation. "They created this town for their habits, and called it Las Vegas."

Their leader, Thundarr, made a move as if to turn away from the twinkling valley. "Maybe we should find a calnmer oasis," he suggested. But, his horse whinnied in protest.

"It's getting late, Thundarr," Princess Ariel said. "And, we're going to need a place to camp for the night."

In the animalistic tongue of his people, Ookla pointed out that this was the first oasis they had come to after days of riding. Their stores of food and water needed replenishing. Thundarr agreed that his freinds were right, and turned back to the futuristic Las Vegas.

The future had not been kind to Las Vegas, as it had not been kind to the rest of the earth. A comet had passed too close to the earth, shattering the moon; and tearing away some of the earth's protective atmosphere. The comet had lkong gone off into space, but left Earth in ruins.

After a thousand years, people rebuilt their lives from the ruins. But, the new world that emerged was one rather primitive, by our standards. A brutal world of slaves, super-science, and sorcery.

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Tales of a Blood Earth by Steven Montano

In the time after The Black, humans battle against the onslaught of the vampire armies of the Ebon Cities.

In a desolate patch of remote wasteland, a young woman named Rooke, part of a group of prisoners held by the corrupt prison wardens called The Revengers, struggles to stay alive. Ordered to unearth a terrible chamber of ancient power and hounded by once-frozen vampire savages, Rooke's journey into darkness will reveal forgotten secrets of the conflict that has brought The Black to our world.

But will Rooke survive long enough to tell anyone?

This 9,300 word short story originally appeared as a web-fiction series at www.bloodskies.com. This newly compiled edition also features new cover art and a sneak preview of Book 3 in the BLOOD SKIES series, "SOULRAZOR", coming March of 2012!

View Steven's other works at BloodSkies.com.

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TALES OF A BLOOD EARTH

one

Rooke saw red water and black skies.

She was dizzy. Her lips were dry and cracked.

The trees behind her formed a dark wall. Dirty golden light tried to break through the charcoal clouds, but couldn’t. Bodies crawled and toiled in the shadows on the bleak plains.

“Dig!”

The mud was as black as coal. Shards of shattered rock and blanched bones shifted in the crumbling morass. Her hands bled. Blisters and cuts riddled her pale skin beneath the ebon muck.

The air smelled of sulfur. To the west, the dark land went on forever. They dug holes at the edge of nowhere.

Rooke closed her eyes, just for a moment. In her mind, she escaped back to the swamp, where she used to hide on hot summer days and wait for miniature crocodiles to float by in the water so that she and her brother could catch them. They were quite good at it, really.

That was before she’d become a prisoner. Chattel of Black Scar.

A rod struck her from behind. Pain flared down her back. Rooke cried out.

“I said dig!”

There were twelve prisoners in all. Rooke was one of the only humans; most of the rest were Lith, Doj, or Gol. They weren’t allowed to speak, and as far as she had guessed they came from different cell blocks of Black Scar. She’d never seen any of her fellow diggers before they’d been put on the ship that morning, and when the day was done she doubted she’d ever see any of them again.

Revengers were close by. There were two men and a woman. Rooke didn’t know their names. The Revengers never told the inmates their names. They wore tight-fitting leather armor with enameled black shoulder plates, tall boots, and leather gauntlets. One of the men paced the ground in front of the diggers, his boots slurping in the cold mud. The other two stood on the ridge just in front of the line of trees, watching, joking about which prisoner would be the first to fall down from exhaustion and drown in the mud.

Rooke was sixteen. She’d been a prisoner in Black Scar for only a few weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. It was a dank and bottomless place, a dark and subterranean hell filled with violence and fear.

It was just as bad there, on the fields of dark mud. They might have been near Blackmarsh. There was no sign of civilization anywhere. The airship had brought them there, and those that survived the day-long dig would be flown back and dumped into their cells with a few scraps of whatever hadn’t been eaten by the other prisoners.

She dug, her hands numb. She tried to think again of the swamp, and of her brother, but she was afraid if she did that the Revengers would somehow know, and she would be struck again. So she dug, and tears made black from the mud ran down her face.

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A Plutonium Record by Maria Stanislav

This would be done in the memory of all musicians survived by their art...

