asthecrowfly

Ever wanted a chimera fancies pendant? Look! http://chimera-fancies.livejournal.com/26324.html

Ahem.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional critic, and outside of college, this is my first serious attempt at reviewing something since then.


Second Disclaimer: I hate the apocalypse. I in fact, have a full blown apocalypse phobia, where watching 99.9% of disaster flicks will make me cry like a tiny child, and talk of the apocalypse will nearly make me faint. I am also deathly afraid of zombies.

Grants Pass is an anthology brought to this world to terrorize you by editors Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pillar. It’s put out by the delightful and spooky Morrigan Books.

Jennifer Brozek is not an apocalypse-phobe. The Apocalypse Girl herself is one of the linchpins to the anthology seeing the light of day. This creepy, lumbering brain-baby is her doing, but every author who contributed, her co-editor, and we readers, are all along for the ride.

Grants Pass, Oregon, is where everyone should head when the world goes bottoms-up and everything we know of life crumbles and blows away in the wind.

A young woman, Kayley Allard, issues a What-If.

What if the world ends? What will you do?
Where will you go? How will you survive?
Her what-if ends in an invitation to all and sundry: if you’re alive when the world ends, go to Grants Pass.

Just Go.

Inside the gorgeous cover of Grants Pass is twenty different slices of the apocalypse. People, good, bad, indifferent, of various ages, backgrounds, all surviving the unthinkable. This is the super flu, the end times, the inevitable crumble all our parents warned us about. And in every story, people are trying to get to someplace safe. Emotionally or physically, everyone is looking for higher ground.

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It’s a gorgeous collection. I think in the end the stories I high-lighted were simply the ones that spoke to me deepest, that echoed things I’ve seen or done or experienced. Survival’s a story close to my heart.

I’ve only held onto one anthology for more than a year in my entire life. Grants Pass will make it two.

Well, that was a lot of fun.

My posts for BLITEOTW number (incl. disclaimer and this after post) 15. I started reading my elves are different because I read Cherie Priest's lj quite a lot, saw a strip on her lj, and was besotten instantly by the comic. When BLITEOTW, I thought briefly.

"But, you're scared of zombies. And you never post publically."

This was all it took for the stubborn part of me to say, "That's EXACTLY why we should do this!"

So I did. I had a free day to post (I sketched out the whole mini narrative the day before) and posted around reading, sending e-mails and running my errands. It was a little scary once or twice, sitting here and playing what-if, trying to picture the world on the day of one big zombie apocalypse.

But it was a lot of fun, too. I might've tried to stick it out till midnight, but I've been under the weather (a funny bit--I really did have an immunization and blood work panel done on Tuesday, but the nurse was in perfect help, and I do not hurt nearly as badly as my fictional self did) so I thought I'd call it quits while the getting was good. Thanks to everybody who was in this--I know I only read a fraction of your posts, but it was a lot of fun.

Thanks to all the fellow BLITEOTWers who friended me today, too.

I hope you wern't too bored.

I've got a laptop taken from the clinic office (they're all dead and holy SHIT do zombies look scary! you heard me, it's fucking ZOMBIES) a back pack full of stuff, files, and a cooler full of the weirdest damn needles and drugs I've ever seen in my life. I'm taking off on my own. I've got enough to keep me ok for awhile, I think, and I'm feeling a lot better, I think, sort of. I can't really tell you much now--no time, no inclination, and I'm crying too much from freaking out to stay ok for long, not with the fucking sound playing in my head and--

Ok. Get a grip. Just get a grip.

I'm not infected. I'm not one of them. I don't know what the Hell is going on anymore, but I've got more energy than I ever had in my life, I look like I've been thru Hell, and the pain in my arm is ice cold, sort of deep. and the test mark on my arm? It's a faded red mark now. It's a funny little symbol. No idea how the hell it even looks like that. Implant, maybe? I don't know.

