"Memento Mori" Holland Tunnel Teaser.

Below is a few pages from my upcoming novel "Memento Mori".
The people involved in the book are real, the places are real and the biological terrorist threat is very real. We live in a world full of dangers which we choose to turn a blind eye to.
But no matter what happens, we always remember the dead.

HOLLAND TUNNEL

While walking deeper and deeper into the depths of the tunnel, the darkness seemed to wrap its arms around us until it completely had us within its grasp. The slightest breeze would kick up the horrid smells of rotting flesh and dank mildew. The humid air felt thick and tepid moisture filled air like breathable soup.
The sound of water dripping, squeaking mice, flies that buzzed passed your ears and didn’t mind landing on your face as if they had never been swatted at by a human being. The occasional distant moan reminded us of the dangers that surrounded us every moment we were outside of any safe haven.
I pulled out my Zippo lighter and asked Ted to lift up the makeshift torches we crafted earlier using torn table clothes and flammable sterno fluid we found in Starbucks. Once all of the cloth materials had fully absorbed the bluish purple liquid, I put the Zippo’s flame closer to the group of torches held by Ted and Blake. Like a small eruption, the flame jumped onto the fabric-covered ends of the sticks and continued to crackle and char the once white table clothes.
“We need to get moving, I don’t know whether this sterno fluid will just burn off or will continue lighting the way for a while. Its not like we ever tested making torches.”
“Why were all the flashlights dead? I mean the emergency flash lights should have worked.”
“I don’t know but at least we have those flares to use in case of emergency.”
“Yeah, I hope we can just use the torches though, flares don’t really light up things the way these torches do.” Blake said as if he knew for a fact about how flares worked
“Have you dealt with flares a lot Blake?”
“Actually yeah, I have.” Blake started to tell a story about his knowledge of flares while we started to walk through the archway of the Holland Tunnel,
“My Dad and I were on a big game fishing trip off the southern coast of California when his motor stopped working. I thought he was just fucking with me, trying to test my ability to stay calm or something. My dad was an outdoorsy sort of guy and I was a techie person. We didn’t always see eye to eye, so he would test me often. But this time, there was no test. A Storm was rolling in and for the first time in my life, I saw a nervous look in my father’s eyes. He tried all he could to get the motor started but nothing would work. He knew a thing or two about motors and cars so I thought he would be able to fix whatever the problem was but after he came back up from the small engine cabin of the ship. His face told me that he couldn’t fix this problem. That’s when I knew we were fucked.”
“So what happened?” I asked while raising my torch to see around some of the burnt out cars that lined the side of the tunnel.
“Well, we tried to gather all the supplies that we might need to survive on the life raft in case we weren’t found for a few days. We had a few bottles of purified water, some dried packaged fruit, fishing hooks and lines, sun-block and tin foil. I was really getting scared because I didn’t know how long we would be out in the ocean and if you have never been in the ocean then you wouldn’t know the fear I felt. The waves were so big that I felt like I was riding a rollercoaster. We would slide down the side of wave thirty feet tall and then were carried back up another wave and then had the same thing happen. Over and over like a nonstop ride of adrenaline. I jerked the handle on the side of the inflatable life raft and with a rushing air sound it grew to its full size in a matter of seconds. We tossed it into the ragging water and with the bag of supplies on my shoulder; I leaped in after it. I clawed at the water and swam as fast as I could to the orange raft until I could pull myself up into it. I had the supplies and was safely in the life-boat, I turned around to call out to my father and watched helplessly as a rouge wave, which was so tall that I couldn’t see the peak, slammed down onto the stern of his incapacitated boat. I screamed out to him, hoping to hear something back but there was no response. The storm lasted for another couple of hours and then went away as fast as it had come. I looked around in the bright moonlight but all I could see was pieces of the boat floating by me. Seat cushions, broken pieces of the hull and other fishing supplies littered the black water, which I floated on. I decided to use one of the flares I had next to me in hopes of maybe seeing my father swimming or something.”
“Did you?” Ted asked while slowly climbing over a small pileup of four cars that clotted the roadway.
“No, I could only see a few feet around me, nothing more. The red glow of the flare actually reflected off of the dark water and made it hard for me to see. It was as if I was standing in a well-lit room looking out into the night. I knew things in the darkness could see me very well, but the light I held made it impossible to see into the dark. About four days later the Coast Guard picked me up just as my supplies ran out. I had a supply of rations that would have kept two people alive for a few days. My father’s body was never found.”
“I’m sorry Blake.”
“I’m not. He loved fishing. He was a tough man who loved nature and knew the risks. I would have felt worse if he had died at the teeth of one of these fucking zombies. But instead, he died the way he lived. Doing something he loved and saving me. I knew he loved me even though we argued all the time and I wasn’t like him. Maybe putting me on that life raft was his way of telling me to be my own person. I don’t know. But that’s why I decided to go to NYU. I wanted to make something of myself to prove that my father didn’t die without purpose.”
“I’m sure your father would be proud of you if he saw you doing what you need to do to survive.”
“Yeah man, you have really hel…”
The portable flames we carried created an eerie dancing yellow lighting effect that bounced off of the tunnel walls. Each time the flames would flicker, another shadow would become stretched out toward the extent of light, which reached only so far into the depth of the tunnel.
