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Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. And we're going back to an older format. We're going back to the way the book club started, which is me reading a book I wrote to Robert.
Hi, Robert. We are returning to tradition.
That's right. Specifically, when the book club started, I read a book called The Lamble Slaughter of the Lion, And you can go back and listen to it if you'd like, And you might want to before you listen to this, but also you might have a different brain where you can just jump into the sequel, in which case that's great because the third book is finally going to come out in this series, and so I thought, why not read you all second one for free?
Excellent.
So the first book, The Lama Thought of the Lion, had Danielle Kane and a bunch of her friends dealing with a demon in a squatted town and then they're on the run and then they're like, let's be the punk rock Scooby Doo people. And that's my summation of it. Robert M. I was going to pretend like you haven't read this book, but I think you've read this book.
Yes I have.
Yeah, but now you get to hear it, so I guess I'll just start it.
Yeah, I mean, I've loved the Danielle Kine series, so excited to be rereading Slash, listening to the second novella in it really just waiting for you to get the third one out.
Oh, it's being kickstarted right now.
Slightly harassing you over that. Good. Yeah, get in there and donate, you motherfuckers.
Yeah, all right, the barrow will send what it may. This was published by tour dot Com the number of years ago, twenty eighteen. I don't know. You think I would know, But that's not the part of the document I have opened right now, Chapter one. The towering bursts of flame that staggered their way across the empty black horizon weren't helping my mood. I'd been dozing in the back seat of the car, my head against Bryn's shoulder, but the staccato, silent bursts were too eerie to sleep through.
Where the hell are we? I asked outside as far as I could see were featureless planes, no stars in the sky, just blackness, blackness, and fire. Hell's about the word for it, Brynn said. She was gazing out the window, her face lit a little by the interior lights of the car, and a lot by the occasional streaks of fire outside. A single thick black tattoo line cut its way down her face from her short bangs to the bridge of her nose, and her face was severe, even
more severe than usual. Or maybe I was just drowsy. The rest of the passengers were silent, and we tore down the road through all that darkness. It was gas flaring. As I woke up more properly, I remembered, must be in North Dakota, somewhere. Excess natural gas production beyond what they've got the infrastructure for gets burned off. I'd never seen it with my own eyes, those flames that stood
in monument to the wastefulness of civilization. My left shoulder ached were thread, regular sewing thread held together a crowbar wound. My right hand was sore still and modeled with supernatural gray where an undead goat had bitten it. Behind us, a thousand miles of Highway. Ago was nothing, dead bodies and probably some investigators who wanted explanations. We couldn't really give a demon killed those police officers, sir, It wasn't us.
They probably shouldn't have pulled out guns around a blood red at three antler deer with obvious supernatural agility, So whose fault was it? Really? No one would believe us A week ago. I wouldn't have believed us. We couldn't go back ahead of us. There was also nothing. We had a sort of scattershot map of towns with friends who might shelter us, of places that might have books
or witches who could teach us. Doomsday was convinced that if we could make it to the Washington coast, we'd eventually find people who could get us on a boat to the islands off the coast of Canada. Vulture had a Google map populated with disappearances and strange phenomenon we might look into. But none of us had anything concrete, no real plans, only chaos. This is how we're meant
to live. Thursday drove for sixteen hours straight, his fists gripping the wheel At ten and two, no music on the stee but the ethereal washed out voices of AM radio preachers were on. Sometimes. I think they were telling us that we were going to hell. I always assumed that voices like those are telling me that we left the fields of fire behind. Just as the sun edged over the horizon behind us, Thursday pulled into a rest area,
quote to watch dawn, maybe eat something. But once the engine was off, he didn't even make it out of the driver's seat before he fell asleep. The rest of us better rested, leaned against the car in the chilly morning air, and watched that sunrise. If you stay up all night, you owe it to yourself to watch sunrise.
Every time Vulture passed around a tiny bottle of orange juice he produced from somewhere, maybe his hoodie pocket, because those blue jeans short shorts sure didn't have serious pockets on them. He would have made a good stage magician. He had the right kind of charm, and all his motions were fluid, almost hypnotizing. He smiled easily, and even though his smile rarely looked genuine, when he smiled, you found yourself smiling too. Is this going to work out?
