BRECK: Dead Delivery — Chapter 14: The Small Thing

BRECK: Dead Delivery — Chapter Fourteen

The Small Thing

This is Chapter 14 of BRECK: Dead Delivery, a serialized noble dark fantasy story by Chadwick Rye, set in the world of Lumenvale. New chapters post daily at noon Eastern.

The Story So Far

Breck is a veteran courier — 6’5″, 285 pounds, former Crystal Wars special operations — who arrived in Crestfall on a routine delivery and found a town quietly strangled by a corrupt magistrate named Voss. He has spent twelve days building a case from the inside: a hidden ledger from a dead miller’s widow, a chalk map from a twelve-year-old boy named Pell, a gap in the patrol created by a young enforcer named Jorin. Last night he went through the unlatched side door at half past the eighth bell, retrieved the original documents from the magistrate’s storage room, and walked back out through a dark corridor where Drav was waiting. Drav stepped aside. One step. Just enough. The documents are now against Breck’s chest alongside the copy kept warm for fourteen months beside a hearthstone. Voss will discover the empty box at the second bell this morning. The north road is waiting. Breck has until then.

← Chapter Thirteen — The First Time | Chapter Fifteen — Coming Tomorrow →

Chapter Fourteen: The Small Thing

This chapter explores the simple pleasures that make a life worth living — and what it means to finally let yourself have one.

He was downstairs before Maret.

That had not happened before. In four mornings at The River’s Rest, the innkeeper had always been ahead of him — the fire already built, the bread already past its first warmth, the particular quality of a space that had been tended before he arrived in it. This morning the common room was cold and dark and entirely his own, and he stood in it for a moment with the oilskin packet and the retrieved documents against his chest and let the silence of the place settle around him.

Then he built the fire himself.

He knew how — had known since childhood, since the farm on the Lumenvale outskirts where the morning fire was the first task and the last task and the task that bracketed everything in between. You started with the coal-bed if there was one, or with kindling arranged in the particular geometry that caught and held rather than flared and failed, and you fed it with the patience of someone who understood that a fire could not be rushed into existence, only invited. He worked the hearthstone with the methodical attention he brought to most things, feeding the kindling in careful increments, watching the catch spread from one piece to the next with the unhurried satisfaction of a process unfolding correctly.

The fire took.

He sat back on his heels and watched it establish itself — the tentative early flame giving way to something more committed, more certain, the warmth beginning its slow radius outward into the cold room. There was no more purely simple pleasure than this, he thought. A fire built by your own hands in a cold room. The particular satisfaction of it had nothing to do with scale or significance. It was complete in itself — a small act done well, yielding a result you could feel against your face.

He’d thought about this more than usual in the past few days. About small pleasures. About what made a day worth the living of it, stripped of everything exceptional and left with only what remained when the exceptional was gone.

The stone house. The south-facing light. A dog.

He thought about bread, too — the specific pleasure of bread eaten when you were genuinely hungry after genuine work, the way it tasted like more than it was, the way simple food taken at the right moment carried a satisfaction that elaborate food served at the wrong one never could. He thought about the sound of rain on a roof when you were inside and dry. About the first cup of something hot in the morning, held with both hands, the warmth working its way from the palms inward.

About a bracelet made from grain stalks by small hands, given without calculation, because the giving was what there was to give.

He heard Maret on the stairs before she reached the bottom — not because she made noise, but because he had been in her building long enough to know the particular creak of the third step from the bottom and had begun, without deciding to, to listen for it.

She stopped in the doorway of the common room. Looked at the fire. Looked at him, crouched before the hearthstone with the fire built and his hands resting on his knees.

Something moved across her face — brief, private, filed away quickly in the manner of a woman who had learned to process things internally rather than display them. She came to the bar and began her morning routine without commenting on the fire or on his presence before her, which was the courtesy of someone who understood that some things were more fully honored by silence than by acknowledgment.

He took his usual stool. She put the herbs in the water without being asked.

They sat in the companionable quiet of people who had shared enough mornings to have no need to fill them.

“He’ll find the room empty at the second bell,” Breck said eventually.