"Shit."
"What?"
"Nothing I thought my shadow was something else."
"Don’t do that."
"What?"
"When you scare yourself with your own shadow, your going to scare me and then we both look like bitches."
"Whatever."
"Whoa!"
"What? Another shadow puppet?"
"No, I think that one is dead. You know, dead, dead. But he’s not a zombie."
"What?"
"Look at this ugly bastard."
"It looks like he is missing his skin."
“Was it burned off?”
“No, It looks as if it was peeled off!”
"What the hell is going on? Can this get any weirder?"
"The way things have been going for us, I don't doubt it."
I leaned in to get a closer look at the body that seemed to resemble a gorilla, but without hair or skin. The beast could probably stand around eight feet tall if it stood straight up.
Its muscles look like steroids or something abnormally engineered them because they were too defined.
This creature was much larger than I had thought any normal ape in the wild could grow to be. Besides the size of it, what the hell was it doing here in New York City? Could it have escaped from the Bronx zoo and have made it all the way down here? What killed it? Countless questions ran through my head while I kneeled beside the corpse of the creature.
BAM! CLINK Clink clink
The sound of metal slamming against the pavement disrupts my concentration and I stood up immediately to look around and find out where the noise had come from.
"What was that? Did anyone catch where it is?"
"Nope I was looking down while you were looking at that thing."
"Blake?"
"Hey where the hell did Blake go?"
"Crap, I’m going to kill him if he’s fucking with us."
"BLAKE!"
"Yeah?" Blake responds from a distance
"What are you doing?"
"I wanted to see what made that sound."
"Wait for us so we can give you backup."
"Come on guys I can out run a zom.....
THUNK! PAT, PAT, PAT, PAT, pat, pat, pat, pat
We heard the thick sound of a bodily impact followed by the patter of bare feet quickly running in the opposite direction.
"Huh? Blake?"
"BLAKE?"
Ted and I slowly moved forward into the darkness with our torches burning brightly. I had my pistol that I recovered from the downed security guard drawn and aimed forward, while paying close attention to the shadows that lined my peripherals.
"He couldn’t have been too far."
“There!” ted whispered to me while pointing out Blakes torch resting on the ground while it continued to brightly illuminate his previous location.
The sound of wet meat being torn and a slight gurgling sound could be heard coming from the other side of a car, which had been flipped up side down.
I laid prone to the ground in order to look through the windows of the vehicle resting on its roof and noticed Blake’s legs lying across the pavement. Looking up at Ted I let him know with a hand gesture, "Blake is dead."
“Zombies?” Ted quietly asked
"Don’t know but I’m afraid we are about to find out."
We slowly moved around the car and lift our torches to expose another huge skinless gorilla tearing flesh from Blake’s throat.
"FUCK! Shoot!" Ted screamed
But when I raise the pistol, the ape seems to sense the danger and it leaped upward grabbing a hold of the lighting structure that had be useless throughout our underground adventure.
"Don’t let it get away!"
BLAM! Clink BLAM! Clink BLAM! Clink BLAM! Clink
I shot four rounds at the beast and hit it twice in one of its legs as it used its upper body strength to carry itself west bound along the ceiling of the tunnel.
"Come on!" I yelled to Ted while chasing the creature deeper into the darkness.
"WAIT! What about Blake?"
"Dude, his throat has been ripped out, what can we do for him?"
"Shit, shit, shit."
We proceed down the tunnel with the orange lighting dancing and bouncing off of the walls and ceiling along with our movement forward. Our own shadows seemed to taunt us with the rapid movements caused by the flickering flames of our torches.
“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
"Shit not now!"
"Where are they?"
"Probably in front of us."
“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM” The moans continued to grow louder suggesting that whatever was making them was coming closer.
"Get up on the van over there!" I yelled to Ted while pointing to a dirty white van lying on its side next to the tunnel wall. We both climbed up on the vehicles side and looked further into the tunnel with the torches limited lighting. We could only view a short distance into the darkness, which caused me to lean forward to try to gain a few more feet of light.
RAWR!
The gorilla swung toward us quickly and pushed its way between Ted and I. The strength of the beast tossed me off of the side of the van and onto the roof of a nearby Honda with a metallic thud. My back indented the aluminum-like rooftop of the foreign car and I laid there for a moment looking at the tiled ceiling of the tunnel as my own torch rested on the ground next to me.
"Ugh! Ted are you ok?" I called out
"Yeah he must be heading for the way we came in."
"We got to get out of here, I don’t know if it will come back or not and I don’t want to wait to find out."
"Yeah, lets go."
“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
I stood and turned to head west down the tunnel, but when I rolled my body off of the cars rooftop, I found myself face to face with one of the zombies that we had heard moaning earlier.
Without giving it a second thought I quickly raised the pistol, placed the barrel under the zombies chin and pulled the trigger.
BLAM!
Small fragments of coagulated blood, brain and skull sprayed all over the tunnel ceiling and myself.
"DUUUUDE!" Ted yelled out commenting on the mess I had just created.
"Ugh this is gross and it stinks to." I wiped pieces of the infected brain and skull off of my left cheek and looked over at Ted.
“You look like shit.” Ted commented on my bloody makeover
“Thanks.”
"I think I see light coming from the end of the tunnel."
"Is that a metaphor?"
"Wise Ass."
"Come on let’s go."
We picked up the pace and continued towards the New Jersey entrance to the tunnel. The light started to interfere with our vision until our pupils were able to adjust. Tossing the torches to the ground, I raised my pistol again in preparation for any type of interference we might encounter on the road ahead.

