DMB Pulp: The Apocalypse Game
Design Your Personal Nightmare Scenario w/Friends!
I used to play the apocalypse game with friends all the time. In 2020, the game lost a bit of its entertainment value due to…well, at times it seemed like it was no longer a game. The year 2021 brought with it the arctic snow-maggedon for Texas and neighboring states. All of a sudden, a game that used to be for kicks and giggles seems to be taking on a more practical purpose. You know, like, perhaps we should be preparing for these catastrophes.
In my neck of the woods, we got everything from hardcore preppers with mountain compounds to the more garden variety preppers with what we respectfully label “Mormon rooms” full of canned goods, bottled water, and buckets of grain. My household falls into the prepper spectrum somewhere around “sloppy cautious.” Our Mormon room is mostly canned jalapeños, salsa, and homemade wine. You know, the basics. But we got a bucket or two of grain, some beans of the black and green varieties, and I’m sure a jug or two of libations that aren’t fermented.
Would we survive the perfect apocalyptic storm? On a scale of 0 to 10 (with zero being certain death and 10 being king of the thunderdome), my family scores a middlin 5.
In case you’re interested in scoring yourself, here’s how the game works. First, devise the worst possible, hand-crafted apocalypse for your region. In my latest scenario, I went with a 7.6 earthquake hitting Boise, Idaho. (We had a 6.5 last year with an epicenter a few hours away.)
Next, you have to paint a quick picture of the results of this hand-crafted disaster. In my scenario, the earthquake results in the power grid going down and the Lucky Peak Damn giving way. This floods half of Boise and kills a few thousand instantly. Fires break out. Buildings collapse. Hoarding runs rampant. And since there are more guns than people in Idaho, and our state slogan is something like, “If you’re anything less than fifth generation Idahoan, you suck,” you can imagine the gunplay that ensues.
At this point in the game, you gotta assess your assets and liabilities in order to deduce your final score. The scoring categories are: 1.) practical skills 2.) survival stores 3.) food stores 4.) shelter 5.) preparedness 6.) connections
In practical skills, my family scores better than most. Between the wife and I, we know how to cook, how to farm/garden, how to build, how to fix stuff, and how to ferment booze. In the more immediate skills, I know how to not blow up or burn down my house while staying warm. And I’m a pretty good marksman.
As far as survival stores, we got garden tools, knives, and a couple of compound bows. Unfortunately, I’ve left all my guns back in Texas. As for food, well, we can eat jalapeños for months, and I’ve got enough bottles of red wine to keep the neighbors happy for a long while. (All the Nazarenes and Mormons just leaves more for me.) Our shelter scores us a bonus in this scenario. It’s a single family dwelling not made of brick. So in an earthquake, we come out pretty well. We have to shut off the gas, and we’ve got no power. But we’ve got mostly intact shelter. Our preparedness is mostly a negative, but I’ve got a friend or two with enough reserves and guns to bring my family along for the ride.
The end score: 5. As long as we don’t get swept up in the initial wave of fires and chaos, we have a decent chance of surviving the roving hordes of militarized rednecks due to the fact that I still speak enough of their language, and I can barter booze for bullets.
There you have it. What would your hand-crafted, regional disaster be? Escaped radioactive chimps? Zombie virus? Hurricane? Blizzard? EMP? Forest Fires? Killer bees? Covid-22? How do you score on the survival spectrum? After you’re done figuring all that, make sure you don’t forget to pour yourself a drink and spend some time being grateful for the time we’ve still got.
At the Desk This Week
Back into the groove this week. I’ve actually started doing some very early thinking about my next project, after wrapping up season 3 of The Green Ones. I’m not ready to talk about the next project yet. It’s still way too early, but I’m enjoying the mind mapping process so far.
I’m trying to find the sweet spot between my current projects, and where my mental space has been taking me over these last several months, while still being able to find an intersection with commercial fiction. In other words, I want to write for y’all. I want to write for myself. And I want to make money while I’m doing it. When I find the right intersection of those three things, I’ll know I’ve got a winner.
