Win a chance to get killed in the 2nd Story Arc of The Strain!
We're making preparations for the coming infestation, storing food, comics and weapons. The Strain #1 is on its way, infecting comic shops on Dec. 14th. And here's a little contest to get you excited for the comics from Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan, David Lapham and Mike Huddleston.
Last week we asked our visitors to share their survival plans with us for a chance to win an appearance in the next Strain story arc. Below is the fifth finalist for the Contest: Greg Duford
Be sure to read each of the entries, voting will begin at the end of the week.
There were signs, if you knew where to look for them. That was the key to surviving the first wave of attacks: Seeing the patterns. The back pages of the newspapers started reporting disappearances of family pets that had been left out at night. Dogs, mostly. They had been tied up, an easy meal. My buddy Darryl’s golden retriever, Ginnie, was one of them. She was a good dog. All the bums at the homeless shelter Darryl worked at loved her.
When Darryl mentioned that some of his regulars at the shelter had disappeared and a whole lot of the street folk were coming in before dark and not leaving, I insisted on getting home from my welding job at the construction site before sunset. My boss was close to firing me for refusing to work overtime, but I was union.
I was always cautious, but friends and family started voicing concerns that I was getting paranoid. Paranoid is good. It keeps you alive. Everyone got paranoid real quick after they found the sorority massacre. Thirty girls with their throats slashed. The papers left out the whole missing blood angle, but I knew. I’d read enough horror stories to put two and two together. I started warning everyone not to go outside at night and not to invite anyone, including people you knew, into your home. I knew the rules.
The morning after Darryl was reported missing by his wife, I stopped showing up to work. Instead, I went out shopping. I bought fifty tanning bed fluorescent bulbs, and electrical supplies, crucifixes from the religious paraphernalia store and cleaned the grocery stores out of their garlic supplies. I went online and got myself ordained as a minister in the Universal Church, then bought the best waterguns money could buy. I could make my own holy water now. The last stop was the
animal shelter. I needed bait. Max was a three-year old mutt on “death row” of the shelter. He was perfect.
It only took one night watching Max chained up in the back yard to see my first vampire. It slithered towards the howling dog, a worm in a man’s body. I hit the light switch and all fifty tanning bed bulbs lit up the yard, clear as day.The vamp burst into flames in under a second. I can still see its face. I still feel sick thinking about it.It was Darryl. He looked right at me and screamed in rage through the living room window before he exploded. I let Max hide under my bed the rest of the night.
I was feeling pretty proud of myself until I checked the news. An entire neighborhood block had burned down just one county over. It was my parents’ neighborhood. I tried phoning, but the lines were down, and I knew the answer anyway, in the pit of my stomach. It was then that I realized things were never going to be the same. We didn’t have to invite the vamps in. They’d just burn the house down around our ears and grab us when we ran out like they did with those poor bastards... with my mom and dad. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. The sound of fire, ambulance and police sirens in the distance kept me awake.
I stole the RV from my neighbor’s driveway the next morning. I’m not proud of it. The keys were left in the ignition, the door open and blood smeared the window. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that the owner wasn’t coming back for it. Emergency service crews were all over the
city, but there wasn’t much they could do except clean up the bodies.
As for me, I had a plan. I jacked up the suspension on the RV and rigged up the tanning bed bulbs so they covered it top to bottom. The generator went in the back and then I welded a cage over top of the whole thing to protect the bulbs from getting smashed. It wasn’t pretty, but I now had a mobile sun machine. The crucifixes were bolted on over top to further deter vamps, although I later learned that these and the holy water were a myth. I called my new ride The Sunmobile.
With my anti-vamp gear loaded up, Max and I abandoned my house. We drove out to a wide open Walmart parking lot. No place for vamps to hide in the shadows in an empty lot. I fired up the sun lights, and slept like the dead until morning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Max and I only travel by day now. We got the hell out of the city as soon as we could. Vamps own the cities. There are a lot of daylight hiding places for them there. They can hide in sewers, parking garages and basements, and pretty much any office building or condo is like an impenetrable hive.
I’ve met a couple of other survivors on the road, and we’ve built a camp around The Sunmobile. We sleep pretty safe there at nights, rotating watch shifts. In the day we salvage and burn down vamp nests as we find them.
We learned the hard way that holy water and crucifixes don't work, but we've learned to be creative with silver. We raid abandoned homes to melt down silverware. A simple silver spoon can kill a vampire...but if you're close enough to stab a vampire with a spoon, you're already infected. Silver arrowheads are okay, silver bullets are better.
Silver jewellery has saved my neck a couple of times, no pun intended. We all have makeshift collars made of silver chains, even Max. Some of us wrap silver around any major attack points as best they can, but you can't load yourself down too much. Silver is heavy, and you need to run sometimes.
We found some silver nitrate in a hospital, and that works gangbusters when you mix it into water. Pretty much the same as what we thought holy water would do. We put it in a sprinkler one night just outside the perimeter of the Sunmobile and heard the vamps scream. It was a good laugh.
