in pastures -- rough draft
So, I've recently got obsessed with The Walking Dead and at the end of the last episode, they showed this walker in a field. Obviously it was some kind of heavy-handed metaphor for Shane (one of the living characters). I don't really like being punched in the face with metaphor, so I decided this walker was somehow important and he needed a backstory. So I gave him a backstory.
However, it doesn't quite feel like it's where I want it to be, but I can't figure out how to get it there. This is where you guys come in. Maybe you can nudge me in the right direction. Or maybe I'm being too hard on myself (like always) and it's great the way it is. I doubt that though, so tell me where I'm going wrong. You don't need to have seen The Walking Dead to understand this fic (if anything, all you need to know is that zombies are called "walkers" in this 'verse) nor does it contain any spoilers.
Title: in pastures
Author: Me
Characters: couple of walkers
Rating: PG-13
Length: <1000
Warnings: Zombies and all that that entails.
Notes: You should probably also listen to this song.
Elora Baptist Church reads the sign, limned in faded white on rough boards. It leans crooked, in need of paint, but there is no one left to paint it.
The church is also white and also faded, peeling in the somnolent summer sun. The air is heavy with dust and the stench of the dead. A few of them – those that are truly, irrevocably dead – lay scattered. In the ditch, in the field, in their darkened homes. They lay in the street, pecked by crows, staring eyeless into the burning sky.
One of them walks, dragging uneven shuffling tracks through the dusty streets as it wanders in search of living, pulsing flesh. When it lived wholly, it was still a good man. A husband, a father of two small girls. Its last living memory is of protecting them as the dead broke through the walls, but it no longer retains that memory. It walks. It searches. It rots in the sun and maggots burrow tirelessly beneath the skin.
It hunts for the last living resident of Elora, smelling blood and life through dust and time and heat and its own decay.
The preacher still lives, and he prays behind the altar in a church filled with the corpses of his congregation and the humming of flies behind a wooden door that bears no lock and no chain. He has never locked the door of his simple clapboard church, and he will not do so now.
He prays with his eyes closed and his trembling arthritis-gnarled hands raised before his face. He rocks into the words, his breathy, hurried whispers blend with the hum of flies laying their children in the skin of his friends and his neighbors.
He is faithful. He has always been faithful. He will not lock the door of the church although he has heard guttural grunts and wet slobbering from the road outside. He will not leave the church. He will not leave his congregation. They have followed him to the end of the world, to a dusty church on a dusty road in a world where the dead no longer lie still, he has led them and he will not leave them now. Not with the curtains of flies and swollen tongues and their brains curdled in the sweltering heat beside them on the pews.
The wooden door rattles in its frame; the wind holds its breath in stillness.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he croaks into the clasp of his hands, into the darkness in the space between his fingers.
The door rattles again, wood swollen with humidity squeaks shrilly as it is forced across the floor. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside still waters!” The preacher raises his voice to be heard over the scream of the door, to show that he is not afraid. His voice trembles, firms, trembles again. There is a grunt in response, a wet gnashing of teeth loud enough to be heard through the flies and the preacher’s quick, terrified breathing.
He stares at the wooden cross on the wall, lifted there by his own hands and those of his parish a thousand years ago, when the world was still sane. When he opened the church, when the paint on the walls and the sign were fresh, when he prayed to seats filled with living.
“He restoreth my soul,” and he hears footsteps now, scraping the gritty floor in an uneven rhythm, growing closer. But he will not move. He stares at the cross over his head. He folds his hands tighter despite the ache in his joints “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Closer now. He can hear wet, eager breaths. He closes his eyes again. He is not afraid. Murdered souls go to heaven, and his soul will not inhabit an unliving body. He has been a good man, a decent man, living a small life in a small town. He is not afraid. He has led his disciples and he has saved them.
Fetid air shifts the graying lank and he feels his shoulders want to hunch forward and away, but he stops. He straightens. He closes his eyes again, the afterimage of the cross throbbing behind his eyes. The creak of dead tendons is loud in his ear as it reaches for him. He sucks a deep breath, the last breath his living body will take, and the scent of death is strong, strong.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil—“
__
It walks. Sunlight glints off the small golden cross it wears, twisting with its fitful movements.
It will not stop, or rest, or lie still. It seeks only warm flesh, hot blood. It does not care if it spreads the filthy red disease it carries to the living, does not care upon who or what it feeds.
The sun beats on its twisted shoulders, but it feels not feel the heat. It does not smell the air, feel the stalks of grass as they brush past its legs, does not hear crickets or birdsong in the trees. It remembers nothing of life or love, of Elora or home or God. All it searches for now is meat, fresh and living.