I’ve also gotten some good words done on The Green Ones. Episode Five is coming along well. I finished the action scene I was working on and have progressed the plot pretty close to the next big action scene. Hopefully I’ll get that one written next week.
Get Doc Quick, Scenes 1 - 3
[Click here for an introduction by Jim Buckner]
[Start with the introduction to the series.]
Is There a Doctor in the House?
Brown’s pulpy action story, Get Doc Quick, has done more to strengthen my belief in the historicity of the Lost DMB Files than any of his other tales save The Austin Job. Certainly I connect at a gut level with the feisty doctor’s run from sinister forces which threaten his life as well as the life of his young daughter (a little too close to home for comfort).
More significantly, the letters Brown refers to (and quotes from) in this story still exist and have been authenticated by three separate experts. Beyond these letters, Doctor Quincy Quick has disappeared from history. Other than a few obscure references to a veterinarian coping with the tragic loss of his wife, the man never seemed to exist. Yet the dating and handwriting analysis of his letters compels me to believe Quick was and is an historic figure.
The only reasonable explanation for the utter erasure of such a person in such a short passing of time is intentional censure. It seems Doc Quick was targeted for removal from recorded history. But why?
The only satisfying answer is that his testimony demanded such extreme discrediting that the very man himself had to become a figment. Said testimony, preserved in Quick’s letters, also serves to strengthen the historicity of Hell’s Womb, which offers the same explanation for what (if be true) would be the origination of the worst plague to ever curse the human race—the twitch.
On a final note, I feel it my editorial duty to inform you, dear reader, that Get Doc Quick exists as both a self-contained story and a thread woven into a larger tapestry. Thus Doc’s thrill ride connects closely with the happenings of Hell’s Womb, McCutchen’s Bones, as well as Twitch and Die!.
While Hell’s Womb was never published, the other three stories were. Interestingly, only Get Doc Quick refers to all characters and places without pseudonym (with the exception of J.T. McCutchen). This could explain why Get Doc Quick did so poorly in sales compared to Brown’s other writings, and disappeared from print after two short years.
It’s my personal belief (on a final, final note) Brown crossed a line by publishing the story you have before you, and was thus forced to be more cautious during the next decade before his own mysterious disappearance. But now I’ve gone beyond the realm of academic speculation into personal theorizing. For that I sincerely beg your pardon!
Earnestly,
Professor Jim “Buck” Buckner
With my leather satchel under one arm, I close my eyes and remind myself to stop smacking the peppermint Chiclet I’ve ground to dirt between my molars. The ten mils of Curare gives the syringe in my calloused hand a business-like weight. The damn guard has witnessed me do this to over a hundred others. Now he’s gonna experience the horror straight up.
Sons a bitches. I may have sold my sixty-year-old soul to the devil, but ain’t no company gonna curate over it while I’m still living. And ain’t nobody laying a hand on my little Abby.
I catch myself grinding the spent gum between my molars again, wishing to God it was a different kind of chew. Casting a furtive glance around the basement-lab-recently-turned-death-chamber, my stomach curdles. Weeks of dried blood, human defecation, and gunpowder have transformed it into a nightmare—a damned human travesty, and on Christmas Eve. Bullet holes pepper the heavily-plastered rock walls.
My last patient, if you can call the wretched things that, lies bleeding out while still bound in restraints. Her autonomic system twitches reflexively. I used the last of the morphine to sedate the whole lot of ‘em—thirty-eight souls. A damn drop in the bucket. Most of the victims aren’t even making it to the hospital, and why bother?
Come on. What the hell is he waiting for? The lab had been eerily quiet, void of moans and thrashing for several minutes. Pressed up against the chipped and peeling paint, I grip the satchel containing my medical notes—my letters to Dot—in one hand and an invitation straight to the gates of hell dripping from the other. With my shirt soaked through, suspenders irritating the skin beneath, my thoughts wander to the outside world where they say it might snow.
I close my eyes and try to envision the intricate white flakes—anything to take my mind off the flickering electric lights and the stink of human gall. I envision my Isabella, Abby cooing in her lap. The two of them represent my second chance. It's a warm October day at our favorite picnic spot looking out over Gordon Valley—the last pleasant time we shared together. We rest our backs against the giant cedar elm, dawdling fingers in the dirt while interlacing them. It's the same spot I proposed to both my wives.
