It’s strange. A great story is a selfish thing. It seems to take more than it gives. When you’re done with it…no when it’s done with you, it leaves you feeling hollowed out.
When you come across a good story you unfold and unpack it, you pull it out and look it over.
A great story does the opposite. It pulls you out; unfolds you; flattens out the creases. It takes from you. It makes you invest yourself in it. It hooks you like a drug. It makes you depend on it and you have it at the back of your mind always.
And then you reach that last period and it’s gone and there is nothing left in that place where it burrowed into you.
You put it down, you sit back, and you don’t do a damn thing.
You sit there and you feel around in that empty place and wait for another great story to fill it.
That is what a great story does.
Continue reading ‘Fiction II’
1 – The survivors have made an airport their base of operations. Do the have a plane? What about a pilot? I’m not talking about anything big that would allow for escape, but a little two seat prop plane type deal. It could be used to keep track of zombie movements and natural resources. I would have just written a story, but I feel that this would have consequences for the zone that are too far reaching for me to have made the decision unilaterally
2 – Zombie shelf life. I know that the zombies we are dealing with right now have a slow rate of decomposition due to the Solanum. How slow is slow? Are we talking a year, two years, ten?
3 – Zombie dentition. The human dental pattern was developed for a generalist and omnivorous animal. How does that translate to zombies? Human teeth are small in size and lack roots deep enough to allow them to sustain heavy impacts. There is a reason we only use our teeth to chew food after we have first prepared it. Try bitting into a raw steak and trashing it as hard as you can with your hands. We also lack any kind of dental battery that would allow us to replace missing teeth. My point is that if you have all these former humans running around biting still living humans and animals they would soon become toothless and no one is afraid of a zombie that needs dentures.
“WATCH OUT! THEY MIGHT GUM YOU TO DEATH!”
Charlie Danton lay in the shadow of an overgrown overpass watching a wide and shallow stream. The road in between was cracked and looked sticky in the July sun. The burned out hulk of a tractor trailer lay on its side further down the road, the skeletal remains of a great beast from some other age. A twisted guard rail sat along the stream’s bank rusting into the earth. Across the stream a lone doe wandered out of the tree line and lowered her head to drink.
Amidst the hanging weeds and vines Danton raised his rifle. He thumbed off the safety and put his eye to the scope. The doe’s eyes drifted along the opposite shore while she drank. Danton stroked her fur with the crosshairs and watched. Birds twittered overhead.
The brush at the doe’s side rustled slightly. She straightened her neck and pricked up her ears. It rustled again, farther down the bank. She turned slightly to watch out of the corner of her eye. It rustled again and she turned to face it.
On the other side of the stream Danton saw her turn and caught sight of her full silhouette. He pulled the trigger. The doe reeled and fell in heap upon the smooth stones at the water’s edge. A small rabbit shot from the undergrowth and darted down the bank before diving into a corrugated drainage pipe. The birds abandoned their roosts and took to the sky.
Continue reading ‘Gen 4:9′
The Mossberg “Just in Case” Kit, possibly the most useful commercially available product when it comes to personal preparedness for the coming zombie apocalypse. It is packaged in a water proof, floating carrying cylinder and comes with a 12 gauge pump action and a water proof survival kit, all for under $300.
Get yours here.
You’ll be glad you invested when Zack comes a’ knockin’.
Children’s author Penn Quinn (real name Lloyd O’Keefe) continued to write stories during his time in the Blue Zone. He used his unique talents to help educate the children about the dangers that lurked beyond the fence. His stories centered around a penguin named Phil.
Here’s a few of his most recent works.
Frank Chesterfield was tired. His back was killing him from a hard day’s work and the only thing in the world that he really wanted was a hot shower, but that of course was out of the question. He hadn’t seen so much as a sponge in a week and wasn’t expecting anything more relaxing than a dusting of delousing powder any time in the near future. He was tired of it all, but then again everybody was.