Brynn asked, breaking hours of silence. She was sitting on top of the spray painted red old Honda Civic hatchback, her steel toed boots hanging down over the side. She ripped at a pomegranate, casting its pulp onto the pavement. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. I'm not sure she owned any T shirts that still had their sleeves on a long enough timeline, Doomsday said, no, but it'll
work out today. Even if she was only just now learning to weave words into ritual magic, Doomsday had a way of warping the world around her when she spoke. What's more important, I asked, laying Low or our new career? It was idle curiosity, nothing more. What mattered was our motion, not our purpose. Low Doomsday said, find some demons, Vulture said. At the same time, they looked at one another. They'd known one another for how long years? I'd not known
them even a week? But do you know what I did know?
Robert Evans that products and services also. I was trying to think of something to say along the lines of all of the gas burning off that you see when you drive across certain parts of the rule. But anyway, the oil and gas industry sponsor, I don't know. I don't have anything for you.
Well, here's whatever sponsors us.
And we're back.
Could we be sponsored by like the kind of spirit of vengeance as embodied by wildlife Margaret? Could that be our sponsor? Do they have money?
So? I, well, okay, they could if they do some vengeance.
First, I'll have Sophie send an email.
Yeah, that's the easiest way to reach the spirit of vengeance. Somebody just drop it off to an elk. You know, I don't know what would happened if you asked for a sponsorship and put it on a piece of paper and put it on an elk's antlers. Your life would be.
In Nobody knows. Nobody knows. And elks seem pretty chill. That's what they're always seemed like, mega fauna, terrifying, mega fauna.
I secretly don't believe in moose.
No, no, not real. Yeah, absolutely not.
Real conspiracy, no Canadian neighbors. Yeah, but elks, elks are real.
Unfortunately, what is reel and deeply off putting. Our camels were like you see camels in movies and like, you know, camels are a thing. When you first run into a real ass camel, it's like, what the fuck? That's like a death the size of an elephant, Like, what the fuck? This is what people were right, of course, these things like you couldn't fight these things on horseback, like no horse would ever get close to a camel.
Oh my god, all right, that's the story. Yeah, find some demons. While laying low, Vulture said it was his way of conceding, the more we know about magic, the more equipped will be to handle whatever comes at us. Doomsday said, so both. I asked, how the hell will we do both magic, Vulture said, grinning. Brynn, probably delirious, laughed with her whole body, her heels banging against the window glass. Shut the fuck up, Thursday mumbled from inside the car. At least that's what I think he said.
It's what I would have said. Thursday would have driven the whole way if we'd have let him, but his protestations were scarcely audible. As we helped him up into the back seat, I took his place behind the wheel, Brynn took shotgun, and we ran away from the encroaching day. I've spent most of my life in the flyover States, and their beauty is largely unmatched throughout the rest of the country, but sometimes the endless expanse is too endless.
I spent the full day driving. Vulture was nocturnal by choice, and he snorted softly with his face against the glass. Thursday was wiped out. Doomsday was wanted for murder more actively than the rest of us, and wasn't excited about the being the one who would get id'ed if we were pulled over. Brynn could have taken a turn, I'm sure of it, but I didn't want her to. She
looked happy sitting there in the passenger seat. She put her hand on my arm and left it there for a long time, and that settled that I wanted to be the driver I drove all day. I used to think I was going to end up a trucker. When I first started hitch hiking ten years back, i'd been eighteen and fallen in love with basically every lady trucker i'd met. Even when that thing happened when I was nineteen, I had to stab a man trucker in the hand.