Dammit, God. I done lost it all once. Ain’t that enough?
Finally a rustling comes from the hall. “Hey, Doc, what’s going on in there?”
Why don’t you come and find out.
Footsteps. His shadow lengthens and then shortens against the far wall.
“Doc Quick—” I ease in behind him as he enters the room and find the fat of his haunch before he knows what’s coming. “What the—” He jerks away from the needle too late. “Doc?” He’s looking me in the eye now, trying to draw his pistol. Instead he lurches forward. I catch him and place him gently on the floor—his eyes still riveted on mine.
I don’t want him to knock his head on the tile and take the easy way out. Instead, for the next few minutes he’ll feel his heart stop and his lungs deflate as every muscle in his body stops responding while his mind’s still very much awake.
I toss the syringe and pick up my satchel before taking a final glance at the dying company goon. “Merry Christmas. Tell Beelzebub I’ll see him later.”
The temperature falls steadily as the freight elevator rises forty feet up from the hospital's underbelly to the public level, and then past it. Manned by a skeleton crew on the eve of our Savior's birth, the second floor of the facility is nearly empty. Within minutes, I descend the stairwell and slip out the back door.
Wet with sweat and shivering, the first thing I do is rifle through my satchel until I find a replacement for what’s been frustrating me for the last twenty minutes. I flick the exhausted clot from my mouth and replace it with a fresh one before dropping the box of Chiclets in my trouser pocket next to the broken pocket watch that’s been with me through it all.
I take a deep breath and stare into the early evening darkness as the first flakes of snow drift gently to earth.
October 28th, 1919
Dearest Dot,
I don’t know what to do. The whole damn thing’s a mess. Out of the five survivors from mine #4, four are dead already. Only the woman’s alive. She’s sweating blood from her chest, shoulders and neck. Her corneas are yellow, but Vezzoni tried to tell me they’ve always been like that, God knows why.
She’s extremely sensitive to light. Her pulse is faster than a jackrabbit in a cage, and she sweats like crazy. I gotta change her IV twice a day just to keep her alive. Morphine seemed to help for the first week. But she broke free of her restraints twice, even with enough dope to drop a mule. Now the company has me shooting all of them with Curare. Damn inhumane if you ask me, but no one’s asking.
Dot, I’m just a country vet playing doctor. I know you never thought that. But dammit, I couldn’t even deliver our baby girl without losing you. And now this?
It’s spreading. I keep telling Vezzoni they gotta find someone else, someone qualified to deal with this plague. I got three more today, including one that doesn't even work at the mine. Before this is over I think we’re all gonna need a priest rather than a doctor.
Is it airborne? It can’t be in the blood. Whatever it is, it seemed to start with the explosion. But there’s nothing left. Everything burned but the young woman strapped down and dying right under my nose.
I haven’t seen Isabella and Abby for 10 days. I miss ‘em something terrible, but I’d sooner eat my own spleen than risk infecting them. I told them to stay in Palo Pinto with her parents.
Something isn’t right, Dot. The company seems more interested in covering everything up than finding a cure. Dammit, gotta go. Thanks for listening.
Quincy
The sweat running down my back begins to freeze. I huff a cloud of breath into the darkened sky and watch it trail off while mentally girding my loins for the long night ahead. First, the Model T. Jogging across the rutted out dirt lot between the hospital and the maintenance barns behind, I try to stretch my slumped shoulders and loosen the arthritis in my joints.
With a smirk, the stiffness reminds me of the dead guard lying in the basement. Better to have stiffened muscle movement than none at all. At least he’ll make a beautiful corpse, unlike the rest of us when we finally die from the twitch.
Reaching the third stall, I lift the wooden latch and heave the heavy door open a couple of feet. It lurches in its tracks before coming to rest. The smell of oil-sodden dirt and sawdust wraps me in a familiar warmth, washing away the stench of death from the lab. The faintest of light penetrates a few feet into the gloom within and reflects off of whirling dust motes in the air. I duck inside, fetch a hand-held electric lamp from my satchel, and flick it on.
