I passed the 60K mark on Dominion this morning, and I’m still muddling through the middle. Um, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not going to finish this thing up by mid-August like I’d planned. Too soon to tell whether this means I won’t be able to publish by Halloween, since I’m likely to pick up momentum once I hit the ramp up to the climax and then sail through to the end. But right now, I’m only averaging about 700 words a day, which is one scene every two days (and breaks from writing on the weekends), and I’ve got about five more scenes to go before I hit that ramp.
At any rate, it’s coming along. Here’s a snippet from today’s session:
The smell of rotting meat assaulted them, making Hannah’s stomach churn. She had to swallow against her gag reflex as she followed Zach into the tiny cell. Inside, strapped to a gurney, lay Bob. Except he didn’t lie there so much as writhe and squirm. The sight of him made her want to gag some more. His skin showed visible signs of decay, and it had mostly sloughed off where the restraints came in contact with it. His lips were missing, and as he strained toward them and gnashed his teeth, she saw that his tongue was gone, too. The flesh on the bottom half of his face had mostly rotted away.
Zach pulled a pair of gloves out of one pocket and put them on. From the other pocket he drew a scalpel and forceps, along with an empty vial that he handed to Hannah. “This’ll just take a sec’,” he said as he leaned over Bob and began carving out a small chunk of his thigh. If the pathetic thing on the gurney felt the scalpel cutting into him, it was impossible to tell. Zach grasped the sample with the forceps and turned back to Hannah. She tucked the gun under her arm and opened the vial so he could drop it in. She secured the lid and handed it back to Zach, who put everything back in his pockets and stripped off his gloves. “That’s it.”
A hand grabbed Zach’s sleeve. He let out a high pitched scream as it yanked him back, and as Bob pulled him down his other hand, or what was left of it, slipped free of its restraint. It grabbed Zach around the back of the neck and tried to pull him down toward those gnashing teeth. Hannah pointed the gun and fired. Bob’s head exploded like a melon, and his hands went limp. Zach fell backward on his rear and scrambled back against the wall, breathing hard. “Shit!”
Hannah brandished the gun. “Thought you said I wouldn’t need this.”
He pointed accusingly at Bob. “That’s never happened before!”
“That’s no reason not to expect it.” She reached down to help him up. After a few deep, calming breaths, he examined the corpse. Raw flesh and gray skin coated the wrist restraints and lay globbed up on the gurney. This time Hannah had to swallow the bile that rose in the back of her throat.
Zach’s face had gone pale. “He just slipped his hands off, like they were gloves.”