Man Made Monsters: List 5

by Andrea L. Rogers
In eighteen stories spanning two centuries and territories throughout North America, members of a Cherokee family battle human and supernatural monsters.

This list covers "I Come from the Water"–"The Zombies Attack the Drive-In!"

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 10 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. feral
    wild and menacing
    I was left behind to hide the escape pod, immolate their bodies, and kill the feral dogs and coyotes that came for the dying.
  2. brethren
    people who are members of the same social or cultural group
    Perhaps they dragged the empty skins of their brethren off and fought over them after I crawled away.
  3. bramble
    any of various rough thorny shrubs or vines
    In the dark they seemed to see the worst of the jagged rocks. They crawled snakelike, avoiding the pricklies and brambles.
  4. roost
    sit, rest, or settle, as on a branch or perch
    We homed into our tree overhead.
    Seven of us roosted just over the circle of water.
  5. treacherous
    dangerously unstable and unpredictable
    Shale and flint and sticks make the way jagged and treacherous for my skin.
  6. elements
    violent or severe weather
    The oils I have covered my skin in for protection from the sun and the elements wear off quickly where I must touch the earth to walk.
  7. mitigated
    made less severe or intense
    In the deep, in our ocean, the ratio of pollution to water can be mitigated where we live, the microplastics filtered by our living biosphere, a bubble unseen by humans.
  8. carcass
    the dead body of an animal
    Occasionally, the water beastie crawls out of the pool and hunts small creatures and puts their emptied carcasses behind the gate.
  9. belie
    be in contradiction with
    She was this tiny woman who drove these big rigs all over North America. Her size belied her powerful presence.
  10. swath
    a path or strip (also figurative)
    There are large swaths of grasses where the sky isn’t blocked by the trees and there are no lights for meters, and you can see the stars like islands and streams of water that pour into the sky.
  11. volition
    the capability of conscious choice and decision
    I poked through the stuff in the very full skimmer with a stick and didn’t see anything moving of its own volition, so I began to scoop it out by hand.
  12. kith
    your friends and acquaintances
    I don’t want to die here, far from home, far from kith and kin.
  13. ovoid
    rounded like an egg
    It was falling on either side of a large, ovoid emptiness. I stared. Then I stopped dumping the salt into the water. I went to turn off the pump, wondering if the water being sucked toward the skimmers or the drain was creating the strange shape.
  14. strew
    spread by scattering
    However, the debris, sand, and small bits of leaves were not strewn about randomly.
  15. concentric
    having a common center
    Instead, the pool was lined with concentric figure eights, circles within circles, an infinity symbol within an infinity symbol.
  16. backlog
    an accumulation of jobs not done or materials not processed
    There turned out to be a backlog of messages from Oceania and New Oceania.
  17. ominous
    threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
    The voice mumbled once more, “So hungry.” Then the voice disappeared. I felt uneasy. The silence seemed ominous. Humans can do terrible things when they are hungry. What would a sea monster do?
  18. blubber
    cry or whine with snuffling
    “The house was so hot. She wanted to go swimming. I told her to wait for me.” She was blubbering now.
  19. guffaw
    laugh boisterously
    My mother guffawed. “What you don’t know is how hard and expensive it is. Sometimes they die anyway.”
  20. turbidity
    the quality of being cloudy or muddy, as with sediment
    Mom was teaching, too, but she spent most of that day outside helping students run water tests and teaching about things like turbidity and life in the water, the microscopic creatures that thrive or die depending on the quality of the Trinity River.
  21. bout
    a period of illness
    She glanced over at my sister who was sleeping after a bout of asthmatic wheezing, before she added, “And loving your kids will break your heart.”
  22. rail
    spread negative information about
    He hadn’t believed the Zombie Flu would touch us out here and railed against an as-yet-unavailable vaccine.
  23. vitriol
    abusive or venomous language to express blame or censure
    “Somebody is going to report you if you cough and the CDC will show up at your door and haul you away.” When he spoke like this, it was with such vitriol you could see the spit shooting from his mouth.
  24. obsolete
    no longer in use
    For the most part, the Zombie Flu had made funerals obsolete. But hymns and prayers were still important.
  25. eradicate
    kill in large numbers
    She loved fireworks, but said she felt funny celebrating the birth of a country that, even in 1776, was well on its way to trying to eradicate or assimilate the Indigenous population.
  26. labored
    lacking natural ease
    Ruth had been having more trouble at night, wheezing and needing her inhaler more frequently. One night, I awoke and noticed her labored breathing.
  27. noble
    having high or elevated character
    And I knew wherever he was, my father was alive, that was the kind of man he was. Not a survivor in a noble way, but the kind of man who would sacrifice everyone around him to save his worthless self.
  28. lumber
    move heavily or clumsily
    Zombies prefer darkness. They lumber around from just before twilight to dawn, but they’re loud and don’t hear well. They stir out of the woods as it gets dark. They’re slow, but plenty dangerous.
  29. olfactory
    of or relating to the sense of smell
    They follow their noses. If you bump into a zombie in the dark, you’re dead. A zombie is all olfactory and teeth and hunger.
  30. astride
    with one leg on each side
    From my spot in the floorboard, I was looking into the face of my mother astride the horse.
  31. celluloid
    flammable substance used in motion-picture and X-ray film
    Price of admission: Cherokee Language materials, DVDs, ammo, canned food, celluloid, medicine.
  32. ploy
    a maneuver in a game, conversation, or situation
    On a separate sheet of paper was the schedule for Saturday night, a family film early, followed by something for the older crowd. Was it sweet, the attempt for normalcy? Or a ploy to lure suckers into the Drive-In?
  33. thwart
    hinder or prevent, as an effort, plan, or desire
    It was the kind of hope that will kill you (or somebody) if it’s thwarted.
  34. legacy
    anything handed down by someone or something in the past
    What we had to offer was my mother’s legacy to me. From Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man, the films had promised a better time, a shared culture like the stories we still tell that are old and timeless.
  35. scaffold
    a temporary arrangement erected around a building
    In the cell tower’s nest, I trained my binoculars on the people on a wall of scaffolding and wire and boards surrounding an area much larger than the drive-in grounds.
  36. sovereignty
    government free from external control
    Some people talked about sovereignty and threw around words like post-colonial and post-tribal.
  37. sentry
    a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event
    I took work hunting and gathering and went on sentry with Ama the nights she worked the wall.
  38. decimate
    kill in large numbers
    Some families were extended. Most were like mine, small. Decimated.
  39. lurch
    move haltingly and unsteadily
    A zombie lurched out of the pecan grove into the field of grass.
  40. incongruent
    not corresponding in character or kind
    My despair was incongruent with the soundtrack that was so much louder than my cry.
Created on Fri Jan 05 09:45:42 EST 2024 (updated Sat Jan 06 15:01:33 EST 2024)

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