I'm not sure where to go from here, except try to get to my parents. I know there's other people in the clinic, people like me--I saw some of them when I was taken for what they kept calling 'Processing', but all Hell broke loose before they took me to 'Detainment'--

Ok. I know where my family is. I know the clinic is the last place I want to be. I've got everything I need for now, I think. I've seen shit I don't want to believe and I've done things I didn't think I could do--I don't care how fleshy their heads look, how the hell did I take one off in one swipe of a fire axe? And how the fuck did I throw someone that far?

I'm getting out of here as soon as I think I can make a break. This place is riddled with dead folks, but if I get out before the guys with the all black 'uniform that isn't really a uniform, no ma'am' have more friends show up and figure out I'm alive, I think I've got a chance of skipping an inside view of 'Detainment.' Whatever and wherever it is.

I've got a song I heard earlier stuck in my head. 'too sick to pray.' A3.

well. there are worse things.

Nurse popped out of the room. I hijacked the computer. World has gone totally crazy. Nuts. If it isn't obliterated within the next day, it still won't be the same world.

And me? I'm shaking, sweating, and I hurt all over. I threw up. I snuck a call to my husband. He's almost to my parents. Things aren't as crazy up at the border. He's ok. Mum and Da had called right before me, they're okay too.

I'm freaked out.

But I'm okay. I'll be okay.

If I just keep saying that, than maybe that'll make it real.

Apparently the shot that hurts is the one they hope works. Immunizations invented on the fly aren't so stable, you know?

So what's happening to me?

Flip a coin.

Heads, I'm fine.

Tails, I'm infected.

I was taking the bandages off when my cell phone rang. It was the clinic.

This is going to be my last post for awhile, folks. I'm hoping, I'm praying, that you guys see this, and read it, and no matter what happens after this, you at least know this much.

They're sending a car for me. It's unreal. They say they'll explain everything, that it's important I come in, that they run more blood panels and tests...

I told my husband to go to my parents. I don't want him near here. They'll take care of him. I'm taking my notebook, he's taking the picture of us he keeps on the desk. I know he doesn't want to go, but this is for the best. I'm okay as long as I know he's safe, safe somewhere I know where to find him....

I wouldn't go, but I don't think I have a choice.

The car is here.

The spot where they took blood is bruised. It's better than most blood draws--just tiny. My arm is itching. I think I'm gonna go take off the bandages from the immunization shots.

Ok. So, there's an apocalypse. I get that. I know, it sounds flippant. I'm too freaked out to be serious now.

It's ... ugly. It's ugly enough you can start to see it in the eyes of newscasters. they're losing it a little, inside. I've gotten e-mail from people saying that they're starting to shoot the uninfected, in some places.

Uninfected. Infected. Coherent. Incoherent. Perfectly normal. Freaking crazy.

If I don't say the word, maybe it won't be so real.

p.s. lj user myrmidione. has a end of the world soundtrack up. Since it's the end of the world...maybe you should give it a whirl.

They're starting to shut off all the exits out of the urban areas. My friends are finding each other as fast-as-they-freaking-can, checking in when they can, as long as everyone's phones hold out--I can't believe they're cordoning it all off. It's just...I mean, everybody has nightmares about this kind of thing happening, our parents SAY weird shit will happen, but we always laugh it off. That's for the movies. That's just silly.

People are encouraged (in the 'burbs, where I am) to stay inside, lock up, and wait. People everywhere have drawn their curtains and holed up. I can't help thinking about all my friends--the ones in Seattle, in England, in major metros...

..I keep wondering if they're ok. If they'll keep being ok.

My left arm hurts. I am not talking, 'oh, it twinges', it freaking _hurts._ This is crazy. I feel weird, I'm freaked out because apparently it's the damn end of the world as we know it all over the world (have you seen the news online? Hell, they even started shutting down file sharing websites when they realized people were putting up home videos of what's REALLY going on!) and I can't stop shaking. i think it's just the never ending panic attack.