CZM Book Club: Cool Zone 2055: Massacred by Demon Ents

fifties and without additional ADO? Would you hate those words that you only ever use in one way, like, no one ever talks about ado unless it's much ado or additional AD. That's the only a do that's available now. Whatever, Anyway, here's the podcast we received from the future. Hello, it's Cool Zone twenty fifty five How to Survive the Dinah Wars, and we are still hearing from Mixed bunny Face Murder

about their experiences behind the Iron Curtain in Iberia. If you would like to be part of breaking that iron curtain and rescuing the Narcosyndicus territory of Catalonia, you can become part of the solution by contacting this show's most generous sponsor, Dino Cadence. That's right, the dinosaur dance troupe that pivoted is becoming the most popular dino writing trainers in the world because all of us, whatever we do for a living, can pivot into the fight against fascism.

Admission is free, but spots are limited. So contact Dino Cadence today and here is mixed bunny face murder. People always say the next day dawned bright and early, as if the dawn didn't always involve brightness, and as if we don't define early by when the sun comes up. It bothers me lazy writing. Life is too short for lazy writing, especially my life, which seems like it's going to be way shorter than I had initially hoped. The battle had been exciting, the funeral had been fascinating, the

sects had been spellbinding. But when the sun crept over the mountains of Catalonia, I felt spectacularly terrifyingly alone. I left Octavia's tent and began to wander around the Dreadnought camp. Only the dinos, the dino minders, and the night Watch were awake, and they were all busy. What thoughts lie inside those big, strange dino brains? A shipment of hay came first thing in the morning, pulled by a dinosaur. Look.

I can't tell all the bronto looking species apart, okay, but it was a bronto looking one, and that dinosaur was pulling a wagon the size of a barn, and the beasts began to eat. Most of the time I can lose myself in the work. I would have asked details of the minders about the economics of feeding such massive herbivores in war, especially war of mass casualty. Feeding the omnivores and the carnivores is kind of easy. But I couldn't focus on my work. The high of the

battle was long past, and I was just scared. It threatened to overwhelm me. And a few times it did, coming in waves like a panic attack, like I'd been taught in elementary school. I fell back on the litany against fear. I let the fear come over me and through me, and I turned my eye to see where it had gone. But that morning the fear kept coming, so I fell back on the other trick I know, journaling.

I have lived as good of a life as anyone has been able to live in this war ravaged climate, ravage century, this century that has proven the center cannot hold, this century that has brought out the worst and the best in humanity. I'm alive for now, Let's be honest. By the time you hear this, I will probably be

dead and live to see the great worldwide Revolution. You can't see this since it's an audio medium, but there are capital letters starting those words worldwide and revolution, and I mean them somewhere between earnestly and ironically, like anyone means anything these days. The worldwide revolution is the big grand thing We've been fighting for forever, and more formally,

since the eighteen forties or so. Wherever empire and colonialism has spread out of Europe, a little seed, a little antibody has gone with it, whispered words and pamphlets and shouted words in labor union halls. Whatever the empire marches, so does the counter empire. So does the hope for decolonization, for internationalism, for all of us to join siblings of the world, to share the bounty of the earth. I'm

feeling Maudlin. If I'm being honest. I'm usually a bit more cynical, a bit more detached, But revolution is earnest. You have to say, we should each give according to ability, to each according to day need, and then mean it so completely that you can jump off the neck of a DREADNAUGHTUS six gun blazing, machete clenched beneath your teeth.

