Written Sy Wyatt at the now infamous MWM Live! in Bristol, May 2009.

Pressure. Emmett had dealt with pressure his whole life. Pressure to deliver. Pressure to perform. Today, however, he was concerned entirely with the pressure on the outside of his deep sea exploration suit. The soft pinging in his ear told him he was safe, and still attached to the survey ship, thousands of feet above, by the umbilical.

“Can you see it, Emmett?”

“I’m pretty much on top of it. Another hundred or so feet and I’ll have contact.”

Emmett imagined the whoops and back-slapping going on on the ship. After months of searching, they had found her.

Emmett’s heavy boots hit the shell of the wreck. There was no give, ships like the Inca Queen were built to last, built to keep their cargo safe. Emmett couldn’t speculate what kind of ordnance could have sunk her.

“Can you see it? Emmett, can you see it?”

Emmett turned slowly, the high powered lights on the shoulders of his suit skimming along skin of the hulk. They reached a ragged gash, a hole punched in the side of the majestic Inca Queen. Inside, gleaming under the powerful spot lights, was her cargo. Untouched, perfect, preserved by intense pressure and cold of the Inca Queen’s deep grave.

Row after row of containers, their contents still a perfect, creamy white and, along the sides, a tell-tale flash of gold.

Emmett smiled. It would be biggest haul of his career.

“I have it. There’s at least eight thousand pints of gold top down here.”

Emmett flicked off the radio link before he was deafened by the cheers. Since the bovine flu epidemic, milk had become the most expensive commodity on the planet. The contents of The Inca Queen, once the star “milk float” of the global “Creamy Corporation”, was worth enough to make Emmett and his crew richer than God.

This one was for Richard Griffiths, of Crafty Butchers fame, who just wanted “spidermonkeys”.

We live to serve …

Cliff reloaded his rifle as quickly as he could, letting the spent cartridges join those already scattered about his feet. The barrel of the gun was hot enough to scorch the wooden parapet of the outpost as he propped it there, glad for a moment not to have the weight against his shoulder.

“How many of them are there?” asked Delilah.

“Depends,” replied Cliff. “If they breed like monkeys, we’ve got to be getting to the end of the troupe by now. If they breed like spiders …”

The words hung in the air as thick as the tropical heat.

“If they breed like spiders …?” Delilah asked meekly.

“Then I don’t have enough bullets.”

There was a crash out in the jungle, and the familiar screeching of the spider monkeys. Cliff had tried to work out where the nest was, considering in his darker moments that maybe the only way to survive this was to take the fight to them, to find their home and burn it out, but every part of the jungle seemed to be their territory. This was their place.

“Cliff, maybe we should take the other jeep, try and –”

“They know where the road is,” said Cliff flatly. “You didn’t see what happened to Clint, Helen, and the others …  Trust me Delilah, you don’t want to end up like that.”

Cliff closed his eyes for a moment. Hunting was a dangerous profession, he’d seen people hurt and killed before. He’d seen the things that an animal can do to a human in a matter of moments, he’d seen how inhuman the things that were left behind looked. What he had seen on the road out of the jungle though, what he had seen in the spider monkey’s web… that was something different entirely. That was a human level of cruelty.

The crashing in the jungle grew closer, and the screeching grew louder. Cliff cocked the rifle back up to his shoulder and peered down the sight.

“I can help,” said Delilah, awkwardly hefting up a pistol.

Cliff sighed. They were dead, of that he was certain. Delilah may as well die on her feet.

“Remember to aim low,” he said, with an uncommon note of kindness. “If you hit the poison sack, that seems to do the trick.”

Inspired by Ryan Reed, who asked for a story featuring ““A man who has been bitten by a radioactive man, a VW Camper Van, and a pie”

Rain rattled against the side of the camper van. Reed tried to ignore it, and concentrated on cooking. Cooking was a lot more complicated for Reed these days than it used to be as, since the bite, he had to work just as hard to keep things out of his meals as put things in.

Thunder crashed overhead and the VW camper rocked from side to side as Reed gingerly lifted the baking tray out of the small oven he had installed into the van. The van, like Reed, had been through a lot of changes, since the bite.

Four years on the run, four years since the bite.

Placing the tray on the edge of the sink, he picked up the piping hot pie and dropped it onto his only plate. He didn’t feel the heat of the pie, the flesh of his fingers long dead.

Long dead since the bite.

The rain was gradually turning into hail, hammering harder on the sides of the van. Reed knew that he didn’t have long, that soon the rain and the hail wouldn’t be the only things hammering on the sides of his van.

