Fortitude McBride was the archtypical gunnery sergeant. A Marine’s Marine. If you cut him, he’d bleed green.
He’d joined the Space Marines to escape the backwater colonial planet he’d been raised on. His parents were members of a tiny Christian sect that named their sons after virtues. Not even his friends called him Fortitude. Fort, for [...]

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She sat amid her life. The kitchen, the purse emptied out onto the table in front of her.
There hung the pot holders she had crocheted for her hope chest at age 11. Over there, the new range they had bought four years ago. The curtains her mother had sewn let the morning sun through, warming [...]

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He dragged his left leg when he walked, the result of some horrible accident or childhood illness. And he mumbled. He was unshaven, and his clothes were old and worn.
I could not tell how old he was, nor what his mental state was. He’d just brush by you, with a sidelong glance, and be on [...]

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Night in the desert is never as quiet as writers make it out to be. The noises you hear refuse to be categorized. It’s as if your analytical abilities shut down when darkness falls. Is it the wind, or some insect, or an animal? Or, is it something that has no name?
Every desert used to [...]

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The wind blows bitter from the east, these nights before Spring. We huddle around a fire, and draw lots to see who goes out to check on the flock. There hasn’t been a report of lions in this district yet this year so we feel pretty safe. There might be bandits, but there are always [...]

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isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, believe me. Try dying a couple dozen times and see if you get excited the next time it happens.
They finally called the virus “The Wandering Jew Disease”. Never found a cure for the couple dozen of us who were in that building when it got released. And, yeah, [...]

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Based upon this post.
Paul had always been a quiet man. More so since he’d died. Not that it mattered. Most of the dead were quiet. We just felt it was their way, of course, not anything bad.
It happened so gradually. It was weeks before we started to notice tha the dead, well, were still here. [...]

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