The world has ended. Not entirely - it never really does that. Yet many things would never be the same again. As time goes on, people try to restore some semblance of the normality that used to be. Yet while everyone is busy trying to rebuild their own lives around them, some things lie forgotten, everyone's and no one's at the same time. Is it any surprise that the first person to remember about them is someone who has no life left to rebuild? Back in the old world, music had never failed to be of invaluable help to her. In the new one, she can repay the favor.

Visit Maria's site at https://thecoffeeclef.wordpress.com.

Read A Plutonium Record below, or download in PDF here.

To John and Patrick
(probably the entirely wrong place for a dedication)

Some say we are the cursed generation. On some days, I am sorely tempted to agree. After all, we have faced global warming and ensuing climate chaos, the gradual destruction of the ozone layer and the melting of ice shelves. We have seen innocent numbers become symbols of the death of thousands, and female names growing to be associated with disasters. We have experienced trepidation as the end of the century and the millennium coincided, and some follow-up on that as different calendars forecasted their own versions of the apocalypse.

Did it make us less cursed, or even more so, that we tended to laugh in the face of all that? Too many fears, too many tragedies – could anyone blame us for becoming maybe a bit more callous than was appropriate? Callousness can be both a blessing and a curse, in my experience. We could make fun of things we were supposed to be afraid of, and it helped. To an extent, at least. Because all those scares, they were hardly sufficient to earn us the name we could have bragged about under different circumstances, as did some X-ers, and then Y-ers, and as would the Z-ers, if there were a generation Z. But the real reason we were dubbed cursed was the fact that among the things we had witnessed was the end of the world. Even for us, that was rather hard to laugh off.

I lay the pen down and stretch my fingers, clenching and unclenching the fist a few times. Three years, and I still have trouble writing with my left hand.

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The Prophet.com by Brent Knowles

This is a story about the early years of the post apocalyptic hero Wanderer and tells of his search for his missing wife. He has not yet found his battlesuit and his foes in this tale are his fellow humans, the ones, like him, who have survived the end of days.

This story was originally published in END OF DAYS: AN APOCALYPTIC ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2 published by Living Dead Press.  You can see more of Mr Knowles work on Amazon.

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THE PROPHET.COM
by Brent Knowles

The helicopter disappears beyond the horizon and Wanderer returns his attention to the laptop sitting awkwardly on his knees, sharing space with a can of cold beans. He digs into the beans with a plastic spork as he views the web site behind his dust-covered screen. A photo of a large man with wide, powerful eyes, stares back at him.

It surprises him that these remnants of the old order linger still. Web sites: illusory constructs, full of ideas and utterly lacking in physical substance -- devoid even of the paper reality of a book. Of course, they too will fade eventually as power grids collapse and the servers of the world die. Well enough. As long as this one site remains, even if only to goad him.

He snaps the laptop shut, drops it into the bag where he carries his dwindling supply of batteries, and stands up, stretching, bones popping back into place. He takes a moment to stare across the badlands surrounding him and with a heavy sigh he picks up his equipment. There's less than when he started out. He walks. Dust rolls across his boots.

Figures approach Wanderer. He watches them out of his sun-squinting eyes as his hand drops to his gun but he does not worry. They are Scavengers and he is not a corpse. He watches them disappear into the sand dunes and wonders where they came from. Would they trek from Calgary all the way out here? Unless-

Adrenaline raises his pulse. Taking a swig of dry water from his canteen he carries on, wiping a callused hand over his bearded face and catching the pearls of water that cling to it. Ducking his head, he plows through the field of wind towards his destination. He walks for the day. Dusk comes before Salvation. But he knows it is near. He can smell the metal in the air, can almost taste it. That night he sleeps restlessly on sharp earth.

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Bad Hand Man by KH Koehler

In the post-apocalyptic world of the Skillet, fourteen-year-old Jake Stryker lives a miserable existence as an indentured slave to the Crayton clan. Then the Bad Hand Man blows into town and Jake's life changes dramatically. But is it for the better?

See more of Ms. Koehler's writings at http://www.khkoehler.com.

