Writing Request: Heave
Dec. 30th, 2007 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaOkay! Next up on the writing request is ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
i_kender's request for some zombie apocalypse fic. I have done my best to oblige!
Clocks in at about 1600 words.
"Dude," Jacky says, ducking his head between these thick strips of plastic hanging over the door, like it's the way into a freezer. "Dude, this is so not that milking place. There are like, those, like hooky things. You know, for like, hanging up dead cows and shit."
He steps back and turns around, looking a little queasy, which is probably what I ought to expect from a guy who's so jumpy he just pumped our last two slugs into a housecat, and thought, "Shit, man! It could have been a zombie farmer!" was a good enough reason.
"Hooky things?" Is what I say to him.
"Yeah, man. For like, killing cows. Like a slaughterhouse or something."
"The word you're looking for, is abattoir."
"Well shit, excuse me for forgetting my dictionary."
"Thesaurus."
"Cows, man. Not fucking dinosaurs."
"I swear, if you weren't related to me and we weren't in the middle of some kind of outbreak -"
"Zombie apocalypse."
"Outbreak," I said, real firm. "I would leave you to the next zombie farmer's housecat we find."
Jacky sneers and tightens the straps on his backpack. "I'm going in," he says.
"What for?" I ask. "They gonna have plastic tubing in there? Yeah, I hear that stuff's essential when you're killing animals. We need to siphon petrol from the farm machinery, not pick up some 'hooky things', you ass."
Jacky lifts his middle finger and steps through the doorway. So, punk that I am, I follow. But not before I roll my eyes. Just for the benefit of God, or whoever's watching.
Inside, it's huge. We're down one end in a section that looks, well, creepy. It's tiled, and the tiles are white, but the grouting in between them is a dark colour . Like dried-blood red. It's leading down to these big, wide drains, and there are sprinklers up above that I guess must be for sluicing away all the stuff that drains out of a dead cow. Up above are vicious meathooks.
Of course, when he sees me, the first thing Jacky does is pretend like this place isn't creeping him out at all. He takes off his backpack, hooks one strap over one of those ceiling hooks, grabs onto the other, and kicks off like he's on some assault course rope swing.
Jacky and the backpack and the hook skid about thirty feet on a metal ceiling rail. He laughs, then pushes off again, travelling even further into the abattoir. Teenagers. I swear to God.
I follow him at a walking pace until he's swung his way to the end of a switched-off conveyor belt with rails on each side and a metal wall at the end. The metal wall is split in two about half way up and there's a circular hole in the middle. Like about the size it'd need to be to hold a cow still by the neck while someone put a bolt in its brain or shocked it.
Jacky's hook slots neatly into the end of the ceiling rail. There's a clanky metal click that makes him frown and stare up.
"Over there," I say, pointing to a couple of switches at the end of the conveyor. Jacky squints at them, then presses one and with a mechanical thunk, the hooks starts dropping from the roof.
"The hell's that for?" Jacky asks.
"You wanna try and lift a dead cow?" I ask, distracted, fiddling with the end of the metal hook. If I can get it free of the winch, it could be useful, now we're out of ammo. Though the thought of having to take on one of the...creatures in hand to hand makes me feel about as queasy as Jacky is. Good thing I'm better at hiding it.
"Uh, Ric?"
"What?" I ask, not looking because I've almost, almost got this thing free.
"Rico!" Jacky's voice comes again, raising an entire octave.
So I look up because not even Jacky's that jump and holy shit, there's something on the conveyor belt, moving. A huge, hulking mass getting to it's...feet?
"Rico?"
"Just...just hold on," I say, still fumbling with the end of the meathook. "It might not be..."
But if I didn't know that awkward, swaying motion, the way the creatures seem to gather up all the kinetic energy in the air before moving so much faster than those damn Hollywood flicks promised us, if I didn't know that, I'd know the low, groaning that just came out of its mouth. So low it's almost a clicking; so primal it's almost something you'd hear in a porno, or from someone who'd gone mad with grief.
It's fucking terrifying to hear it come out of a cow.
Finally, the hook is free in my hands. So heavy I can barely lift it, but maybe if I'm lucky, if I've got enough adrenaline, I can whack it between the eyes as it gets off the conveyor. Any second now; I have to be ready, any second it'll move.
Jacky's picked up a long metal rod from the ground - a shock stick. Cattleprod. "That won't do any good Jacky," I say.
"Yeah, but - "
"Run," I tell him. "I'll be right behind you."
That's when it happens. The cow moves and it moves fast. I'm watching it so hard, I barely notice Jacky slamming his fist onto the other button at the end of the conveyor. The part of me that does notice is already too panicked to panic more, but it does want to slap him upside the head. Hard. Like that thing needs any help getting to me.