Even after that, I had assumed i'd wind up a trucker. Open Roads, Solitude, books on tape, decent pay who wouldn't want to be a trucker. By the time I was old enough for the job, I didn't want it, mostly because I didn't want any job. I found my niche as a wanderer, and driving on some company schedule just wasn't going to suit me. Still, I was pretty sure I was one hell of a long haul driver. We
crossed into Montana and I kept driving. Glacier National Park is probably the single most beautiful place in the country, and I figured we'd get to sleep there, blend in with a tourists at some campground if I just kept at it. We made it halfway across the state. I was on a side highway, avoiding the interstate because the occasional small town speed trap seemed like a better bet than the highway patrol who might have an all points
to look for us. Some British man was narrating a fantasy book at us from the stereo vultures doing, and the sun was just starting to get low. Brinn was asleep, Everyone in the back seat was quiet, hadn't said a word in an hour. The sun was just starting to look a little low on the horizon. I nodded off. I came too halfway into the oncoming lane and corrected. There was no traffic to run into, just an endless
stretch of Montana Highway. I slapped myself it's usually good for about ten minutes or so, and made a mental note to pull off at the next exit. Switched drivers, I naded off again. I had never crashed a car in my life. When I came to, probably a half second later, I was in the wrong lane again, fully this time startled. I corrected fast and saw myself headed real quick toward running off the right side of the road, so I corrected again. Still wasn't thinking way too fast.
The car went up on two wheels and my vision got choppy. Blackness, the sunset streaming through the window, with the road where the sky should be blackness. Maybe I screamed, Maybe somebody else screamed, where's the reset button? Like I was a kid again playing Nintendo. Just hit the reset button, start over from the last save. No, it's actually happening. Blackness. Then it was over. We were twenty feet off the left hand side of the road. The car was upright again.
We'd spun a full three sixty. The windshield was fucked. A beautiful spider web of fucked, with trees in the distance that I could see through the kaleidoscope of fucked. Guess the car didn't have airbags? What year did air bags get to be standard? Thursday's voice cut through the white noise that I hadn't even noticed. Doomsday. Yeah, Vulture, I'm fine, brin alive. I freaked out. I just started gasping for air. Danielle, I'd rolled the car. I'd almost
killed Brynn. Danielle fine, I answered, because I wanted to be left alone, and answering seemed like the fastest way to accomplish that. I took off my seat belt. Thank fuck. We'd all been wearing seat belts, even the people sleeping. Even the other people sleeping had been wearing seat belts. I opened the door and tried to stand, but my legs gave out and I collapsed in on myself. Danielle, Brynn said she was next to me, crouching her arm around me. I fucked up, I said, fighting for air.
I don't need anything. I'm the one who I gave up trying to talk. I got my head between my knees and I wrenched out gasps no tears, though not yet Vulter knelt down on the other side of me, put his arm around me too. I lifted my head up to see him wet blood smeared across his brown skin. You're bleeding, said, I'm fine, just cut up my arm a little nothing deep. I fell asleep. We're alive. Vulture pulled aside the shoulder strap of my tank top. Hey,
he said, my stitch is held. Got to get this thing away from the road before anyone drives by, Thursday said, into the trees. Vulture glared at his friend, But Thursday was right. We didn't want to deal with cops or ambulances or any of that shit. Brinn tried to help me up, but I shook her arm off. The only thing worse than needing emotional support after what I'd done was stubbornly refusing help I so obviously needed, but I couldn't help it, which made me resent her support even more.
