Fright farm uniontown pa

Nawawala yung enjoyment. Nakita na ngang chocolate, makikipagtalo pa sa gold medal at MVP. Tapos, pag napikon, kala mo batang naghamon ng suntukan sa labas ng compshop, AKA "oh 1v1 tayo". Luh, mag Tekken ka gago.
Lalaro ka 5v5 tas gusto mo 1v1? Lalaro ka MOBA tas nag farm ka buong round? Lalaro ka 5v5 tas gusto mo solo ka lang the entire game? Puta, ano, single player RPG tas ikaw main character? Lalaro kang 5v5 tas sasadyain mong last hit para sayo kill? Lalaro kang 5v5 tas iiyak ka sa killsteal pag competitive kakampi mo? Core core pang nalalaman, eh kung bugok kayo, baliwala core niyo.
Nakita mo ng may nag Roaming, bibili ka pa second Roaming mo? At saka it's "LAG ako," and not "LOG ako". Putang ina, kahoy ka? Lilista ka? Bobo ampota. At, matuto kayo mag tower lock, ha? Tore ng kalaban ang goal, hindi minion o yang putanginang recall spam niyo.
At, may Brawl po tayo, ha? Kung ayaw mag push, dun ka sa Brawl, ha? Kung alam mong tanga ka, wag ka rin mag Ranked. Kung alam mong nasa byahe ka, pasahero ka sa jeep, wag ka mag Ranked, kasi putang ina kung di mo gets kung bakit, eh tanga ka nga talaga. At pakigamit yung mapa.
Bobo. Y'all dumbasses take the fun out of the game.

