The Dancing Dead E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

• Herausgeber: Pie Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Dance or die! That’s the choice faced by victims of the Dance/Drop plague raging through the United States of tomorrow. Everyone in the nation dances nonstop, knowing all the while that as soon as they quit moving, they will die an agonizing and senseless death. What triggered this nightmarish marathon remains unknown...at least until Laurette, a dancer with a dark past, is swept to the West Coast as part of a mysterious migration that reveals the secret behind the plague. Can she survive attacks by brutal fanatics and disease-control warriors long enough to embrace her twisted destiny at the end of the biggest, and deadliest, dance number of all time?

Leseprobe

The Dancing Dead

A SCIFI STORY

ROBERT JESCHONEK

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

The Dancing Dead

About the Author

Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

THE DANCING DEAD

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

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Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com/

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Also by Robert Jeschonek

Battlenaut Crucible

Scifi Motherlode

Six Scifi Stories Volume One

Six Scifi Stories Volume Two

Six Scifi Stories Volume Three

Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel

The Dancing Dead

Hundreds of us push forward, dancing madly as we always do, not suspecting, never guessing what awaits us up ahead.  We're spinning, sprinting, leaping, twirling by moonlight and flickering streetlights, one huge rhythmic mob bumping and slamming and kicking chaotically...all caught up in the hyper metronome beats in our heads, none of us watching that billboard in our paths.

Then BAWHOOM, a row of cannons punches through the giant sign, tearing holes in the oversized faces of the smiling models in the massive image.  Most of us finally look up, gaping at the weapons pointed in our direction...though I wonder how many of us really understand what's in store.

Not many, I think.  Most of the others keep dancing straight ahead...but with my long brown hair flying, I redirect my path and accelerate my movements, gyrating as fast as I can away from the field of fire.

My name is Laurette and I'm not ready to surrender, not now when we're so close to wherever this plague of ours has been leading from the start.

The sickness has been driving us west for weeks, and now we're here, L.A. at last.  Something big's about to happen, we don't know what, but we do know when--45 minutes from now--and I for one intend to be alive to see it.

As exhausted as I am, as I always am these days, I double-down and push myself harder than ever.  And as I rush out of range, I catch glimpses of the attack as it starts.

The cannons blow out streams of white slop that rain down on the dancing mob like a shower of plaster.  Those caught in the shower keep hopping and whirling, some hooting and whooping, all splashing like kids in the covering whiteness.

But the whitewash isn't meant for their amusement.  Within seconds, it does the worst thing the dancers can imagine.

It hardens.

Even the most oblivious ones get it now.  As their dancing slows and slows some more, they understand.  As the hardening muck locks them down no matter how hard they struggle, they grasp their fates.

And they scream for their lives.

I'm lucky, I made it--barely--out of reach, and I'm untouched.  But I know I'll never get that symphony of screaming out of my head.  Hundreds of men, women, and children shrieking in terror, howling their lungs out.

Because this is the end for every one of them.  Because they all know there's only one thing any of them can do.

Which is die.

Not because the muck stops their breathing.  Not because it stops their heartbeats.

Because it stops their dancing.

* * *

That would've been my fate, too, if I'd been whitewashed.  I'm just as infected as the rest of them, just as much a victim of the Dance/Drop plague.

For the past six weeks, I've been dancing day and night, never stopping for a moment.  If I ever do, whether by choice or force or accident, I'll be dead within seconds. Excruciating pain will flash through me, and then I'll fall down screaming on the spot, just another spent young woman in a very long line of danced-out corpses.  I've seen it happen too many times to count.

Everyone in what's left of America has.  Why do you think the millions of sick ones are all dancing so hard?

Even if, deep in our overstressed hearts, we secretly crave the stillness that only death brings.

* * *

Dancing freestyle, I skip down an alley as fast as I can, waving my arms overhead.  Every few steps, I do a spin-kick or twist, just to make sure my plague-ridden body never doubts I'm keeping up the dance moves.  When it comes to the Dance/Drop bug, launching into a straight-ahead walk or run with no rhythmic component can trigger a fatal reaction just as easily as ceasing all motion.  The beat in our heads and the beat of our hearts are inextricably linked; falling out of step with one will throw the other into runaway asynchronous spasms.

At the end of the alley, I do a slow pirouette as I size up the street in front of me.  Then I quick-step left, away from the flashing orange lights on the right.

Orange lights mean Dance Rangers, and Dance Rangers mean trouble.  Recruited from the few cops and servicemen uninfected by the plague, they used to try to help victims like me.  Now, they're just trying to drop as many of us as they can, to contain the plague.

I go half a block, then hip-hop stomp my way across the street, weaving between a scattering of abandoned cars.  Who needs a zombie apocalypse to end congestion on the streets of Los Angeles? Boogie fever will do the job just as well, it turns out.

On the other side, I polka the rest of the way to the next intersection and shuffle right.  I see dancers in that direction, converging on a rolling yellow truck...and I hurry to join them.

Because I know exactly what that vehicle is all about.  The Dance Rangers aren't the only ones hunting us Beatheads.  The folks with the yellow trucks painted with big smiley faces are looking for us, too...but not to drop us.

They just want to help us hold on a little longer, keep body and soul together in spite of our plight.

* * *

Before the plague struck, I loved dancing.  It was the most important thing in the world to me.

I was always dancing, whether I was on the job as a professional dancer on stage and screen or during my off-hours, getting down in wild clubs.

Dance, dance, dance, that was me.  And burn every bridge on the way as I danced to the top.  Drop-kick almost everyone who couldn't help my career, just because.

Now look at me.  What wouldn't I give to have someone who cares, just to have the simple company of someone I love?

And what wouldn't I do to be able to stop dancing without dropping dead?

* * *

Keeping the truck rolling, that's the key.  The Beatheads dance up, grab what's handed out the window, and dance away.

As I waltz my way closer, I see a young man trot away from the truck, stuffing a sandwich in his face.  A woman bounds up next and grabs a yellow sweatshirt, then pulls it on over her tattered pink tank while shimmying down the sidewalk.

Next thing I know, I'm at the window myself, shouting to the Smileez--the people in the biohazard suits inside.  "Food and water! Food and water!"

As the truck rolls onward, I do an Irish jig to stay alongside it.  One of the people inside hands me a bottle of water; someone else pushes a sandwich my way.