Weekly Prompt Story: Underground

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=26892

On Zombie Preparedness

By Christopher Munroe

I’ve always been old-school, that way.

Even before the dead rose from their graves and started shambling across the countryside looking to sate their hunger for flesh, I was at the cemetery every weekend, looking over the tombs.

A bunch of us went, we’d drink wine, write poetry, and discuss what we’d do in the event of actual zombie apocalypse.

People mocked us, called us freaks, but once the graves started opening up again we knew we were the only ones who were ready.

I guess you could say: I’ve been into zombies since back when they were still underground…

A Father's Love

They walk the streets, flesh hanging loose from long dead bones, faces slack and emotionless. Once they hunted, ran down whatever prey they could catch and feed upon, but there’s little prey left nowadays, so now they simply walk. Sleeplessly, endlessly walk, with neither destination nor any real notion of time as it passes.

There was a time they would’ve hunted me, chased me down, but now their eyes slide over me as though I was nothing more than part of the landscape. I’m beyond their notice. Beneath it.

This is useful.

As little as two weeks ago there would’ve been no way I could make my way down this street, crowded as it is with animate corpses, without having my entrails torn from my body and spread across the walls of the nearby buildings. As things stand, however, I’m walking unmolested, carrying with me several boxes, a load heavier than I could once have ever hoped to carry unaided.

Due to the fact that I have a trolley. It’s the trolley that allows me to carry the boxes so easily. I ought to be clear, I’m no stronger than I once was, whatever else about me has changed.

I could have mentioned that sooner.

It just gets hard sometimes.

Hard to focus.

Hard.

FOCUS.

Okay, so down the street I walk, pushing my trolley, carrying several hundred pounds of emergency military rations I found in the now abandoned military compound a few miles from the fortified warehouse in which my encampment is holed up. I pass dozens, maybe hundreds of the dead as I go, but none of them spare me a moment’s attention as they shuffle aimlessly back and forth. I’m invisible to them, or irrelevant, and it’s because of this that I’m sent on supply runs like this. Why I’m sent by myself.

It’s lonely, but I’m doing it for the good of the group back at the Warehouse. I have an opportunity, however briefly, to help them survive a little longer, and I’ll pursue it for as long as I’m able.

I don’t approach the Warehouse from the front, that would draw too much attention to it and nobody wants that. Instead I go around to the back entrance, where an improvised sling and pulley system  has been built and lowered from an open window twenty feet above the ground. I load the supplies onto the sling, bang on the door twice with a fist that moves slower than it did even as early as this morning, and wait.

I don’t know how long I wait.

Time doesn’t occupy my mind in the same way it used to. I know it should, but it doesn’t.

Eventually, a man whose name I no longer remember pokes his head out the window and, seeing me, signals to somebody back inside. The sling begins to rise into the air toward the Warehouse’s window, bringing the treasures I’ve found to the people who need them most.

I realize, as it rises, that I can’t remember specifically how the pulley system works. I think I might have designed it, I ought to know how it works, but I can’t focus enough to recall...

“Thank you, Alec,” the stranger above me calls down once the supplies are unloaded, “I hope you understand how much what you’re doing means to us, we wouldn’t have a hope in hell of survival if it wasn’t for you.”

I try to form words, but all that comes out is a moan. Yesterday I formed words. Not many, and it was uncomfortably difficult, but a few. I wish I could form words, I have so much I want to say.

I want to tell them to keep her safe. She’s beautiful and bright, and she’s only six. She can’t take care of herself. I want to tell them to bring her to the window, so I can tell her daddy loves her. I want to tell her she’s my whole world, and that I’d do anything, will continue doing everything I can, to keep her safe and fed and breathing.

It’s probably for the best that I can no longer speak. I wouldn’t really want them to bring her to the window. I don’t want her to see me like this.

I do wish I could remember her name, though…

So I moan, then turn, trolley in tow, and start making my way back through the alley and around to the front of the warehouse. I think I can make it back to the military compound for one more load before the rest of what I once referred to as my “self” slips away. I hope I can. It’s too important not to.

I hope I can remember where the compound is.

I hope I can remember how to tell the difference between the boxes of supplies, and get the ones that might be of some use.

I hope that by the time I return I’m not so far gone that I forget to go around back.

And they say things nowadays are hopeless?

I shuffle out into the street, still moaning, and the dead moan a greeting back at me. It would be so easy to lose myself in what’s happened to me in the days since I was bitten and join them.

So easy.

So tempting.

But I can’t.

Not yet.

I still have work to do.

Rise of the Dead

The thing that had once been Marc Russell awoke from the slumber of death, craving the flesh of the living.

It struggled to pull it’s half-rotted body upright, brushed the dirt off it’s shoulders and, not even understanding it was dead, shambled forward in search of it’s unholy sustenance.

It would never relent, it would never tire, and it’s focus would never be swayed from it’s one burning drive.

Hunger. Unending hunger.

Myself, I couldn’t have been more pleased. I mean, everything had worked perfectly!