You've got to earnestly watch those old movies like that damn Lord of the Rings everyone here keeps talking about, and think to yourself, Yeah, a red day, a sword day. You've got to think to yourself, death, death, death. It's fucked up, really, because the whole fucking point is we're trying to destroy the death machine, and we're doing it so fucking violently. I'd say the pacifists have a point,

but I'm not sure that they do. I spent three weeks in Frederick, Maryland, tending to the survivors of the Humboldon massacre of forty nine. If fascism is not stopped, it will murder all of us. I think over and over again about the American Civil War. I have ancestors who fought for the North, both white ancestors and black ancestors. I have white ancestors who fought for the South, who killed people to defend the most evil institution in the

history of the world. Western chattel slavery. Family lore says we've got a maroon in our blood too, who led gorilla raids from the great Dismal Swamp. I don't know if that's true. I like to believe it. For centuries, people had tried in more subtle waste end slavery, outbursts of violence and outbursts of legislative activity. Lots of people put a lot of work into changing hearts and mind

and culture. Ten or twelve million people lived in slavery, all told in the history of that terrible country, and what it took to free them was nearly three quarters of a million dead bodies. I wish some sins did not need to be washed away in blood. Two of my ancestors at least fought in World War Two as well. They couldn't have hung out with each other, because even in World War II, the American units were segregated. The white man, my great great grandfather's, died somewhere in France.

The black man, a different great great something or other survived and was forever transformed. Together, those two destroyed fascism as a political force for nearly one hundred years. Fifty to eighty five million people died in that war, all of which is nothing, fucking nothing compared to World War three, and it's billion dead. We don't have an accurate count on World War three point five, not yet. Maybe you out there listening from behind the Iron curtain, maybe you do.

I've seen claims of fifteen million, and I've seen claims of a billion. But we are not done yet, and I don't like it. The thing that I hold on to, though, the one thing that the Fanato Nihilists have right, is that none of us were going to get out of this live anyway. Being alive is a death sentence. All we can do is try to live well and die well. There are two good deaths. Someone told me around the fire last night. You can die fighting for a better world,

or you can die in bed. In that better world, we're guaranteed a death. The Dreadnoughts want to die fighting. I want to die in bed. I sort of wish I didn't, because frankly, I probably won't. If I'm lucky, I'll die violently and fast. If I'm not lucky, I'll die violently and slow, or I'll be captured. And the Iberian Phalanx does terrible things to their prisoners. Maybe I'll hit up the armorer for one of those cyanide capsules. Just knowing my luck, I'd keep it in my gums

during battle and bite it by accident. When people glorify war, they rarely talk about all the people who die by accident, who die in helicopter crashes, who are gunned down by friendly fire. Imagine being the poor son of a bit who shot De Rudy in the First Spanish Civil War. But you know what else is inevitable besides death advertising. This podcast is brought to you by Demon Dan's Danger Depot, your one stop shop for everything that burns, blasts or bashes.

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lifelong therapy, sure, but also like their houseplants. Contact the Council for the Plant Sitting of house Plants today and we're back. I didn't get a chance to wallow too long, because eventually the Dreadnought camp began to rise, hangovers and bangovers were visible on most faces, but overall morale seemed high. The great thing and sometimes terrible thing about morale is that it is infectious. Octavia found me, slapped me on the butt, and said, another beautiful day in the Core.

Every meal is a banquet, every paycheck of fortune. I love the Core. I was fucking a movie nerd, a doomed movie nerd with a death wish and an ancient air fifteen and cheap pirate style cutlass, both of which had spilled blood the day before, which is actually kind of cool. She was wrong about the meal being a banquet, though it was musely just dry, musely the human food equivalent of the hay that the dinos were eating. Listen up in older Dreadnought shouted in Cotilan, and then in

heavily accented English for the international fighters. He wore colorful late Renaissance brigandine armor with a Napoleon hat on his head. I'd assumed the hat just sort of a joke, but actually it indicated some kind of rank. We've got word from the pterodactyl scouts that what's left of the enemy is hold up licking their wounds in the woods about three clicks north of here. We can't abandon this position completely, so most of the main camp is going to stay put.

