In a land overrun by ruthless creatures that hunt by sound, even the faintest whimper can lead to your death in Tim Lebbon's The Silence, a new horror novel hitting shelves later this month. Titan Books has provided us with an exclusive excerpt from Lebbon's latest to share with Daily Dead readers, and we also have a look at two recent 31 images revealed by Rob Zombie, as well as details on the zombie series, Fight of the Living Dead, which is now available to watch in its entirety on BlackBoxTV.
Tim Lebbon's The Silence: "In the darkness of a underground cave system, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed... Swarming from their prison, the creatures thrive and destroy. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death. As the hordes lay waste to Europe, a girl watches to see if they will cross the sea. Deaf for many years, she knows how to live in silence; now, it is her family’s only chance of survival. To leave their home, to shun others, to find a remote haven where they can sit out the plague. But will it ever end? And what kind of world will be left?"
To learn more about The Silence, which comes out on April 14th from Titan Books, visit:
http://titanbooks.com/the-silence-7189/
Excerpt:
It was just another hotel room, in another bland hotel that Huw would forget the moment he drove away, and this one smelled of piss.
The place was presented nicely enough. The rooms were all different—his was unimaginatively called the Red Suite, with red curtains and bedclothes, and a series of abstract paintings depicting stark fleshy landscapes and bleeding sunsets—and the couple who ran the hotel seemed friendly and efficient. The wife was a little older than Huw, and she’d smiled just a little too much when he’d noticed the undone buttons on her blouse. It was only a peek, a bit of lacy brassiere. He couldn’t help noticing things like that, but notice was all he’d ever done. He had a table booked for dinner later, and the hotel seemed to have a great reputation as an eatery as well. So it was fine. It was quirky. But his room still smelled of piss.
He’d moved slowly around the room, sniffing here and there, ducking into the en suite to see if the stink came from the most obvious place, but he couldn’t pin it down. It was only a slight tang, nothing too heavy and alarming, not enough to persuade him to ask to be moved. Certainly not enough to make him complain. Huw just wasn’t like that. He hated trouble, and avoided confrontation at all costs. If there’d been a huge turd in the middle of the floor, he’d probably have complained then. Probably.
He sighed, sitting back on the bed and sinking into the four pillows he’d stacked against the headboard. A book lay unread beside him. A cup of tea cooled on the bedside table, a good idea at the time but tasting of... well, piss, with the faux milk they provided in those little plastic containers.
That was another thing he’d do if he ran a place like this. A small fridge in the room with a jug of proper milk. He spoke with Kelly about it often, and once or twice they’d had serious conversations about actually buying a small B&B here on the Cornish coast. She could paint, more than the occasional dabbling she sometimes found time for now. He could surf. Jude could explore the rock pools down on the beach, and Ally could indulge whatever her latest interests might be—shell-collecting, kayaking, coasteering. Huw smiled. Ally would probably want to try them all, and more.
He glanced at the book, sighed, flicked on the TV and started surfing the channels, sound muted.
It had been two long days, working on the new house. Or mansion, more like. The client was a racehorse owner, sixty years old, rich, and readying to retire. A nice guy with lots of interesting stories, he inevitably kept Huw behind for an hour longer than each meeting really needed to be. But Huw really didn’t mind. Max would sometimes pull a bottle of wine from his briefcase, and they’d had more than one boozy late afternoon on the building site that would soon become his luxury home.
Max was paying Huw’s company almost a million pounds to build the house, so he guessed Max was entitled to own just a little bit of his soul.
He sighed and reached for the tea. Moving seemed to agitate the air and bring another waft of ammonia. The clock said almost six, his meal was booked for seven, and there was sod all on the box. Maybe he should go for a run. It was a long time since he’d even got as far as slipping on his trainers. There was always a reason not to run, and today that was tiredness. His limbs ached. If motivation was there it was buried deep, and not coming out to play.
Huw thought of the woman who’d registered him, her welcoming smile, and wondered whether that blouse button had been left open on purpose.
Kelly sometimes jibed him a little about his frequent spells away from the family home near the town of Usk, in Monmouthshire. They were rarely more than three nights; still, she prodded and poked, never quite serious but, he thought, never completely joking either. She’d ask whether he had his hooker booked for the night, or whether he had a regular fuck buddy in whichever town he was staying in. Huw would go along with it, never taking things too far, and then he’d hug her and say she was the only one for him. And truth was, he completely meant it. After twenty years of marriage, the two of them still loved each other, differently from before but just as deeply. He knew of other guys working away who’d had flings—a regular shag, casual visits, or just a one-off screw in their hotel room with someone they’d met that night and whose second name they’d never know. But that had never been for him. Huw was a family man, and his family always made him look forward to returning home.
He took a swig of tea and wished he hadn’t.
Maybe he’d run a bath, relax with a book. Mind made up, he reached for the TV remote, but before turning it off he flipped through a few more channels, a casual habit he’d picked up from Kelly.
An image caught his eye.
Several people were gathered around an apparatus of some sort, two of them working hard to turn a handle while a third seemed to be tinkering with a control mechanism. The camera must have been handheld because it was jumpy and uneven. In the background were several tents, lights strung between them, shadowy people dashing back and forth. They were somewhere wild—trees, a starry sky, gnarly terrain.