“I know.”

“He’ll send for Drav before the third.”

Maret’s hands were still around her cup. “And Drav?”

Breck looked at the fire. “Drav will take his time getting there.”

She absorbed this with the particular stillness of a woman filing a piece of information that changed the shape of several other pieces she already held.

“How much time do you need?”

“I’ll be on the north road before the second bell.” He paused. “The documents go to the Regional Adjudicator in Millhaven. Three days’ ride. His jurisdiction covers river trade disputes and local governance — Voss’s operation falls squarely inside it.” He reached into the satchel’s secondary pouch and set a sealed letter on the bar. “This goes with the documents. It explains the ledger, the methodology, the collection scheme. I’ve cross-referenced the copy against the originals.” He looked at her. “I need someone to carry it.”

Maret looked at the letter. Then at him. “You trust me with that.”

It was not quite a question.

“You’ve kept this building running for twenty years under conditions that would have broken most people,” he said. “Yes.”

She picked up the letter and held it in her hands for a moment — feeling its weight, the way she felt the weight of most things before deciding what to do with them.

“There’s a grain merchant named Foswick who runs the Millhaven road twice a month,” she said. “He leaves this Friday. He owes me a considerable favor from three winters ago and has the discretion of a man who understands that discretion is a business advantage.” She set the letter on the bar with the careful placement of a decision made. “He’ll deliver it.”

Breck nodded.

The fire had fully established itself now, filling the hearth with the steady, generous warmth of something that had been properly built and was doing exactly what it was built for. The room smelled of burning oak and the herbs in his cup and the particular early-morning smell of a building that had been tended by the same hands for two decades and carried that tending in its stones.

“Sela,” he said. “The miller’s wife. She should be told before I leave.”

“I’ll go this morning.” Maret’s voice was even, but something moved underneath it — the quality of a person absorbing the full weight of what they were agreeing to do, not flinching from it. “Before the second bell.”

He looked at her across the bar, across the fire’s warmth and the steam rising from two cups and the letter between them that contained fourteen months of a dead man’s careful work.

“After this,” he said, “Crestfall will need someone to help it remember what it was.”

Maret was quiet for a moment. The fire worked. The morning pressed against the window.

“Crestfall has always known what it was,” she said finally. “It just needed someone to make it safe to say so again.”

He went upstairs one last time.

The room was as he’d kept it — spare, functional, the narrow bed made with military precision because old habits didn’t require intention to maintain themselves. He stood in the center of it for a moment, looking at the four square feet of bare floor where he’d inventoried his possessions four mornings ago, and felt the particular quality of a space that had briefly been inhabited and was already beginning the process of becoming unoccupied again.

He packed with the efficiency of a man who had been packing and unpacking in small rooms all his adult life. Everything in its place. Everything earning its weight. The oilskin copy of the ledger went back inside his shirt. The original documents went into the satchel’s document sleeve, sealed and protected. The compass. The straight-edge. The chalk, shorter now. The money pouch. The knife. The flint. The waxed cord. The tin of salve for the heel that was finally healing properly after four days of not being on the road.

He picked up the satchel and settled the strap across his chest.

Moved the bracelet from the table — where it had spent the night, beside the two documents, keeping something like company with a dead man’s handwriting — back to the strap. Wound it twice. Felt it settle in its familiar place.

Pale. Small. Saying nothing.

He thought about the fire he had just built downstairs, already doing its quiet work in the cold room without him. About a cup of hot water held with both hands. About bread at the right moment and rain on a roof and the small things that carried the weight of everything worth carrying.

About a girl who had given a man a thing made of grain stalks and roof grass because it was what she had, and because the giving was what there was to do, and because sometimes the small thing is the whole thing, and there is no larger version of it anywhere.

He picked up the satchel. Walked to the door. Stopped with his hand on the frame and looked back at the empty room once — the way he always looked back at places he’d been, not from sentiment but from the habit of a man who liked to leave places the way he’d found them, and liked to know he had.

