Posts Tagged ‘survival’

axe and chopped wood

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Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf

Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content warning for implied past sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:29 — 36.4MB)

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Worse than a Wolf

by Wen Wen Yang

The sound of the metal grinding against the whetstone reverberated up my arms. My father was sharpening his ax, preparing for the day’s work. “I invited Mu to dinner tonight,” he said.

I shuddered.

Mu was a woodsman whose family came from a neighboring village in China and had settled in the same rural town in Oregon a decade before my family. How happy my family was to hear our dialect! It almost made this foreign country feel safe. (Continue Reading…)

raw meat

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Cast of Wonders 590: Umami

Originally published in October 2019 by Sourcebooks on their FIREreads blog

Episode image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

cannibalism, zombies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:17 — 26.5MB)

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Umami

by Amelinda Bérubé

Their progress through the woods had slowed to a stagger, but they kept going. They had to.

Jane shoved one booted foot through the layers of fallen leaves, then the other. Imagination kept her fear burning, prodding her forward with what if on an endless loop. What if that thing that had been her father had lurched impossibly to its feet, bent-necked and grinning, and come after them? But the sun was going down, the sky fading to pink and lavender behind the trees, and they wouldn’t be able to push forward much longer.

Emmett, ahead of her, cried out. “Look!”

Jane squinted in the direction he pointed, but the pale, twilit trees refused to stop moving after she turned her head, sliding past like tall, mocking ghosts. (Continue Reading…)

Girl with balloons walking on a landscape made out of an open book

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Cast of Wonders 559: Libricide

Cast of Wonders 559: Libricide is a Cast of Wonders original.

Arson, burns

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:20 — 27.9MB)

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Libricide

by Rachel Linton

When he woke, the air tasted of ash.

For a moment, he contemplated not getting up. There was a physical weight to smoke-filled air that went beyond the actual density of the particles. It crushed him; his throat closed up beneath it. It was never a good day when a neighborhood of ideas was consumed by fire. (Continue Reading…)

shoes

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Cast of Wonders 432: 12 Tanzen Lane

Cast of Wonders 432: 12 Tanzen Lane is a Cast of Wonders original.

References to suicide

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:35 — 18.4MB)

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12 Tanzen Lane

by H. E. Casson

Tanzen House was Victorian. At the time, I didn’t know what Victorian meant.

Then Duo said, like it was a thing people just knew, “It means this house was built while Queen Victoria was alive.”

Yeah, I guess that made sense.

Our house was Victorian and my room was the smallest. Duo called it the shoe box, so I cut out pictures of shoes and decorated my door. Nikes, Adidas, Manolos – they were all shoes I couldn’t afford. I wore dollar store shoes and hand-me-downs. He thought that was funny. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 395: Barter Queen (Staff Picks 2019)

Originally appeared in Cast of Wonders 352, March 10, 2019.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:46 — 31.4MB)

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Barter Queen

by Sarah Pauling

Soledad lets Gabe do the introductions because most strangers see him as the more respectable sibling. His attentive green eyes stare from under thick lashes, and his hair lies flat even when it’s desperately in need of a cut.

“We want Queen Mary’s protection,” he says, brazen as anything. Soledad tries not to stare at the ground. Gabe squeezes her hand.

“What can you give her?” the man at the door asks. Huge firearms dangle from his sides.

“We got guns, for one thing. And we’re mechanics. We can fix things. Bikes.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 361: Heartless

Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #84 (December 2011)

Content Warning: body horror; some violent elements right at the start

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:44 — 30.4MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is part of our 2019 Summer Spotlight, showcasing the work of the year’s major award finalists.

Peadar’s YA novel The Invasion is a finalist for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.

Heartless

by Peadar Ó Guilín

“No one asks for death.” This was the proud boast of the city of Kalegwyn. “No one ever asks for it.” Until Malern did. A bad move for her, as it turned out. She awoke on Castellan Garvinger’s operating table with his favourite surgeon elbow-deep in her chest.

“This is going to hurt,” said Garvinger from somewhere in the background. “Scream all you want.”

And she did. She couldn’t help herself, although she knew her cries were being conveyed magically to the people in the plaza beyond. She screamed until something seemed to snap in her throat, and after that the best she could manage was a wheezing, bubbling sound that carried no hint of her former insolence.