Except it isn't. It's slowing down. Like gravity is slowing it down. Like Jacky started up the conveyor belt in the opposite direction. In the split second that we look at each other, Jacky gives me a grin that says, "I told you I wasn't stupid," and I give him a look that says, "Maybe, but you'll be dead if you don't start running."
So we run. Jacky ahead of me because I'm dragging the hook, screeching and scratching across the floor.
About halfway to the tiled section and the door and escape, I hear this almighty crash and look back to see that the creature has tried to jump clean over the belt's side-penning. It's too high for any normal cow to jump, and it's made it, but landed nose-first on the hard concrete floor. Looks like it's dislocated a hind leg, too. But it's already pushing itself to its hooves, restarting its pursuite in a loping three-legged canter that would be hilarious if it weren't trying to kill me and my kid brother.
We're nearly to the door; we're nearly outside. Of course as soon as I think that I realise it's irrelevant. The cow will just follow us. Me versus it in a big, wide yard. There's got to be more in here that can help me, give me an edge. There's got to be.
I skid to a halt. "All right," I yell to Jacky. "Outside."
He shakes his head; grabs the cattleprod in both hands.
I turn to face the cow, bearing down on us. There's seconds, just seconds. "Get the fuck outside, Jacky!" I bellow, but don't spare any attention to see if he's following orders. I slide the curved hook through the gaps in the drain-cover and heave.
The cow is hurtling towards me, head down for a collision. I'm straining with everything I've got and then some, and praying that what I learned in high school about leverage was true. And wondering if I'd joined the army or become a body-builder instead of ditching out of university to work for my dad, I'd be any better prepared for this.
Probably not.
The cow is two seconds away.
The drain is coming loose.
Heave.
The cow is one second away. I'm flying backwards with a hook and a drain hooked to the end of it. The cow stumbles, crumples, one front leg entirely sunk into the drain, its forward momentum probably breaking it as cleanly as its hind leg when it tried to clear the guard rail.
I'm trying to get to me feet, to lift the hook up like a club, to move before it's too late.
And there's Jacky. Cattleprod straight to the back of the neck. Of course, it won't kill it, won't really hurt it permanently. But it's got muscles like anything else and now they're spasming, out of control.
"Thanks," I say, breathless.
I kick the drain from the end of my weapon, turn it so the point is facing me, and I have the long rounded back to bludgeon with. Down it goes, right into the cows good leg. Then down, and down again.
Then I do the same to its good back leg. So it's just a hunk of cow with no way of raising itself up, no way of following us. Desperately trying to will itself forward on its broken and trapped limbs.
Again, it might be funny, if it was a film. If I wasn't maiming something.
"It's all right, Jacky. We got it. Go outside now, okay?"
This time, he does what I say.
I put my foot against the cow's skull. Aim the pointed end of the hook at its eye. Close my eyes, pull the hook towards me until it meets resistance and heave.
I try not to think about where I am and what I'm doing, and how long it's going to be before I die. I try to just think about breaking apart the head of this cow. And then I feel a little sick, so I just think about pulling until there's nothing to pull against anymore, and that helps.
I squeeze my eyes a little tighter, and I heave.
***
Initially I wasn't sure how to approach this as it's a setting (zombie apocalypse) rather than an actual plot in and of itself. I didn't want to tell the story of how the zombie apocalypse started as that would be really long and has been done many times. But since the notion of a zombie apocalypse is so iconic (at least on the internets!) I figure, I can make use of that understanding of the background the way fan fiction makes use of the readers' knowledge of the setting and just tell a story set during a zombie apocalypse. But still...what?
I wasn't having much luck coming up with a story from scratch that would either benefit being told during a zombie apocalypse or that solved one in an interesting way (see: I can do plot under some circumstances but it's...problematic and I usually need prompting). Though (I share because I find it amusing), I briefly toyed with the idea of writing, "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret. Look, God, you might want to rethink this whole Zombie Apocalypse thing..."
But anyway, I figured I'd use the opportunity to work on another weakness I have - action scenes. I'd write a zombie-apocalypse-fight. All I needed was a cool setting for the fight. After toying with toy stores, museums and ice-rinks, I finally asked Kev where he thought I should set it. He said an abattoir and I actually really liked that idea and had some immediate thoughts about how the fight would proceed. So that's where I ended up writing it.
And that's the story of this story!
I hope you all enjoyed. :)
i_kender - thanks again for the prompt; whether the story ends up one of my best or kind of shabby, it's really good to have the motivation to actually write and finish these little, short tales.