Fourth and final part at the same time tomorrow.
Series Page - Read 10 weeks ahead on Patreon - Read the story so far on Royal Road
*
Chapter Twelve - The Blacksmith's Boy (Part Three)
Clouds. Black, moving, twisting like rope. His head ached. His blood was hot as flame. Fire flashed in the clouds, and the old stormtower gleamed. The Old Man stared back at him from the gloom, eyes carving at his skin. You could have warned me. He taunted him. Smoke bled around his shoulders, and his skin melted away. Cal tried to look away, but it was too late. The fire was on him, and the sky filled his eyes with black water, smothering his breath.
*
He gasped, pain searing down his spine, and choked on his own breath, spluttering.
‘Get him up.’
‘I’ve got him.’
Lokk’s voice. Cal felt a hand curling underneath one of his arms, lifting his aching jaw off the floorboards. Pain shot down his back again, and he cried out, eyes spinning. Then there was another hand beneath him, and he was lifted groaning away from the floor. They lowered him carefully into a chair, and he fell against it, skin stinging, panting through gritted teeth.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Had a wolf at ‘im, by the looks of it!’
‘Don’t be a fool! No wolves in these woods.’
‘Believe in magic, but not in wolves?’
Cal groaned again.
‘Shut it, all of you!’
Cal blinked again, and the Innkeep’s rosy cheeks coalesced into the air before his eyes, looking down at him worriedly. Lokk was at his shoulder, wide-eyed, his mop of lank hair hanging loosely over his forehead. Someone had put the door to, and it was suddenly very quiet. Cal took a breath.
‘What happened, boy?’ The Innkeep asked him. Beyond his shoul-ders, Cal could see the faces of a half-dozen patrons, blinking back at him with wide eyes. All except Old Godry, who looked mildly irritated. Outside, the storm wailed helplessly against the thatching, and thunder rumbled against the hills, more distant, now. Cal held his breath, craning his ears. But the footsteps were gone. He swallowed.
‘There were…’ He hesitated, glancing towards the door. ‘I… fell.’
‘Down half the Teeth by the looks of it!’ Lokk pointed at his arms. ‘What were you doing out in this?’
Cal blinked, looking down. His arms were crisscrossed with dozens of bloody cuts, and his shirt was hanging off him in strings. He frowned, shrugging, and then winced as fire raced over his skin, and fell back against the chair, gasping.
‘Thought… Thought I had time to get back.’
‘Damned fool.’ Carel told him, appearing beside her father. She had a pail of steaming water under one arm, and a bundle of rags in the oth-er. ‘Got to clean those before they rot.’
‘I’m fi-’
‘That’s enough talking.’ The Innkeep told him. ‘Or I’ll want coin for the cloth.’
Cal thought better of arguing.
‘Saw a fair few mugs go over.’ The Innkeep turned towards the rest of the room, smiling reassuringly. ‘I’ll fetch a new barrel. This one’s on the house.’
A few grumbles of approval from the assembled regulars. They were all watching him. He could feel their eyes on him, prying, poking. Sen-sible boys know better than to go wandering in a storm. They’d always thought the Blacksmith’s stray was cracked. Same as his master. Godry seemed to have let his irritation go at the promise of free ale, but Cal spotted the butcher’s brute of a son, Petr, sneering back at him over the rim of his mug. He lowered his eyes. They thought him mad. Maybe they were right. Behind his eyes, the shadows were still chasing him through endless trees, clawing at his heels. But the door stayed closed, and there was no sound beyond it but the storm. Maybe he was losing his mind.
‘Quite the show, that was.’ Lokk grinned as his father went off to find the barrel. Carel rolled her eyes, pulling up another chair and set-ting about dampening the cloth. ‘Barely seen you in weeks, then you show up all bloody an’ panting like a wolf that’s got in with the chick-ens? You always knew how to make an entrance.’
Cal grunted. He didn’t feel like explaining himself. Wasn’t sure he could, even if he did.
‘Scared off the new folk, too.’ Lokk nodded towards an empty table in the far corner of the room, scattered with discarded mugs.
Cal blinked. ‘What?’
‘Had some of Solen’s new hands in tonight.’ Lokk told him offhand-edly, scratching his chin. ‘Quiet lot. Must have given them quite the fright. Saw themselves out sharpish.’
‘What did… hnngg.’ Cal clamped his teeth together with a groan as Carel pressed one of the rags against his bloody forearm.
‘Stay still.’ She told him, wiping the cloth slowly across his skin. It felt like someone was stripping his flesh with a wood plane. Cal clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to yelp. Lokk lounged idly against the bar beside him, sweeping his loose hair back from his forehead un-tidily.
‘Interrupted Godry, too.’ His friend went on, clearly unperturbed by his suffering. ‘Old goat hates being interrupted.’
Cal grunted again. The little clump of patrons seemed to have lost interest in him, now, turning back to their mugs as the Innkeep moved deftly through the tables, a little cask under his arm. Petr and his father were sitting glowering at no one in particular. Forley and his young wife Priss looked taken aback, and not the least bit shaken, by the un-expected turn of events the evening had taken, but the dour-faced min-ers beside them (whose names Cal did not know) seemed to have paid Cal’s entrance no heed at all. Old Godry was sitting patiently, firelight knotting over his scarred cheeks, waiting for his cue. Soon their mugs were full again, and the foolishness of the Blacksmith’s stray was quite forgotten. The Innkeep set the empty cask down somewhere behind the bar, and went off to find another barrel. Cal gritted his teeth as Carel went on with her work, eyes watering, and watched the villagers blur indifferently by the fire.
‘You weren’t finished, Godry.’ Albin, the butcher began, taking a long swig from his mug. ‘’bout to tell us how the wizard farted out his storm to save the savages.’
Cal saw Forley roll his eyes. ‘You know damned well where we were! Tell us about Arolf!’
Albin scowled, opening his mouth to retort, but Godry regained his composure in time to step in.
‘Aerolf, Forley.’ He corrected patiently.
‘Aerolf, then.’ The young shepherd agreed, rolling his eyes. ‘What happened next?’
‘Well, like I was saying, old King Talor’s already met his end, but them Northmen weren’t done yet. That beast Aerolf most of all.’ Godry began, lowering his voice and eyeing his audience conspiratorially. ‘He had a score to settle, see. This weren’t the kind of man to let a woman run from him, you understand.’
‘Serves him right.’ Albin grumbled. ‘Couldn’t keep her in his bed, even with a sword on her.’
The two miners snorted in agreement, and Petr just kept scowling. Cal flinched as Carel drew her rag over a particularly deep cut. He caught her eye reproachfully, and she smiled slyly.
‘Oops.’
She was very close, he realised, and he could feel the heat of her against his cut-thread skin. Another night, he might even have enjoyed it.
‘So there they was, dead King and all. Could of had the throne for hisself, right then.’ The old miner continued gravely. ‘But he was more animal than man. Mad as a beast, they say, big as a bear, covered head to toe in blood, cut up like an old buck. And this beast had a taste for blood.’
The little circle of villagers leaned a little closer in their seats, eye-ing Godry eagerly. Cal realised he was listening along with them.
‘So off he goes, bloody magic blade in hand.’ Godry held out his hand like a blade, scowling at them over the fire. ‘He finds that place where old King Talor locked up his pretty young daughter. And what’d’you think he does when he finds it?’
‘Kills her.’ Forley whispered.
‘That’s right, boy.’ Godry nodded, dropping his arm. ‘Heard it said he clawed the tower door open with his bare hands. Dragged her out in-to that garden, butchered her right there in the grass, threw her off that big rock of theirs like an old ham. This weren’t a man you run from. If he couldn’t have her, no one could.’
‘How’d they kill him, then?’ Albin asked, frowning.
‘Well, see now. Northmen ain’t the only one with monsters.’ Godry said craftily, raising one patchwork brow. ‘Dekar’s a sharp one. He’d realised what was afoot, by now. Rallied the King’s Men, drove the scum back out of the King’s hall. Weren’t a man amongst them left standing, save the ones in the garden. But for Aerolf and them, he saved his best killer.’
‘The Bloodless.’ Forley murmured.
‘The Bloodless.’ Godry agreed. ‘Biggest woman you’ve ever seen. Big as a wagon, skin like blue snow. They say there’s nought but ice in them veins, and if you cut her, she don’t bleed.’
‘And I’ve got rocks for balls.’ Albin snorted.
‘Might as well, for all the good they do you.’ Godry snapped back at him. ‘But the Bloodless finds the traitor. Right there in that garden, all covered in the Princess’s blood. Cuts Aerolf down, throws him from the walls after her, him and his magic sword. Almost killed that Stonesplitter dog, too, whilst she were at it. Weren’t no easy thing though; gets her head cut open like a peach for its trouble. Should’ve died, right there. Would’ve, if not for those… other types Dekar had took up with.’
‘‘Least the traitor was dead.’
‘Aye, that he was. That Heartspire’s taller than a mountain. Say there weren’t nothing left of him but mulch, once he got to the bottom. Him and the princess both.’
‘Makers have mercy.’ Forley murmured, making the sign of the Nine over his breast. Even Albin took another mouthful of ale.
‘Weren’t no mercy. A beast don’t deserve none.’ Godry said sober-ly, following Forley and drawing a circle over his chest. ‘If he couldn’t ‘ave her, no one could.’
