The Last Flag by Wren Cavanagh Book Tour and Giveaway :)
The
Last Flag
Race
the Dead Book 1
by
Wren Cavanagh
Genre:
Dystopian Horror, Thriller
What
would you do to pay the bills; to survive, or to just get rich, would
you compete against other teams in a quarantined town filthy with
zombies wanting to bite out your throat?
Emma
and Lewis sign up for the race, they need the money to save his life.
But they won't just be racing the dead, the surprise blizzard or the
other contestants.
Because
anger and vengeance know no bounds and like everyone in the blighted
town they become pawns in a game of retribution.
The
contestants become nothing more than live entertainment to viewers
who watch and judge their every move in the town of Prideful as they
race each other to arrive alive to a final flag. The team that makes
will get airlifted out alive and go back home richer for it, the
others walk back to a pittance and if they are not careful. They
won't get out at all.
SHOW
TIME
The
helicopters lifted off from their respective locations at the town’s
cardinal points. For the landings, the pilots made a show of finding
a good spot, good editing would do the rest. It would create the
impression of action and urgency where there wasn’t much of it; for
‘safety’ the pilots hovered close to ground and let the members
of the four teams jump out of the open doors. All a show—a few
ladders and some thick blankets thrown over the barbed wire would
have worked as well. Or cutting a hole in the fence. But cutting
through it would have caused legal issues, worse, the noises might
eventually draw out some of the town’s current inhabitants. And
everyone wanted intact fences between them and the turned.
The
players now had two days to reach as many flags as possible. They
would be told how many flags the other teams had, for added pressure.
If they went past two days the cash pot would drop hourly by hundreds
of thousands of dollars. A million today not being what it used to
be, the contestant had better be hauling ass.
The
video streams from the aerial drones, the helicopters, and the
cameramen showed that most of the teams had gotten quickly organized
once they hit the ground, and trotted off without a hitch. With one
exception: The voice of the senior editor came in through Tom’s
headset.
“Tom,
first fuck up.”
“Great,
who is it?”
“Joe
from Striker,” replied the man as he zoomed in on the feed for the
team.
Tom
nodded, he looked at the fallen man on his tablet and opened his
microphone. His voice came in over the video feed. “It looks like
we have a player down. A player in danger! And that can put his team
mates in danger. Joe Rosling from team Striker is on the ground and
not getting up! Team striker has hit the ground and is already
behind. Joe Rosling! Joe, looks like you got hurt there.”
Joe,
the Army vet, tall and wiry, with wild shoulder length brown hair
tied back in a pony tail and biker mustache, sat grimacing on the
ground. He looked embarrassed and his lips formed a tight white line
on a face from which pain had already drained all color.
“Just
a sprain. I’ll be okay.” He gasped through clenched teeth and
killed any credibility his reply might have had. Joe tried to get up
and held his hand out to Lew for support. With the other man’s help
he
struggled
to his feet, but when he tried to put weight on the hurt foot he gave
a sharp cry and fell back on his ass.
The
awkward silence and frustration was palpable as the camera feed
streamed on and minutes passed. Ross Boulez, the team’s assigned
cameraman, panned in on the reaction of the team members.
Embarrassment,
anger and impatience were the predominant emotions.
“Think
you can keep going, Joe?” Tom asked. “Your team is waiting on
you. Do you need to be extracted?”
The
man shook his head. “I'm good.” With a pained, tight lipped
expression and Lew’ help, he managed to get back up and started
walking. Emma and Lew clapped and patted him on the back, but they
looked doubtful. The team left at a slow trot that soon turned into a
slow walk, and then to a funeral procession pace march as Joe limped
along and kept up as best he could.
----------
“That
guy is done. Right now he’s just looking pathetic.” Said Fats “So
far, so boring. Where are all the dead people? I don’t see dead
people.
Our
viewers want to see dead people.”
“They're
there,” Cheryl snapped.
“Hooo!
I see one!” A junior executive whose name no one had yet bothered
to remember pointed excitedly at one of the screens. “I see one!”
----------
Once
pointed out and seen, the dead man could not be unseen. It was at the
south-most point of the town, as the She Devils progressed past a
tire retailer where the haggard apparition came out of one of the
open bays. So well had the lack of life, the dust and grime
camouflaged the man, that he had seemed invisible as he stood by a
grimy and scuffed wall, unnoticed until he finally moved.
The
gray man incongruously dressed in a disheveled gray three piece suit,
covered in dirt and dust, had blended perfectly with the gray cement
walls of the bay. He staggered out like a careful drunk and made his
way toward the women like a man in no hurry, a man with nowhere
special to go.
Cho,
the team leader and weapon bearer, passed him by blithely, without
noticing as did Kate Keller,they were both gazing straight ahead as
if already locking on the final goal. Both women were oblivious to
the threat and it was Xhiu Lee, the shy one who carried the food and
first aid kits and already dragged behind, who saw him.
“Hey!
Everyone! Look to your left!”
