EYEHEARTZOMBIES

Silas left the tent and Jonas sat back in the canvas chair and sighed deeply. This was the last thing they needed at this point. Nevermind that the man — boy! — could be a spy for the Republic; nevermind that they were so close to Mile-High City, one of the largest and most heavily guarded of the Light Cities, that you could spit on the surveillance cameras if the wind was kicking up even enough to stir a dandelion’s head; nevermind that a storm was brewing on top of the mountains to their west, threatening to flood the whole valley and wash them halfway back to Detroit. No, forget about all of that. The boy was wandering around, got caught, and now they couldn’t possibly entertain the idea of letting him go. Jonas wondered if the boy even really believed he had been caught by the Legion. By the Darkness.

A drop of rain pittered on the waxed canvas of the tent above his head and he looked up, watching the dark circle grow a mite bigger. A second drop joined the first, then a third. The storm was starting sooner than expected. He sighed again, then hoisted his large frame out of the sagging chair, standing as straight as the four-foot-tall tent would allow. He stepped out into the evening air, his skin prickling in the cool breeze. Yes, the storm was coming soon. And the weather might not be the only threat his people faced tonight.

Silas was standing a few tents down the row and apparently saw Jonas come outside. He was standing next to Jonas a few seconds later, whispering wildly to him. “I see you’ve decided to act. What’s your mind? Feed and tent the Light-cursed boy? Or will you finally pay some attention to my mind’s read and send him away. Damn fool don’t even believe we’re real. Leastways doesn’t seem to think we could rouse up no harm. I say send him back and be put with it.” Silas’ eyes had a mean shine to them that Jonas didn’t like seeing. He didn’t see it often, either.

The last time had been during the battles for Kansas City. The Light had been entrenched there pretty good; the fighting was something fierce and dirty, like a wounded fox caught in a box trap. Jonas and Silas had fought there, side by side, fought like brothers. They were responsible for leading the charge into the Armory, even. A victory that, if not bringing about the end of the siege, definitely shortened it. A new slew of Light weapons and body armor was just what the Legion had needed, since the ones they had taken before were finally starting to run out of ammunition, and they couldn’t make more. That had been lost to them years ago. Jonas sometimes wondered how good of an idea that had been of the Fathers. No, one didn’t question the past; not on days like this, at least. On that day, the day of the charge, Silas had shaken with a rage that seemed to burn at his gut like wildfire. He had carried two of the large Legion guns at his hips, their steam tanks gurgling. He had also had a sword strapped to his back and one of the Light’s own gatling guns in his hands, the bandolier of bullets trailing beside his feet.

The Armory had been fortified during the night. The Republic’s troops had dug a trench around the building and burned down all the nearby growth. It stood as a monolith on a small hill; a castle that could be attacked only by a dragon. The three hundred troops behind Silas and Jonas weren’t exactly a dragon, but they planned on taking this castle anyhow. They needed the weapons. More importantly, they needed the food and other supplies kept in the basement of the Armory.

Silas had led the charge, screaming, guns blazing, with Jonas just steps behind him. The rest of the three hundred seemed to be inches from him, their war cries echoing off the Armory walls, calling eerily up from the several-feet-deep moat ahead of them. When Silas reached the moat, he leapt, somehow clearing it solidly. Jonas followed suit, but many of the men didn’t. Those that fell into the pit scrambled to get out. The Republic had filled the pit with unimaginable horrors. Jonas shuddered, even now, not wanting any of those images to come back. He hadn’t seen all there was in there himself; most of his knowledge came from those who had been further back. They told of the fangs, the wings, the tentacles, and the pieces of soldiers spread across the muddy floor. Why did it always rain in memories?

Silas slammed into the door of the Armory and bounced back. It had obviously been barricaded from the other side. Another of the soldiers that had made it across placed a few sticks of dynamite on the metal gateway and everyone stepped back, ducking behind each other and the flimsy protection provided by the recessed doorway. The explosion sent steel shards flying through the air, striking a few of the men that had yet to reach the pit. Larger pieces tumbled over and down into the moat, striking monster and man alike. Screams came calling up from below, not all of them shaped by human tongues or mouths.

Again, Silas was the first one in. His gatling gun lit the walls of the Armory as he zipped down the first hallway he came to. Jonas could hear him cackling over the roar of the spinning muzzles. Thinking about that would come later, as Jonas ducked down the opposite hallway, kicking in a door and letting loose with his Legion gun. Each shot started with a poof of steam, followed by the hollow whistling sound of the projectile flying through the air. The small rooms with their stone walls just amplified the sound, making it sound like thousands of angry bees. He heard other beehives start up further into the building.