Then he went downstairs, and Maret was still at the hearth, and he said what needed saying, and she said what needed saying, and then he walked out of The River’s Rest and into the dark pre-dawn street and turned his boots toward the north road.

Behind him, the inn’s window showed a warm rectangle of firelight against the dark.

He had built that fire.

It would keep going without him.

This is Chapter 14 of BRECK: Dead Delivery, a serialized noble dark fantasy story by Chadwick Rye, set in the world of Lumenvale. Breck is a veteran courier — a man who can’t walk past certain things — moving through a medieval world one delivery at a time. New chapters post daily at noon Eastern.

← Chapter Thirteen — The First Time | Chapter Fifteen — Coming Tomorrow →

Chapter 5 is up: The Weather Channel
A tornado, a bathroom floor, a memory that doesn’t line up. Charlotte’s edges show in this one.

Excerpt:
“You remember it all better than I do… I really do want to see things more like you do.”

#Fiction #SerializedFiction #SpecFic #AIGirlfriend #WritersOfMastodon #AmWriting

https://charlottethenovel.substack.com/p/the-weather-channel?r=6v9b6f

Eight Feet of Dirt

​A Fiction Series

Chapter 2: The Northern Track

By Cliff Potts

The radar scope swept in slow, steady arcs, the green line circling like it had a thousand times before.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Bragg, United States Air Force, stood with one hand resting on the console, eyes fixed on the screen. Beside him, First Lieutenant Carter tracked the return as it sharpened with each pass. Staff Sergeant Wilkes stood behind them, arms folded, saying nothing.

“Range?” Bragg asked.

Carter checked the sweep.

“Three-one-two nautical miles, sir.”

“Bearing?”

“Track one-eight-zero. Due south.”

Bragg nodded once.

“Altitude?”

“Angels two-seven-point-five.”

“Commercial traffic?”

“Not on that line.”

The sweep came around again.

The return held.

Not clutter.

Not weather.

Not drift.

Something real.

“Count.”

Carter hesitated.

“Multiple groups, sir. Spread formation. Tight enough to be deliberate.”

“That’s not a count, Lieutenant.”

“No, sir.”

Another sweep.

“Range now two-nine-eight nautical miles.”

Bragg looked at the clock.

“Keep tracking.”

“Yes, sir.”

Far to the north, aircraft moved in disciplined formation through clear morning sky.

No weaving.

No scatter.

No uncertainty.

Just bearing, altitude, distance, and time.

Inside one cockpit, a pilot adjusted his heading by less than a degree and kept his voice level.

“Control, this is Sabre Two-One. Vector holding.”

“Sabre Two-One, maintain present heading.”

“Copy.”

There was nothing dramatic in any of it.

That was what made it dangerous.

Michael Doyle sat at the kitchen table with his coffee untouched in front of him.

The Chicago Sun-Times lay open but unread.

The radio played low.

Music. Announcer. Commercial. Music again.

Nothing unusual.

That was the problem.

Helen moved through the kitchen, finishing what needed to be finished before they all went downstairs again. Tommy had already been told to carry the smaller boxes. Carol lingered near the doorway, trying to understand the mood of the room.

At the far end of the table, Margaret Kowalski—Helen’s mother, widowed in the war when her husband went down with his ship in the Atlantic—sat with her hands around her coffee cup, watching Michael.

“They haven’t said anything,” she said.

Helen didn’t look up.

“About what?”

“Anything.”

Helen shook her head.

“They don’t always say something.”

Michael finally spoke.

“They usually do.”

Margaret nodded once.

“Yes.”

In the radar room, Carter checked the return again.

“Range two-eight-four nautical miles, sir.”

“Still on one-eight-zero?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Speed?”

“High subsonic.”

Bragg kept his eyes on the scope.

“Formation?”

“Disciplined.”

He disliked that answer because it told him more than a number did.

“Intercept status?”

“Aircraft airborne from northern sectors, sir.”

“Good.”

No one in the room relaxed.

Not even a little.

Michael leaned back slightly in his chair.

“You remember Korea,” he said quietly.

Helen didn’t answer.

Margaret did.

“They didn’t tell you first.”