Cal barely heard them. He felt drained, as though the cuts had bled the weight from his bones. He floated just above his chair in a haze, and the roomed blurred and swayed as if through shallow water. Carel went about her work quietly, carefully, and the pain of it washed over him in raw waves, until the pail of water at her feet was stained an ugly pink.
‘Dekar had a plan though!’ Forley whispered excitedly, his rever-ence forgotten. ‘Tell ‘em, Godry!’
‘That he did, Forley.’ Godry smiled, his scarred face contorting gro-tesquely. ‘See, that Dekar’s sharp as a carving knife. Took up Taylor’s magic sword, led the King’s Men himself. But that weren’t all. Had some of his men kept back, from down West. Big men. Hard men. Came on the Northmen camp in the dead of night. Surrounded ‘em.’
‘Weren’t just any men, I hears it.’ Albin grumbled.
‘Here we go!’ Forley snorted.
‘Said it yourself, Godry. Dekar took up with them religious types.’ Albin shot back, frowning indignantly. ‘Everyone knows it.’
‘Religious? Masks don’t keep the Makers.’ Forley spat. ‘Ain’t noth-ing but bandits dressed up like monks.’
Cal blinked.
‘Brothers ain’t got no Gods save the Darkness.’ Priss murmured qui-etly. ‘You say Nine, I say eight.’
‘All the same.’ Albin was saying, folding his arms over his mug. ‘Brothers are useful, and good old Dekar didn’t sniff at them like you do.’
‘That’s enough, Alb.’ Godry interrupted. ‘He’s still our King, even all the way out here.’
Cal opened his mouth, straightening in his seat, but Carel pushed him back down again tutting.
‘Sit still.’
‘But-’
‘Hardly our King anymore, anyways.’ Albin spat. ‘Not like it used to be. Valia’s for the lowlanders.’
‘You sounds like a Northman.’ Forley scowled.
‘Or one of the Elahi.’ Priss added. Albin bristled, and Godry jumped in just in time.
‘Doesn’t matter. All Dekar’s hard men never got to the Northmen camp.’ The grizzled old smelter went on. ‘Seems old Isandur weren’t done yet.
Cal gritted his teeth. His head ached, and his mouth tasted like smoke.
Albin spat at his feet, sneering. ‘Isandur my arse.’
‘Let him be, Alb.’ Forley told him.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the butcher and his son fixed Forley with their most angry of looks. Then Godry cleared his throat noisily, and Petr shoved himself to his feet and stalked off to-wards the bar, snatching up their empty mugs as he went.
‘But Isandur is a crafty one, and no mistake. Showed up just in time, as always. What he wanted from it, no man can say. Them Chosen are scheming sorts, what ones is left. Us mortals couldn’t guess what they’s thinkin’.’ He paused, nodding knowingly. ‘Storm-tamers, they call ‘em. He spoke the words, and the sky opened. Biggest storm you’ve ever seen. Caught Dekar’s men as they came. Scattered ‘em like wheat in a gale.’
Petr aimed a crooked smile at Carel as he passed, and she lowered her eyes. Cal barely noticed. He no longer heard Godry. The room around him seemed very far away. Was he awake? Or was he dream-ing?
‘Northerners took the chance. Fled faster than the wind what chased them. Them that were still on the rock, them what murdered and killed our King?’ Godry went on, shaking his head sadly. ‘Them he called the wind itself for, and carried them away before Dekar could get at them. Aerolf’s brother, among them. King of the North, he goes by now. Couple of other Northmen, too. Stonesplitter cut almost in half by the Bloodless’ blade.’
Albin spat on the floor, and the miners scowled. No right-minded Valian liked this part, magic or not. Cal ground his teeth.
‘That Chosen bastard let the King get his throat slit, then shows up to save his killers.’ Albin cursed.
‘Makers know why. Not been seen since.’ Godry agreed. ‘Back they went, anyway, back to the rest of the savages as they fled like dogs. Storm was so heavy, river banks burst behind them, flooded half the valley.’
Cal’s heart was pounding in his ears, and his skull was ringing. Out-side, the wind whined over the thatching, howling at the broken clouds.
‘Don’t matter how many men Dekar had. Or how many Brothers. Ain’t no one swimming in mail.’
Cal forced his eyes shut. Black Ones. A storm. Falling.
‘Cal?’
He opened his eyes, blinking into the firelight, and found Carel look-ing down at him worriedly.
‘Does it hurt?’ She was asking softly.
‘What… no, I’m fine.’ He told her, blinking again. ‘I need to…’
‘Stay here.’ She told him, lifting up the bloody pail. ‘I need more cloth.’
She turned on her heel and disappeared. Cal’s head spun.
‘… already scared off the new folk with all these tall stories.’ Albin was saying. ‘Storm’s just a storm. Forge boy knows.’
Cal blinked, lurching unsteadily to his feet. Asking questions, the Innkeep had said. His vision blurred unsteadily, and the room stared back at him, wobbling like a top.
‘Cal, you need to sit down.’ Lokk told him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Cal blinked. His eyes stopped spinning, and the ache in his head had vanished. The wind had moved on overhead, and the air was thick with smoke and heat. The little group of patrons were eyeing him curiously. All save the butcher.
‘Listen to him boy, before you hurt yourself.’ Albin sneered back at him.
‘Come on, Cal. Ignore him.’ Lokk murmured in his ear.
Cal swallowed, meeting the swarthy butcher’s eye for a moment. Then he let himself be steered backward, slumping into his seat like an empty sack.
‘Must have lost more blood than I thought.’ Lokk told him, pulling up a chair beside him and tutting. ‘Want to pick a fight with Albin as well as that storm?’
‘What?’ Cal mumbled, blinking. The butcher had gone back to his drink, and the other villagers had gone with him, grumbling amongst themselves about the practicalities of storm-tamers and treacherous, magical old men. He took a breath. ‘I wasn’t. I-’
‘Sure looked like you were. You know Alb. Just his way. Didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Lokk, when did the new folk leave?’
‘What? Oh… I told you. Right after you turned up. Spooked ‘em good, you did, all bloody like a fresh ham…’
‘Where did they go?’
‘How should I know? Had my hands full peeling you off the floor. Why d’you care, anyway?’
‘Lokk, I need to…’
‘Oh, no you don’t! You aren’t going anywhere. Need to rest.’ His friend told him, pinning him to his chair by his shoulders. ‘Look like you fell down half the Teeth face first.’
‘I…’ Cal began, lowering his voice. His head was clearing, and the room was no longer spinning like a leaf. Beside the fire, the other pa-trons were still bickering emptily. The storm had passed, and the ache of it was clearing from his battered skull. ‘I didn’t just fall. Something was chasing me.’
‘What are you talking about? You crack your head, too?’
‘Lokk, listen. There were…’
‘Let go!’
They both looked up at the sudden commotion from beside the bar. Carel had just made it out from behind it with a fresh pail of steaming water before Petr had cornered her, bulky shoulders blocking the way forward like a stubborn bullock. He had one meaty hand curled around Carel’s wrist, and she had her eyes fixed on the floor. Cal was on his feet before Lokk could say anything.
‘Let go of her.’
The big youth let go of Carel’s wrist, and the pail fell abruptly back to her side, spilling steaming water across the floor. She looked at it distantly, frowning.
‘Or what, you little shit?’ The butcher’s son grumbled throatily, turning slowly around to facing Cal, glaring down at him with rheumy-eyes. His words had the imprecise edge of drink to them, and his breath smelled of sour ale. ‘Gonna throw yourself down a fucking hill at me?’
‘Just leave her be, Petr.’ Lokk added from Cal’s shoulder.
‘Mind your own business.’ The big youth snorted, still glaring at Cal darkly. ‘Sit down before you hurt yourself, stray.’
He began to turn back to Carel. Lokk put a hand on Cal’s shoulder, and Cal ignored him.
‘Leave her be.’ He said again.
‘Or what?’ Petr snarled back, lurching around again, wiping spittle from the corner of his mouth. ‘Going to bleed on me?’
‘It’s fine, Cal. No harm done.’ Carel said quietly from beside the bar, eyes still on the ground. ‘Sit down, let me finish with your cuts.’
‘You heard her. Be a good little foundling and sit down like she says.’
Cal swallowed. Petr was nearly a head taller than he was, and his arms were thick, corded with miner’s work. But there would be no avoiding it now, and he didn’t have the patience to let it be, that night. The big youth was drunk, and spoiling for a fight. Cal glanced back over his shoulder, but the other patrons were bickering loudly beside the fire, oblivious, or indifferent, or both. The Innkeep was still in the back somewhere, tapping a new barrel. Strike first. Strike hard. Cal shifted his feet slightly, readying himself. His head had cleared, and his pain was far away. The moment of calm was on him. A blink in time. The room faded away, vibrating with stillness. There was only his breath. In, and out. He waited.
‘Nothing to say? Suppose a dead whore can’t teach her cunt son any manners.’
Cal moved quickly, uncoiling like a bowstring. He burst forward off his hind leg, bunching his fist towards Petr’s slab of a jaw. The butch-er’s son had no chance to react. How could he? Cal moved with the ease of a seasoned brawler, hard limbs whipping like clubs. Lokk’s arm slipped from his shoulder. He was already halfway across the distance between them before Petr could even blink.
His boot splashed, skidded, slid. The water. Cal blinked, lost bal-ance, and slid wildly into Petr’s chest. His head thudded into the other boy, and he staggered back, confused, dazed. Petr blinked down at him, cogs turning slowly in his ale-slowed mind. Then a broad grin spread across the big youth’s jaw.
‘Should’ve listened, stray.’