One weird zombie dream.

Last night I had one of the most vivid dreams I have ever experienced. Yes, it did have to do with zombies so those of you who guessed it, you win.... nothing.
When i entered my dream, the first thing i noticed was that I was in a dive bar downtown someplace. It wasn't heavily occupied with patrons of the bar but there were enough people to fill the room with different conversations and laughter. The TV was on but no one was really paying attention to it. I felt the urge to use the bathroom which was up one flight of stairs.
This was where my dream shifted into a world of oddities. I opened the bathroom door and saw a backpack resting on the tank of the toilet bowl and something was poking out of the top flap. I moved over to it and moved piece of material to unveil a ceramic garden gnome staring back at me with its perpetual smile molded into its face.
"What the hell?" I thought to myself before packing it back up to bring to the bartender. But once outside of the bathroom again, two guys who looked like they were backpacking stopped me and said "Oh thank god you found it."
I gave the backpack, gnome and all, back to one guy.
But before i could make my way back down to the bar, the other guy started to tell me that "they" were coming and we all needed to leave. I asked who was coming but he just grabbed his friend and suggested they leave as well. I kept asking who he was talking about but my voice became muffled with the ambient sounds from all of the bars customers.
Following the two campers back down to the bar, i noticed that the bar had filled up with many more people than before and within a few seconds i had lost track of the two i was following.
Without even thinking about the warning i was given just minutes earlier, I found myself walking from the bar parallel to an elevated train which was usually found in Queens or Brooklyn. I was walking to a movie premiere but for some reason I didn't know what I was going to see. (it is a dream so some details do elude me)
When I showed up, I remember entering a lobby of sorts that had a spiral staircase leading up to a special theater. When you stood at the base of the staircase and looked straight up, there was a blueish white light glowing and I could see silhouettes looking down at me in a circular patter. It gave the impression of laying on the floor and having a crowd stand around you.
As I made my way up the stairs I noticed that each silhouetted person I previously saw from the bottom was a mannequin dressed up to look like one of the undead staring down at their fallen victim. It really gave an eerie appearance from the ground level.
This all made sense because apparently when i reached the doorway to the special theater, I noticed a movie poster that read "The Walking Dead". Was it a movie made from the popular comic book soon to be made into a TV Series on AMC? Or were they actually going to show a couple of episodes as if it were a movie to a select group? I didn't know but I did know that I was excited to get the show going.
I noticed plenty of people had already been there prior to me showing up and had taken their seats anxiously waiting to what was to happen. The stage had a red curtain which was divided in two vertical parts that were supposed to spread open to reveal a screen on the wall behind them but only the right curtain was drawn back and the other was still holding its place. A woman in black leather outfit, not far off from a catwoman-ish style stood up with a clip board as if she was some sort of public relations personnel or something and attempted to address the audience.
The countless conversations that were in full swing hindered her ability to standout amongst the sea of noise and she got up on the stage and tried again.
During her attempts at getting the crowds attention, I just stood at the base of the stage and watched as two people shuffled slowly from behind the curtain and approached the woman. One grabbed her throat and the other clutched at her waist before they both proceeded to bite into her warm body. I could see liquid running down the womans' body but since she was wearing black leather, i couldn't see the color of the liquid.
I was shocked but then thought it was a marketing ploy for what we all came to see
"the Walking Dead". But then something else started to happen. More people dressed as the undead started to shuffle into the room from different doorways and from behind curtains and counters. Slowly making their way into the audience before sinking their rotting teeth into the living flesh that filled up the stadium styled seating.
"My God." I thought to myself once i realized that this is what i was being warned about earlier in the bar. Shit has really hit the fan and in this case, the fans.