Michael nodded.

“They never do.”

The radio continued.

A bright, ordinary voice broke in to give the hour and went straight back to the program.

No warning.

No bulletin.

No grim voice from Washington.

Nothing.

Helen dried her hands and turned toward him.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What.”

“Listening for something that isn’t there.”

He met her eyes.

“That’s exactly it.”

She didn’t like that answer.

Neither did he.

Far to the north, the pilot checked his instruments again.

“Control, Sabre Two-One. Request updated vector.”

A brief crackle.

“Sabre Two-One, adjust heading zero-one-seven. Maintain angels two-seven.”

“Zero-one-seven, angels two-seven. Copy.”

He made the correction.

Ahead of him, the sky remained empty to the naked eye.

The instruments said otherwise.

Tommy picked up one of the smaller boxes from near the basement door.

“Do I take this down now?”

“Yes,” Helen said.

Mike stood up from the table.

“We’re finishing the arrangement today.”

Helen nodded.

No argument. No hesitation.

The structure was done. The extension under the yard was done. The reinforced walls were done. The heavy door was hung and working. What they were short on was not concrete.

It was time and supplies.

In the radar room, Carter’s voice was lower now.

“Range two-six-one nautical miles.”

Bragg asked the question he already knew the answer to.

“Any deviation?”

“No, sir.”

“Any chance they turn?”

“No, sir.”

Bragg put both hands on the edge of the console and leaned in slightly.

“They’re committed.”

No one replied.

There was nothing to add.

Margaret rose from the table first.

That was unusual enough to make Helen notice.

“You all right?”

Margaret nodded.

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t frightened exactly.

She was older than fear in that particular form.

What bothered her was quiet. The official kind. The polite kind. The kind that sat on top of a situation like a lid.

Her husband had gone down with his ship in the Atlantic, and the first thing she learned from the government was how little the government intended to say.

Some patterns didn’t improve with time.

The basement smelled faintly of concrete dust and damp earth.

Helen stepped into the shelter section first and pointed where she wanted things.

“Water along the wall. Food where we can reach it without climbing over everything. Cots in the back.”

Mike nodded.

“Radio near the door.”

“Phonograph too.”

He glanced at her.

She gave the smallest shrug.

“We’re not sitting in silence.”

Tommy carried his box in and set it down where he was told. Carol followed him, slower and more careful on the steps. Margaret came last, one hand on the rail, eyes moving over the reinforced wall and the heavy steel door.

Mike stood in the middle of the shelter and turned once, slow.

Finished.

Not full.

But finished.

Far to the north, the pilot finally saw them.

Tiny at first.

Then not tiny.

“Control, Sabre Two-One. I have visual.”

A pause.

“Confirm.”

“Multiple aircraft. Large formation. Bearing one-eight-zero relative. Closing.”

Another pause.

Then:

“Stand by.”

The pilot kept his voice even.

“Control, I am within range.”

Static answered first.

Then a voice.

“Sabre Two-One, stand by.”

He kept closing.

Back in the shelter, Tommy looked around at the cots and the stacked cans and the water containers lined up against the wall.

“How long are we staying down here?”

Mike answered without turning.

“Couple weeks.”

Tommy’s eyes widened.

“That long?”

“Maybe longer.”

Helen cut in before the question could get bigger.

“We’ll be fine.”

That was the line she meant to hold.

The line for the children.

The line for herself.

Carol frowned.

“Do we have to stay the whole time?”

Helen crouched slightly to look her in the eye.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s how this works.”

Carol didn’t like it, but she accepted it.

Margaret said nothing.

She had learned long ago that acceptance and agreement were two very different things.

In the radar room, Carter spoke again.

“Range two-three-eight nautical miles.”

Bragg looked at the clock.

Then back at the sweep.

Everything was happening on schedule.

That was the part he trusted least.

“Mark it,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Mike wiped his hands on a rag and looked around the shelter.

Concrete.

Steel.

Cots.

Boxes.

Water.

The small tabletop radio.

And in a drawer, unopened, his transistor set without a battery—insurance against something he couldn’t quite explain, only feel.