Forgotten machines and tools cast skeletal shadows against the far wall—predatorial and lurking, or maybe just waiting for human folly to free them from their obligatorily subservient existence. But not yet. Not until you’ve helped me get my Isabella and Abby away from here for good.
In the back of the stall I tug a heavy canvas to uncover the machine I’ve spent every stolen moment for the last month creating—a bastardized Model T with the sole purpose of escape. The weak beam of hand-held light glints off the windshield and all four of the headlights. Two are the factory electric lights, but the two I cobbled to the fenders for fanning light further abroad are carbide. Hopefully they’ll be bright enough to blind God himself from the deeds I’ve premeditated.
Besides a Ruckstell axle, roll cage, shaved-down head, and a Bosch timing cover, I replaced the coils with a distributer. Add a touch of alcohol in the fuel, Doc’s own Castor oil lubricant, with duel exhaust and she represents my best hope. There’s no turning back now. I pop the trunk. Fumbling with a box of 12-gage shells, I manage to spill its entire contents.
“Dammit, old fart. Get a grip.” I slow down, grab the shells five at a time, and load all four of the Browning Auto-5s welded onto the doors and the roof—four in the clip, one in the chamber. Finally she’s hot and ready to go, twenty shells all told. Buckshot, everyone of ‘em.
I chew the inside of my lower lip, cratered from years of tobacco. I tuck the gum away there before ejecting a string of sticky spit through the gap in my teeth and onto the finely ground silt of the dirt floor. “Pandora’s box done been opened boys, and there ain’t no closing her up. The whole state a Texas might pay fer it, but my Isabella and little Abby sure as hell ain’t.”
Time to go. A light flickers in my peripheral vision, dancing inside the garage door. I switch my lamp off and crouch behind an arc welder. Now flick my giblets. Why the hell didn’t I close that? A guard stands in the opening, silhouetted against the night sky and poking his shotgun around where it doesn’t belong.
I grit my teeth and search my immediate surroundings for anything helpful until I locate the heavy come-along chain. Over my head dangles a hook, a series of pulleys, and enough cable to get the job done.
“Anyone in here?”
I clutch a file, take a deep breath, and chuck it toward the opposite corner of the garage. As soon as the sound reverberates from the recesses I lunge upward. Looping the hook with the chain, I swing the whole contraption toward the door with everything my crusty old muscles can muster and then hang on for the ride.
“Hey!”
I pitch forward and down as the confines of the garage reverberate with the blast of the guard’s shotgun. Ricocheting birdshot pings all about as the hook and chain strike the guard in the shoulder. I scramble to my feet and hurdle a work bench, pulling my damn groin in the process.
The guard bounces off the door and rebounds in my direction. Limping forward, I kick the shotgun from his grip before he can level it again. In a minor miracle, I manage to flip one end of the chain around his neck twice, catch it on the hook, and straddle his midriff with my full weight. Now I ain’t as muscular as I used to be, but Isabella’s cooking has given me a healthy bulge around the middle that had taken more than a month to wear off.
For a second I worry the extra weight isn’t enough. Then his legs wobble and fold. Without slack enough in the chain for his knees to find the floor, he chokes out in twenty-seven seconds. The whole time I’m counting the seconds, all I can think about is the fire emanating from the pulled muscle in my groin. And people say doctoring has become a young man’s business. There’s no doubt in my mind that killing is.
I glance out the opened door, no point in closing it now, and find the coast clear. Fat white flakes fall, only hours away from a white Christmas—the first since I was a boy. Shivering, I return to the Model T and pull a heavy wool coat from the trunk.
I hold my pocket watch up to the hand-held light. The hands are of course frozen in the same place they’ve been for the last twelve years. Looks like it ain’t time to die. Finally, I secure my satchel on the floorboard of the passenger side and hang the watch from the rearview mirror. The T starts without pause. Pedal down, I punch through the back wall and around the bone yard. Gathering speed, I head straight for the main gates.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read McCutchen’s Bones, Season Three of the Lost DMB Files. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from the Lost DMB Files until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 400 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy the Lost DMB Files. Happy reading!