Then i woke up. What a dream.

Kick-Ass is coming out on DVD, I love this movie!

When I was younger and more ignorant, I purchased an authentic styled ninja outfit from a small Japanese store that was temporarily stationed in a strip mall, which has now been turned into a Target. It was like the scene in Gremlins when the guy walks into a small smoke filled store, which sold stuff that people only imagined existing.
Well it felt like that for me as an eleven year old. They sold Shuriken throwing stars, long samurai swords, katana blades, daggers, scrolls that hung from the wall were written in Japanese and looked so mysterious to me. I wanted to be part of a secret society of assassins, but assassins who were good. After I made my purchase I went back the next week to get some other supplies but the place had moved. This only made me think that it was a special made-to-be sort of thing in my life.
But then I got older and met the wonderful existence of women and my passion to become a ninja super hero had gone on the back burner. But at least in the completely awesome graphic novel “Kick Ass”, I can relive some of the moments that I only dreamed had happened to me.
Right from the start the lead character Dave Lizewski explains how his story started by asking why the world hadn’t thought of this before. I mean we see commercials all the time in regards to people joining the military and going away to fight wars. We never see a commercial for local super heroes, just take some self-defense lessons, make a costume and go rid the world of evil.
Every little bit counts, right?
Well when Dave first tried his new costume out he would mainly just practice using the rooftops and getting his body adjusted to the wet suit he had picked up on eBay. To him, what he had seen in comic books was wrong, you didn’t have to have some big trauma in your life to become a super hero, just had to have the right balance of loneliness and despair.
He was really getting into the secret life of a super hero by wearing his outfit under his regular clothing during the day while in class. I think it was something psychological about having his own secret that he wouldn’t share with anyone. Lunchtime was spent trying to build his strength up since he had planned on doing something about crime, he couldn’t do that being a wimp. Most of the nights he spent trying to figure out the perfect name to call himself, but nothing was sticking.