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Hello everyone, recently I've had so many PA carries on my team and i've lost every single time. What needs to happen for PA to start carrying? Even if I secure amazing lane for PA, she still underperforms significantly compared to enemy carry who is way behind her. I've also noticed PA players avoid team fights, only farm the safe lane jungle camps and have almost 0 participation 30 mins. What am i missing here?

I have a family friend who works with my husband and I who is Honduran and in his 60s (I will call him Joe).
Joe often goes to Sheetz (gas station in PA) to purchase beer. His only form of ID is his Honduran passport, which is still valid. He never has any problems purchasing from any other employees or manager except for when one specific manager is working. She will not allow him to make his purchase with zero explanation each time. Joe speaks limited English, so he would be uncomfortable asking the manager why and leave empty handed. This has occurred over half a dozen times.
This manager denied him from from purchasing alcohol again yesterday (6/1/2023). Joe still doesn’t understand and finally asked my husband (Steve) to help find out for him why this keeps happening.
We asked Joe to identify the manager so that Steve might ask her about the situation. Not long after Joe leaves Sheetz, Steve goes in. He completes his purchase of beer, and proceeds to ask the employee ringing him out, “Is there a reason why you might deny alcohol sales to a 60 year old man with a Honduran passport?” This employee stated that she would have no reason to deny him service or do such a thing. Steve, then, described the manager in question and requested to speak to her.
The manager comes to meet him. In order to not cause a scene, Steve asks the manager to step away so that he could ask her the same question. Her immediate response was, “I don’t have to explain anything to you. Leave now.” My husband pressed again and asked why she’s kicking him out. The manager raised her voice at Steve, repeats herself and points at the exit telling him to get out. At this point, the entire store is watching this go down. Steve leaves with no answers and immediately reports the incident to corporate and waiting to hear back
For additional contexts, this Sheetz is located in a small, predominantly white farming town. Without any explanation as to why Joe keeps getting denied service, it seems as though there is a possibility that this is racially motivated; however, this is only speculation.
The reason why I’m posting on here is to ask:
Is there a valid/legal reason why a manager might deny selling alcohol to a Honduran passport holder?
Is what this manager doing illegal? Could she kick someone out without providing a reason?
Does Joe have any legal grounds to pursue legal action?
Please let me know if you need any further clarification or have any questions.
Thanks!

At the end of June a few friends and I are going to be traveling from PA through New England for 10 days going to various breweries and disc golf courses. The itinerary is as follows:
Day 1: Leave PA, Travel to Norbrook Farms (DG & Beer)
Day 2: Leave CT, Travel to MA, Play at Maple Hill (DG), Go to Treehouse (Beer)
Day 3: Play Pyramids (DG), Eat at B.T.’s Smokehouse (Food), Go to Oakholm Brewing (DG & Beer)
Day 4: Leave MA heading towards Waterbury, VT, Play at a course along the way, (Clement Farms, The Hollows, Top O' The Hill?) (DG)
Day 5-8: While staying in VT we are looking to play at The Quarries, Brewster Ridge, Fox Run Meadows (DG), and Von Trapp (DG & Beer). Going to imbibe at Foam Brewing, The Alchemist, and Lawson’s (Beer). We are also going to Cider Hollow Mill, Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot Cheese (Food)
Day 9: Leave VT towards Albany NY, play Joralemon (DG)
Day 10: Head back to PA
I am looking for some further recommendations in regards to interesting places to eat, excellent breweries to drink at, where to play at on the way to VT from MA, and potential must see courses I may have missed.
Thanks in advance!

2-May-2023

• Stability AI releases StableVicuna, the AI World’s First Open Source RLHF LLM Chatbot (https://stability.ai/blog/stablevicuna-open-source-rlhf-chatbot)
• Introducing Lamini, the LLM Engine for Rapidly Customizing Models (https://lamini.ai/blog/introducing-lamini)
• Machine Learning Compilation (https://mlc.ai/index.html)
• The State of Serverless GPUs (https://www.inferless.com/serverless-gpu-market)
• A brief history of LLaMA models (https://agi-sphere.com/llama-models/)
• Study Finds ChatGPT Outperforms Physicians in High-Quality, Empathetic Answers to Patient Questions (https://today.ucsd.edu/story/study-finds-chatgpt-outperforms-physicians-in-high-quality-empathetic-answers-to-patient-questions)
• AI / ML / LLM / Transformer Models Timeline and List (https://ai.v-gar.de/ml/transformetimeline/)
• Speed Is All You Need: On-Device Acceleration of Large Diffusion Models via GPU-Aware Optimizations (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11267)
• Italy lifts ban on ChatGPT after data privacy improvements (https://www.dw.com/en/ai-italy-lifts-ban-on-chatgpt-after-data-privacy-improvements/a-65469742)
• We aren't close to creating a rapidly self-improving AI (https://jacobbuckman.substack.com/p/we-arent-close-to-creating-a-rapidly)
• Lawmakers propose banning AI from singlehandedly launching nuclear weapons (https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/28/23702992/ai-nuclear-weapon-launch-ban-bill-markey-lieu-beyer-buck)
• AI News, Explained by GPT-4 (https://www.emergentmind.com/)
• The self-supervised learning cookbook (https://ai.facebook.com/blog/self-supervised-learning-practical-guide/)
• A Photographer Tried to Get His Photos Removed from an AI Dataset. He Got an Invoice Instead. (https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkapb7/a-photographer-tried-to-get-his-photos-removed-from-an-ai-dataset-he-got-an-invoice-instead)
• Develop, optimize and deploy AI models natively on everyone's devices (https://github.com/mlc-ai/mlc-llm)

​
3-May-2023

• WangChanGLM — The Multilingual Instruction-Following Model (https://medium.com/airesearch-in-th/wangchanglm-the-thai-turned-multilingual-instruction-following-model-7aa9a0f51f5f)
• Inflection AI launches pi chatbot (https://heypi.com/talk)
• Mojo — a new programming language for all AI developers (https://www.modular.com/mojo)
• Understanding Large Language Models (https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/understanding-large-language-models)
• Avoiding hallucinations in LLM-powered Applications (https://vectara.com/avoiding-hallucinations-in-llm-powered-applications/)
• Samsung bans use of A.I. like ChatGPT for employees after misuse of the chatbot (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/samsung-bans-use-of-ai-like-chatgpt-for-staff-after-misuse-of-chatbot.html)
• Job cuts may intensify as IBM plans to use AI to replace 30% of back office jobs (https://www.computerworld.com/article/3694874/job-cuts-may-intensify-as-ibm-plans-to-use-ai-to-replace-30-of-back-office-jobs.html)
• Chatbot ‘journalists’ found running almost 50 AI-generated content farms (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/02/chatbot-journalists-found-running-almost-50-ai-generated-content-farms)
• Jsonformer: Generate structured output from LLMs (https://github.com/1rgs/jsonformer)

​
4-May-2023

• HuggingChat Python API (https://www.kdnuggets.com/2023/05/huggingchat-python-api-alternative.html)
• Mojo may be the biggest programming language advance in decades (https://www.fast.ai/posts/2023-05-03-mojo-launch.html)
• OpenLLaMA: An Open Reproduction of LLaMA (https://github.com/openlm-research/open\_llama)
• Replit's new Code LLM: Open Source, 77% smaller than Codex, trained in 1 week (https://www.latent.space/p/reza-shabani#details)
• SparseGPT: Massive Language Models Can Be Accurately Pruned in One-Shot (https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00774)
• Poisoning Language Models During Instruction Tuning (https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.00944)
• Chatbot Arena: Benchmarking LLMs in the Wild with Elo Ratings (https://lmsys.org/blog/2023-05-03-arena/)
• Evaluate and compare LLM outputs (https://github.com/typpo/promptfoo)
• AI vs. Hollywood: Writers battle “plagiarism machines” in union talks (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/ai-vs-hollywood-writers-battle-plagiarism-machines-in-union-talks/)
• AI-generated beer commercial contains joyful monstrosities, goes viral (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/ai-generated-beer-commercial-contains-joyful-monstrosities-goes-viral/)
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now supports pgvector for simplified ML model integration (https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/05/amazon-rds-postgresql-pgvector-ml-model-integration/)

