Trouble in Tomsk: Drumming for the Dead

By Gabby Gilliam

An ancient parasite thaws from the permafrost, infecting its human hosts, and reducing them to mindless husks, attacking any living creature to create new parasitic hosts.

The remnants of humanity flee to the coldest regions of the Earth, where they build walls to protect themselves from the wandering infected—the husks.

Armed with her father's shamanic drum, Bree settles in Tomsk, the largest city in Siberia, where she uses the beats of the drum to draw these husks to her; the steady beats mirroring the heartbeats of their hosts.

Arrested by the city's patrol guards, she and her neighbour, Tyler, who is working on a cure, must convince the council that his serum can neutralise the parasites, eradicating the threat on humanity.

But the council aren't ready to listen.

Dystopian horror from Gabby Gilliam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Hare Press
• Release date: May 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223224358

Book preview

Trouble in Tomsk

Drumming for the Dead

Gabby Gilliam

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Black Hare Press

TROUBLE IN TOMSK title is copyright © 2022 GABBY GILLIAM

First published in Australia in May 2022 by Black Hare Press

Revised in June 2023

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The author retains the copyright of the works featured in this publication.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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Edited by Jodi Christensen

Formatted by Dean Shawker

Cover design by Dawn Burdett

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Also By Gabby Gilliam

DRUMMING FOR THE DEAD

Trouble in Tomsk

Chasing a Cure

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Trouble in Tomsk

An ancient parasite thaws from the permafrost, infecting its human hosts, and reducing them to mindless husks, attacking any living creature to create new parasitic hosts.

The remnants of humanity flee to the coldest regions of the Earth, where they build walls to protect themselves from the wandering infected—the husks.

Armed with her father’s shamanic drum, Bree settles in Tomsk, the largest city in Siberia, where she uses the beats of the drum to draw these husks to her; the steady beats mirroring the heartbeats of their hosts.

Arrested by the city’s patrol guards, she and her neighbour, Tyler, who is working on a cure, must convince the council that his serum can neutralise the parasites, eradicating the threat on humanity.

But the council aren’t ready to listen.

Dystopian horror from Gabby Gilliam.

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Chasing a Cure

After her exile from Tomsk, Bree is joined by Tyler and Carly on the road out of the city.

Together, the children travel toward Moscow, hoping to find someone who will listen to them about the newfound cure.

Tyler’s cure is only partially effective. It will kill husks, but he isn’t sure if it can cure someone infected with the parasites before they become a husk.

Moscow’s leader, Aleksandr, doesn’t want to wait to find out. He injects Carly with parasites to motivate Tyler into creating a viable cure.

With Moscow’s fully-stocked lab at his disposal, Tyler experiments all day with potential cures. Bree nurses Carly as best as she can, but Carly’s symptoms continue to worsen.

Every day it’s clearer that Tyler and Carly are both running out of time.

Dystopian horror from Gabby Gilliam.

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For my son, Oskar, who wanted a zombie story

Contents

1.Chapter One

2.Chapter Two

3.Chapter Three

4.Chapter Four

5.Chapter Five

6.Chapter Six

7.Chapter Seven

8.Chapter Eight

9.Chapter Nine

10.Chapter Ten

11.Chapter Eleven

12.Chapter Twelve

Gabby Gilliam

Black Hare Press

Acknowledgements

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Chapter One

Mom and Dad had a hippie shop. One of those places that sells essential oils, incense, and handmade jewellery. Mom made the jewellery. Dad procured the healing bits. His patrons called him a shaman, but Dad balked at the idea. He wasn’t a shaman. He just genuinely cared about helping people, however he could. In most instances, that meant giving them eucalyptus oil to rub into the soles of their feet to help with chronic congestion or mint tea with honey to soothe a tired throat. He was a walking herbal encyclopaedia. He could identify plants by sight and memory. We had a garden behind the shop where he grew most of the herbs he sold. We harvested them and hung them from the roof of the shed to dry before we packaged them for sale. Some of my earliest memories involve basil and sage. They still remind me of my dad.

Dad also played the drums. Not like Ringo Starr or anything. We didn’t have a drum kit. Dad had somehow made his own. I never quite figured out exactly what he had used. Some kind of animal hide and a wooden ring. YouTube probably helped. He was a hippie, not Amish. The sounds he coaxed out of that drum were tantric. I drifted off to its gentle rhythm so many times that once he was gone, it was difficult to fall asleep in the silence. The silence was everywhere now.

One of the first things to go was the internet. I had vague memories of Candy Crush and YouTube, but hadn’t even seen a computer in a few years. Most people abandoned them when they had to move North. They weren’t much use without the worldwide web. Some die-hard gamers might have dragged the machines with them, but for many of us, it wasn’t worth the hassle. Survival took precedence over Dragon Warrior.

Electricity was next. There were still some cities, the bigger ones, who were connected to the grid. They had a large enough population that there were residents who knew how to operate the power plants, but even the big cities had occasional black and brown outs. The generators were small, and the demand was great. Once the sun set, it was always lights out. The husks were attracted to light the way a moth was drawn to flame. They didn’t want the heat. Some instinctive part of them knew the light would lead them to prey.

I was only twelve when the first husks appeared. A research team in the Arctic never checked in. The crew who went to check on them sent a distress signal before their communications failed. The next crew never disembarked from their ship. The rescue mission lined the shore, waiting for them. Their eyes were swollen and yellow, leaking pus that froze to their cheeks. Their frostburnt skin was covered in lesions. They stood still, staring at the ship as if they could pluck the warm bodies off it by sheer force of will. The ship turned around and left the husks behind. It didn’t take long for the husks to follow them home.

The research team was investigating the effects that climate change and global warming were having on the Arctic ice shelf. The data they had submitted so far was bleak. Temperatures were rising. Ice was melting. It turns out some things can survive being frozen and will wake up once they thaw.

Bottled water was our downfall. People would pay extra for water that came fresh from the source. Nothing sounded more exotic than quenching your thirst with a melted glacier. While scientists mourned the loss of the polar ice caps, companies profited from it. They sold the results of global warming for two dollars a bottle and consumers drank it greedily, tossing plastic bottles back into the ocean to make things worse.

A few weeks after the research team turned husk, the first documented case appeared in California. A middle-aged housewife took a