Introduction
"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, which will be published here in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.
The story of the story
Zack began life as a newspaper serial. It ran one chapter a week in The Rochester (Ind.) Sentinel from fall 2009 to summer 2010.
The originally published story was a raw first draft. Between 2008 and 2010 I worked as a proofreader for the Sentinel, and the editor agreed to publish Zack more because he appreciated the work I did in the newsroom than for the merits of the story.
I wrote one chapter a week on an old typewriter. Each chapter was one page long: when I neared the end of the page I knew it was time to spin a cliffhanger and wrap it up. The story held together fairly well, considering, but it definitely needed some revision and thoughtful plotting to become a completed work.
I have worked on revising and plotting the story off and on for the past 16 years, most intensively from 2013 to 2015. The version I'm sharing here is complete and it tells the story I want to tell with this character, and at the same time it preserves the style, tone, and much of the text of that original draft.
The sequel
Those of you who have followed my blog for awhile might recognize the name Alabama Zack. In May of 2020 I took a stab at writing a sequel to my original for the #maynia novel writing month. I wrote 12 chapters before fizzling out.
If you're curious, you can peruse the uncompleted sequel here. The sequel greatly enhances the complexity of the Alabama Zack world (which is part of why I set it aside for later).
Guide to reading
I originally intended Alabama Zack to be a lark, an entertaining diversion that could be picked up and enjoyed chapter to chapter without requiring an inordinate of work from the reader to follow the story. To that end, I’ll include a summary before the start of each chapter to refresh the memory; hopefully with the summary you’ll be able to hop into the story at any point and enjoy the chapter for that week.
I’ll also publish this as a curated collection on PeakD, so you can find and read the whole series.
And now, our story
Chapter I
Our hero stood over a dead man on a train station platform.
It was another time and another dimension, a time when trains ruled in the movement of mankind, and a dimension only somewhat like our own.
The dead man lay there, face up, in a brown business suit. His face looked a lot like one from our TV. He had long black eyebrows that pointed at his bald head, and his cheeks were horribly scarred – pocked as though from bad acne or smallpox, or from some other skin disease that existed only in that world. The bulbous nose was pocked too, and grey eyes stared at a passing cloud.
Our hero cast his gaze over the crowd. No one had noticed the dead man. Mothers in bustle dresses and feathered bonnets led children between the passenger cars and the station house at the far end of the platform. On a bench in front of the station house, a group of boys lounged in black leather jackets and white T-shirts, and as a mother passed by, one of them stuck his leg out to trip her little boy, who was sucking on a licorice. The boy stumbled, stayed up by his mother's grip, but dropped his treat. The group found it hilarious.
He looked back at the body. Our hero was a tall, broad-shouldered man who had fought in a war. He still wore part of the uniform – a calf-length grey overcoat with a wrap-around cape that fell to his forearms – but he also had a brand new cowboy hat, which shaded hard blue eyes made sadder by his drooping blonde mustache.
He meant to be traveling away from death, but here it was again, at his feet.
Maybe he could just walk away, before anyone saw him. He scanned the platform, but an image from his past intervened: in a tent, slipping on bloody grass, his saw grating on a soldier's calf bone until midway the soldier's screams cut off because the soldier had died. For some reason he'd finished the cut. Goddamn, he'd seen plenty of death and buried plenty of corpses. Why couldn't he walk around this one? Why stand there as if thunderstruck?
Along the back of the platform half a dozen people waited on a double row of benches. Past them he could see a field, where a breeze rippled through a crop of something that looked like wheat. The field rose sharply and crested, and he wondered what was on the other side, if the crop waved there too. He wanted to go find out, but he wouldn't. There was a dead man at his feet, and that man deserved the recognition of a name, even in death.
Civilization required one to put a name with a body: war had taught him that much.
He straightened and adjusted his cape and looked down the platform toward the station house. There would be officials there, or some way to communicate with officials – and his eyes met those of one of the boys loitering there.
The boy had the drained, empty look of fear. He elbowed the kid next to him and pointed at our hero. Soon all five of them were staring, in between frantic looks at the dead man. The first boy stood up for a better look. He was first to know for sure that he was looking at a dead man, not just some guy lying there hurt. He leaned down and whispered to his buddy, then straightened and put both hands on his hips. All of his friends began standing up, and then the people on the benches were staring and standing up, and our hero had a sick realization.
Civilization required that a body have a name – and it demanded that a murder have a perpetrator.
He cast about the platform. Concern was changing to anger in all the faces turned to him. He looked for an ally, one person to reach another conclusion, but among them all he found only one verdict: guilty.
Next week in our story
“This man is dead,” the doctor said, looking at our hero.
“I know it,” he said. “But how?”
“Are you saying you know nothing of this?”
“That's right,” he said, but then he went cold, because he realized he could not even remember how he had come to stand on that platform, let alone whether or not he'd had anything to do with the man's death.
without the use of AI.