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*