The village was less than an hour away and he was sure that the children would have been missed by now. He wished that it didn’t have to be children, but they were the only things that worked.

The only things that worked since the bite.

Edging down the van, the wind threatening to topple him at any moment, Reed caught a glimpse of himself, reflected in the windscreen. His flesh was rotten, sloughing off every bone. The poisoning was getting worse. The poisoning that had been eating away at him ever since the bite.

He sat down, and let the aroma of the pie fill his nose.

Soon, he would look like everyone else. Soon, he would be able to walk among the normal people, and no one would know.

The secret was in the pie.

And all it would take was a bite.

The Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS) is back, bigger and better than ever before for 2009! And, as usual, Monkeys with Machineguns will be there!

After our exhibiting hiatus at last year’s BICS, we will be proudly sharing a double sized exhibitor space with the fine fellows of Orang Utan Comics and David Wynne at the 2009 show. Having seen life on both sides of the table at last year’s Birmingham International Comics Show, the first convention I have ever attended as anything other than an exhibitor, I think it is a fantastic show and one worthy of pride of place in the autumn/winter convention schedule.

As well as exhibiting our wares at the table I am single handledly trying to have dubbed “Monkeypalooza”, Stu and I will also be spending some time at the Markosia stand where you will be able to talk to us about our upcoming projects The Magpye and The Dark, and at the Insomnia Publications table where I will be talking about my new project The Fictionalists. We will also be at the pre-show party on Friday night. At present, however, we have no plans (despite encouragement from quite a few people) to repeat the monumental feat of Monkeys with Machineguns Live! (Although, anyone who wants to see if they can goad Pete Rogers and I into finally having our “write off/face off” …)

Overall, BICS is shaping up to be a fantastic show and if you haven’t already booked tickets, a table, or registered as a professional, I heartily advise the application of skates to feet … pronto.

Monkeys with Machineguns are getting the front page treatment over at www.spexpo.co.uk.

Nothing like a little pressure.

Monkeys with Machineguns … Live! is on the front page of the updated website for the Small Press Expo 2009

No pressure.

Myself and Stu.Art, more commonly known as “Monkeys with Machineguns”, are booked to exhibit at this year’s Bristol Comic Expo.

This year we are exhibiting with a twist however, as all our hard work on The Magpye for Markosia has left us without a brand new issue of our eponymous horror anthology to debut at the show. With the release of the latest MWM being somewhat of a Bristol tradition, at least for Stu and I, were left somewhat stumped this year as to what exactly to do …

Thankfully, the answer is obvious. We would just write and draw a new issue of Monkeys with Machineguns at the Bristol Comic Expo!

Any of you who have attended one of my signings will be familiar with the setup – woefully unable to cede the limelight to artists and jealous of the constant requests they receive for sketches and shows and signings, I have gotten into the habit of writing flash fiction & short stories at shows, often based on random words, phrases, objects etc. thrown at me (figuratively) by whoever is around. It’s a sort of “Whose Line is it Anyway”, but with horror fiction.

So, this year, visitors to the Small Press Expo will be cordially invited to challenge the creativity of the Monkeys with Machineguns team with some random objects, places, people, and points in time from which to create a short story. Once I’ve written the short, Stu will be providing a sketch illustration or two and, after we’ve scanned the result to go into the new book, you will be able to buy the original artwork.

By the end of the day we are hoping to have enough content to complete the upload to our POD publisher of all the stories and artwork, resulting in a brand new issue of Monkeys with Machineguns on sale at the end of the show.

So, if you have ever wondered exactly how we make Monkeys with Machineguns … this is your chance to find out. Or watch us crash and burn horribly, which will probably be equally entertaining.

How to Find Yourself some MWM Goodness

For those who don’t know, the expo this year is a special one off version of the event that will be spread across two venues. The “Bristol International Comic Expo”, which will be held exclusively in the Ramada Plaza hotel this year, and the the “Small Press Expo”, which will be held in the Mercure Hotel. If you have been to the Bristol Expo before then you may well know the Ramada as the hotel that has hosted many of the talks and panels for previous shows, as well as being where most of the comic book fraternity do their socialising after the event.

The Monkeys with Machineguns table will be the Mercure, hopefully with a loud crowd around it and limited screaming from Stu and myself.

Please note that the Small Press Expo is a one day event only. Stu and I will be lurking around in the Ramada based Expo on Sunday, but don’t expect us to write and draw anything unless you come with gifts. Or cash.