Featured in Cemetery Dance magazine, issue #70, pages 74-79, illustrated by Gak

This is a gripping viewpoint story set in Eastern Europe during the middle-ages. The feel of Red Soil is local, limited, xenophobic—precisely medieval. The tale is told from the viewpoint of Matthias, a young peasant boy who is among the many who have been pressed into slave labor gangs to build the local Boyar’s towering keep. Even as the boy and his ailing sister endure this primal gulag at the hands of the Boyar’s cruel men, they are all assaulted from without, by what seems to be a zombie plague.

I can’t reveal anymore without ruining the story. The entire read is gripping and darkly-textured, and is concluded in an interesting fashion.