He couldn’t just sit in his room thinking about what to call himself and posing in the mirror, he actually had to start doing something if he ever really wanted to become someone who actually does something. So one night he applied the tight green wetsuit and headed out until he found some small time troublemakers who were defacing a public wall with graffiti.
Like a teenage boy trying to build up the confidence to ask a girl out for the first time, Dave was trying to figure out what to say to start up his first confrontation. But before he could say anything cool, one of the thugs noticed him. A huge fight broke out over some witty words and in a short amount of time Dave was bleeding from his nose and was on his knees in pain. But not before dishing out his own blows to the fiends. One of the thugs asked him what his name was but he jokingly replied that he didn’t know, he didn’t think of a name yet. That’s when a thug stabs him just before they all run off leaving him to die. But even though Dave’s body might not be super human, his will for life is. He continued to walk out of the parking lot and into the path of an oncoming Mercedes Benz. The driver of the car never slowed down and just continued to drive off in hopes of never being found. The impact of the car slamming into Dave’s body leaves him lifeless and twisted in the middle of the road.
After a long amount of time spent in the hospital recovering from his wounds and near death experience, Dave see’s his mother who had died back when Dave was fourteen. She died of an aneurysm instead of a hit man, which was another thing that proved that comic book heroes don’t have to come from a horrible situation. But after reading this section, finding your mother dead from anything when your fourteen could stir something up for sure. Dave is obviously channeling his inability to help his mother since her problem was medical, into people who he can help with his own hands. But that’s just my opinion.
A couple of months later and Dave is back at school talking to his friends at lunch, explaining to them that he won’t let the muggers deter him from what his main plan is, to become a superhero. Even though he takes fourteen different pills a day he won’t let them put him in the ground. In a fit of rage against all of the comic book life he had previously built, he decided to rid himself of all of it by way of bonfire. All of his comics, his secret plans and costume designs, right into the fire. He promised himself that he would never do that shit ever again.
But the beast was within him. Who was he kidding? As soon as he was off those crutches he was back “pounding the streets”. It wasn’t long before he found trouble, but it wasn’t the sort of trouble he was looking for. One girl approached him telling him he should be ashamed of himself for exposing his penis to girls. Apparently there was a flasher who wore a ski mask and was out exposing himself to girls the same time that our hero decided to debut himself to the public.
Then before that scene could escalate, someone gets bumped into Dave knocking him to the ground. There were three Puerto Rican guys beating another guy into a bloody mess. After a warning by one of the assailants, Dave decides that this is the time for him to do something. With his small staffs and his agile movements, Dave delivers a powerful beating to the three-team-wrecking machine. While standing over the body he had rescued, Dave recalls the fact that even though he lost some teeth, cracked a few ribs and he had a hard time seeing anymore, he didn’t let the guy down.
Turning around, he noticed a huge crowd had gathered around his actions and everyone was taking video and photos of him. If he wanted to be known this would be the way. After being viewed on Youtube.com over ten thousand times, Dave realized that he had become a global sensation as the most bad ass geek around.
“It was the best moment of my entire life…” KICK ASS!
As if the stresses of being a secret superhero that seems to get his ass handed to him every time he picks a fight, Dave also has to pretend to be gay in order to get closer to the one girl in his school who he would fight the world for. How long will it be before she knows the truth? Will he get his own Mary Jane or his own Lois Lane? But until that time, he will need to take his time and pick his battles. Fight crime or try to understand the female mind, I choose fighting crime.
The popularity of his actions started to get some feedback from the public. Other people started to dawn costumes and do their part in the community. Most of them just posed for pictures online and through cell phone photos. But there were two super heroes who stood out to Kick-Ass. After setting up an official “Kick-Ass Myspace” page for people to contact him like a twentieth century “Bat symbol”, Dave takes on a job given to him by a girl who says her ex is stalking her and harassing her over the phone and wants him to stop. When Kick-Ass arrives as the apartment of the ex boyfriend, he realizes that the boyfriend is not alone.
A group of thugs are hanging out in a living room while their ring-leader plays a video game with the stereotypical slutty girl on his arm. Dave stands his ground and everyone makes comments about him wearing a costume a little too early for Halloween. During a futile fight, A little girl wearing a purple mask appears out of nowhere wielding two swords. With the amount of bloodshed all over the apartment, it was clear that this little girl had a big appetite for revenge.
Although this graphic novel is not for kids, It will bring out your own memories of teenage turmoil and stressful situations as well as your love for the superhero genre. The Images and writing work beautifully together like two people dancing a violent waltz. I will be sharing this find with all of my friends for years to come. This is a great addition to my graphic novel collection.
Pick up this graphic novel as soon as you possibly can from Co-creator Writer Mark Miller and Co-creator Penciler John Romita Jr. and enjoy the world of Dave Lizewski as the crime fighting teenager who’s only power is being stubborn and driven.
If your not into reading with amazing art work, you can always experience this adolescent journey through the major motion picture directed by Matthew Vaughn which stars Chris D’Amico (formerly known as Mc Lovin’), Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage. The setting and mood of the film takes on the dark essence of the graphic novel with ferocious flare that successfully leaps from the pages to the big screen. If you are left out of the masked phenomenon you will surely be kicking your own ass.
-Anthony Zummo