But you'd better believe we volunteered the Dreadnoughts to go wipe them out finish up the job. The whole camp broke into a roar. Then the Napoleon guy raised his fist and everyone was immediately silent. Normally this is the kind of raid better done at night, but they're wounded and they're on their back foot. Finish your food, kiss your loved ones, and suit up. A couple unit of fag Hags are coming with us. I guess to see how it's done, and as soon as they're here, we're

heading out. The whole camp was awash with joy and cheering. People started singing annoying ren fair style singing body songs and shit swords held in the air above their heads. I caught songs sung in Arabic, Kurdish, Catalan, English, Italian, and German. The Dreadnoughts are somehow maybe the purest distillation of internationalism. Most people stay in units united by language. The Dreadnoughts are united by their commitment to a short

life span. Rationally, I knew that going into battle with them was a bad IDEA reckless lack of self preservation is their defining characteristic. But sometimes when all your friends are jumping off a bridge, you think to yourself, I'd rather die jumping off this bridge than live my life

questioning my own bravery. I don't know if that's what you should think, but sometimes you think that it's normally a fine thing to think, because normally you're surrounded by friends who only jump off bridges that they assume are safe to jump off of. But it was better not to think too much on that and look spoiler alert, I wrote this whole script, so I'm clearly still alive to write I don't die in the fighting. Everyone else, though the thag Hags arrived. It was the Eldian wall,

the click that spoke Elvish amongst itself. I was disappointed to not have more friends with me, But you don't go into battle to make friends who do it to write podcast episodes. What a fucking weird job I have. I caught a ride on a dreadnaughtus alongside the rest of the Dreadnoughts. Octavia said she wasn't going to ride with me because she wasn't there to keep me safe. She was there to kill Nazis and probably die. This

did not comfort me. They travel on those platforms built onto the backs of those giant beasts, and it felt more like sailing through a storm than riding a horse. You don't disguise the stampede of the largest creatures to ever walk the earth, So our only hope for surprise was speed. Dreadnaughtus and Stegosauruses aren't the fastest creatures. But we made a decent clip over the hills and into the forest beyond. We thought we had the enemy outnumbered

and out maneuvered. Turns out it was an ambush. We made it deep into the trees, all the way to the little Nazi camp before we met resistance. I was near the rear of the dino parade, so I didn't get a great look at the camp. Seemed to be about one hundred tenths with some makeshift palisades and two machine gun nests. The nests opened up right away, but RPGs from the dreadnoughts silenced them quick Then the enemy encircled us. This wasn't the remnants of the force we'd

taken on the day before. This was something new, not just fresh reinforcements, but something new and something horrible, some nightmares concocted in a Nazi lap. First came the screamers, of course, but behind them wasn't a line of zombies. Behind them were monsters, things made of flesh and vine, some unholy union of squid, giant and tree. Each face at the top of the strange trunk was made from a dozen or more people, all of them suffering, all

of them screaming, all of them united in rage. These hell beasts, demon ents. I feel like I'm responsible for naming these things, but I don't. I don't know where to begin. Walk towards us on trunk and leg in tentacle. Someone on my platform opened fire with a belt fed gun, and bark and blood poured out of the creature near us, but it kept lumbering and stumbling towards us. A cheer

a shout broke out across the Dreadnought ranks. A collective death rattle, war horns blew, and Dreadnoughts jumped to the earth with axe and gun to do battle with the nightmare in the distance. I saw Octavia with her cutlass climbing one of the creatures. I don't know what happened to her. I likely never will. A massive tentacle lashed out and struck the platform I was on, and it tumbled to the ground, right into the sweet sweet deals

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Care is a collective process. Who would like to remind you that it's okay to take care of yourself so long as you don't ignore what's happening, and so long as you don't completely withdraw, but instead imagine yourself as part of a holistic process of resistance, and we're back. I hit the ground, and that ten weeks of training at Dino Cadence really paid off, because I knew how to land rough, hitting the ground in a roll to absorb some of the impact. No permanent or even lingering damage.

But the fall was not the end of my danger. As soon as I regained my feet, the sever limb of somebody hit me in the chest and bowled me back over. I stood up again and I saw the fight. Zombies were coming out of the woods, walking between the legs of the nightmare trees. I swear, if I live long enough, I'll name them properly. It was almost a relief to see the enemy's mooks, because then I had

something I could fight. I had my mossberg and several gun belts full of shells, and I spent the next confused minute shooting dead people in the face to make them stop trying to kill me, reloading into the two barrel every spare moment I had above me, n RPG hit a Cthulhu tree beard. No, that isn't it either and snapped it in half. The upper half fell to the earth lifeless. The lower half, of legs and tentacles kept thrashing, now mindless, taking out Dreadnaughts and zombies alike.

