♠ Someone’s looking at you ♠

“Shit!” A low hum was coming from outside. He stuffed the papers under a cushion and ran to the window. “Fuck. A drone.”

Drone surveillance was regular and bad news. He snatched the papers and key and rushed to the spare bedroom. Under the bed was a false tile which had to be prised open with a long nail. The nail was kept on the pillow for occasions like this.

Tile open, he placed the papers with his other prized possessions. Fake ID, his last picture of Francina (bitch), his hand gun and ammo.

Tile back in place, he rushed to his study, found the book with the false compartment and hid the nail. He ran back to the living room window to see the drone was hovering around his garden, its camera peering in through the dirty windows.

“Fuck off.” Connor encouraged the drone to go about some other business. The drone ignored him and was joined by a second.

Despite the heat of the day, Connor rushed to close all the doors and windows. Drones weren’t supposed to come inside without a warrant, but warrants were a formality and could be backdated. The system was rigged, with every advantage given to the military police.

Then, to make matters worse, Connor heard a pounding on the front gate.

It was too early for the food parcel delivery. The real one. Everybody knew the daily deliveries were just an excuse for the hazmat-suited snoopers to keep an eye on the inmates. Oops. Let’s be politically correct. The “general populace.”

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Read Big Day Out in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole mad mercenary romp through the dystopian nightmare that Covid-19 might have become. Might still become, if we don’t keep our self-appointed leaders on a very short leash.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Or read them on Kindle Unlimited.

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at No.1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

⛥⛥

Check out the Beyond The Vale Bookshop, opening 1 October in the Edenglen Shopping Centre, Edenvale. You can find my books there, along with a huge selection of other local authors. Beer can be found nearby. Obviously.

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Cheers.

♠ Half your age ♠

He pulled the paper out and a key tinkled on the cracked tile floor. He peered down at the innocuous metal object lying between his once-white training shoes, before returning his attention to the paper held like gold leaf between his thumb and index finger. Wait – two pieces of paper.

Behind the hand-written letter was a newspaper clipping. Written in English but not from a South African paper. They had been disbanded many years ago. Early victims of the department for information control. Possession alone would guarantee arrest, detention without a jury, torture to find out where it had come from, and then, if he was lucky, death.

How long had it been since he had seen anything so white? The books on the shelves in his study were yellowing and dog-eared now, they had been read so often.

Keep the body active, keep the brain active. That had been Francina’s parting words.

Bitch.

No, he didn’t mean that. He loved her.

She had left him. Yes, he did mean it.

Bitch.

Where was she now? Probably dead. Forced labour in one of the government’s agricultural programmes. Or worse. Entertainment for the brave loyal military police. Passed round and shared like a bottle of tequila at a braai. She wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet. She would have stood up for people’s rights and she would have faced the consequences.

She was the past. Francina’s pretty face and athletic body was shunted back into a deep dark part of his memory. The split was rammed down underneath that.

“No!” Connor shouted at the world. “I will not think about that.”

He slowed his breathing and turned his attention to the contents of the envelope.

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Read Big Day Out in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole mad mercenary romp through the dystopian nightmare that Covid-19 might have become. Might still become, if we don’t keep our self-appointed leaders on a very short leash.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Or read them on Kindle Unlimited.

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at No.1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

⛥⛥

Cheers.

♠ Message in a bottle ♠

Nothing written on the front, or the back. Where had it come from? Who was it for?

Connor got to his feet, only bothering to brush the dirt from his knees when he tried to get it off his hands. He looked around. Pointless. Of course, there was nobody there. Nobody could get into his garden. Unless they crawled through the delivery slot cut in the bottom of the steel gate.

The envelope looked fresh. Clean. New. It had been so long since he’d seen anything fresh or clean or new – or different – that he didn’t know what to do with it.

So he took it inside and tossed it into the decontamination corner while he washed his hands. Next to yesterday’s food parcel and three bottles of brandydrink he’d been saving for a special occasion.

Automatic reflex. Anything that came into the house sat in the corner like a naughty child until any trace of the virus had been starved into submission.

But as he dried his hands, he shook his head. How long was paper supposed to be left? Wasn’t going to happen. There wasn’t enough self-control left anywhere to ignore an unopened envelope for longer than the few minutes it took him to grab a pair of gloves and a new facemask from the box he kept on the hall table.

He reached down and picked up the envelope. Held it up to the light. Shook it. Almost put it next to his ear to see if he could hear anything rattling around inside.

Instead, he sat in his favourite lounge chair, took a deep breath, and broke the wax seal.

⛥⛥

Read Big Day Out in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole mad mercenary romp through the dystopian nightmare that Covid-19 might have become. Might still become, if we don’t keep our self-appointed leaders on a very short leash.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Or read them on Kindle Unlimited.

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at #1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

⛥⛥

Cheers.

♠ 66 6 packs ♠

Reliance on government became total. Food, power, TV, radio. There were two options. Acceptance, or face the consequences. Most accepted, aided by the government-produced brandydrink. Sickly sweet and a guaranteed release from the horror that daily life had become.

What Connor wouldn’t give for a beer. A six-pack would be better, but he’d settle for just the one. He wasn’t sure there were any left. They’d been an early casualty in the clampdown. Four hundred million bottles, destroyed. His own considerable stockpile had lasted a few weeks. He’d had to conserve them, obviously. Only two or three each night. Except for weekends. To be honest, he’d lost track of which days were “work” days and which weren’t, but there was something about cracking open a cold beer on a warm Saturday afternoon…

His foot caught in a strand of kikuyu and he found himself flat on the path, face to face with a tiny green praying mantis. It raised one spiked arm. Attack? Defence? Saying hello?

“Hello.”

Satisfied with Connor’s response, the tiny predator shuffled off to carry on with the important business of the day.

Connor envied it. Business as usual. Hunt. Eat. Sleep. Hunt. Eat. Sex. Decapitation. Yes, he’d dated women like that, too. He smiled. These days, it would almost be worth it, just for a change of pace.

Hello. What was this?

Lying in the neglected grass jungle, covered by brown stalks and invisible from any other angle, was a rectangular piece of paper. He reached out and plucked it from its lair. It wasn’t just a scrap of paper. It was an envelope. Crisp white stationery. Sealed with an old-fashioned wax seal.

⛥⛥

Read Big Day Out in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole mad mercenary romp through the dystopian nightmare that Covid-19 might have become. Might still become, if we don’t keep our self-appointed leaders on a very short leash.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Or read them on Kindle Unlimited.

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at #1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

⛥⛥

Cheers.