Enough for a little over two weeks if they were careful.

Not enough if his instincts were right.

Helen stepped beside him.

“We’re ready,” she said.

He looked at the walls, then at the low ceiling over the rear sleeping area buried under earth, then at the heavy door.

“Almost,” he said.

Above them, the radio in the kitchen played on.

Music.

Normal voices.

Ordinary Saturday life.

Unbroken.

Far to the north, the distance kept closing.

And in the cockpit of Sabre Two-One, a man waited for an order he was beginning to suspect would come too late.

Eight Feet of Dirt

A Fiction Series

Chapter 1: Saturday, October 3, 1959

By Cliff Potts

The coffee was already poured before the sun had fully settled into the kitchen window.

Michael Doyle sat at the table, sleeves rolled, a cup cooling in front of him. The Chicago Sun-Times lay folded nearby, still carrying the slight curl from where the paperboy had tossed it onto the front step that morning. He hadn’t opened it yet.

The radio played low in the background, filling the room the way it always did on a Saturday morning.

Helen moved between the stove and the table with purpose. Not rushed. Not distracted. Just steady.

Eggs. Toast. Plates down in front of the kids before they could start asking.

“Eat while it’s hot,” she said.

Tommy didn’t need telling twice. Carol took a little longer, watching everything like she always did, picking up on tone more than words.

At the far end of the table sat Margaret Kowalski, Helen’s mother, hands wrapped around her coffee cup, eyes moving from one person to the next.

She had been watching families like this for a long time.

“You’re going to start on it today?” Helen asked without turning around.

Mike looked up.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

No hesitation. No argument.

Just agreement.

Mike studied her for a second.

“You sure?”

Helen turned then, leaning one hand on the counter.

“Mike,” she said, “we didn’t spend that kind of money and time digging into the yard so we could admire it.”

Tommy looked up.

“Digging what?”

“The back section,” Mike said.

“The shelter?”

Helen answered before he could.

“Yes, the shelter.”

She set another plate down, firm and final.

“And we’re finishing it.”

Margaret watched her daughter for a moment.

Not surprised.

Just measuring.

“The structure’s done,” Mike said. “We just need to—”

“No,” Helen cut in. “It’s not done until everything’s in place.”

He held her gaze.

“The walls are reinforced. The ceiling’s reinforced. The extension’s in. The door’s in. That’s the hard part, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we finish it.”

Mike leaned back slightly.

“We still need more supplies.”

“We’ve got enough.”

“For two weeks.”

“That’s what they said.”

Mike didn’t answer right away.

Helen crossed her arms.

“You think they’re wrong?”

“I think they’re guessing.”

“They’re the government.”

“They guessed in Korea too.”

That slowed her for half a step, but only that.

Margaret spoke quietly.

“They guess in every war.”

Helen shook her head.

“This isn’t the same.”

Margaret didn’t argue.

She didn’t need to.

“It doesn’t matter,” Helen said, sharper now. “Two weeks is what they said. Two weeks is what we plan for. If it’s longer, we deal with it when it comes.”

Mike nodded slowly.

“I want more than two weeks.”

“You always want more.”

“This isn’t groceries.”

“No,” she said. “It’s survival.”

That word stayed in the room.

Tommy looked between them.

“Are we really going to stay down there for two weeks?”

Helen turned immediately.

“If we have to.”

“Why?”

She didn’t soften.

“Because there are people in this world who don’t think the way we do.”

What she didn’t say, but lived with, was everything she had heard for years.

That the Soviets didn’t believe in God.
That they didn’t value life the same way.
That when armies moved through Europe, terrible things followed.

She had heard enough.

She believed enough.

And she had two children sitting at that table.

That was all that mattered.

Carol frowned.

“Are they coming here?”

Helen didn’t hesitate.

“If they do,” she said, “we’re going to be ready.”

Mike watched her.

There was no doubt in her.

That mattered.

His was different.

Less about who.

More about when.

And how fast.

Margaret took a small sip of her coffee.

“Your father didn’t think it would happen either,” she said quietly.

Helen didn’t turn.