Every once in a while we get lucky and find an old computer store that sells silver paint, the conductive kind. It's rare, though. When we do find it, we put it on our clothes in strategic places. It washes off though, and most of the time isn't worth the trouble.
At this point, it's all about careful routine: Stay away from dark places, park where they can't sneak up on us, and always keep the Sunmobile's lights on at night.
I don't know how long we can last out here, though. Depression is replacing the paranoia. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Kill them before they kill us, I guess. There's a certain simple pleasure in that.
When Darryl mentioned that some of his regulars at the shelter had disappeared and a whole lot of the street folk were coming in before dark and not leaving, I insisted on getting home from my welding job at the construction site before sunset. My boss was close to firing me for refusing to work overtime, but I was union.
I was always cautious, but friends and family started voicing concerns that I was getting paranoid. Paranoid is good. It keeps you alive. Everyone got paranoid real quick after they found the sorority massacre. Thirty girls with their throats slashed. The papers left out the whole missing blood angle, but I knew. I’d read enough horror stories to put two and two together. I started warning everyone not to go outside at night and not to invite anyone, including people you knew, into your home. I knew the rules.
The morning after Darryl was reported missing by his wife, I stopped showing up to work. Instead, I went out shopping. I bought fifty tanning bed fluorescent bulbs, and electrical supplies, crucifixes from the religious paraphernalia store and cleaned the grocery stores out of their garlic supplies. I went online and got myself ordained as a minister in the Universal Church, then bought the best waterguns money could buy. I could make my own holy water now. The last stop was the
animal shelter. I needed bait. Max was a three-year old mutt on “death row” of the shelter. He was perfect.
It only took one night watching Max chained up in the back yard to see my first vampire. It slithered towards the howling dog, a worm in a man’s body. I hit the light switch and all fifty tanning bed bulbs lit up the yard, clear as day.The vamp burst into flames in under a second. I can still see its face. I still feel sick thinking about it.It was Darryl. He looked right at me and screamed in rage through the living room window before he exploded. I let Max hide under my bed the rest of the night.
I was feeling pretty proud of myself until I checked the news. An entire neighborhood block had burned down just one county over. It was my parents’ neighborhood. I tried phoning, but the lines were down, and I knew the answer anyway, in the pit of my stomach. It was then that I realized things were never going to be the same. We didn’t have to invite the vamps in. They’d just burn the house down around our ears and grab us when we ran out like they did with those poor bastards... with my mom and dad. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. The sound of fire, ambulance and police sirens in the distance kept me awake.
I stole the RV from my neighbor’s driveway the next morning. I’m not proud of it. The keys were left in the ignition, the door open and blood smeared the window. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that the owner wasn’t coming back for it. Emergency service crews were all over the
city, but there wasn’t much they could do except clean up the bodies.
As for me, I had a plan. I jacked up the suspension on the RV and rigged up the tanning bed bulbs so they covered it top to bottom. The generator went in the back and then I welded a cage over top of the whole thing to protect the bulbs from getting smashed. It wasn’t pretty, but I now had a mobile sun machine. The crucifixes were bolted on over top to further deter vamps, although I later learned that these and the holy water were a myth. I called my new ride The Sunmobile.
With my anti-vamp gear loaded up, Max and I abandoned my house. We drove out to a wide open Walmart parking lot. No place for vamps to hide in the shadows in an empty lot. I fired up the sun lights, and slept like the dead until morning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Max and I only travel by day now. We got the hell out of the city as soon as we could. Vamps own the cities. There are a lot of daylight hiding places for them there. They can hide in sewers, parking garages and basements, and pretty much any office building or condo is like an impenetrable hive.
I’ve met a couple of other survivors on the road, and we’ve built a camp around The Sunmobile. We sleep pretty safe there at nights, rotating watch shifts. In the day we salvage and burn down vamp nests as we find them.
We learned the hard way that holy water and crucifixes don't work, but we've learned to be creative with silver. We raid abandoned homes to melt down silverware. A simple silver spoon can kill a vampire...but if you're close enough to stab a vampire with a spoon, you're already infected. Silver arrowheads are okay, silver bullets are better.
Silver jewellery has saved my neck a couple of times, no pun intended. We all have makeshift collars made of silver chains, even Max. Some of us wrap silver around any major attack points as best they can, but you can't load yourself down too much. Silver is heavy, and you need to run sometimes.
We found some silver nitrate in a hospital, and that works gangbusters when you mix it into water. Pretty much the same as what we thought holy water would do. We put it in a sprinkler one night just outside the perimeter of the Sunmobile and heard the vamps scream. It was a good laugh.
Every once in a while we get lucky and find an old computer store that sells silver paint, the conductive kind. It's rare, though. When we do find it, we put it on our clothes in strategic places. It washes off though, and most of the time isn't worth the trouble.
At this point, it's all about careful routine: Stay away from dark places, park where they can't sneak up on us, and always keep the Sunmobile's lights on at night.
I don't know how long we can last out here, though. Depression is replacing the paranoia. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Kill them before they kill us, I guess. There's a certain simple pleasure in that.