Jungle
Brett
McBean
Illustrated by Keith
Minnion
JUNGLE:
n 1 any dense or
tangled thicket or
growth
2
a place of intense competition or ruthless struggle for
survival
We’re trapped in a world of modern convenience, of
steel giants and oceans of concrete. For the most part we’re content
to live in this colourless existence. But we’ve paid for our
comfortable lifestyles. Instead of looking out our windows and
seeing a forest of trees, we see a forest of buildings; instead of a
clear flowing river, we see rapids of asphalt and an endless stream
of vehicles cascading along its surface. Smog chokes the once clean
air. Noise pollution drowns out the birdsong. It’s a jungle out
there, but not in the way nature intended.
Which is why nature
has decided to take back
control.
Welcome to the new
world.
A
world in which the land has reverted back to jungle, where you no
longer fight for a parking space, but for your life; where
supermarkets have become places of savagery and your next-door
neighbour looks at you not as a friend, but as perhaps their next
meal.
A world where survival is reserved only for the fittest…and
for the cunning.
Welcome to the
jungle.
In a
series of three novellas, Brett McBean takes a look at life in the
modern world and turns it inside out. He transforms the common into
the uncommon, the banal into the unreal, as everything from a
multi-level car park, to a typical suburban sprawl become dangerous
hunting grounds. Forget TV dinners and 50% discounts at your
local Target - it's a fight for survival as nature takes over your
homes and shopping
centres.
Book 1: CONCRETE
JUNGLE
It's late. A few remaining
shoppers head for the multi-story car park after
attacking the
sales at an adjacent shopping center.
However, they become trapped
in the underground bunker when, incredibly,
trees start to sprout
from beneath the car park, transforming the concrete
structure
into a ruined, maze-like cavern.
Unable to find a way out it
becomes a struggle for survival, for not only
does the car park
continue to transform back into a jungle, wild animals
have begun
to appear, governed by hunger under the foliage canopy.
Now the
humans must fight to survive - not only Mother Nature, but a
foe
just as deadly...each other.
*Bonus stories from Nate
Kenyon and Tim Kroenert*