It walks, plodding forward through the gently waving grain.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
However, it doesn't quite feel like it's where I want it to be, but I can't figure out how to get it there. This is where you guys come in. Maybe you can nudge me in the right direction. Or maybe I'm being too hard on myself (like always) and it's great the way it is. I doubt that though, so tell me where I'm going wrong. You don't need to have seen The Walking Dead to understand this fic (if anything, all you need to know is that zombies are called "walkers" in this 'verse) nor does it contain any spoilers.
Title: in pastures
Author: Me
Characters: couple of walkers
Rating: PG-13
Length: <1000
Warnings: Zombies and all that that entails.
Notes: You should probably also listen to this song.
Elora Baptist Church reads the sign, limned in faded white on rough boards. It leans crooked, in need of paint, but there is no one left to paint it.
The church is also white and also faded, peeling in the somnolent summer sun. The air is heavy with dust and the stench of the dead. A few of them – those that are truly, irrevocably dead – lay scattered. In the ditch, in the field, in their darkened homes. They lay in the street, pecked by crows, staring eyeless into the burning sky.
One of them walks, dragging uneven shuffling tracks through the dusty streets as it wanders in search of living, pulsing flesh. When it lived wholly, it was still a good man. A husband, a father of two small girls. Its last living memory is of protecting them as the dead broke through the walls, but it no longer retains that memory. It walks. It searches. It rots in the sun and maggots burrow tirelessly beneath the skin.
It hunts for the last living resident of Elora, smelling blood and life through dust and time and heat and its own decay.
The preacher still lives, and he prays behind the altar in a church filled with the corpses of his congregation and the humming of flies behind a wooden door that bears no lock and no chain. He has never locked the door of his simple clapboard church, and he will not do so now.
He prays with his eyes closed and his trembling arthritis-gnarled hands raised before his face. He rocks into the words, his breathy, hurried whispers blend with the hum of flies laying their children in the skin of his friends and his neighbors.
He is faithful. He has always been faithful. He will not lock the door of the church although he has heard guttural grunts and wet slobbering from the road outside. He will not leave the church. He will not leave his congregation. They have followed him to the end of the world, to a dusty church on a dusty road in a world where the dead no longer lie still, he has led them and he will not leave them now. Not with the curtains of flies and swollen tongues and their brains curdled in the sweltering heat beside them on the pews.
The wooden door rattles in its frame; the wind holds its breath in stillness.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he croaks into the clasp of his hands, into the darkness in the space between his fingers.
The door rattles again, wood swollen with humidity squeaks shrilly as it is forced across the floor. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside still waters!” The preacher raises his voice to be heard over the scream of the door, to show that he is not afraid. His voice trembles, firms, trembles again. There is a grunt in response, a wet gnashing of teeth loud enough to be heard through the flies and the preacher’s quick, terrified breathing.
He stares at the wooden cross on the wall, lifted there by his own hands and those of his parish a thousand years ago, when the world was still sane. When he opened the church, when the paint on the walls and the sign were fresh, when he prayed to seats filled with living.
“He restoreth my soul,” and he hears footsteps now, scraping the gritty floor in an uneven rhythm, growing closer. But he will not move. He stares at the cross over his head. He folds his hands tighter despite the ache in his joints “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Closer now. He can hear wet, eager breaths. He closes his eyes again. He is not afraid. Murdered souls go to heaven, and his soul will not inhabit an unliving body. He has been a good man, a decent man, living a small life in a small town. He is not afraid. He has led his disciples and he has saved them.
Fetid air shifts the graying lank and he feels his shoulders want to hunch forward and away, but he stops. He straightens. He closes his eyes again, the afterimage of the cross throbbing behind his eyes. The creak of dead tendons is loud in his ear as it reaches for him. He sucks a deep breath, the last breath his living body will take, and the scent of death is strong, strong.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil—“
__
It walks. Sunlight glints off the small golden cross it wears, twisting with its fitful movements.
It will not stop, or rest, or lie still. It seeks only warm flesh, hot blood. It does not care if it spreads the filthy red disease it carries to the living, does not care upon who or what it feeds.
The sun beats on its twisted shoulders, but it feels not feel the heat. It does not smell the air, feel the stalks of grass as they brush past its legs, does not hear crickets or birdsong in the trees. It remembers nothing of life or love, of Elora or home or God. All it searches for now is meat, fresh and living.
It walks, plodding forward through the gently waving grain.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.