But now comes the difficult part.

What are the commercial applications of such a thing?

An Essay: On Zombies

Here’s something unusual for me on here.

As many of you might already know, I am, in addition to various other creative projects, tooling around character and plot ideas for a novel set during the zombie apocalypse. And, in order to give myself a better sense of what it is I‘m trying to accomplish, I figured it might aid me to put down on the page my thoughts on the genre, and in doing so sort out what zombie apocalypse means to me.

No, I was not visited by three spirits last night who taught me the true meaning of zombie apocalypse. There has been no major revelatory event in my recent life that’s caused me to focus on this particular branch of speculative fiction. Rather, I just love them. I love zombie books, I’m a sucker for zombie films, and I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about what I’d do in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse (spoiler alert; I’d be delicious). And with the time I’ve spent considering zombies and zombie apocalypse, I think I’ve come up with three major points that must be kept in mind whilst writing zombie fiction. These points aren’t immutable, no rules are ever written in stone, but I’ve found that they’re pretty solid guidelines for writing engaging, interesting zombie fiction, and using them you can write zombie tales with a little more depth than you otherwise would. And I’m hoping to write a zombie tale with a little depth. So; If you’re writing a zombie story of your own (and you should) these might prove helpful to you.

1) Remember: Your story is NOT about zombies.

This seems counter intuitive, insomuch as you are writing a zombie story. However, if you stop to look at the great zombie fiction/films of the past fifty years, you find the zombies a fairly incidental part of the narrative. Dawn of the Dead is not a movie about zombies, it’s a movie about out of control consumerism that happens to involve legions of the ravenous dead. The excellent World War Z is a book about societal breakdown in the face of a global pandemic, and the fact that the pandemic involves the dead rising and shambling across the earth is awesome, but not strictly neccessary. Even a zombantic comedy like Zombieland winds up being more about the need to connect meaningfully, to form families even while deprived of your own than it is about zombies, or indeed land. Zombies in fiction work better as metaphor for some larger issue you wish to address than they do as zombies, and there’s a very good reason for this.

Zombies are boring.

They move slow, they don’t get a lot of lines, generally in film they’re played by legions of extras rather than real actors. Zombies don’t do much, and prove rarely to be dynamic enough characters to warrant significant screen time. As an unstoppable force outside, waiting for their moment to overwhelm your defences, ever vigilant for the moment your beleaguered heroes let their guard down, they are a fantastic device, but as a “Monster” they don’t have a lot going on. And this is, I think, part of their appeal. A zombie story is, at it’s heart, a human story, telling the tale of the survivors of a great tragedy, struggling through their day-to-day existence, knowing each moment could be their last. It’s the human conflict inside the room that builds tension, not the legions of rotting, pitiless dead outside the doors. The zombies in a well handled zombie story should be, in this light, easily replacable with aliens, a flood, radioactive fallout from a war, or any other of a host of natural disasters, so long as it allows the characters you’ve collected together to enact the personal story you wish to tell. They serve, ultimately, only as metaphor.

On an unrelated note, the only other genre I can think of that exists only as metaphor is movies about boxing. I’ve never seen a movie about boxing, but I’ve seen movies about the human spirit, class issues, the right to die with dignity, the cold war and the inevitability of old age that happen to feature boxers as lead characters. Does this mean that a book about zombies who are forced into a boxing ring would sell? I have no idea, but I’d certainly buy it, if only to find out what it was actually about.

2) Nobody, and I mean nobody, cares where the zombies come from.

But Munsi, you might say, readers love information, and moreover hate plot holes, if we don’t explain the source of the force that will eventually drive the story forward how can we expect the reader to suspend disbelief? And, while this is true in a general way, there’s a weird loophole when it comes to zombie fiction, and I’m thinking it relates back to point 1). Since the story’s not about zombies, the source of unlife is a lot less relevant.

Readers suspend disbelief enough to accept zombies because they’ve purchased a zombie book/tickets to a zombie film. And due to the conventions of the style, they understand on some basic level that the zombies, while necessary to push the plot forward, do not constitute the plot in and of themselves, and as such require no great backstory.

Put another way, your reader doesn’t give a rat’s ass where the zombies come from. They just want to know a) what zombies are meant to represent in your story, and b) if they will eat that guy. And they would prefer the answer to b) to be “Yes”.

The best example of this rule I’ve ever seen was in the film 28 Days Later, specifically the first scene, where they fail utterly to follow this rule. They explain via a tacked on scene about PETA and rage-infected monkeys, and the results come off, to me at least, as incredibly forced and ham-fisted. Seriously, I find the scene unwatchable, it very nearly ruins what otherwise could be an excellent zombie flick for me. When I pop in the dvd, I generally skip over the scene, and doing so improves the movie immeasurably.

3) Think small.

There’s a reason you don’t often see world-spanning epics involving zombie apocalypse. It’s a style of speculative fiction that lends itself to little, personal stories, about people forced to work together to survive or, more often, who find themselves unable to do so and die because to it. Survivors of zombie apocalypse wind up barricaded against the hoard together and, almost by definition, trapped by walls of their own devising. This does not lend itself easily to bigness.