​
5-May-2023

• Microsoft is dropping a big set of updates to Bing Chat today (Bing Chat Plugins, Multimodal answers, Persistent chat + chat history, No more waitlist to use) (https://twitter.com/nonmayorpete/status/1654018106543554561)
• Distilling Step-by-Step! Outperforming Larger Language Models with Less Training Data and Smaller Model Sizes (https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.02301)
• Google tells staff it plans to limit publishing AI research to 'compete and keep knowledge in house' as its rivalry with Microsoft's OpenAI heats up (https://www.businessinsider.com/google-publishing-less-confidential-ai-research-to-compete-with-openai-2023-4)
• Inflection AI, Startup From Ex-DeepMind Leaders, Launches Pi — A Chattier Chatbot (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/05/02/inflection-ai-ex-deepmind-launches-pi-chatbot/)
• Amazon plans to rework Alexa in the age of ChatGPT (https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/4/23710938/amazon-alexa-ai-chatbot-llm-teaching-model)
• BigCode Project Releases StarCoder: A 15B Code LLM (https://twitter.com/BigCodeProject/status/1654174941976068119)
• Google "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI" (https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither)
• Re-implementing LangChain in 100 lines of code (https://blog.scottlogic.com/2023/05/04/langchain-mini.html)
• WizardLM: Empowering Large Pre-Trained Language Models to Follow Complex Instructions (https://github.com/nlpxucan/WizardLM/tree/main)

​
8-May-2023

• MPT-7B: A New Standard for Open-Source, Commercially Usable LLMs (https://www.mosaicml.com/blog/mpt-7b)
• Releasing 3B and 7B RedPajama-INCITE family of models including base, instruction-tuned & chat models (https://www.together.xyz/blog/redpajama-models-v1)
• OpenAI changed its plans and won’t train on customer data, Sam Altman says (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/05/sam-altman-openai-wont-tap-into-customer-apis.html)
• OpenAI vs Open Source LLM Comparison for Document Q&A (https://georgesung.github.io/ai/llm-qa-eval-wikipedia/)
• VardaGPT is a memory-enhanced GPT-2 model powered by Hugging Face Transformers and FAISS (https://github.com/ixaxaaVardaGPT)
• MaMMUT: A simple vision-encoder text-decoder architecture for multimodal tasks (https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/05/mammut-simple-vision-encoder-text.html)
• Practical-Data-Science-Blog (https://github.com/youssefHosni/Practical-Data-Science-Blog)
• Unlimiformer: Long-Range Transformers with Unlimited Length Input (https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.01625)
• VardaGPT is a memory-enhanced GPT-2 model powered by Hugging Face Transformers and FAISS (https://github.com/ixaxaaVardaGPT)
• Deep Reinforcement Learning library focused on improving development by introducing RLOps - MLOps for reinforcement learning (https://github.com/AgileRL/AgileRL)

​
9-May-2023

• Introducing Slack GPT, the future of AI in Slack (https://slack.com/intl/en-in/blog/news/introducing-slack-gpt)
• Fixing Hallucination with Knowledge Bases (https://www.pinecone.io/learn/langchain-retrieval-augmentation/)
• Using Images in Your Prompts - The /Blend Feature (https://mjtipsandtricks.substack.com/p/using-images-in-your-prompts-the)
• Running Large Language Models Natively on Mobile and Laptops (https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/05/mlc-llm-mobile-laptops/)
• ChatGPT Code Interpreter (https://twitter.com/skirano/status/1653085442047369217)
• Open-source PaLM models trained at 8k context length (https://www.reddit.com/MachineLearning/comments/13bxu2g/p\_opensource\_palm\_models\_trained\_at\_8k\_context/)
• Google launches demo site for Visual Blocks & Announces Colab Integration (https://www.reddit.com/MachineLearning/comments/13ccho0/d\_google\_launches\_demo\_site\_for\_visual\_blocks/)
• It looks like GPT-4-32k is rolling out (https://community.openai.com/t/it-looks-like-gpt-4-32k-is-rolling-out/194615)
• Reflected Diffusion Models (https://aaronlou.com/blog/2023/reflected-diffusion/)
• DEF CON to set thousands of hackers loose on LLMs (https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/06/ai\_hacking\_defcon/)
• AI’s Ostensible Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage (https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ais-ostensible-emergent-abilities-are-mirage)
• Alphabet to unveil A.I. updates at Google I/O, showing off creative writing and coding capabilities (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/08/google-io-to-feature-ai-updates-showing-off-palm-2-llm.html)
• Efficiently Applying LLMs to Transform Semi-Structured Data (https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/05/data-transformation-using-llms/)
• RasaGPT: headless LLM chatbot platform built on top of Rasa and Langchain (https://github.com/paulpierre/RasaGPT)

​
10-May-2023

• Meta open-sources multisensory AI model that combines six types of data (https://ai.facebook.com/blog/imagebind-six-modalities-binding-ai/)
• Machine Learning Containers are Bloated and Vulnerable (https://deep.ai/publication/machine-learning-containers-are-bloated-and-vulnerable)
• Study: AI can predict pancreatic cancer three years ahead of human doctors (https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/09/ai\_pancreatic\_cance)
• Language models can explain neurons in language models (https://openai.com/research/language-models-can-explain-neurons-in-language-models)
• Amazon Is Being Flooded With Books Entirely Written by AI (https://futurism.com/the-byte/amazon-flooded-books-written-by-ai)
• Google's AI chatbot Bard now available for Workspace accounts (https://www.techlusive.in/apps/googles-ai-chatbot-bard-now-available-for-workspace-accounts-1375948/)
• Constitutional AI: RLHF On Steroids (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/constitutional-ai-rlhf-on-steroids)
• Run inference for Large Language Models on CPU, with Rust (https://github.com/rustformers/llm)
• llm-jeopardy (https://github.com/aigoopy/llm-jeopardy)

​
11-May-2023

• Google Bard is now open to over 180 countries, more connected with apps & extensions (https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/artificial-intelligence/google-bard-gets-new-updates-at-google-io-2023-8602245/)
• LMFlow Benchmark: An Automatic Evaluation Framework for Open-Source LLMs (https://www.reddit.com/MachineLearning/comments/13d2vos/r\_lmflow\_benchmark\_an\_automatic\_evaluation/)
• Huggingface Transformers Agent (https://huggingface.co/docs/transformers/transformers\_agents)
• StabGPT: A Tool-Equipped LLM Designed for Improving Social Outcomes (http://sigtbd.csail.mit.edu/pubs/2023/sigtbd23-paper1.pdf)
• A Large Language Model for Healthcare NHS-LLM and OpenGPT (https://aiforhealthcare.substack.com/p/a-large-language-model-for-healthcare)
• Google Chrome Upgrades Web AI Intelligence (https://www.analyticsinsight.net/google-chrome-upgrades-web-ai-intelligence/)
• Google I/O 2023: Making AI more helpful for everyone (https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-io-2023-keynote-sundar-pichai)
• Google launches PaLM 2, its next-gen large language model (https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/10/google-launches-palm-2-its-next-gen-large-language-model/)
• Google will label fake images created with its A.I. (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/10/google-will-label-fake-images-created-with-its-ai-.html)
• AI Test Kitchen is a place where people can experience and give feedback on some of Google’s latest AI technologies. (https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com/)
• Principle-Driven Self-Alignment of Language Models from Scratch with Minimal Human Supervision (https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.03047)
• Your next Wendy’s drive-thru order may be taken by an A.I. chatbot that understands a ‘milkshake’ is actually a ‘frosty’ in the chain’s lingo (https://fortune.com/2023/05/09/wendys-ai-powered-chatbot-drive-thru-orders/)
• IBM Unveils the Watsonx Platform to Power Next-Generation Foundation Models for Business (https://newsroom.ibm.com/2023-05-09-IBM-Unveils-the-Watsonx-Platform-to-Power-Next-Generation-Foundation-Models-for-Business)