Once his room was cleared, Jonas moved onto the next. Pausing in front of the door, he heard Silas’ muzzles stop, the laughter dying with them. A solid clunk and a yell followed. A cold laugh from Silas came short on the heels of that, along with another agonized yell from that direction. Silas would later brag of how he had cleared the room of all but one Republic soldier. The soldier, seeing that his opponents gun was empty, pulled out a dagger and started toward Silas, lunging when he got close enough — actually managed to cut Silas’ cheek, giving him a scar he wore proudly. Silas threw the gun at him, knocking the air out of the man, then pulled his own sword and sliced open the soldier’s gut. “No reason to make his trip into the Light any faster than it has to be,” Silas would later reason. “Leave him time to see the sights; Hell comes too quick these days.”

Jonas didn’t have time to wonder what Silas was up to down the other hallway. He had broken down the next door in hallway and was met with a room of Republic soldiers in a small bunk room. Something must’ve been in the air, because the threw down his steam-powered pistols and pulled the flamethrower hose around from behind him. A twister joker’s grin filled his face as he squeezed both triggers and engulfed the beds and footlockers. Soldiers screamed and tried to grab weapons, dodge the bellowing flame, or just flee from the room. They all succumbed in the end, though, the last one being taken down by Jonas’ knife. He stood in the doorway, panting, wondering what had come over him. He would think that many more times before Kansas City was theirs.

Large, cold raindrops brought him out of his mind and back to the present. He and Silas had been walking in silence, the scarred man letting his questions and the conversation drop into the weather like leaves it the Fall. It was still there, still swirling around them, but it was of no consequence right now. They reached the small tent compound where the boy was being kept. Jonas took a deep breath and let it out in a long hissing breath. “No sense keeping the Light waiting, I suppose.” He meant both the captured boy and his god. The Legion kept their gods to themselves, each man taking care of his own bit in life. Jonas still liked to believe in a man from over two thousand years ago, come to Earth to make the world a better place. He held a bit of faith in the Light, too. He just couldn’t believe completely in a deity that would allow men like President Howell to come to power. God damn him, but this bit of the world had been a horrible place since Howell had come to his flock in the Republic.

Silas cleared his throat in the deepening evening and motioned toward the flap of the tent. Jonas nodded. “Don’t you be fretting about the boy, Silas. I take care of my own, and this whole camp is mine now. I’ll see to it ‘fore I see to any Lightspawned spy.” The scarred man’s face stayed scrunched for a few moments, then loosened as he nodded.

“Best get to it, then,” Silas said. “They’ve been waiting long enough for you to trot down here in this mist. They’ll be thinkin’ you’re an evil witch that hates the water, you keep ‘em much longer.” Jonas nodded again and lifted the flap to the brightly lit tent.

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I’ve been running an Ubuntu box downstairs (or, rather, on my old PC) for several years now. Probably something like 4 years. Wow. Anyway, lately it’s just not doing what I need it to do. And with the kid, I’m not able to spend a day troubleshooting one file’s permissions or why CUPS doesn’t want to let me print a test page from the Mac. I’m thinking of going back to Windows on it.

All I need to be able to do is share (as writable) the music folder on an external drive and use the printer. I’m sure Windows can handle those bits, right? Testing in IE 6 and 7 will be nice, too, of course. I plan to strip the rest of the system as much as I can, though. I don’t even plan on having email or anything like that set up. Well, maybe some sort of torrent application, to save the iBook some trouble.

So, here’s my question for you, dear reader, what’s essential nowadays for Windows? And do you have any advice on doing the few things I want to be able to do?

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I had a job interview this past week. It felt both strange and great to be back “out in the game” or whatever you want to call it. I’m not going to go into details over the job or the interview or anything, but it was definitely a good start to getting back in the saddle. I’m a font of euphemisms today.

Now that I have the interview behind me (although there will hopefully be more ahead, too), I’m gonna start working on EHZ again. I had to stop myself from installing any new Wordpress plugins or screwing around with my theme for awhile there so I could be sure everything would work for the interview. I think I’m going to tone down the brightness of the site (yes, I’m changing those colors that I’ve been using for some 2 years now. How sad.) and try to clean up a few other things. I’m still definitely infatuated with how simple Wordpress seems compared to previous experiences.

I want to start posting more on here that’s design- or web-related, but I don’t really have much that I feel is unique enough to belong in the blogosphere. We’ll see, though.

As far as personal stuff, goes, I finally played throught Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater this weekend. Aside from Hideo Kojima’s usual insanity, it was a good story and a very fun game. There could have been fewer/shorter cutscenes and less Codec-chatting, but they didn’t take you too far out of the game. And the addition of some player-controlled cutscenes was definitely a great idea!

Alright, I’m outtie for now.

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