When we take a closer look at the world that “Marek’s Zone” occurs within, what we get is a moment when what is left of the U.S. military is attempting to respond to a faceless enemy with very strange habits. Dealing with the faceless is often what the protagonist in a H.P. Lovecraft tale is up to. For example, even though a Lovecraftian protagonist may very well encounter the Mi-Go, there must be sinister force that shaped them. In terms of Darwinism in our world, we understand that sinister force is evolution, a process of nature dealing with an uncaring landscape. However, in our dark fantasy worlds, we often tie that process in with a mask of a villain, a being responsible for the problems in the story like in Chambers’ The King in Yellow series.
For example, in Vangie’s tale, we first meet the problem of the “fibrous wall” that encircles a fictional Mount Geneva, Illinois. Who made the wall is perhaps what what we might think of first. Also, next, we have to ask, how in hell could a “fibrous wall” be made so quickly that humanity could not stop it? Questions like these in UFO related experiences always crop up. Switch “craft” for “wall” and we see the similarity. Here, I point back to nature for a clue. Insects like hornets, bees, and ants build nests in human houses (and even in yards) surreptitiously. Texas and its secretive red-ant nests stand as an example in my memory. Often enough, you don’t know you are in trouble until the first sting.
There is a type of sinister mystery in nature that we humans dislike. Face it, we hate not knowing about the ninja-alligator lurking nearby in a Florida swimming pool. This is exactly what the citizens of New Jersey faced with the drones a few weeks ago. Current Jersey questions we are still pondering: Which of the lights were U.S. made, and where any of the lights made by a masked civilization? Furthermore, the wall Vangie faces also symbolizes the artifacts sometimes found in the world that beg the question– for example, the odd walls in South America, comprised of stones larger than a human down in South America (such as those in Peru), as well as the weighty stones of Edward Leedskalnin’s Coral Castle down in Florida. Those limestone slabs he manipulated weighed thousands of tons. More examples are available once one begins to dig. However, I will tell you that what made the wall that encircles my Mount Geneva is a hive of giant, elusive insects that secreted the wall in one night. Enough said on this because we will eventually see these drones in future tales.
So, “Marek’s Zone” kicks into gear when our brave Vangie (who has volunteered for the duty) glides into town on a glider (of course), defeating the dead zone that comes along with the wall, a dead zone that flusters computers and compasses (modeled on Mexico’s “Zone of Silence”). This zone implicates a technologically advanced invader (as seen in Jane’s experience and glimpsed in Vangie’s tale toward the end). I admit to stealing the “riding in from the horizon” motif that Clint Eastwood’s No-Name Man represents in Pale Rider. His minimalist character rides into a world not of his own making, a type of hardened survivor who changes the flow of events antagonists already have in the works.
Vangie survives a controlled crash of the glider, and voila, she’s in a world not of her own making (a typical hallmark of existentialism). Her search for life is reminiscent of Bill Masen in Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffid’s who also searched for survivors. For example, Vangie checks the pulse of the immediate neighborhood, searching for survivors; she enters a random house, but instead of Triffids, witnesses the shape of the first enemy: a titan-sized mushroom in its death throes (shades of Andrei’s tale). It’s already leaking spores by the time she finds it. Fortunately, this Wells-like Food of the Gods homage ends in an upstairs bedroom. Fortunately, no spores made it out to the neighborhood. However, remember, while this is true, if Vangie were to further investigate the neighborhood, she would find giant mushrooms on the “move.” What grows outside of our character’s immediate view becomes a sinister threat later. Of course, Vangie pushes on with the mission of intercepting “care-bear” packages dropped from high- flying American craft. Vangie is very much a character bound to orders and her duties (like a dutiful soldier ant).
Another interesting theme in Vangie’s story is emptiness. For example, when Vangie makes it to a neighborhood convenience store, we watch her interact with emptiness: a store devoid of a clerk or customers. All but a shell is left of the store, a shell still filled with goods. Emptiness is a famous trope seen in works like Wyndham’s Triffids novel, in Richard Matheson’s I am Legend, and in Stephen King’s The Stand. In my small opinion, Vangie is encountering true freedom. She’s out of contact with mission control, there’s no clerk, there’s no other customers. She is experiencing a type of freedom without a witness or a judge–she’s outside of the law itself. We see a version of this in Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (you may detect that I’m a fan of Eastwood films–I whole-hardheartedly admit it). Often Eastwood’s movies seemingly encounter post-apocalyptic-like scenes or scenarios where personal freedom is put into check by those nefarious forces we have previously examined (which are in human form in his movies). While we are on Westerns, and if you like odd Westerns especially, check out The Shooting starring Jack Nicholson (and scenes of emptiness).
And though Vangie commits theft in the store (could there be theft if there is no law?), we quickly forgive her when we remember that she is present to help the populace of Mount Geneva. Volunteers in the armed forces have it rough, but Vangie makes it super rough on herself with her stringent need to follow orders. I was asked by a blogger about what was in Vangie’s heart? The answer: Duty. It’s her superpower and her Kryptonite all in one.
Vangie attends her last duty in the story, finding the “care-bear” packages dropped by aircraft well above the walls of lost Mount Geneva. With a bit of military discipline, she uncrates the goods and places them carefully in the hull of a dead Otasco store. Job done, she rests, but not for long. From the black of space comes a crashing object, aimed for the outskirts of the town, dangerously close to the wall. As the dreamer of this story, what emerges from the crater is a type of silver-hued liquid, a liquid able to become any solid the organism needs to be for the job at hand. This is a clear bow to Irving H. Millgate’s The Blob script; I will also like to give a nod to John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There,” which in 1951 became the movie The Thing.
This amorphous hound is a bare bones theatrical shark basically, surfacing in the waters of a theme park to scare customers booked on a jump-scare ride. Vangie shoots a couple of rounds at the hound, and finds that bullets are no ward against the beast. She scampers away in the ensuing chase scene because she possess common sense like Yoda at the end of Star Wars III (Yoda realizes that if he dies at the hands of Darth Sidious, the Empire has won forever).
Vangie flees down a back alley, which leads to an open sewer shaft, the weighty cap thrown aside by the citizens of the town for some odd reason (this is the archetypal descent into the underworld straight out of Dante’s Inferno). The question we might ask: What are the citizens doing down there all at once? I point back to the odd interaction of the thynnid wasp and the hammer orchid. The orchid’s pheromones draws in the wasp, and before you know it, the wasp unknowingly provides the orchid with a bit of pollen, which was lodged on its appendages. I wonder what “pollen” the folk of Mount Geneva possess?
The first sight of a Lovecraftian beast is witnessed by Vangie down in the sewer-cavern, but she must stand in line to experience it. Like in my “Claudia” tale, the members of the line are drugged just like Tom back in Andrei’s tale. I was recently asked by a blogger if Vangie survived this highway to hell. Truth is, probably not, but then again, I wouldn’t count that woman out. She is a survivor as we know.
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