The
two women up front stopped in their jog and turned their attention to
where Xhiu was pointing. The expressionless man continued his
approach but now seemed to be struggling to hasten his pace. They all
looked unsure on how to proceed. They had seen the Turned on the news
and in the movies. But most people had yet run into them one on one.
In the movies they were zombies, gory, noisy semi-dismembered corpses
whose most prominent features were their teeth. You popped them in
the head and that was it. Show business always made killing look
easy.
“He
looks...” Xhiu hesitated, “…normal.”
“From
a distance maybe, look at his eyes,” Kate whispered.
Now
a few feet away, the man’s eyes were easily visible. Opaque, cloudy
pupils, the left eye was rotted and blown, visibly larger than the
right.
“Okay,”
conceded Xhiu, “not even close to normal.”
The
forlorn figure staggered faster toward them.
“Wow.
It’s like he’s getting desperate to reach us. Sad. C’mon, let's
go people,” Cho said.
The
three women looked at each other, shrugged and resumed their run with
none of the arrogance and levity they displayed at the start of the
race. The dead man began to follow them, but slow and unsteady, he
was soon left behind.
Wren
Cavanagh, that would be me. Also writes under the pen name Junior
Sokolov.
An
artist and writer from great North West.
I
am grateful that I have this opportunity to share my work and
imagination with you. Growing up my head was always stuck in a book
or a comic book (before they got fancy and got the moniker "graphic
novels").
More
often than not those books were filled with monsters, werewolves and
vampires.
Then
the likes of Godzilla showed up along with their brethren, born from
the very justified fear of the atomic bomb and its consequences.
And
that is what I love. Escaping into worlds of monsters and heroes, and
sometimes they are one and the same!
Letting
my imagination run along and bring into the narrative what I see
around me everyday.
I
hope that you will enjoy my stories. Find in them a temporary and
enjoyable escape of your own.
Interview Notch Publishing House
General Background Questions
• What is Notch Publishing House?
I created it when I started as an indie
writer using the pen name of Wren Cavanagh. But I’ve always wanted
to add more writers. I love reading, love hearing different voices
and interpretations on established mythologies and of course, love
being entertained as a reader. It’s why I have just launched our
first anthology / contest event.
So that we may hear new voices and
establish a relationships talented writers.
• What is the anthology event about?
It’s built on Lovecratian Mythos. But
I wanted fiction that transports that mythology to a recent world.
Nowadays we wear fitness trackers or phones that know where we are.
Can remember and anticipate our habits. We connect and access our
devices across networks on multiple platforms. Cameras are
everywhere. Can old monsters keep their mystery? Do they have any
more privacy that we do? We could have space stations on faraway
planets in decades.
And as for humans, things and attitudes
have changed since the times Lovecraft created his works. How many
people would slap a video of Innsmouth odd citizen waddling into the
ocean faster than you could say Dagon. Vlog ghouls or do or maybe use
AIs to trap an elder God. Or are we too jaded for them, who cares
about Cthulu when are off to an hospital visit without insurance.
When you see climate changes take out your farms.
• What are the payment, or prizes?
The anthology pays out anyweher from
$10 to $25, depending on length and quality. I’d like to assume the
quality will be good all around. So it’ll be down to length and
originality. I hope we’ll have a lot of diverse voice. And there’s
no charge to submit the fiction.
• The Contest?
The contest has multiple awards:
1st
place: $500, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
2nd Place: $200, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
3rd place: $100, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
4th place: $50, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
5th place: $30, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
All others: $25.00 and 1 paperback, a digital copy of the book.
2nd Place: $200, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
3rd place: $100, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
4th place: $50, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
5th place: $30, 2 paperbacks and a digital copy of the book.
All others: $25.00 and 1 paperback, a digital copy of the book.
• But it has a fee.
Yes it does. Notch Publishing House it
still a small business and it’ll help defray some of the costs. I
kept the fee as low as I could to allow as many people as possible to
enter the contest. Realistically a couple of fancy Starbucks drink
could be more expensive than submitting a manuscript to us. And I
think the prizes make it worth it.
Some writers are not fans of the fees.
And I understand that point of view. I have entered contest that had
fees. You really feel like you’re putting yourself on the line.
Conversely, I read comments from other writers who say it motivates
them.
• Who do you hope will contribute, to
the contest or the anthology?
Anyone with talent and a love for the
genre of course. But I’d love to read fiction from folks who are
not commonly heard. Minorities, artists and writers from underserved
communities. Straight as well as LGBTQ writers. I’d love to hear
their take on the Lovecraftian mythos.
For the contest contributors we have
special prompts.
• What are Notch’s Publishing
House’s next projects?
We have coming up the Honeycomb novel.
Sci-fi horror, combined with plantary colonization. The sequel to
“The Last Flag” a zombie novel. And of course Jericho the cat
from heaven who fights the supernatural in a quaint Oregon coastal
town will make a comeback later in the year.
• Who is Notch?
A feral cat I rescued some years back.
He loves to read.
Follow
the tour HERE
for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!
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