The town was burning, and somewhere within one of the sets of blazing walls a phone had begun to ring.

Myriam had little patience left for Calvin’s nonsense, and yet his litany of complaints seemed to grow with every step.

Tonight, as is tradition, a ghost story.

Despite the distance he’d travelled, despite the years he’d waited, Mukki found himself fighting the urge to sprint from the shore.

He’d been reduced to riffling through his memory for nonsense trivia and unlikely anxieties to keep himself awake.

Mukki stood on Pebble Beach and took the weight of the flat rock in his hand.

There wasn’t much of a world for quite a while. Panic had gotten him - panic had gnawed at his calf muscle, panic had laid him out.

It was a long bus ride, and the lumbering gray beast stopped regularly

The thin silver line of fear that ran along her spine, mimicking the chill of the cold wall, would help keep her awake.

He had proven to himself that Baker was involved in a cover up, but this was a fact William had already known. It had only been he, the escapee, who’d held any lingering doubt.

Hari cradled his head in his hands, attempting to block out the smokey sweet smell of freshly-charred human flesh

As soon as he stepped from the 747’s controlled climate the dry Arizona air began to bake Mukki’s lungs.

There was no hiss, nor rattle of warning, one moment they were speaking and the next the tent to Gord’s left seemed to explode into motion.

The conversation on the night of their unexpected meeting was so celebratory that Mukki was forced to repeat most of the details the following day when they met for dinner.

Seeing the shredded seats, deployed airbag, and tornado trail of upholstery and glass had brought a reality to his friend’s words.

Without physical records to pin them in place, the events, like the town of Jackfish itself, became a receding memory only touched upon by sentimentalists and conspiracy theorists.

You wouldn’t be so eager to sleep if you’d seen the damned thing.

He had argued to no end, then been dragged into the boat by a hand so firm it left four brown bars across his forearm.

While shuffling along the tracks, Gord mentally repeated his arguments against regretting this decision.

William came awake, the second morning after the trauma, to a silent house.

Myriam watched the bobbing light break up among the branches, then disappear, as Gord and Cal crept along the rails that led to the car.

As they spoke the Colonel would occasionally raise his hand, then a building would suddenly be ablaze.

Silence, deep and unyielding, descended. No bullfrogs sounded and no night birds called - even the chirp and buzz of the insects had fallen into a hushed lull.

William had clawed his way through the brush and darkness until he could move no more, then he’d discovered that weeping silently was an exhausting business.

While Gord would have claimed it was “an echo of the past carried by the tail of our nation’s avatar,” or some crap, Hari simply hoped he wasn’t about to require a number of rabies shots.

If he’d awoken in the middle of the night and stumbled across the scene it might have seemed peaceful, but there was something unnerving at the lack of lit windows beyond the railroad tracks. The glass panes now seemed to stare him down, sockets without eyes.

The rum was doing an excellent job of warming her against the chill of the lake breeze. Somewhere in the darkness, down where the lapping water worked at an embankment overrun with grasses, a bullfrog began to croon a long and low note.

“Do you think Dad will be okay?” Ester had asked, and Monica and Haaken were quick to assure her he’d be fine, then they’d offered up a blackboard game of Tic-Tac-Toe to keep her mind from the blood they’d all witnessed on the sand.

This is how I heard the story, and I’ve got good reason to believe it – which I’ll get to. It starts with five kids running across town – this town, Jackfish – or, at least, the town that once stood here.

You can run through Jackfish in under ten minutes if you can keep your legs pumping, and your heart from exploding in the humid August heat.

A word from Jurd

Tonight, a future-facing tale of stardom and obsession.

Tonight, Bunny, the Coffin,finds herself a horse being led to water.

Tonight, Bunny, the Coffin, finds herself slowly surrounded by a party of mystical vagabonds.

Tonight, Bunny, the Coffin, finds herself in the same old haunts as the world outside her bar’s window rapidly changes.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, and Milo “Head” Smith, member of the Irregular Division and reformed thief, find themselves burning different ends of the same candle.

Tonight, the tale of Doctor Sofronio Momus, a man who knows not what the day after tomorrow might bring, but who, through science, intends to find out.

Tonight our spacefarer and his clawed companion find themselves at the end of an unexpected journey.

Tonight, someone’s uttering threats, and Mulligan swears it isn’t him.

Tonight, we briefly diverge from our current ongoing investigation to tell you a well-worn urban legend from the streets of Capital City.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, chases a missing notebook into a suburban wasteland.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, finds himself looking into a novel mystery centered around a missing notebook.

Tonight, an insight into the modern life of monsters.

Tonight, a brief tale from a distant war.

Tonight, your girl, Harper Tierny, learns many secrets - but be forewarned: Please keep both earbuds in until the ride has come to a complete stop.