Next up -asta77 requests some Lee & Laura in Razor! Now I just have to get an idea...
i_kender's request for some zombie apocalypse fic. I have done my best to oblige! Clocks in at about 1600 words.
"Dude," Jacky says, ducking his head between these thick strips of plastic hanging over the door, like it's the way into a freezer. "Dude, this is so not that milking place. There are like, those, like hooky things. You know, for like, hanging up dead cows and shit."
He steps back and turns around, looking a little queasy, which is probably what I ought to expect from a guy who's so jumpy he just pumped our last two slugs into a housecat, and thought, "Shit, man! It could have been a zombie farmer!" was a good enough reason.
"Hooky things?" Is what I say to him.
"Yeah, man. For like, killing cows. Like a slaughterhouse or something."
"The word you're looking for, is abattoir."
"Well shit, excuse me for forgetting my dictionary."
"Thesaurus."
"Cows, man. Not fucking dinosaurs."
"I swear, if you weren't related to me and we weren't in the middle of some kind of outbreak -"
"Zombie apocalypse."
"Outbreak," I said, real firm. "I would leave you to the next zombie farmer's housecat we find."
Jacky sneers and tightens the straps on his backpack. "I'm going in," he says.
"What for?" I ask. "They gonna have plastic tubing in there? Yeah, I hear that stuff's essential when you're killing animals. We need to siphon petrol from the farm machinery, not pick up some 'hooky things', you ass."
Jacky lifts his middle finger and steps through the doorway. So, punk that I am, I follow. But not before I roll my eyes. Just for the benefit of God, or whoever's watching.
Inside, it's huge. We're down one end in a section that looks, well, creepy. It's tiled, and the tiles are white, but the grouting in between them is a dark colour . Like dried-blood red. It's leading down to these big, wide drains, and there are sprinklers up above that I guess must be for sluicing away all the stuff that drains out of a dead cow. Up above are vicious meathooks.
Of course, when he sees me, the first thing Jacky does is pretend like this place isn't creeping him out at all. He takes off his backpack, hooks one strap over one of those ceiling hooks, grabs onto the other, and kicks off like he's on some assault course rope swing.
Jacky and the backpack and the hook skid about thirty feet on a metal ceiling rail. He laughs, then pushes off again, travelling even further into the abattoir. Teenagers. I swear to God.
I follow him at a walking pace until he's swung his way to the end of a switched-off conveyor belt with rails on each side and a metal wall at the end. The metal wall is split in two about half way up and there's a circular hole in the middle. Like about the size it'd need to be to hold a cow still by the neck while someone put a bolt in its brain or shocked it.
Jacky's hook slots neatly into the end of the ceiling rail. There's a clanky metal click that makes him frown and stare up.
"Over there," I say, pointing to a couple of switches at the end of the conveyor. Jacky squints at them, then presses one and with a mechanical thunk, the hooks starts dropping from the roof.
"The hell's that for?" Jacky asks.
"You wanna try and lift a dead cow?" I ask, distracted, fiddling with the end of the metal hook. If I can get it free of the winch, it could be useful, now we're out of ammo. Though the thought of having to take on one of the...creatures in hand to hand makes me feel about as queasy as Jacky is. Good thing I'm better at hiding it.
"Uh, Ric?"
"What?" I ask, not looking because I've almost, almost got this thing free.
"Rico!" Jacky's voice comes again, raising an entire octave.
So I look up because not even Jacky's that jump and holy shit, there's something on the conveyor belt, moving. A huge, hulking mass getting to it's...feet?
"Rico?"
"Just...just hold on," I say, still fumbling with the end of the meathook. "It might not be..."
But if I didn't know that awkward, swaying motion, the way the creatures seem to gather up all the kinetic energy in the air before moving so much faster than those damn Hollywood flicks promised us, if I didn't know that, I'd know the low, groaning that just came out of its mouth. So low it's almost a clicking; so primal it's almost something you'd hear in a porno, or from someone who'd gone mad with grief.
It's fucking terrifying to hear it come out of a cow.
Finally, the hook is free in my hands. So heavy I can barely lift it, but maybe if I'm lucky, if I've got enough adrenaline, I can whack it between the eyes as it gets off the conveyor. Any second now; I have to be ready, any second it'll move.
Jacky's picked up a long metal rod from the ground - a shock stick. Cattleprod. "That won't do any good Jacky," I say.
"Yeah, but - "
"Run," I tell him. "I'll be right behind you."
That's when it happens. The cow moves and it moves fast. I'm watching it so hard, I barely notice Jacky slamming his fist onto the other button at the end of the conveyor. The part of me that does notice is already too panicked to panic more, but it does want to slap him upside the head. Hard. Like that thing needs any help getting to me.
