We Are Legion (van Helsing Diaries Book 2) Page 9
The story of Dracula isn’t simply the classic fight between good and evil. Bram Stoker draws the battle lines between ordinary, everyday people who are naive about the challenge they face, and an ancient, inhuman, calculating evil. The imagery is vivid, commoners challenging a powerful aristocracy. The stakes are the opportunity to live a normal life without succumbing to evil and preying on loved ones. And it is this grounding in the daily routines of life in the 19th century that makes Dracula resonate even today. Rather than flights of fantasy, Dracula seems to exist as a shadow in our own world.
In Vampire and We Are Legion, I’ve deliberately avoided the regular blood sucking tropes, instead grounding the story in a quasi-plausible manner, reviving the realism that haunted the original. In the words of the Daily Mail, from 1897.
By ten o’clock the story had so fastened itself upon our attention that we could not pause even to light our pipe. At midnight the narrative had fairly got upon our nerves; a creepy terror had seized upon us, and when at length, in the early hours of the morning, we went upstairs to bed it was with the anticipation of nightmare. We listened anxiously for the sound of bats’ wings against the window; we even felt at our throat in dread least [sic] an actual vampire should have left there the two ghastly punctures which in Mr Stoker’s book attested to the hellish operations of Dracula.
—For more information on historical reviews of Dracula, see Dracula: A Documentary Volume (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol 304), Elizabeth Miller.
If I too have kept you reading into the small hours of the morning, then I hope you will judge these stories a success.
Please take the time to leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon, as it is you, the reader, who determines the fate of novellas such as these.
Proof reading was provided by Pikko’s House out of Hawaii.
I’d like to thank those that helped as beta readers and jumped in on the editing process. I won’t name everyone for fear of missing someone, but I would like to note Andrea Beatrice Reed who edited this story.
Other books by Peter Cawdron
Thank you for supporting independent science fiction. You might enjoy the following novels also written by Peter Cawdron.
WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND & ALL OUR TOMORROWS
Hazel is a regular teenager growing up in an irregular world overrun with zombies. She likes music, perfume, freshly baked muffins, and playing her Xbox—everything that no longer exists in the apocalypse.
Raised in the safety of a commune, Hazel rarely sees Zee anymore, except on those occasions when the soldiers demonstrate the importance of a headshot to the kids.
To her horror, circumstances beyond her control lead her outside the barbed wire fence and into a zombie-infested town.
“Five, Four, Three, Two—count your shots, Haze,” she says to herself, firing at the oncoming zombie horde. “Don’t forget to reload.”
ALIEN SPACE TENTACLE PORN
A 1950s hospital. Temporary amnesia. A naked man running through Central Park yelling something about alien space tentacles. Tinfoil, duct tape, and bananas. These are the ingredients for a spectacular romp through a world you never thought possible as aliens reach out and make contact with Earth.
MY SWEET SATAN
The crew of the Copernicus is sent to investigate Bestla, one of the remote moons of Saturn. Bestla has always been an oddball, orbiting Saturn in the wrong direction and at a distance of fifteen million miles, so far away that Saturn appears smaller than Earth’s moon in the night sky. Bestla hides a secret. When mapped by an unmanned probe, Bestla awakes and begins transmitting a message, only it’s a message no one wants to hear: “I want to live and die for you, Satan.”
SILO SAGA: SHADOWS
Shadows is fan fiction set in Hugh Howey’s Wool universe as part of the Kindle Worlds Silo Saga.
Life within the silos follows a well-worn pattern passed down through the generations from master to apprentice, caster to shadow. “Don’t ask! Don’t think! Don’t question! Just stay in the shadows.” But not everyone is content to follow the past.
THE WORLD OF KURT VONNEGUT: CHILDREN’S CRUSADE
Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five: The Children’s Crusade explored the fictional life of Billy Pilgrim as he stumbled through the real world devastation of Dresden during World War II. Children’s Crusade picks up the story of Billy Pilgrim on the planet of Tralfamadore as Billy and his partner Montana Wildhack struggle to accept life in an alien zoo.
THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED TODAY
The Man Who Remembered Today is a novella originally appearing in From the Indie Side anthology, highlighting independent science fiction writers from around the world. You can pick up this story as a stand-alone novella or get twelve distinctly unique stories by purchasing From the Indie Side.
Kareem wakes with a headache. A bloody bandage wrapped around his head tells him this isn’t just another day in the Big Apple. The problem is, he can’t remember what happened to him. He can’t recall anything from yesterday. The only memories he has are from events that are about to unfold today, and today is no ordinary day.
ANOMALY
Anomaly examines the prospect of an alien intelligence discovering life on Earth.
Humanity’s first contact with an alien intelligence is far more radical than anyone has ever dared imagine. The technological gulf between humanity and the alien species is measured in terms of millions of years. The only way to communicate is by using science, but not everyone is so patient with the arrival of an alien spacecraft outside the gates of the United Nations in New York.