Pushing a fucking car though that I could do. Vulture and I were tied for being the smallest, but no one made any suggestion that I should get back behind the wheel. Doomsday got in and steered while the rest of us pushed, and we got it into what was probably a tree farm. The trees were in those unnaturally perfect rows, and I was sure that the car wasn't completely hidden, but with any luck, we'd gotten it far enough from the road that it looked like it was
supposed to be there. A few cars went by while we were doing it, but none of them slowed down. What's next, Doomsday asked, getting out? Get the VIN numbers off? Thursday said, it's just VIN. Vulture corrected vehicle identification number like ATM machine or PIN number or whatever. Fuck off. There'll be a plate on the dash. That's easy, I said, cutting in, but it'll also be stamped into the frame in a few places. We need a pretty serious file to get it out, even if we can get all
the VIN numbers without taking the thing apart. They talked it over for a moment. Then Thursday pried the metal tag off the dash, while Vulture and Brinn took off the plates close enough for government work, I guess me. I leaned against the back of the car. I tried not to take stock of what condition the car was in, but the windows were all busted out and the roof was carved in on the back corner. You all right, it was Doomsday, probably the least emotional of the five
of us. Strangely that helped. I put my hand on the massive dent on the roof. If we'd landed anywhere else, I said, we didn't, Doomsday, pulled out a cigarette, lit it and took a drag. You smoke, I asked, not usually? She said, use two more. Still keep a pack around, but I could use a cigarette. You did almost just kill us all. I'm not going to say, don't remind me. I probably won't again. You know what you did, and you'll mostly get over it, and there isn't one of
us who's anywhere near as mad at you as you are. Thanks, I said, I didn't smoke either, Can I have a cigarette? I don't bump cigarettes out to non smokers. It's hard to hitchhike with five people under normal circumstances. The thing to do would have been to split into two groups, but these obviously weren't normal circumstances. To make things even more fun, we had to get a ride before the
cops stopped us and ran our names. None of us had any idea if there were warrants out for us yet, and none of us wanted to find out the hard way. Five people and luggage. Bryn, Vulture, and I all had travel packs. The days had decent sized suitcases. All of them were covered in glass, and Vulture's yellow pack was now replete with bloodstains. All right, Doomsday said, dropping her cigarette from her lips, letting it fall to the ground, where she stomped it out with a heeled boot. Gather around,
hold hands, got a ritual for this hitchhiking shit. We were still in the woods, hidden from the road. I took Vulture's hand and Bryn's hand, and the five of us formed a little pentagon. You say what I say, Doomsday said, But like in a round, I'll say a line. Then Thursday, you say that line while I say the next one. Then Bryn, Danielle Vulture, you say the line that the person on your left would have said last time. After I say the fifth line, It'll all go on
without me until Vulture says the last line alone. Anyone fucks it up, we just have to start over. First time I tried this method, I fucked up every line once. It's not a big deal.
Got it, Got it?
We said back. We began. We ask for good strangers. We ask for the barrow to send what it may. We ask that ill eyes pass us over. We ask for the dead to guard us. We ask that sorrow be held at bay. It took us about four rounds to get it right. It's hard to listen to what someone is saying while you're talking, but not as hard as I would have thought. I'm glad I was never the one to fuck up. I don't know how well
I could have handled any more failure. I felt the energy pass between our hands, a subtle thing, the kind of thing I might have felt before i'd seen magic. But after Vulture said the last line, a silence fell over us, and the wind picked up a gyre, spun itself between us, the same direction as our ritual, then spun outward through the trees. Then that's silence, So I asked,
at last, the fuck did we just do? It's nothing, Doomsday said, just a spell for good luck with strangers, keeping people would hurt us away, and all that shit about the barrow and the dead. I don't know the spell too well. I think Barrow is the name of the endless spirit it appeals to. He's a death spirit, I guess, But that's not what the ritual is about yeah, great, what could go wrong? Well, Robert, I'll tell you what couldn't go wrong.
Products and services that support this podcast, one of which is the seat belt, which, Margaret, because you brought that up, I had to look it up.
Huh.
Shockingly, seat belt or air bags sorry, airbags had not become mandatory until nineteen ninety eight.
Amazing.
I am really took this a while on that one.
I mean, this scene of flipping the car is based on when I flipped a station wagon when I was seventeen.
I was guessing that a lot of this whole road ship part was very very much based on.
Your Yeah, totally, and it was definitely like a nineteen ninety four to escort station wagon. It definitely did not have airbags, and I was completely unharmed. And if I hadn't been wearing a seat belt, I would probably be dead. So seat belts, air bags and whatever else wear ads are.
And we're back.