He and his men had been on a Zack sweep all day and had had their work cut out for them. It was the middle of winter and it was cold. Real cold; not just regular cold, but snot-freezing, lung-burning, shrivel your balls to raisins, make you want to curl up and die cold. Even so, today had been a good day. Apparently Z’s didn’t like the weather either.
Chesterfield and his team had found fifty-seven ghouls during their sweep. All of them were frozen solid. On days like this being on patrol with the Corps meant that you were more of a glorified lumberjack than a soldier on the front lines. Fear is a powerful and demoralizing enemy, but monotony and boredom are worse. Even so, they had done their work well and were ahead of schedule. They had cleared their allotted area and were about to link up with the other four squads and catch a lift back home.
Home.
Home. Chesterfield spat at the thought.
Continue reading ‘Brews’
Auburn Correctional Facility is probably to most secure place in all of CNY during a zombie attack. A structure specifically designed to keep people in would be perfect for keeping Zak out. I wanted to have this be the setting of my next story, but I’m finding that information about the place on the net is lacking. I tried looking it up on Google Earth, but its all blurred out. You can only make out the vague outlines of the separate buildings. I just want to know locations of the mess, how many prisoners are accommodated there, max capacity, that kind of stuff.
Hopefully no one looking at my internet activity is thinking that I’m planning a prison break.
I found this notebook at the bottom of my bag this morning. I was looking for my last can of tuna. There’s not much in here, a to do list from a few months ago: groceries, gas, dentist appointment. I wish I had used the space for another can of beans. I think I’ll try to write in it every day. There’s nothing else to do.
—————
It’s gotten real cold; it must be well into January. I did the best I could but am finding that I’m not prepared for winter. My boots are sturdy but not meant for the cold. I haven’t been able to find any good shelter for a few days and I’m afraid to take them off. I fear several toes have gotten frostbite. Food is running short. I have been rationing it but will run out in the next couple of days. The last few houses I have come across have already been picked clean. Not so much as a crumb left. Game is scarce, not that I could kill anything having lost my rifle last month. My luck has to change.
—————
I slept in a ditch last night to stay out of the wind. The sun woke me early in the morning. I had a crushed pop tart for breakfast and took the time to start a fire and melt some snow for water. The sky is unusually clear today; perhaps it will warm up a few degrees.
I have been unfair in regards to the weather, I may be on the verge of hypothermia, but I have not seen one of those creatures in weeks. Thank God for small mercies.
Right…God.
Continue reading ‘In Pace Resquiscat’
Whenever anyone asked Jake Rogers about his life before the invasion, he always responded the same way. “I was a hitman.” No one really believed him, but they would play along and listen to his stories anyway. Everyone assumed that Jake had a normal job in his past life and that he created his stories to liven things up. Some said he must have been a writer because he had a way of making his stories seem so real. Others figured that he had watched too many movies. I know the truth.
Continue reading ‘Hitman’
“A true work of fiction is a wonderfully simple thing — so simple that most so-called serious writers avoid trying it, feeling they ought to do something more important and ingenious, never guessing how incredibly difficult it is. A true work of fiction does all of the following things, and does them elegantly and efficiently: it creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind; it is implicitly philosophical; it fulfills or at least deals with all of the expectations it sets up; and it strikes us, in the end, not simply as a thing done, but as a shining performance.” – John Gardner, “What Writers Do”
“Oh my god. I’m in love. Hey baby! How about it?”
“Johnson, I wouldn’t do it with you if you were the last man on earth.”
“Come on, Jackie. At the rate things are going around here, I will be soon enough. And all you poor lonely ladies will have to fight over me. You should get in on my action while the getting is good.” He smiled to himself at the thought of himself as king of the entire world. It didn’t last long–the Zombies soon came back.
“If that happens, I’ll take my chances outside the fence.” She set down the pile of gauze and two tubes of antibiotic, turned on her heel, and left the infirmary.
“Ouch,” said Driscoll when she’d gone.
“She’ll come around soon enough. I can see she’s weakening. There are subtle clues.”
“They must be pretty subtle. That’s the fourth time this week and twenty-sixth since the beginning of the month.”
Continue reading ‘Still’
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