​
12-May-2023

• Claude’s expanded context window from 9K to 100K tokens, corresponding to around 75,000 words (https://www.anthropic.com/index/100k-context-windows)
• DeepMind cofounder warns governments seriously need to find solutions for people who lose their jobs to A.I. (https://fortune.com/2023/05/10/artificial-intelligence-deepmind-co-founder-mustafa-suleyman-ubi-governments-seriously-need-to-find-solution-for-people-that-lose-their-jobs/)
• Gandalf – Game to make an LLM reveal a secret password (https://gandalf.lakera.ai/)
• Google needs to stop throwing good money after Bard (https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/10/23710839/google-bard-ai-competition-bing-openai-chatgpt-io)
• Delimiters won’t save you from prompt injection (https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/11/delimiters-wont-save-you/)
• Stability AI releases Stable Animation SDK, a powerful text-to-animation tool for developers (https://stability.ai/blog/stable-animation-sdk)

​
15-May-2023

• Web browsing and Plugins are now rolling out in beta (https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes#h\_9894d7b0a4)
• Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea (https://nautil.us/why-conscious-ai-is-a-bad-bad-idea-302937/)
• Google Launches AI Supercomputer Powered by Nvidia H100 GPUs (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-a3-supercomputer-h100-googleio)
• Open source codebase powering the HuggingChat app (https://github.com/huggingface/chat-ui)
• Reverse engineered google bard's system prompt (https://twitter.com/bladestatus/1656920476533551104)
• Chatbots Don’t Know What Stuff Isn’t (https://www.quantamagazine.org/ai-like-chatgpt-are-no-good-at-not-20230512/)
• The Vault: A new multilingual dataset for advancing code understanding and generation (https://www.reddit.com/MachineLearning/comments/13fftd7/r\_introducing\_the\_vault\_a\_new\_multilingual/)
• Language Models of Code are Few-Shot Commonsense Learners (https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07128)
• Bot or Human? Detecting ChatGPT Imposters with A Single Question (https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.06424)
• Training code of the open-source high-performance Llama model, including the full process from pre-training to RLHF (https://github.com/s-JoL/Open-Llama)
• Forefront Chat: Access GPT-4 Completely For Free (https://blog.unlimitedgpt.co/2023/05/forefront-chat-access-gpt4-completely-for-free.html)
• The Dual LLM pattern for building AI assistants that can resist prompt injection (https://simonwillison.net/2023/Ap25/dual-llm-pattern/)
• Run LLama 13B with a 6GB graphics card (https://gist.github.com/rain-1/8cc12b4b334052a21af8029aa9c4fafc)
• GitHub Copilot Chat leaked prompt (https://twitter.com/marvinvonhagen/status/1657060506371346432)

