Category: One Among the Dead

Day 245:

Oh hey, I haven’t mentioned the goo monster yet!

OK, here’s want I want you to picture: hospital gelatin.  Lime flavored. But for some reason because it’s the medical center the lighting is off so it doesn’t look like an appealing green. It looks like the green of the hallway walls, or the green of a dying plant.

If you’ve gotten to baby-poop green, back up, it’s not that brownish.

Now make it perfectly cubical. And two meters tall. And give it giant eyes and a  big squishy maw that makes you wonder how it chews.

You know when it’s around because there’s this sickening “splort” sound when it hops. It would remind you of an undead axe murderer crossing a swamp at midnight in an ancient movie reel. The noise that makes the stupid teens go investigate and the audience go drop another dollar for a barf bag because carnage is about to ensue.

The only way this thing is a result of terraforming is if someone dropped their lunch into the payload before it was launched.

Slice a hunk off, and after a short pause, that hunk becomes another just like its bigger parent.

So far the only way I’ve found to defeat it is to beat it with a sword until it’s small enough I can squash it with my boots.

Thank heavens it doesn’t appear to be caustic or I would be out of boots.

One upside to being attacked by a giant cafeteria dessert is that the green goo it leaves behind seems amazingly springy. It bounces, is what I’m saying.

There’s got to be a use for it, other than ruining my day. I just have to find it.

Day 244:

To heck with this. I’ve got almost an entire wooden chest of glass supplies. That’s enough to hold me for a while. I’m tired of sunburn. I’m tired of being wet. I’m tired of squids. I’m tired of sand wearing away at my feet. I’m tired of the furnaces roaring and the stink and the zombies.

I’m going back underground tomorrow. This topside life is for the birds.

Day 243:

Spent most of the morning scooping some pretty deep sand.

Sometime around noonish one of the water squids decided it loved me, and spent an inordinate amount of time slapping me around underwater.

Spent the rest of the day coughing up water in the comfort of my bed. Because nobody should have to put up with that crap.

Maybe I’ll use all these bricks to build something I can hit squid with.

Day 242:

So far, no sign of more pigs.

I’ve been clearing the bulk of the sand out of the sea to my north (or whatever it is).

There’s ore below it, in some parts, but it’s hard enough just scooping sand into a bag to haul up. I can’t imagine trying to hold my breath and swing a pickaxe through water. I’m not even sure I could get enough momentum to do anything.

So I’m not totally ore-crazy, which in a way is a relief, because sometimes I worry about my mental health in this place.

Today, I miss oranges.

Day 241:

One thing I noticed when I was up all night all night is that there’s a beautiful spring breeze once the sun goes down… the kind that reminds me of dozing off on the porch swing while my folks sipped fancy lemonades and talked in those voices that told you everything was okay in the world.

I can’t open my windows, first because they’re really just thick blocks of glass, and second because if I did every spider in six counties (do they have counties here?) would be trying to squeeze through them.

And it’s really hard to sleep through the mooing and quackeling and oinking and zombie groans, so sleeping out in the yard with the animals really doesn’t seem to be a solution.

But I miss those warm spring breezes.