"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, published in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.
You can start the serial from the beginning by visiting the Curated Collection.
Alabama Zack, our hero and a war veteran, found himself standing on a train station platform in another time and dimension. At his feet lay a man in a brown suit. The man was dead, and Zack was arrested and jailed.
Zack can not remember how he had arrived on that platform, let alone whether or not he had anything to do with the man's death.
In last week's chapter, a group of pig-man jailers pulled Zack from his cell and guided him down a long hallway to a talking door. The door opened on a scene like nothing Zack had seen before.
A cavern stretched before them for miles. It opened upward into blackness – this absence of light was the only visible ceiling. The floor was rough rock. It curved upward on both sides into jumbled boulders, and emanating amid the jumbles a multitude of lights lit the dark like thousands of campfires. In the glow of each light stood an assembly; or rather, some lounged in an elevated position on the rock – in natural seating formed from each unique array of boulders – while others stood, with pig-man jailers like our hero, before those lounging. There was a babbling inquisition going on: those lounging on the rock asked questions of the ones standing before them, and this scene was repeated ad infinitum throughout the cavern.
The lead jailer pushed Zack forward, and as soon as his boot hit the rock, all of them were whisked into the air by an incredible force that seemed to originate in Zack's own chest. The force pulled them up and then forward at breakneck speed, arching his body so that his arms and legs trailed back. Wind ripped the hat from his head. They banked left over the lights and the boulders, and then the pull was gone and they were standing before one of those lounging inquisitors.
The inquisitor looked like a human albino, with skin so white it was almost translucent, no hair, and wrinkled eyelids that cupped large pink eyes. But it was not exactly human. It was dressed in a hooded mauve robe, with brown sandals.
“Alabama Zack,” the inquisitor intoned. “You have been accused of the murder of a man in a brown suit. What is your response to this accusation?”
Zack stared, still trying to grasp the fact that they had just flown across the cave. He had not really followed the question. He twisted his shoulders around toward the babble on his left, to see what others were saying, but the pig-man jerked him back forward.
“I don't know,” Zack said.
“Ah,” the inquisitor said from its rock. “But are you curious?”
“Curious,” Zack said. “Yeah.”
“Of what are you curious, Mr. Alabama Zack?”
“Well,” he dragged out, until he remembered. “The doctor. I reckon the doctor knows something.”
“You are wise to be curious about the doctor.” The inquisitor paused for thought. “Yes, you may talk to the doctor. But don't be too long about it, and be sure you come back.”
On those words Zack was yanked straight up by that force in his chest. He rushed through the cold dark. In just moments a slash of daylight began opening above him; then he burst from the ground into daylight.
Next week in our story
Our hero said, “I did not kill him,” and he was surprised, because he still had not remembered anything.
The doctor laughed shortly. “None of the murderers I've talked to ever killed anyone.”
“I killed plenty,” Zack had to say. “But not this man.”
Chapter VI
Start at the beginning
Cover for “Alabama Zack” designed in Canva using a Pixabay photo as background (image source).
Text written by 
Creative Coin banner designed by @ pacolimited.
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