THE ROAD TO HELL
The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
How do you solve a murder when the victim comes back to life with no memory of recent events?
In the twenty-second century, America struggles to rebuild after the second civil war. Democracy has been suspended while the reconstruction effort lifts the country out of the ruins of conflict. America’s fate lies in the hands of a genetically engineered soldier with the ability to move through time.
The Road to Hell deals with a futuristic world and the advent of limited time travel. It explores social issues such as the nature of trust and the conflict between loyalty and honesty.
MONSTERS
Monsters is a dystopian novel exploring the importance of reading. Monsters is set against the backdrop of the collapse of civilization.
The fallout from a passing comet contains a biological pathogen, not a virus or a living organism, just a collection of amino acids. But these cause animals to revert to the age of the megafauna, when monsters roamed Earth.
Bruce Dobson is a reader. With the fall of civilization, reading has become outlawed. Superstitions prevail, and readers are persecuted like the witches and wizards of old. Bruce and his son James seek to overturn the prejudices of their day and restore the scientific knowledge central to their survival, but monsters lurk in the dark.
FEEDBACK
Twenty years ago, a UFO crashed into the Yellow Sea off the Korean Peninsula. The only survivor was a young English-speaking child, captured by the North Koreans. Two decades later, a physics student watches his girlfriend disappear before his eyes, abducted from the streets of New York by what appears to be the same UFO.
Feedback will carry you from the desolate, windswept coastline of North Korea to the bustling streets of New York and on into the depths of space as you journey to the outer edge of our solar system looking for answers.
GALACTIC EXPLORATION
Galactic Exploration is a compilation of four closely related science fiction stories following the exploration of the Milky Way by the spaceships Serengeti, Savannah, and The Rift Valley. These three generational starships are piloted by clones and form part of the ongoing search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. With the Serengeti heading out above the plane of the Milky Way, the Savannah exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy, and The Rift Valley investigating possible alien signals within the g
alactic core, this story examines the Rare Earth Hypothesis from a number of different angles.
This volume contains the novellas Serengeti, Trixie and Me, Savannah, and War.
XENOPHOBIA
Xenophobia examines the impact of first contact on the Third World.
Dr. Elizabeth Bower works at a field hospital in Malawi as a civil war smolders around her. With an alien spacecraft in orbit around Earth, the US withdraws its troops to deal with the growing unrest in America. Dr. Bower refuses to abandon her hospital. A troop of US Rangers accompanies Dr. Bower as she attempts to get her staff and patients to safety. Isolated and alone, cut off from contact with the West, they watch as the world descends into chaos with alien contact.
LITTLE GREEN MEN
Little Green Men is a tribute to the works of Philip K. Dick, hailing back to classic science fiction stories of the 1950s.
The crew of the Dei Gratia set down on a frozen planet and are attacked by little green men. Chief Science Officer David Michaels struggles with the impossible situation unfolding around him as the crew members are murdered one by one. With the engines offline and power fading, he races against time to understand this mysterious threat and escape the planet alive.
REVOLUTION
How do you hide state secrets when teenage hacktivists have as much quantum computing power as the government? Alexander Hopkins is about to find out on what should have been an uneventful red-eye flight from Russia. Nothing is what it seems in this heart-pounding short-story from international best selling author Peter Cawdron.
HELLO WORLD
Hello World is a short story set in the same fictional universe as Alien Space Tentacle Porn.
Professor Franco Corelli has noticed something unusual. The twitter account @QuestionsLots is harvesting hundreds of millions of tweets each day, but never posting anything. Outwardly, this account only follows one other twitter account—@RealScientists, but in reality it is trawling every post ever made by anyone on this planet. Could it be that @QuestionsLots is not from Earth?
In addition to these stand-alone stories, Peter Cawdron has short stories appearing in:
The Telepath Chronicles
The Alien Chronicles
The A.I. Chronicles
The Z Chronicles
Tales of Tinfoil
Coming in 2016
THE COLONY
The colony on Mars is the first step in humanity’s long walk out of Africa and into the stars. Mars Alpha is heavily dependent on resupply from Earth. Where possible, colonists use 3D printing and locally grown food, but they still rely on Earth for complex medicines and electronics. The colonists are prepared for every eventuality but one. What happens on Mars when nuclear war breaks out on Earth?
WELCOME TO THE OCCUPIED STATES OF AMERICA
Seven years after the invasion of the grubs, 110 million Americans have been displaced by the war, with over 50 million dead. Ashley Kelly was crippled by a cluster bomb. While the world crumbled, she spent seven years learning to walk again, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to lie down for anyone, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Peter Cawdron 2015
Synopsis
Chapter 2:01 — Home Sweet Home
Chapter 2:02 — Finding Jane
Chapter 2:03 — Transylvania
Chapter 2:04 — Castle Dracula
Chapter 2:05 — van Helsing’s Diary
Chapter 2:06 — Alan
Epilogue
Afterword
Other books by Peter Cawdron