It was the looks on their faces that grabbed his attention. They were scared.
“New movie trailer,” Huw muttered. He talked to himself quite a bit, and usually didn’t even notice. But this time he did notice, because he wasn’t quite sure. If this was a trailer, it was incredibly realistic. And graphic.
The people kept turning the handle, and it was only as Huw saw something glistening and red rising out of the ground that he realised the sound was still muted.
He hit the sound button and winced as a soul-shattering scream tore through the room.
“Shit!” Heart pounding, Huw chuckled at how easily he’d been scared. He leaned across the bed and grabbed his mobile phone, glancing quickly at it to check the time. Almost six fifteen.
No way they should ever be showing anything like this before the watershed.
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Rob Zombie's 31: Recently revealed by Zombie on his Facebook page are two more stills from his upcoming Halloween-set horror film, 31. The first one features Jeff Daniel Phillips as Roscoe and the second one depicts Judy Geeson as Sister Dragon. 31 was recently acquired for North American distribution by Alchemy.
In addition to Phillips and Geeson, the 31 cast includes Malcolm McDowell, Lew Temple, E. G. Daily, Daniel Roebuck, Jane Carr, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Torsten Voges, Tracy Walter, Pancho Moler, Ginger Lynn, Richard Brake, and David Ury.
"Welcome to my next film. It is called 31. It is the story of five random people kidnapped on the five days leading up to Halloween and held hostage in a place called Murder World. While trapped inside this man-made Hell they must fight to survive playing the most violent game known to man... a game called 31.
31 has no rules. 31 has no boundaries. It is ever so simple. Do whatever you can do to kill your opponent before they kill you. Keep this up for 12 hours and freedom is yours.
Who are the opponents? Well... a group of vile, filthy, blood-thirsty clowns known as THE HEADS. They come in all shapes and sizes and each grows nastier than the last.
What kind of film is this you ask? It is a fast paced, mean dirty film for those who like it rough. Get ready for a sick piece of celluloid! This is some hardcore business for the blood-thirsty gore hounds."
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Fight of the Living Dead: Press Release - "(Los Angeles, CA) April 5, 2015 – Only the strong survive in the action-packed series, “FIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD,” available today on YouTube’s #1 ranked genre channel BlackBoxTV. Originally airing on the streaming digital network CONtv, every episode of the pulse-pounding original series, filled with “nerve-wrecking intensity” (Nerd Reactor), is now also available to watch all at once via YouTube.
An abandoned jail sets the eerie scene as digital superstars are pitted against bloodthirsty zombies in the action-packed series from Alpine Labs, BlackBoxTV, and Revolver Picture Company.
Featuring highly popular online stars such as Joey Graceffa, Jesse and Jeana (PrankvsPrank), Justine Ezarik (iJustine), Iman Crosson (Alphacat), Meghan Camarena (Strawburry17), Olga Kay and more, “FIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD” also includes a cameo appearance from BlackBoxTV’s founder Tony E. Valenzuela.
Come along for the ride as a group of digital celebs face various challenges in an attempt to eliminate each other from the competition while trying to survive the undead’s relentlessly grisly, and frighteningly realistic onslaught. Then, visit the pages for Joey Graceffa, iJustine, PrankvsPrank, OlgaKay, Strawburry17 to get a deeper look into their experience shooting “FIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.”
“Collaborations like ours have been happening for a long time on YouTube but I believe we’re actually the first to distribute a narrative piece across six YouTube channels” said Valenzuela. “It’s like watching ‘House of Cards’ episode one on Frank Underwood’s channel, then bouncing to Claire’s channel to watch episode two. The pay off for the viewer is that even when the season is over, there is plenty of fresh new content specific to those characters or, in our case, gamers.”
Shot over the course of two days at Sybil Brand Women’s Prison in Los Angeles, “FIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD” competitors were first blindfolded, driven in circles, led onto the set, and zipped into body bags, all to help simulate the all-too-real tension of awaking in a post-apocalyptic landscape riddled by monsters out for blood. Instructed by a faceless character named Dr. Altagracia (Valenzuela), the “survivors” are tasked with finding the antidote that can save mankind.
Enlisting over 200 extras, FX Supervisor Tommy Pietch (“Face Off”) and his team create a horrifying mob of rotting, wounded, bloody zombies tasked with keeping the competitors from accomplishing their mission. “FIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD” also turns up the thrills by including a collection of zombie-clad Parkour experts, overseen by renowned stunt coordinator Chris Carnel (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), who use the prison’s walls as their terrifying playground, threatening to unleash destruction from any angle.
“FIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD” is produced by Alpine Labs and Revolver Picture Company; Executive Producers are Kevin Abrams, Jamie Denenberg and Tony E. Valenzuela; Rodney Frazier, Nick Phillips, Kelly Martin Wagner and Aaron Lewis are Co-Executive Producers."
The post Round-Up: Read an Exclusive Excerpt from Tim Lebbon’s The Silence, Photos from Rob Zombie’s 31, Fight of the Living Dead Details appeared first on Daily Dead.