A Dreadnaughtus reared up on its back legs and then stomped what was left of the death Tree into splinter and bone. The dinosaur roared. I've never heard a Dreadnaughtus roar before, but I suspect that people back at the main camp so many clicks away could hear it too. I don't know that I've ever heard anything so loud or so beautiful. But the nightmares kept marching out of the trees, and one by one, and ten by ten, the fighters around me got their wish to die in

the fight against fascism. We were clearly not equipped for the fight in front of us. Then the shining conquistadors strode out from the dark forest, lances and rifles of gleaming like angels of death, come to summon us up to a fascist heaven. I hate to give them credit, but look, no one has ever accused fascists of failing from a fashion point of view, well except the US Christian nationalists of the mid twenty twenties, before they settled

into an unfortunately coherent and effective cowboy vibe. I shot one of those shiny fucks right in the chest with buckshot, but their breastplates were modern steel and he scarcely noticed. So I shot him in the face, and he scarcely noticed, but this time it was because he was dead. Then someone shot me in the arm, and someone else ran a lance into my leg, and I remember thinking, wow, I feel like this should hurt more than it does, and noticing I no longer had a shotgun, and then

I was thinking, I guess I'm gonna die. But instead of dying, someone with a handgun shot both of my antagonists. The battle was lost. That much was clear. Dreadnoughts don't run, but they are willing to stubbornly retreat, each arguing with the other over who would have the honor of staying to the bitter end. Thag Hags though they are brave enough, but they're not foolhardy. I saw Stegosaurus and limped towards it.

While dinosaurs and trees fought a terrible war, while medieval knights fought called quistadors, both sides, armed with blade and rifle. Somehow I wound up with a handgun in my uninjured hand. I probably picked it up off a corpse. I made two more people into corpses, then made it to the stegosaurus. Slowly. A handful of us made it out of the woods. No shared language between us, besides the language of grief

and anger and anguish. The cavalry was not coming to save us, and I limped for kilometers across the hills, while behind us dreadnoughts held back those who would have hunted us down and killed me. Out of the six hundred dreadnaughts he went into those woods, forty four came back out. Octavia was not among them. I hope somewhere she's happy, or at least resting in death. I hope I never see her among the faces embedded into bark and bone. I hope I never see her screaming in

eternal pain. I hope I see her when I die instead, and whatever happens next, and whatever dreams may come. I suspect, though soon enough, I'll know what dreams come, because, dear listener, I don't think I'm going to make it out of the iron curtain, not unless you mobilize and break the fascist lines. But I suspect, dear listener, that wherever you are,

you're dealing with fascists of your own. My only hope, our only hope, is that we crush them beneath the feet of giant lizards, that we smash them, that we break them, that with our life and with our death, we can destroy the death machine that threatens to envelop the world. And that's been uplifting a little bit from Mixed bunny Face Murder. You've been listening to Cool Zone twenty fifty five how to Survive the Dino Wars, and we promise there will be more uplifting the parts of

this too. It's just I really feel like we owe it to Mix Bunny Face Murder to read their whole statement. You know, they put a lot of work into getting this out, and there's a lot we can learn from it, even though again I would like to remind everyone that most people do survive any given war. It's just rough.

Fascism is rough, and we got to fight it. But if you want to support me, you could, uh bois I remember thirty years yars ago in twenty twenty five when I put out a book called The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice. What a good time that was, What a good book it was, if I recall correctly, it kickstarted in March twenty twenty five, and I believe that there was audio editions of all of the books in the Danielle Kaine series as part of that kickstarter, which

was pretty cool. That was pretty cool that that happen back then in twenty twenty five. Anyway, So join us next week for more adventures from the Dino Wars. It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the Iheardradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at

coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening