Deadly Drafts - CH 34

SOLITARY

Solitary row consisted of five cement closets, each separated by five feet of solid fieldstone, each with a five-inch-thick steel door and a crapper even a small housecat would overfill. A yet-discovered quantum fluid formed the walls: probing hands found hard, pebbly rock, yet the arctic air cut through without abatement. Frost glowed and sparked from the mortar. At the end of the row, Death Fist's mantra rose and fell like waves crashing a beach.

Shivering from the cold, shivering from the flood of adrenaline sloshing through his guts, Arthur pressed his body to the front of the cell. The atmosphere in his cell was too thick, too lumpy to breathe. Only the free air trickling in through the door's keyhole window seemed to carry enough oxygen to sustain a man.

Book Bites - A Field Guide to the Apocalypse

A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Serious Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times by Athena Aktipis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This books alternate title should be, “So, Your Lexapro Isn’t Quite Cutting It.” Early chapters are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy wrapped in a candy coating of the zombie apocalypse. The text also has an underhanded habit of talking down to the reader—for example qualifying Carl Sagan as a “really smart guy”—and is peppered with enough coined lingo (z-teams, etc) to feel just a skosh culty. Add that to chapters littered with filler (pages of apocalyptic film synopses or lists of jam session etiquette) and the cons outweigh the moments of humor and insight of Aktipis’ “Field Guide.”

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Deadly Drafts - CH 33

WHO WANTS TO PUNCH THE HIPPIE FIRST?

Arthur and Harris huddled, shivering, in the far corner of the exercise yard. Winter's baby teeth had sharpened to razors overnight. Ice slashed with every gust. An ironic sun punctuated the perfect, cloudless sky. November's crisis of self had apparently ended. It shouted on every gust: "I'm motherfucking November, motherfuckers."

"This is inhumane," Harris shivered, clutching his leather-bound Sherlock Holmes tight to his chest. "We're being treated like…like…"

"Like prisoners?" Arthur looked up and punched a fist into the pale sky. "I'm not a number—I'm a free man!"

The yard's sparse vegetation resembled quills on a balding porcupine. Clusters of prisoners roamed the football field sized yard. Loners shuffled from group to group, trying to decipher the politics of cliques. Take away the state-issue drab and it could have been middle school recess. Those with a baseball or football played makeshift games of varying rules, mostly consisting of vociferous, chest-puffed arguments about the specifics of said rules. Others grunted under secondhand workout equipment near the cellblock door. Arthur and Harris scanned the olive sea, playing a dire game of 'Where's Waldo.' The body-builders were right out, as were the gang-bangers, sportsmen and anyone near a guard.