“He didn’t say much about it. Not at first.”

Mike glanced at her.

Margaret continued.

“Then one day there was a letter instead of a man.”

Silence followed.

Not uncomfortable.

Just full.

Mike cleared his throat and pushed his chair back.

“Alright,” he said. “We finish it today.”

Helen nodded once.

“Good.”

“What about supplies?”

“We’ll keep bringing them in.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one we’ve got.”

Tommy grinned.

“Can I help?”

Mike looked at him.

“Yeah,” he said. “You can help.”

Carol perked up.

“Me too?”

Helen smiled, just a little.

“Yes,” she said. “You too.”

Mike stood and moved toward the basement door.

Helen followed.

Margaret stayed where she was for a moment longer, watching them.

They were good together.

That counted.

The basement smelled faintly of concrete and dust.

The main section looked like any other basement in the neighborhood.

The back section did not.

A reinforced wall divided the space. Beyond it, the extension pushed out under the yard, packed and layered, built for one purpose and one purpose only.

The ceiling was lower there.

Heavier.

The air felt different.

The door, thick, steel, deliberate, stood open.

Waiting.

Helen stepped inside first.

She looked around, already organizing it in her head.

“Cots go back there,” she said. “Water along the wall. Food where we can get to it.”

Mike nodded.

“Radio near the door.”

“Phonograph too.”

He glanced at her.

She shrugged slightly.

“We’re not sitting in silence.”

Tommy came down carrying a box.

“Where do you want this?”

“Right there,” Mike said.

Carol followed, slower now.

Margaret came last.

Always last.

Always watching.

Mike stood in the center of the space, turning slowly.

It was finished.

The structure, anyway.

Eight feet of dirt and concrete between them and whatever might come.

It had cost more than he liked.

Taken longer than he wanted.

Left them short on supplies.

But it was done.

Helen stepped beside him.

“We’re ready,” she said.

Mike looked at the walls.

Then the door.

Then back at her.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Almost.”

Upstairs, the radio played on.

Music. Voices. Ordinary life.

Unbroken.

For now.

From the Greenland Diaries: Happy Little Trees

“I really didn’t think I’d be using it for this,” Debbie mumbled to a few squirrels crossing the trees to her right. “This is not what I had in mind. Not at all. I guess none of us did, did we? Who could have thought this much has changed in less than two years.”

She stopped and dipped her brush in a can of odorless paint thinner at her feet. It caught a bit of afternoon sun as it gleamed between the sharp stalks of overgrown grass. She beat the brush on the wooden legs of her easel, just like Bob Ross used to do. She tried to laugh thinking of his videos.

She wondered if she would ever watch them again. Power had not been restored, and she had a VHS tape of a few of the episodes. She had noticed them while hiding in her basement beneath the stairs when the Drum first started. They would shake beneath the old tube television her son Tyler had left there from the 90’s. He had been out in California when the Drum started. She doubted she would ever see him again.

Her husband, Tim, had died the first night. Debbie had happened to be downstairs grabbing some chicken breasts to defrost when she heard them arrive. Her instincts fired and she hid quickly and silently. It was like a dormant portion of her brain switched on. The reptilian lobe took control and hid her like she was nothing more than a frightened insect.

It had worked; she had survived.

Now, at present, she was in her backyard. The same backyard of oak trees and white fencing that kept her kids from escaping when they were toddlers. The same backyard her husband had tried to play catch with their son despite him having no interest in sports or athletics. Despite the rampant greenery, and the destruction, she could still see shadows in her memories of these moments. They were her only escape from all the heartbreak and weirdness that had appeared with these actual, living shadows.

One of these very monsters was in her backyard.

Debbie had gone to college for visual art. She then met Tim, who had just returned from Vietnam. They got married, had kids, and her artistic endeavors had firmly gone into purgatory. She always made a little time each week to watch Bob Ross on PBS to keep her skills honed. She loved landscape painting with both oils and acrylics. She loved him, too. She made plenty of mistakes following his tutorials, but he always made her feel like she was supposed to make mistakes. It gave her a sense of confidence, and eventually she was painting without him and to the quality she was creating back when she graduated. 