We return from the commercial, a five-minute video that was just a still image of Dexter Flux.
Babaganoush: The following contest is scheduled for -
Crowd: ONE FALL!
Javier smiles at this response, and he’s clearly got confidence that he’s shook the rust off.
Babaganoush: ...And it is for the WiR Tag! Team! Championship!
Crowd: YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Babaganoush: Introducing first, the challengers…
Shit, you judge me on my appearance… face value ennat…
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOO!
As “Inglorious” plays, King Mustafa exits from behind the curtain with Eddie Skelter following closely. Mustafa has a suit - a blindingly light-blue Christian Dior one - on over his gear and he curses at the crowd, but Eddie, dressed in red sweats, just mean-mugs and gets up in the faces of a few front row spectators.
Mann: Look, I - I know why people hate these lads. I really do! Not blessed with great social graces and they get off on getting ill-gotten cash and hurting people. But they make for a tremendous team, both covering each other’s flaws and fighting as more than the sum of their parts.
The two of them hop up on the ring apron and remove their outer gear - horrifyingly enough, they take off their pants to reveal their short tights - and point to their chests: Mustafa has a lion symbol on his blue gear, while Eddie has a rose symbol on his red gear.
Babaganoush: …From the United Kingdom, weighing in at a total of 445 pounds, they are King Mustafa and Eddie Skelter… TWO! SMOKING! BARRELS!
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOOO! / ENGLAND SUCKS! ENGLAND SUCKS! ENGLAND SUCKS!
Woodbridge: They’re right! They should say it! England DOES suck! That’s why guys like Brendan Byrne came here! He’s a good boy and he’s smart!
Mann: Moving on, and I’d like to apologize to our UK-based fans… as much respect as I have for 2SB, they’ve got their work cut out for them. Because here comes…
Babaganoush: And now, introducing the titleholders…
There is the completely incongruous sound of a blast on a Viking war horn before the jazz classic “Cantaloupe Island” begins to play and champions Jim Baker and Dexter Flux come from behind the curtain together, belts around their waists. Baker has on a chainmail shirt, while Dexter is in a huge fur cloak, which doesn’t even seem to be making them sweat. Their faces are painted with blue woad designs.
Crowd: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! HORDE! HORDE! HORDE!
Flux: OC BABY!
Crowd: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! DEXTER! DEXTER! DEXTER!
Mann: The crowd in Dexter Flux’s home region are giving him love.
Woodbridge: They’re wearing the belts! As it should be! Too much of this damn “I’ll put it over my shoulder” nonsense in wrestling these days.
Mann: And the rejuvenated Horde seems to be taking their name very seriously, judging by those outfits!
Woodbridge: What? What’s that mean?
Mann: Because of the barbarian type clothes -
Woodbridge: I still dunno what you’re talking about.
Mann: sigh I finally am starting to empathize with Allen Paisner.
On their way to the ring, Baker and Flux hand out a bunch of fist bumps; they take a brisk walk up the stairs, get their entrance gear off and hand it to Maurice Chondon for safekeeping, and Baker steps on the middle rope to help Flux in - Dexter is apparently adamant about starting.
Babaganoush: …from Orange County, CA -
Crowd: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Babaganoush: …and Cincinnati, OH, weighing in at a total of 425 pounds, they are the WiR Tag Team Champions - Jim Baker and Dexter Flux, THE HORDE!
Crowd: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Mann: Dexter Flux clearly going to be in the match first, and it looks like out of 2SB, Eddie Skelter wants to start…
Referee Harry Undersach checks over the four competitors - everyone complies even though Mustafa calls him a “chi chi man” - and signals for the match to begin!
DING DING DING!
Skelter offers a lockup to Flux, which the champion accepts, doing his best to ignore King Mustafa pounding on the ringpost and goading him while making rude English gestures at Baker from across the ring. The two wrestlers in the ring grapple - Skelter puts a facelock on Flux, goes to lock his right arm as well, but Flux gracefully gets out and tries to get a headlock on Skelter. Skelter has none of this and pushes Flux off, but Flux gets him down with an arm drag!
Crowd: YAAAAAAAAAY!
Mann: Both of these men are accomplished technical wrestlers. Skelter is obviously more a traditional mat wrestler, Flux is well-known for his high flying, but they’re going to do more of feeling each other out like this, I think.
Skelter attempts to put a wrist hold on Flux while the two are both down, but Flux gets out of his grip and kips up, and Skelter gets into a crouch, rising slowly and deliberately with both his eyes fixed on Flux, who assumes a readied stance but doesn’t go to attack Skelter yet. They re-assume a lockup, seemingly out of mutual agreement - this time, Flux manages to snap off a headlock takeover, bringing Flux to the ground again! Instantly he tries for a jumping elbow drop but Skelter rolls out of the way, and Flux makes a smooth recovery, landing on both his hands and pushing back up.
Crowd: AWWWWWWWWW…
Woodbridge: Both guys still actin’ wary. For now. Even Flux didn’t commit too hard to that elbow drop. Woulda been cool to see him break Skelter’s nose like that, hah.
Mann: Be that as it may, I feel like this pace will pick up soon!
Mustafa shouts a little more while Baker looks on calmly but still at the ready. The two stare each other down, and Skelter decides to take the first swing, throwing a fast but vicious jab towards Flux’s face. Flux, however, is able to dodge backwards and follow through with a forward jumping elbow! It hits Skelter square in the chest and he winces but SLAPS Flux right across the right cheek!
Crowd: OHHHHHHHHHHHHH! / BOOOOOOOOOO!
Woodbridge: The level of disrespect!
Mann: It’s still a legal strike, Mark. And it’s a treasured part of Eddie Skelter’s arsenal.
Mustafa is obviously pleased at the pimp smack, while Jim Baker looks irate, and is about to gesture for Flux to come back to their corner and tag him in. But Baker thinks the better of it, letting Flux avenge the insult himself instead. This he does, with a nice uppercut to Skelter’s jaw, but even as the Brit reels, before Flux can hit a follow-up attack, Skelter ducks behind him and grabs at his arm, a hold which Flux spins out of. But Skelter isn’t unprepared for this and knees Flux in the gut! He brings a chop down towards Flux’s head as Flux doubles over, but Flux is able to block it - Skelter then locks Flux’s arm and attempts to drop Flux with a Russian legsweep - Flux dodges and goes behind but Skelter turns around in time and throws a hard left-handed punch which Flux counters with an elbow, and both men’s strikes connect! They both stagger!
Crowd: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Woodbridge: Both of ‘em have their fire up! Kill him, Flux!
Mann: No easy task! Now it’s going to be a question of which man is forced to tag out first!
It’s Skelter who gets his head clear first and dives in for a double-leg takedown, which Flux blocks by splitting his legs - Skelter goes under and uses the leverage to attempt to lift Flux onto his shoulders - but Flux is ready for it! He clamps his legs and THROWS skelter with a modified headscissor takedown!
Crowd: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Woodbridge: That tijeras came straight from Guadalajara!
Mann: And now both competitors are on the mat!
Skelter sits up and winces and Flux scrambles to take advantage, but Skelter grabs his ankle and flips him to the mat with an ankle pick! Suddenly both men get about the same idea at the same time - Skelter takes further hold of Flux’s ankle but Flux tries to grapevine one of Skelter’s legs! They battle for a hold on the mat!
Crowd: LET’S GO DEXTER LET’S GO! clap clap LET’S GO DEXTER LET’S GO! clap clap
Meanwhile, dark gray clouds are gathering in the sky above the ring. The venue turns on some extra lights for better visibility.
Woodbridge: We’re onto Indian leg wrestling now!
Mann: That, and it looks like rain.
Woodbridge: You think the Tongva Indians ever used leg wrestling to do a rain dance?
Mann: …I do not think the one thing has to do with the other. Anyhow, the battle in the ring’s been VERY evenly matched so far.
Whilst Skelter goes for a modified figure-four leglock, Flux has something else in mind. He suddenly grips both of Skelter’s ankles, bridges onto his neck, and surprises Skelter by forcing him into a pin!
Woodbridge: DAMN!
Mann: Whoa, a flash pin attempt!
ONE!
TWO!
NO!
Crowd: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW…
The pin catches Skelter off guard but it’s clearly not enough. Both men spring to their feet and Skelter tries another double leg takedown attempt which is fended off by a flurry of overhead elbows by Flux! Skelter holds his head and decides he’s had enough for now, backing into his corner and tagging in the furiously waving hand of King Mustafa.
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Mann: His partner Eddie Skelter may have started off, but the big man of Two Smoking Barrels has wanted in all match so far.
Mustafa leaps in the ring and curses at the crowd once more.
Woodbridge: Dexter Flux is standing firm!
Mann: He did well against Skelter, who was his equal in terms of physical strength, but I have a feeling King Mustafa’s going to absolutely overpower him now!
Mustafa steps right up to Flux and proceeds to slap him in the left cheek!