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– Shuffle –

A murmur went up in the town of Gehenna the day the Bad Hand Man rode in. He came in out of the Skillet on a massive, barrel-chested Suffolk as black as a raven’s breast, its nostrils exhaling smoke and sand like a machine on full power. The horseshoe-like symbol of the Regency was imprinted upon its riveted breastplate and sat between the creature’s flat, triangular ears. The creature bared its teeth at passersby, and those who saw creature and rider at first glance swore one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse had arrived.    

Then the blinding white sun was refracted by the animal’s joint rivets, and the scouring wind plucked at the edges of the rider’s duster to reveal a dusky purple silk lining. Women took their laundry in early that day, and the First Church of the Divine Restitution welcomed fifteen new Believers into its folds. The bingo parlor was closed for the first time in almost ten years.

What had been visited upon the town of Gehenna was no Horseman, yet its presence was no more reassuring.

Gehenna waited and watched.

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Jailbreak by Harry Shannon and Steven W. Booth

"Jailbreak," co-written by veteran writer Harry Shannon and newcomer Steven W. Booth, is actually the first chapter of a new briskly paced weird-western-zombie-apocalypse novel. This 5,000 word section has already appeared in "Best New Zombie Tales," the charity anthology "Dead Set," and is in also Harry Shannon's Stoker-nominated collection "A Host of Shadows" from Dark Regions Press.

The new novel, also starring Sheriff Penny Miller, is tentatively entitled "The Hungry." It will be released as an ebook and trade paperback late summer, 2011.

Read "Jailbreak" below, or visit the Amazon product page to add it to your Kindle.

"Say again?" Sheriff Miller slid worn boots from the edge of the desk, slammed them down on the messy floor. The antique office and jail were in the middle of yet another round of remodeling. Paint cloth whispered. Dust rose, spread and slowly settled. The old style radio crackled with static. Outside, night was spreading like a dark blanket over the little town that crouched further down the road.

"I said, he killed Miss Barbara by the library, Sheriff," Deputy Bob Wells said. He spoke rapidly, baritone voice thick with panic. "He killed her with his bare hands, so I shot him."

"Slow down. Shot who, damn it?"

A long pause. More static. "It was old man Grabowski, Sheriff. Sure as shit."

"Lazlo Grabowski is dead, Bob."

"I know."

Sheriff Penny Miller blinked and straightened her long legs. She leaned forward over the desk, stomach tingling. "You okay, Bob? You been drinking?"

"I ain't had a drop, Sheriff, I swear. It was the strangest damned thing I ever saw. Old Grabowski came out of the bushes while I was talking to Miss Barbara. Looked like shit, some sort of zombie. He tackled her and started...biting. I tried to pull him off her, but his arm came right out of his shoulder. Jesus, blood come out of her quick as a double-dicked bull pissing on a flat rock. Miss Barbara was screaming. He wouldn't stop, so I shot him. He kept on biting anyway. I shot him again, in the head this time, and then he quit."

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The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged) by John Varley

This is the best story and the worst story anybody ever wrote.

There’s lots of ways to judge the merit of a story, right? One of them is, are there a lot of people in it, and are they real. Well, this story has more people in it than any story in the history of the world. The Bible? Forget it. Ten thousand people, tops. (I didn’t count, but I suspect it’s less than that, even with all the begats.)

And real? Each and every character is a certified living human being. You can fault me on depth of characterization, no question about it. If I’d had the time and space, I could have told you a lot more about each of these people … but a writer has dramatic constraints to consider. If only I had more room. Wow! What stories you’d hear!

Admittedly, the plot is skimpy. You can’t have everything. The strength of this story is its people. I’m in it. So are you.

It goes like this:

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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a postapocalyptic science fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. It won a Hugo Award in 1968. It is one of the ten most reprinted stories in the English language.

---

Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.

When Gorrister joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, AM had duped us, had had its fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it.

Gorrister went white. It was almost as though he had seen a voodoo icon, and was afraid of the future. "Oh, God," he mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed him after a time, and found him sitting with his back to one of the smaller chittering banks, his head in his hands. Ellen knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. He didn't move, but his voice came out of his covered face quite clearly. "Why doesn't it just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don't know how much longer I can go on like this."

It was our one hundred and ninth year in the computer.

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