Then the Drum arrived, and everything changed.

Debbie laughed. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Of all the things to be painting. She couldn’t abandon this emotion. This weirdness. What would Bob Ross say? He was the embodiment of wholesomeness to so many. His ability to communicate positivity in the face of failure and difficulty was unmatched.

What would he say about the Unnamed?

They were beyond anything that his canvas could capture, emulate, or portray, but here Debbie was, using it to paint one in her backyard. Since the destruction of the Drum, survivors had moved through the wasteland and said the Unnamed should no longer be hunting humans like they did before. With the Drum gone they would have a new role in our world, but nobody knew what or how. 

When Debbie first noticed it, mixed in with the edge of the trees that led to the forest she’d lived next to for thirty years, she immediately wanted to hide. However, it stopped, and just floated on the edge of the trees, like it didn’t know where to go. After watching it standing amongst the bark, branches, and billowing leaves, Debbie got an interesting idea. She had been staring at her art supplies and canvases for months. They were just sitting there. Her digital camera and phone had long died. She needed to capture it, to pull into her own voice.

To make it hers.

After all, despite the nights of pure violence, the Unnamed was magnificent in all terms of the word.

It was ten feet tall, wide, and curled over itself like a frozen wave of fluctuating darkness and bone. Its hooks of golden claws were dug into the earth, with flowers sprouting around their impressions and edges. Birds were sitting and chirping along the golden horns and spikes sprouting from their back and hood. Even the shifting shadow beneath that midnight fabric seemed to glow in the sunlight. Below that was its chest of amber ribs, which reflected sunspots of daylight. Occasionally it shifted, but mostly it was just a violent cloud sitting still. A tempest tethered. A sleeping maelstrom of claws and bones. A thunderstorm lost and confused without its demon thunder to call home.

“You’re a good subject; you stay awfully still” Debbie would occasionally mumble from across her yard. She had set up her easel on the back of her brown deck. She had to chisel away at some of the plants that had choked the wooden planks with a spade. Eventually she got it to sit evenly.

“Do you understand what I’m doing?”

The Unnamed would never reply. Debbie was getting low on food. She had heard other survivors were beginning to leave the neighborhood to look for more supplies. Lines of resources were trying to be established, but people still did not trust traveling around the Unnamed, or the Reanimated. She sighed as she labored with the paints. Most of them had been salvageable but there were a few colors that she had to use sparingly. Sadly, green was one of them.

“You’ll always be remembered,” she said, adding the trees and wildlife behind its grizzly shape. 

“Nobody will remember me.”

If you want to learn more about the Greenland Diaries series, you can get the Kindle version of the first book for a dollar right here, or read the first ten days for free.

Eight Feet of Dirt

​A Fiction Series

Chapter 3: The Warning

By Cliff Potts

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Bragg stood over the scope, one hand braced on the console, the other hanging loose as the sweep came around again.

The returns held.

“Range one-nine-six nautical miles, sir,” First Lieutenant Carter said.

“Bearing?”

“Zero-zero-zero to one-eight-zero track. Due south.”

“Altitude?”

“Angels two-seven-point-five.”

A beat.

“Speed?”

“Four-eight-zero knots, steady, sir.”

Bragg nodded once.

That was enough to know.

“Interceptor status?”

“Air National Guard F-86s lifting out of O’Hare. Northern interceptors already vectoring in. Great Lakes Naval Air Station is scrambling everything flyable—Corsairs and Mustangs.”

Bragg glanced at him.

“Good.”

Another beat.

“Nike?”

“First Ajax battery ready.”

Bragg checked the clock.

“Let’s spend it.”

Out over Lake Michigan, the first formation came in level and tight, engines droning steady, contrails faint against the cold sky.

Below them, the lake stretched wide and empty.

Then the Americans arrived.

Sabres hit first.

Fast, cutting passes—.50 caliber bursts stitching across wings and engines. Tracers reached out and found metal, sparks and fragments peeling away into the air.

“Contact! Contact!”

