Zombie Drabble #53 “Outliers”

“Whoa, look at that one!” Harold pointed.

One of the zombies was moving faster than the others. Where they shuffled, it was stumbling along at almost a normal pace.

“They’re changing!” I said, my voice gone panicky.

“No. It’s just a statistical anomaly.”

“What?”

“Well,” he said, in that college boy tone that annoyed me so much, “That zombie’s just the fast edge of the bell curve. Like, a few zombies are really slow? Even for a zombie? This one’s just really fast. For a zombie.” He fired and it went down.

“Okay.”

“Someone oughta do a study,” he grinned.

SF Drabble #23 “Good Fences”

I’ve been Sherriff for ten years. The treaty gives me a lot of authority, over humans and the locals, but the locals never make any trouble.

Well, almost never: they did raise a hell of a stink when one of the road building machines almost paved over their spawning grounds. I’ve never seen anything like it. Pieces of that thing all over town, two people kidnapped.

We got the hostages back, worked out a deal where they build the road for us. It’s a little more windy than we would like… but then, the peace and quiet is worth it.

SF Drabble #22 “Window”

We built the gate in Nevada, on an army base. When we turned it on, it took almost four hours to stabilize. By the time we could make out any detail they were already trying to come through. They built an enclosure around it within a day. They tried sending a robot through, but it bounced right off. So did those energy pulses. By the time they thought of a laser we had the mirrors up. I don’t know why nothing solid’s worked… it’s supposed to be a gate. But from the looks of their weapons I’m glad it’s not.

SF Drabble #21 “Burdens”

Some days, I just don’t get people.

I mean, I used to be one, glands and all. Then came cancer, and given limited choices, I volunteered for the SCID project. So now I’m a brain and a spine wrapped in some of the most complex machinery ever built. And that’s wrapped in starship going about twenty percent of c.

So, as you might gather, I have a lot of responsibilities. But they want to take up my time chatting about baseball, dating, whatever. I have half a mind to reduce the oxygen to the crew modules.

I’m almost completely kidding.