World Building Blogfest: Dead Sea Games Excerpt

Days 5 of Sharon Bayliss’s World Building Blogfest.  A day late, as usual, but today is all about the excerpt.  So you’ve built a fantasy world. You want people to read about it?  Prove it.

Presenting the brand new cover for Dead Sea Games: Adrift.

Dead Sea Games: Adrift

And an excerpt from Dead Sea Games: Exiled, fresh off the editor’s desk…

The inside of the building was dark. A long corridor ran as far as I could see, leading to a T-dead end. There were open doors on both sides of the corridor with gore-stained walls.

“No, no,” Jessie struggled against me. “Don’t take me in there. No! We’ll be trapped!”

I was reconsidering the foolishness of plunging headlong into a dark corridor in zombie territory when the decision was taken away from me. The guards burst through the stairwell door and pulled up sharply against the 2nd floor exit of cell twelve with guns drawn. As soon as they saw us, I shoved Jessie through the door and pulled it shut behind me.

The first bullets ripped through the top of the door leaving four tiny pinpoints of light streaming into the darkness, narrowly missing me in the process. I dove away from the door and covered Jessie with my body.

“Go! Go!” I crawled over her and dragged her along with me. We crawled along the waterlogged carpet, soaking in the filth of a year’s worth of rotting zombie feet, until the gunfire stopped hitting the steel of the door and started hitting the diseased fleshbags covering our exit. The white light from the bullet holes flickered and was replaced with grey and red flashes of dead flesh and rotten things.

They were coming for us.

“This is some rescue you pulled off.” I got to my knees and hauled Jessie up with me. “I’d rather be in a holding cell.”

Jessie was shivering against me, her fingers clawed against my shirt.

“Do you have a light? We need a flashlight,” I said.

I could see her head shake, no. “A glowstick? A lighter? Something?” The panic in my voice was impossible to control. I was freaking out. Jessie dug in her pockets frantically and produced a Zippo lighter.  She flicked it over and over, producing nothing but sparks. She finally found her voice in the fear and screamed at the lighter, “Light, you fucker!”

The spark caught and a tiny orange flame kicked up in her trembling hand.

“Okay, Okay, just calm down, calm down,” I said.

“I can’t!” Jessie cried.

“I’m not talking to you,” I snapped. “Calm down, Jeremy. You can do this. You’ve been in worse situations. You’ll make it. Keep fighting.”

I got to my feet and pulled Jessie with me. We still had a knife and a tiny bit of light. All we needed was a way out.

“We need to find one of the stairwells. I can boost you up from there.”

We crept along the corridor toward the T at the end of the hall. Jessie’s hand shook as she swept the lighter back and forth, trying to cast the tiny light farther down the hall. She only ended up making the place seem creepier than it already was. The shadows from the lighter moving back and forth perverted our imaginations; the twisted cables hanging from the ceiling turned into intestines, the mold on the wall became zombie blood, and dead eyes peeked from behind every door.

Something moved off to our left and we held our breath.

A flash of black streaked across the hall at our feet and Jessie screamed.

“Jesus!” I felt my heart pounding out of my chest and tried to settle. “It’s just a rat. See?”

Jessie looked over my shoulder at the huge black sewer rat peeking out behind a door. It looked curious, as if it had never seen living humans. And just as quickly as it appeared, it squealed a tiny rat squeal and bolted into the darkness.

“Guess we scared it.”

“Aaaah…” The deadhead snuck up behind us in silence and grabbed Jessie with both hands. She screamed in terror as black lips brushed against her neck and it opened its mouth. I reacted out of instinct and grabbed the zombie by the throat and threw myself at it.

“No!” …

Thanks for reading my World Building Blogfest entrees. I hope I’ve convinced you to give the world of Dead Sea Games a chance. It’s a fun, action-packed ride. Look for the release of “Dead Sea Games: Exiled” on Amazon and Barnes and Noble on February 9th, 2013!

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