An suv picked us up not ten minutes after we'd been waiting for those keeping score at home. Neither being picked up by an suv nor so quickly is common. I mean both have happened to me before, but usually not while hitching it with five people, two of them being people of color and men besides Oh and Brinn had that face tattoo, and Doomsday was a bonafide cop
killing husband killing murderer. I actually can't blame anyone who drove past the five of us, though, no matter what their car, no one wants to be outnumbered by strangers in their own vehicle. It takes a certain kind of person, one with bravery and a belief in doing right by people, to pick up a crew like us. It takes a person like Gertrude Miller. It turns out, where are you headed? She asked, after the four of us got in the
back and I climbed in shotgun. I had been designated driver dealer with her by a rather hasty consensus decision, with the caveat that Thursday would be ready to step in if the driver was a creep or just a bro looking to brow down. Gertrude Miller wasn't either of those things. She was a white woman, probably fifty, with a vacant look in her eyes and a cold, but somehow genuine smile on her face. She had that tired look of a woman who done service class work. Her
entire life and the self confidence of the same. Out to Glacier. I said, you, it's good practice to ask where a ride is going, Probably more important when you've got reason to be skeptical, like when I'm hitching alone and a man picks me up. If they can't give me a clear answer, I don't get in their car. Pendleton, She said, that'll get you close to Glacier, but I'm afraid the sun will be down before we get there. That's fine, I said, we'll figure it out from there.
Thanks for the ride anytime, She said, know why I picked you up? Probably Jesus had told her to pick us up, or maybe I reminded her of her daughter or her granddaughter, or she was worried about me and the company.
I kept.
Why is that? I asked, God told me too, She said, there are some young folks who look just like y'all and Pendleton. They run the library ever since the county gave up on it, and they still run it for free. Never would have thought I'd make friends with someone with a face tattoo. No, I didn't, But these kids are all right. Figured you'd be all right too. The smile dropped off her face for a moment, and she squinted at the road ahead. Plus she went on, I've already
died once, ain't got nothing left of fear. I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just waited for her to elaborate. She didn't. Instead, she put the radio on pop country, filled the car, and we drove back off into the sunset. That's the end of chapter one and ah soon.
Yeah, I love the way you describe the countryside, like it's very It all has the vibe of like four in the morning after you've been driving all night, which is also the most like occult time of day, Like it's the most It's the most I ever believe in magic. It's why all the things that are now part of, like the horrible fascist movement we live under. It's where the beauty. Like there was a time when like you could just listen to Coast to Coast AM and a
man would talk about Bigfoot in the aliens. Yeah, four point thirty in the morning as the sun rose over the desert, and it was a magical thing to experience. Yeah, they've taken that away from us, Margaret.
I know.
It's like, Yeah, what happened to just the person who listens to that also has a lot of VHS tapes of very strange things in their very cheap apartment they share with four people, you know. Yeah, and that is a good thing. That's a good kind of person to be.
Yep.
And I I like the like, I like the altered how it's like drugs to just stay up too late, and like also just to drive all day, you know, it's a nice feeling.
Yeah, it's been too long since I've like lived in a car for an extended period of time and that, Yeah, you can really tell in you're writing that you've had a lot of your kind of seminal life moments behind the wheel of a vehicle and a long, proud highway behind you.
Yeah, and then also just like getting into the car with strangers. I was thinking about this recently. I haven't hitchhiked in like twenty years, but I used to do it a lot. And then I sometimes I'm like, I don't know whether I'm not trying to encourage listeners to necessarily go hitchhiking, but that's probably just me aging, you know.
Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of depressing to me the degree to which some of these things that were a big part of my life are just like not really done anymore. Like there's some hitchhiking, but I'm also talking about stuff like CouchSurfing, Yeah, getting killed by Airbnb and yeah, like that sort of stuff like there used to be. There used to be a lot more of. I think wisdom is a rule comes from spending a lot of time with people you've never met before who have lived completely different lives.
Yeah.
I think the world is increasingly designed to make sure nobody has that experience.
That is a totally because the people, Yeah, the people have picked me up pitch hiking, or the people who's like houses I've stayed at, or like the friend of a friend of a family who I'm just going to go hang out with and like go get a drink at a bar with that I don't have anything in common with. No, You're right, that is people need that, yep. But what also people need to do is wait another
week for chapter two, right u assholes? Yeah, farewell. If you're enjoying the barrel will send what it may, then you might like it. SEQL, which is called the Immortal Choir, Holds Every Voice and it's on Kickstarter now and you can go back it unless you're listening to this in the future, which case it's not a kickstarter anymore. But you can go buy it. You have so many choices. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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