Tonight, your girl, Harper Tierney, gets a sharp lesson in the realities of life in The Irregular Division.

Tonight, we meet some new friends, encounter some old friends, and find ourselves dug in, at last, with the full complement of The Irregular Division.

Tonight, a brand new story about the same old story.

Tonight, a conversation with a space goat.

Tonight, we take a brief journey into one possible future.

Tonight, we hear another story, this time from the lips of the too-grateful dead.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, seeks a dead man in a haunted world.

Tonight, we begin a tale of things stolen, and things better left buried.

Tonight, a brief tale of another life, though one perhaps not entirely unfamiliar.

Tonight, we visit briefly with an old friend along a northern lakeside.

Tonight, we return to the Hundred Kingdoms, the realm of Sofia Esperon, as the Queen must deal with a number of climbers.

Tonight, we return to a simpler time, when private investigator Mulligan Smith’s greatest concern was the possibility of a serial killer.

Merry Kar’Mas from all of us at Skinner Co. Here’s a gift just for you.

Not for small children though. Just for you.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith discovers the truth about the death of a hero of two plagues.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, meets an unlikely source of information regarding his missing client.

Tonight, Mulligan Smith takes on a new client.

Tonight, we hear the last of it from Harm Carter.

Tonight, Harm Carter finds himself not quite alone in a museum of his own making.

Tonight, Harm Carter discovers you can never go home again - especially when that home is surrounded by homicidal maniacs.

Tonight, Harm Carter completes a sudden descent from a rooftop.

Tonight, Harm Carter makes a mistake.

Tonight, Harm Carter and his companion, Hamlet the Great Dane, must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - though mostly the arrows - in their hunt for familiar turf.

Tonight, Harm Carter searches for a moment of peace among the traps of the homicidally insane and the rationally terrified.

Tonight, Harm Carter finds an unlikely guide through the deadly traps of the homicidally insane.

Tonight, Harm Carter must navigate a world brimming with paranoid killers while contending with an empty stomach.

Join the Chrononaut's as they Shatner double-chop their way through ALEXAAANDER!

Tonight, Harm Carter finds Minnie.

Tonight, Harm Carter finds himself on the wrong end of a maniac’s shopping list.

Tonight, Harm Carter, still in search of his daughter among the murderously infected, considers his own lingering debts.

Where once we were promised a jetpack future, know now the grim truth of your pop culture demands.

Tonight, Harm Carter and his new friend are dealt a bum hand, and must either gamble it all or cut and run.

Tonight, Harm Carter and his new friend, Hamlet the Great Dane, come to a fork in the road as they journey across the paranoia-infected countryside.

Tonight, Harm Carter and his new traveling companion, Hamlet the Great Dane, face the perils of the paranoia-inducing plague that is Hitchcock’s while learning the true price of movement in such murder-hungry lands.

Tonight, Harm Carter makes a new acquaintance among the homicidal maniacs of the plague-infected countryside - but will they prove themselves to be friend or foe?

Tonight, Harm Carter, while in search of his homicidal daughter, Rebecca, must reconsider his approach to moving through the deadly traps that litter the plague-infected countryside.

Tonight, Harm Carter returns to a countryside inhabited by homicidal maniacs.

Tonight, we present a quick history of occupation.

Tonight, Harm Carter reflects on the forces that drove him back into the depths of the Murder Plague.

Tonight, Jennifer corrects a long-standing error.

Tonight, Ruby comes to the end of her road.

Tonight, our heroine careens through the ranks of the dead in an attempt to escape their hungry jaws - but will she join them instead?

Tonight, Ruby encounters a new familiar face, and the key to her escape from the shuffling dead

Tonight, Ruby inches ever closer to home - but at what risk?

Tonight, in a world where the only certainty is the gnashing of undead teeth, Ruby discovers something truly unexpected.

Tonight, our zombie-slaying heroine begins her long walk out of the apocalypse.

Tonight, Ruby must face up to vermin of a different sort.

Tonight, while dodging the stumbling dead, Ruby hears of cowboys, hidden treasures, and the relative madness of The Rat Trapper.

Tonight our corpse-dodging heroine summons an old acquaintance and new problems.

Tonight, we come to the end of a road.

Tonight, our zombie-slaying heroine wishes she could include a few of the living in the sweep of her blade.

Tonight, as our zombie-impaling heroine makes her way home, new friends encounter old problems.

Tonight, we cross and re-cross the Canadian wilderness, as if an echo of another time.

Tonight, Ruby encounters an unexpected friend among the shambling dead.

Tonight, Ruby moves among the throngs of the stumbling undead in search of antibiotics and an exit.

Tonight, Ruby considers her options for departing the zombie apocalypse.