31 Days of Halloween - Matthew Lang

Day Nine: Tuesday.

Nine days since all hell broke loose and started overrunning the town. Checked perimeter defences and UV spotters—the vamps don’t like those—and put up more silver crosses around the internal walls. Sarah and Max lugged a generator back from Bunnings  and rigged it up so we have electrified fences now. That should keep most of them out. Everything hates the electric fences, even if the zombies aren’t smart enough to not walk into it. Or pull away. The entire compound is starting to smell like a BBQ according to Max. Told him I was going to turn vego. Shen’s still going on about the countdown to Armageddon on the 31^st, but Sarah pointedly reminded him the Mayan calendar restarts after it finishes, just like our own. Shen just shrugged and smiled enigmatically the way he does. Sometimes it’s like he knows something we don’t, but it could just be that Asian thing of smiling when you’re upset, rather than getting aggro the way my dad used to.

There was a howl outside, and we all went for our weapons—Max and I have chainsaws and Sarah’s scored herself a gun from a copper we found dead six days ago. Got ambushed by trick or treaters gone wrong if the candy was anything to go by. We lost Shazza that day. Rule 1: Don’t eat the candy. Set up a series of webcams on our LAN to act like security cameras, but have to hope none of the vamps out there were hackers or IT techs before everything started. Don’t think they could crack my passwords, but with some of the software out there…it’s doable. Finally got some down time after all that but frankly, even when stood down you’re on edge all the time.

On the Ninth Day of Halloween my Lover Gave to Me,

Nine Zombies Shuffling

Eight Vampires Biting

Seven Rounds of Ammo

Six Trick or Treaters

Five Candy Canes

Four Bloody Corpses

Three Werewolves

Two Chainsaws

And a Webcam up a Gum Tree.

I got a present from him today. A copy of The Secret of Talmor Manor, which was nice, but I pointed out I wrote the book and then it was all “but this is extra royalties and encouragement for places to stock your work” and that was all good, ‘cept of course if this thing is happening globally there won’t be any more royalties and then I was like, “wait a sec, this wasn’t released in hardback,” and he was all innocence and “wasn’t it?” And then I opened the front cover and found a large print version of Twilight inside. With movie stills.

“Happy Halloween,” he said, before I could take him to task for murdering my book.

Then he gave me this t-shirt, which was much more like it—if you don’t get the reference, I refer you to this video:

I wish that was real. Could use a slayer right about now. Shazza fancied herself one—the things she could do with a gardening stake would have landed her a stunt job if that show was still going. One slayer, brought low by a mintie. Hell of a way to die. Gotta go now. Just got promised the ‘treat’ part of ‘trick or treat’. Apparently I need to relax more. You try relaxing in the middle of a bloody supernatural uprising, I said, he’s not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Probably a good thing. Gotta wind down when and how you can, I suppose.

~*~

Matthew writes behind a desk, in the park, on the tram and sometimes backstage at amateur theatre productions. He has been known to sing and dance in public, analyse the plots of movies and TV shows, and is a confessed foodie. He has dabbled in film, machinema, event management and even insurance, but his first love has always been the written word. He is suspected of frequenting libraries and hanging around in bookstores, and his therapists believe he may be plotting some form of literature. He was going to do a character interview around Halloween with Jake and Nathaniel from The Secret of Talmor Manor, but they refused. “We don’t do Halloween,” Jake was later quoted as saying. “After the crap he put us through last time, we just can’t get into the holiday.”

The Secret of Talmor Manor is available in print and ebook from select bookshops, Amazon.com and direct from MLR Press. Matthew can be found at his website, or he can be stalked on Facebook and Twitter.