SYNOPSIS
Detroit’s eastside has
seen its share of horrors. Once-proud factories gutted for scrap. Whole
neighborhoods burned out and boarded up. Nature drained of color. But nothing
like this: a thought-virus that turns the city’s dogs feral and its underclass
into jackal-headed beasts.
The city erupts in chaos
and nightmare violence. Communication in or out is impossible. The skies fill
with lethal drone copters and airships bristling with heavy-duty cannon.
Abandoned to their separate fates among hordes of monsters, the few surviving
humans must find a way to elude the military blockade preventing their escape
or to defeat the virus at its source—before government forces sacrifice them
all.
Breakneck action, rogue
science and deft portraiture combine for a grand and gripping tale of urban
terror.
PURCHASE
Nightscape: Cynopolis
David W. Edwards
Excerpt v2
Von hunched over and aimed his catch pole at the sky so as to not
startle the dog. “Hey, pooch. We got you now. Be a good dog now and we can go
on home.” Self-conscious in Deliza’s presence, he spoke in a normal timbre
instead of shifting to the recommended baby-talk pitch. He paused for Teyo to
get in position.
“Maybe I should get the net,” Deliza said.
“No, no,” Von whispered. “Don’t wanna spook im wit you comin in.”
The pit bull twisted his boxy head to follow Teyo’s slow-motion advance,
hackles fluttering and tail swishing. Teyo was careful to monitor the dog only
out of the corner of his eye and to keep his catch pole pointed away from the
animal. He didn’t regard pit bulls as innately aggressive; in fact, if he were
to generalize about breeds on that score, he’d rank Chihuahuas higher. The pit
bull inched forward on ragged paws, growling and popping its teeth. Teyo froze
for a few tripping heartbeats then spun on the dog as it pounced at Von. He snagged
the dog with the catch pole while it was in the air. The noose cut short a
petulant bark. The dog skidded into the grass on its chin, its right foreleg
trapped in the tightened loop.
When Von shot forward, the dog hurried into the corner formed by the red
brick of the porch steps and the waist-high chain link fence.
“Whoa, now,” Teyo said, pressuring the pit bull low to the ground.
“Down, boy, down.”
Von ran the noose-end of his catch pole through the scrub grass to loop
it around the dog’s shimmying hindquarters. “Got your back.”
The bungalow’s front door burst into jagged fragments and a great
black-furred creature cut against the porch light. It was a mythical hybrid of
jackal and giant. The creature had feral-red eyes and an elongated head topped
with posted ears. Wiry arms ended in grasping, five-fingered claws. The
creature reared back on its haunches and released a sonorous howl. The echoes
alone seemed enough to settle its savage claim on the city.
Under the creature’s gaze, Von forgot himself.
Teyo yanked the emergency release on the catch pole. “Tha blue fuck?”
“Von!” Deliza screamed. “Von!
Your gun!”
Deliza’s voice roused Von to
action. He wrapped his fingers around the gun’s taped handgrip and loosed the
Glock from his belt. The urgency of the moment caught him up.
Blood dripped from the creature’s chin to its sleek chest.
Teyo aimed his catch pole at the monster as though it were a lance,
muttering curses and abuses. The pit bull scrambled around the far corner of
the bungalow.
Von squeezed the trigger. The shot broke across the starless sky. The
blast returned Von to his senses and he fired again and again. To what effect,
he couldn’t say. The creature, the bungalow, the sky, everything, had assumed a
watery indistinctness. Wounded, or merely annoyed, the creature growled a
warning before clattering down the steps. It dropped to all fours on the
concrete walkway and loped down the street to disappear in the dark between
street lights.
Von lowered the pistol and gasped. He could barely follow his own words.
“Can you believe that shit?”
“Muthafucker,” Teyo said, relieved.
“Couldja tell I hit im?”
Deliza rushed into the yard. Her angular chin looked dented and her
breath came in troubled gulps. “That was unreal. I thought for sure it—no, wait…”
She gestured helplessly toward the porch.
A middle-aged woman in a tattered nightie lurched to the edge of the top
step, stagger-blind. Her mouth was a brilliant wound. Her intestines spilled
from between her hands, slicking her bare legs with blood and viscera. She
tried for a step that wasn’t there and tumbled down the concrete.
“Oh, God no,” Deliza cried. She pitched forward to check on the woman,
stopped, trembling, her eyes welling up.
Teyo sleeved the sweat from his upper lip and said, “That seals it. This
is a crazy crime scene now. We gotta pursue, right?”
Deliza bobbed her head in agreement then turned to Von, “You’re the best
driver.”
Von threw up his hands, frustrated that Teyo had been the first to
suggest pursuit, making him out to be a sidekick. He dug the van keys out of
his jean pocket and jingled them cavalierly. “Say ‘Hey’ to a new grade a hell,”
he muttered.
THE AUTHOR
David W. Edwards is the writer, director and
producer of the feature film Nightscape and author of the novels Nightscape:
The Dreams of Devils and Nightscape: Cynopolis. He attended the University of
Southern California's prestigious screenwriting program and earned bachelor's
and master's degrees in English Literature while working for a variety of
Hollywood production companies. He's the founder and former CEO of a successful
high-tech market research firm, and a former two-term state representative. He
currently lives in Hillsboro, Oregon with his family.
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