Stupid Title # 1

I worked on that novel I was writing that used to be a comic book for today. Since I basically started it from scratch recently, I'll go ahead and post everything I've written so far. Also, I'm very bad at coming up with titles, so for now this thing is called The Eight. I'll say again: I don't guarantee that anything written here will be very good. But hey, at least I'm writing, right?

PS-I've waited to post this toward the end of the day to give people a chance to catch up on the fact that I'm posting things on my blog again. If you are one of those people, be sure to read the previous entry as it will explain a lot.

The Eight

You know that moment, right before the zombie horde (raised, no less, by a man you thought you could call a friend) breaks down the door and kills those people you’ve come to love as a second family, and everything suddenly shifts into perspective and you realize there are a lot worse things than knowing that out of 1000 people you survived a freak industrial accident which left 992 dead, 7 now sporting equally freaky genetic mutations (aka superpowers), and all you got was a one-way ticket to tea with the Grim Reaper at an indeterminate, but most likely near future, time and date?

No?

Maybe it’s just me.

I could start at the beginning, but who can say where this all really began? Was it when a little boy named Benedict Chant was born to two of the wealthiest parents on the planet? Or maybe when that same little boy grew up and started having visions about the end of the world? Or when that little boy, now a grown man, decided he could save the world by creating an army of superheroes but instead just ended up making a lot of people dead?

No, it’s not fair to blame everything on Benedict. However misguided, his intentions were good. And to be fair, the accident that wasn’t really an accident, wasn’t his fault.

Maybe that’s where it began, with the ‘accident’. But that’s too painful to recall. It’s blurry and confused, full of shrapnel and panic. I’m not sure I’m up to the task of putting it into words. What happened after, that’s what’s really clear. Those years we spent together, the eight of us who survived, locked up on an army base while they ran test after test, (locked up, they said, for our own safety, and therefore not imprisoned exactly, just not free to leave) those memories are sharp and fresh in my mind. It was the first time I can ever remember being really happy.

I know that sounds bad. After all, as I’ve already mentioned, 992 people died in that ‘accident’. What right had I to be happy after that? And I wasn’t at first. But as the years went by, the eight of us bonded in a way unlike anything I’ve ever known outside of family. But more so. This wasn’t just a bond of blood, it was a bond of shared experience. An experience so word-stallingly huge it actually changed our very DNA. Or, their DNA, anyway, we’re still not super sure on what happened to me. If anything.

We are family. Even Michael. I mean, hey, every family has its creepy uncle, right? And every family has its disfunctions.

Listen to me, babbling on about how to begin. Why am I even writing this at all, you might ask. There are already three books about what happened, one of which will be coming soon to a theater near you. But I thought it might be nice if someone set down the truth. And, as I am the only author who actually witnessed the events leading up to the attack of the zombie horde on Chant Tower, I think that makes me uniquely qualified.

Let’s start with the cast of characters. You’ve probably already heard their names, unless you happen to live under a rock, but I’m going to start from scratch anyway. Everything you’ve heard is from the media, which, frankly, makes it rather suspect. So let’s assume that almost everything you think you know is wrong, and let me describe them in my own words.

Anzu: Perhaps the most beloved of all of us by the public. And she’s pretty hard not to love. Anzu was born in Japan to a woman named Suzume. None of us had a chance to know Suzume, who was killed in the ‘accident’. Anzu was only five years old at the time, and could not tell us why her mother had brought her to Chant Industries that day. She also did not know who her father was or where he might be now. Much about Anzu’s past is unknown. And the scientists could not adequately explain how Anzu had survived when her mother had not. Of course, the scientists couldn’t actually explain how anybody had survived, but that’s beside the point. What is clear is that Suzume bribed one of the scientists into giving Anzu a shot. More on that later.

Anzu is bright and curious and wise beyond her eleven years on this earth. She is also exhaustingly energetic, and stubborn. She’s closest to Sophie, who became like a second mother to her. Right after the ‘accident’, Anzu was listless, in shock (as we all were) and there was some concern that she would be emotionally damaged by the violent loss of her mother beyond anyone’s capability to heal. But Anzu proved stronger than that. It was the animals that helped her understand. I should mention, Anzu came out of the accident with the ability to speak to animals. I asked her once what it was like, and she cocked her head to one side, her pigtail bouncing jauntily as she did, and said carefully, “It’s like listening to music. Even when there are no words, you know what it’s saying to you. My friends don’t use words…but I understand them.” She shook her head, the pigtails whipping back and forth. “It’s too hard to explain. It’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like not to understand them, you know?”

Anzu can also grow things. At the compound where we were locked away for six years, she had a little garden which delighted her. She could make things grow instantly, but she said the plants didn’t like that, so she tried to let them grow naturally if she could. She can also control the weather to some extent.

I don’t know if there are any tests for this kind of thing, but I’m pretty sure Anzu is the most powerful of all of us. Thank whoever is listening that Anzu is Anzu, and not likely to abuse that power.

Sophie was born and raised in Athens, Greece, where her family owns a bed and breakfast. She learned English at a young age, as well as French, German, and some Spanish from the number of guests she met there. In her own words, Sophie described her family thus: “After one of my great-uncles was killed for being associated with the communist insurgents in 1949, my family decided to stick their collective heads in the sand and remain firmly neutral with regards to anything of interest. They decided just to run their little inn, make the tourists happy and not get in anybody’s way. Which, naturally, made me run screaming off to America the second I received my invitation from Chant Industries. If there was even the slightest chance that invite was real, and I might actually get the opportunity to do something in this world, I was going to take it.”

Sophie was 28 at the time of the accident, and had never been further from home than the city limits. It isn’t difficult for me to imagine her chomping at the bit to get the heck out. Sophie is incredibly intelligent, especially when it comes to computers. She’s also somewhat naïve in regards to the practical things in life, and I worry that she has learned essentially everything about the world through computers which can create an odd mixture of cynical know-it-all and innocent no-practical-experience-all. She projects a world-weary stoicism, but inside she’s a sensitive little girl, liable to get her feelings hurt at the smallest slight. She also has a vivid imagination which helps her create the elaborate illusions of light and color she can now project as a result of the ‘accident’.

The scientists spent a long time trying to figure out if she was actually creating these hologram like visions, or whether she was affecting the visual part of the brain of those around her. They have yet to come to any useful conclusion.