A bomber took hits along its nacelle—fire blossomed, then spread. Another shuddered under impact, slipping out of formation, trailing smoke.

Then the prop fighters climbed into it.

Mustangs—lean, fast for what they were—sliding into firing angles the jets overshot. One tucked in behind a damaged bomber and opened up, steady hammering bursts walking across the fuselage.

The aircraft yawed, struggling.

A Corsair came in low and brutal, gull wings unmistakable, engine roaring. It fired long and hard into another bomber’s wing root.

Metal tore.

The bomber didn’t explode.

It just stopped holding together.

“Control, we’re in the middle of them—multiple hits!”

The sky fractured.

Nike Ajax missiles arrived a second later.

Sharp, violent bursts ripped through the formation. One bomber lost a wing outright. Another split under the pressure, fire trailing as both halves fell toward the lake.

The formation dissolved.

Not gone.

But broken.

In the kitchen, the radio was still playing.

That bothered Mike more than anything else.

The Chicago Sun-Times lay open on the table, unread.

Helen moved between sink and counter. Tommy stood near the basement door with a box. Carol watched the radio.

Margaret Kowalski watched Mike.

“They’re not saying anything,” she said.

Helen didn’t turn.

“They don’t know anything.”

Mike shook his head.

“They know something.”

The sirens began unevenly.

One.

Then another.

Then more, overlapping, rising into something unmistakable.

The radio cut mid-song.

Dead air.

Then:

“This is… Civil Defense… This is not a test… Repeat… not a test…”

Static swallowed the rest.

Mike stood.

“Tommy, downstairs. Now.”

Tommy moved.

“Carol, go.”

Helen hesitated a fraction.

“Mike—”

“We go now.”

That was enough.

Over the lake, a damaged bomber broke from the formation.

Something dropped from it.

Clean.

Wrong.

No chute.

No delay.

It fell fast.

Then—

The lake flashed.

A flattened bloom of light and water punched upward, a heavy shock rolling across the surface. Spray climbed high before collapsing back into the lake.

No towering cloud.

No clean shape.

Just violence in the wrong place.

“Control—” a pilot started.

There wasn’t a word that fit.

The house shuddered.

Not hard.

But enough.

Helen stopped.

“What was that?”

Mike didn’t answer.

He was already moving.

The shelter door closed.

Sealed.

The air changed.

Helen gathered the kids close. Tommy stood stiff, trying to hold himself together. Carol climbed onto a cot, pulling in tight. Margaret stood near the wall, steady.

Mike moved to the pipe along the outer wall.

He unscrewed the cap, fed the wire through the rubber grommets, and connected the radio.

The signal came in stronger.

Distant.

Broken.

“…take cover immediately… this is not a test…”

Then static.

Enough.

Back in the radar room:

“Second formation holding,” Carter said.

Bragg didn’t look away.

“Range?”

“One-six-five nautical miles.”

“Nike?”

“Reloading.”

“How long?”

A pause.

“Too long.”

Bragg nodded once.

The second formation came in tighter.

Lower.

They had seen what happened to the first.

They adjusted.

Sabres engaged immediately—fast passes, guns flashing. One bomber took hits and began to burn.

A Mustang slid in behind another, firing steady into its tail.

The bomber staggered.

But held.

A Corsair made a head-on pass, guns blazing.

Both aircraft survived the crossing.

Barely.

“Control, they’re still pushing through!”

The answer came thin.

“Understood.”

Nike batteries were still down.

Time was gone.

One bomber fell short, trailing fire.

Another broke off, losing altitude fast.

But three remained.

Three held formation.

Three kept coming.

Inside the shelter, the radio faded in and out.

Mike checked the water.

Still running.

For now.

Tommy looked at him.

“So what do we do?”

Mike looked up.

“At this point? We stay here.”

Helen tightened her grip on Carol.

Margaret stood quietly, hands folded.

Above them, the sirens wavered.

Then one cut out.

Then another.

The sound thinned.

Mike started counting without meaning to.

Not because it would help.

Because it was something.

Margaret closed her eyes for just a moment.

“And now we wait.”