The surgeon kept working, ripping and tearing. He made sure she could see everything. They had pointed a mirror at her chest and had pinned her eyes open.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 359: Tiger, Tiger

Cast of Wonders 359: Tiger, Tiger is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:42 — 19.3MB)

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Tiger, Tiger

By Drea Silvertooth

Echo had always thought that when the world ended, she’d either be running with a motley band of survivors or instantly vaporized. Not a single book, show or movie had prepared her for being apocalypse adjacent.

In the Tropical Asia building, protected by thick glass walls and a ventilation system designed to keep air warm in the winter and sticky in the summer, she hid with her animals. Warty pigs snuffled through the decorative undergrowth, a siamang family sung like sirens in the canopy overhead, and the Malayan tapir and small-clawed otters had taken residence around the cement-bottomed stream that wound through the exhibit. There was still no sign of the sloth bear or the orangutans. Echo wondered if, while she’d been lying face down in the public restroom fighting for consciousness, they might have been evacuated.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 352: Barter Queen (Artemis Rising 5)

Cast of Wonders 352: Barter Queen (Artemis Rising 5) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: Profanity

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:50 — 33.3MB)

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Barter Queen

by Sarah Pauling

Soledad lets Gabe do the introductions because most strangers see him as the more respectable sibling. His attentive green eyes stare from under thick lashes, and his hair lies flat even when it’s desperately in need of a cut.

“We want Queen Mary’s protection,” he says, brazen as anything. Soledad tries not to stare at the ground. Gabe squeezes her hand.

“What can you give her?” the man at the door asks. Huge firearms dangle from his sides.

“We got guns, for one thing. And we’re mechanics. We can fix things. Bikes.”

The bouncer taps a finger against his forearm. “What kind of bikes you mean? Motorcycles or the other ones?”

“No engines,” Gabe says, firm and deliberate. “The kind that’ll last when there’s no gas left.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 343: Ten Things Sunil and I Forgot to Prepare for, When Preparing for the Apocalypse (Staff Picks 2018)

Previously published in Cast of Wonders 312, July 17, 2018

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:15 — 21.9MB)

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Show Notes

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders highlights some of our favorite episodes from the previous year. It’s a great chance for us to take a bit of a breather, and let you, our listeners, catch up on any missed back episodes with new commentary from a different member of the crew.

Today’s episode is hosted by associate editor Shawn Proctor.

Ten Things Sunil and I Forgot to Prepare for, When Preparing for the Apocalypse

by Shane Halbach

1. We didn’t prepare multiple contingencies

When Sunil and I made our plan, we always thought it would be zombies. I mean, we literally imagined nothing else. It just made sense.

Now that I think about it, there are tons of other ways the world could end: aliens from space, nuclear war, some kind of non-zombie disease, maybe nanobots or something. But even then, I wouldn’t have thought of portals to other worlds. I mean, I literally could not have imagined it. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 320: Presumed Dead (Part 7)

First published in the novel Presumed Dead (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, August 2016)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:47 — 44.8MB)

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Show Notes

Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!

Presumed Dead (Part 7)

by Rick Kennett

The Xenoid hadn’t tried to cover up evidence of its theft.

Her raft had been dragged out from behind the fungi bush and now lay on the white sand beach. Many of its locker doors hung open, their contents spilled on the floor. There was a gouged-out space on the control console where the computer had been.

It’d probably planned to use the raft after eliminating her, Cy guessed confidently. But, being a calculating creature, it had to secure the computer’s memory module when it had the opportunity. It represented a prize too invaluable to risk to the chance of failure.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 319: Presumed Dead (Part 6)

First published in the novel Presumed Dead (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, August 2016)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:14 — 33.3MB)

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Show Notes

Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!

Presumed Dead (Part 6)

by Rick Kennett

For a moment she puzzled over why the plants up ahead had all turned white and were sparkling under the sun.

Then, in a single step she left the warmth of the day and entered the cold of the island. A sudden, severe plunge in temperature, far colder than she’d ever known – colder still than the day she’d run, bare-footed and exposed, across the sands of Mars.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 318: Presumed Dead (Part 5)

First published in the novel Presumed Dead (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, August 2016)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:47 — 34.7MB)

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Show Notes

Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!

Presumed Dead (Part 5)

by Rick Kennett

The map in her hand now showed only the blue-green of the sea. Apparently there was nothing but ocean ahead for the foreseeable future.

“Plain sailing form now on, Lazarus,” she said, turning to look for the spider, but could see it nowhere.
(Continue Reading…)