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Mann: The cycle of disrespect is completed by Skelter’s teammate!
Flux backs off, before returning back in for a lockup with Mustafa, who uses his size advantage to throw Flux back into his corner, where he tags Skelter back in, and the two stomp Flux down into the corner. Skelter then immediately tags back out to King Mustafa.
Woodbridge: I can’t judge. Literally can’t. Used that tag team tactic there too many times to count.
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOO
King Mustafa once again overpowers Flux, using her superior size to launch him into the hard camera turnbuckle. He attempts to charge in, but Flux skitters out of the way! Flux tries to bring down King Mustafa with a kick to the knee, but he doesn’t budge. King Mustafa blocks an attempt at a strike, and throws Flux by the arm off the ropes! As Flux careens towards the opposite end, Baker sticks out his hand, and smacks Flux on the shoulder!
Woodbridge: That’s a legal tag!
Flux baseball slides underneath King Mustafa, who is unaware the tag has been made, while Baker comes in and pearl harbors him! Baker takes control with an overhand right, a blow to the chest, and a Russian leg sweep, before attempting a body slam, which King Mustafa is too large for. Mustafa offers Baker a test of strength, but before Baker can even accept, he kicks him in the gut.
Crowd: BOOOOOO
Mustafa scoops Baker up with ease, and delivers a gorilla press slam, taking a moment to flex for the unappreciative crowd before continuing his assault. Mustafa wrenches the arm of Baker, before tagging Skelter back in. Skelter climbs up to Bret’s Rope, and while Mustafa wrenches the arm, Skelter dives off, and delivers a double axe handle to the trapped arm!
Mann: Some solid teamwork here by The Barrels!
Skelter puts the larger Baker on the mat with a clubbing blow to the back, before delivering a fist drop to the skull. Skelter, relishing his small victory, backs off the ropes and prepares an elbow drop, but Baker rolls out of the way, and tags Flux back in! Flux charges in once again to meet Skelter… and is caught instantly with an arm drag. Skelter brings him down to the mat, and applies a sleeper hold…
Crowd: BOOOOO
But Baker charges back into the ring, and breaks it up! King Mustafa enters the ring to try and chase Baker off, drilling Flux with a shoulder tackle as soon as he lands on his feet with a kip-up, planting him back on the ground. Mustafa returns to his corner, while Skelter ascends a turnbuckle!
Mann: Not something we’re used to seeing! Skelter wants to beat Flux at his own game!
Skelter dives off the top, attempting a flying forearm… and falls short. As he tries to get back to his feet, Flux batters him with a closed fist, before whipping him off the far ropes, but Skelter is able to turn it around. Flux attempts a sunset flip to regain control, but Skelter simply pops down and pokes him in the eye.
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
While Skelter is told off by the official, King Mustafa sneaks into the ring to deliver a stomp to Flux, before skittering back to the apron. Skelter picks up Flux, to deliver a forearm, before walk-dragging Flux over to the corner by his hair, and tagging Mustafa back in. Skelter holds Flux by the hair, and Mustafa stomps his boot before delivering a knee to the stomach as Skelter heads back to the apron. Mustafa whips Flux, and as he returns, scoops him up for a powerslam, before rising to his feet, walking to the ropes, and preparing a knee drop, which Flux avoids! Flux crawls on his knees over to the corner before Mustafa can catch him, and tags Baker back in! Flux takes position on the apron, one foot on the second turnbuckle.
Finally, the sky has opened up! It begins to rain on the ring, the crowd, and even the announcers!
Mann: Didn’t I say it was going to rain?
Woodbridge: It’s not bothering anybody one bit!
Crowd: YEEEAAAHHHHHH
Baker charges in, delivering a pair of punches to try and slow down Mustafa, but they fail to knock him off his feet. Baker tries charging in for a clothesline, Mustafa ducks, but as Baker approaches, he attempts a sunset flip!
Crowd: A-LO-HA KING! A-LO-HA KING!
Mann: Uncharacteristic offense from Baker!
Woodbridge: I’ll say! Baker’s a great power guy, but I didn’t think he’d even ever seen one of those!
Mustafa refuses to go down, but as he struggles, Flux suddenly leaps from the apron to the top turnbuckle, before flying in with a dropkick! Mustafa stumbles, and Baker pulls him down for the rollup!
Woodbridge: Oh shit!
Mann: Huge missile dropkick, and the mat’s slick with rain now! Mustafa had to go down!
ONE
TWO
THR-
Skelter breaks up the pin! Skelter then grabs Flux by the hair again, and darts him shoulder-first into his own ringpost. He bends the aching Flux backwards and grabs his neck for a dragon sleeper…
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! / GO FLUX GO!
Mann: He won’t be able to submit Flux unless Mustafa gets tagged out!
Woodbridge: I don’t think he wants to! This is gonna be Lack of…
Skelter twists Flux around and fires off a fat open-palm thrust to Flux’s throat, making Flux sputter and drop to his knees!
Woodbridge: TRUST! Nasty!
Crowd: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Mustafa, who has recovered from the takedown, then proceeds to deliver an elbow to Flux’s crown! The two work over their opponents in the corners- Skelter attempting to ground Flux with kicks to the knee, Mustafa using his large arms to deliver repeated clotheslines, and with Flux and Baker tied up in opposite corners, Two Smoking Barrels attempt to whip their Horde counterparts into each other! As the two partners head on a collision course, Baker suddenly drops down, in back-body drop position to Flux, who lands on his feet!
Crowd: YEEAAAHHHH
Flux continues his momentum by delivering a running knee to King Mustafa, who is in his corner, before charging back a Baker, who offers a hand, and gives Flux a launching pad to deliver a flying forearm to Skelter! Skelter flops out of the corner, and out of the ring, and with the support of Knott’s Berry Farm behind him, Flux charges, and flies through the ropes with a dive that takes out both men!
A few members of the crowd begin to open up umbrellas, including the fan who got The Milkman’s earlier
Baker approaches Mustafa in the corner, and attempts to lift him to the second rope, but gets met with a boot for his troubles. Mustafa trades places with Baker, and pops him in the jaw, before delivering another one to the ribs, and a third to the temple. Baker blocks a fourth attempt, and turns it around on Mustafa! Baker unloads with a series of right hands of his own! Mustafa powers Baker out of the corner, and throws him to the opposite. Mustafa charges in, but as he tries to charge in, Baker moves out of the way, and attempts another rollup! This time he’s able to get Skelter off balance!
ONE
TWO
Kickout!
Flux ascends from the grass to the apron, and Baker tags him in! Baker attempts to lift Skelter once again, but struggles to, as he breaks free, but Flux delivers a dropkick, and Mustafa stumbles into Baker’s arms, who lifts him for a scoop slam!
Crowd: YEEEAAAHHHHH
Mann: He did it! He slammed him!
Woodbridge: This is where Baker shines! Not only displaying his power, but being great in the clutch!
Skelter tries to get in the ring again, but Flux meets him with a superkick! Skelter tries to keep his balance, but slips on the wet Apron and drops to the grass! Flux grabs the arm, and tags Baker back in, who delivers a clothesline to the trapped Mustafa, dropping him again. Flux gets the tag back in, and ascends the ropes…
And delivers Quantum Flux! He blasts down onto the King, into a puddle of rainwater forming in the center of the ring!
Woodbridge: QUANTUM FLUX! QUANTUM FLUX! DEXTER SEIZES THE MOMENT! MAN HAS FOLLOWTHROUGH!
Skelter tries to scramble back to the ring to make the save, Baker meets him, and holds him down! Flux scrambles into the cover!
ONE
TWO
THREE
DING DING DING
Crowd: YYEEEEAAAHHHHHH
Mann: And The Horde are victorious!
Woodbridge: And damn do they deserve it!
Babaganoush: Your winners and STILL WiR Tag Team Champions, at a time of twelve minutes and forty-three seconds, The Horde!
Flux and Baker hug it out in the ring, holding their tag belts high. Tony “The Milkman” Stevens emerges from the back, knee wrapped in medical tape and casts, limps to the ring, and raises the hands of his stablemates! Everyone is going crazy, especially because the hometown boy defended the stable’s belts by getting the pin!
Flux and Baker each get up on a turnbuckle, holding their tag belts up high, while in the ring, Stevens stands alone in the middle, one leg down, hair slicking back over his face from rain.
Mann: Fans at home, this has been Sound Off! The weather outside has turned frightful, but this show has been delightful! I have been Shay D. Mann filling in for Allen Paisner, alongside Mark Woodbridge. Take us home, Woodbridge!
Woodbridge: I finally feel confident in saying this - it has felt like a wonderful, shine-drunk dream so far - but folks, we are so fucking back. For all of the incredible fighters in WiR, for our whole staff and crew, and for my short-term broadcast partner Shay D. Mann, this has been Sound Off, and I have been Mark Woodbridge - gooooood night everybody!

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a towering ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, with a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

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