Except it isn't. It's slowing down. Like gravity is slowing it down. Like Jacky started up the conveyor belt in the opposite direction. In the split second that we look at each other, Jacky gives me a grin that says, "I told you I wasn't stupid," and I give him a look that says, "Maybe, but you'll be dead if you don't start running."
So we run. Jacky ahead of me because I'm dragging the hook, screeching and scratching across the floor.
About halfway to the tiled section and the door and escape, I hear this almighty crash and look back to see that the creature has tried to jump clean over the belt's side-penning. It's too high for any normal cow to jump, and it's made it, but landed nose-first on the hard concrete floor. Looks like it's dislocated a hind leg, too. But it's already pushing itself to its hooves, restarting its pursuite in a loping three-legged canter that would be hilarious if it weren't trying to kill me and my kid brother.
We're nearly to the door; we're nearly outside. Of course as soon as I think that I realise it's irrelevant. The cow will just follow us. Me versus it in a big, wide yard. There's got to be more in here that can help me, give me an edge. There's got to be.
I skid to a halt. "All right," I yell to Jacky. "Outside."
He shakes his head; grabs the cattleprod in both hands.
I turn to face the cow, bearing down on us. There's seconds, just seconds. "Get the fuck outside, Jacky!" I bellow, but don't spare any attention to see if he's following orders. I slide the curved hook through the gaps in the drain-cover and heave.
The cow is hurtling towards me, head down for a collision. I'm straining with everything I've got and then some, and praying that what I learned in high school about leverage was true. And wondering if I'd joined the army or become a body-builder instead of ditching out of university to work for my dad, I'd be any better prepared for this.
Probably not.
The cow is two seconds away.
The drain is coming loose.
Heave.
The cow is one second away. I'm flying backwards with a hook and a drain hooked to the end of it. The cow stumbles, crumples, one front leg entirely sunk into the drain, its forward momentum probably breaking it as cleanly as its hind leg when it tried to clear the guard rail.
I'm trying to get to me feet, to lift the hook up like a club, to move before it's too late.
And there's Jacky. Cattleprod straight to the back of the neck. Of course, it won't kill it, won't really hurt it permanently. But it's got muscles like anything else and now they're spasming, out of control.
"Thanks," I say, breathless.
I kick the drain from the end of my weapon, turn it so the point is facing me, and I have the long rounded back to bludgeon with. Down it goes, right into the cows good leg. Then down, and down again.
Then I do the same to its good back leg. So it's just a hunk of cow with no way of raising itself up, no way of following us. Desperately trying to will itself forward on its broken and trapped limbs.
Again, it might be funny, if it was a film. If I wasn't maiming something.
"It's all right, Jacky. We got it. Go outside now, okay?"
This time, he does what I say.
I put my foot against the cow's skull. Aim the pointed end of the hook at its eye. Close my eyes, pull the hook towards me until it meets resistance and heave.
I try not to think about where I am and what I'm doing, and how long it's going to be before I die. I try to just think about breaking apart the head of this cow. And then I feel a little sick, so I just think about pulling until there's nothing to pull against anymore, and that helps.
I squeeze my eyes a little tighter, and I heave.
***
Initially I wasn't sure how to approach this as it's a setting (zombie apocalypse) rather than an actual plot in and of itself. I didn't want to tell the story of how the zombie apocalypse started as that would be really long and has been done many times. But since the notion of a zombie apocalypse is so iconic (at least on the internets!) I figure, I can make use of that understanding of the background the way fan fiction makes use of the readers' knowledge of the setting and just tell a story set during a zombie apocalypse. But still...what?
I wasn't having much luck coming up with a story from scratch that would either benefit being told during a zombie apocalypse or that solved one in an interesting way (see: I can do plot under some circumstances but it's...problematic and I usually need prompting). Though (I share because I find it amusing), I briefly toyed with the idea of writing, "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret. Look, God, you might want to rethink this whole Zombie Apocalypse thing..."
But anyway, I figured I'd use the opportunity to work on another weakness I have - action scenes. I'd write a zombie-apocalypse-fight. All I needed was a cool setting for the fight. After toying with toy stores, museums and ice-rinks, I finally asked Kev where he thought I should set it. He said an abattoir and I actually really liked that idea and had some immediate thoughts about how the fight would proceed. So that's where I ended up writing it.
And that's the story of this story!
I hope you all enjoyed. :)
i_kender - thanks again for the prompt; whether the story ends up one of my best or kind of shabby, it's really good to have the motivation to actually write and finish these little, short tales. Next up -
asta77 requests some Lee & Laura in Razor! Now I just have to get an idea...