World War Z seems at first glance to be an exception to this, being a story of the global response to a zombie epidemic, but upon closer inspection the book really is a number of small, personal stories that happen to interact with one another in ways that eventually lead to a larger whole. It nearly functions as a short story collection that happen to stitch together to form a global tale. And this isn’t accidental.

Because zombies approach horror in a uniquely small manner. They will never outsmart you, they will rarely batter down doors, they don’t have “plans” the way other genre icons do. They will simply wait for you to go mad, for the unity of your group of survivors to fracture and break down, and pick you off as you fight amongst yourselves. Does this mean writing a zombie epic is impossible? No. But in doing so you would be forgoing the tension and claustrophobia that are the greatest strengths zombies bring to the table, narratively speaking. So, while it likely could be done, there are very few reasons I can see to want to.

This, in a nutshell, is what I believe in, when it comes to zombie fiction, and it’s what I want from the story I hope to write. It’s a little rambling, to be sure, but it’s good to get a statement of intent out before going to work on a new project, so I think this helps me out enormously. Am I right in my assessment of zombies? I think I am, for the project I’m considering at least. I’ll certainly be keeping the 3 major bullet points nearby as I’m writing my book, assuming I ever get far enough along in the project that I need them.

Also; I know this isn’t the usual sort of thing I put on this blog, but it’s my blog and I can put what I like on it. So there

What do you think? Any rules you’d add to my personal zombie bible? Any counter-examples you’d like to bring up? Anything I’ve mentioned here you violently disagree with? I’m always interested in talking about zombies, and can always use the opportunity to think about them in greater depth. Either this was helpful to you or it wasn’t, I wrote it for myself but I hope you at least found it marginally interesting, and I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts on zombies in return. I’d love, pardon the pun, to pick your brains about it…

The Most Unfair Part Is...

…how well the film had been going. My directorial debut was three weeks ahead of schedule, the dailies looked fantastic, and it seemed we’d be wrapped in another two weeks.

The day the dead rose I was extraing to help contain costs, and was in full makeup when real corpses started shambled into the set. Nobody could tell extras from undead.

So I ran. And, when the first group of survivors I ran into shot at me, I kept running. I’ve been running ever since.

It’s lonely, being trapped between worlds. But I try to make the best of it…

The Best Laid Plans

My plan for Zombie Apocalypse was flawless.

I’d packed a bag with rations, rifle, ammunition and crowbar (a bludgeon that could crush skulls AND a useful all-purpose tool) and left it by my home’s door.

I’d memorized a route from the city that’d avoid refugee hubs (hospitals, malls, churches) that less prepared survivors would swarm.

And a few hundred miles north, my fortified cabin waited, with food for the winter and a garden in the spring.

I was ready, and justifiably proud of the prep-work I’d done.

The only thing I hadn’t accounted for was being patient zero.

Stupid monkey…

No Such Thing as Zombies

The walking corpse outside your door isn’t a zombie.

There’s no such thing as zombies.

It’s simply a corpse I’ve rigged with remote-controlled animatronics, and which I control the movements of from the safety and comfort of my nearby van.

I’m watching you now, through miniature cameras behind it’s eyes.

But, in spite of there being no such thing as zombies, it is a walking corpse. And that’s all you’ll see.

That’s what makes this so great!

This may, I admit, be crossing a line.

It may end our friendship.

Yet, here in my van, I’m laughing my head off.

As Long as You Need

The basement’s unfinished, it’s walls and floor concrete. No windows.

And the staircase leading up to the main floor is simple lumber, decades old lumber at that. Half the boards were half-rotted anyway. Knocking them out with a fire axe took minutes.

Lucky every home has a fire axe nowadays, hey?

So when one of the bastards bit Cynthia, we had a safe place to put her. We weren’t perfectly comfortable with the situation, but we knew if we’d put her down for good you’d freak out. And we couldn’t put you through it. You’d been through so much already, with your parents and Jerry and all. So we put her down in the basement.

The constant moaning down there took some getting used to, but as we’ve all learned since the initial outbreaks a person can eventually get used to anything.

And so we got on with our lives.

For a while.

But the outbreak’s getting worse, and now people are talking about the local emergency services being suspended indefinitely. And if they are, without the police and the militias anyone who stays behind doesn’t stand a chance in the hell this city’s about to become.

Please, stop. Stop crying, I know. Please?

Listen, I know you don’t want to hear any of this, but you knew storing Cynthia in the basement was only every going to be a temporary fix. Calm down! You need to get your head together, we need to get out of here, and she needs to be left behind.

I’ll pack, you go downstairs and say your goodbyes.

Take as long as you need. But not too long.

My Testimony

Admittedly, mistakes were made.

And while I take no personal responsibility, I agree the outcome was unfortunate.

Yes, I was in charge of the facility, and yes I signed off on the project in question, but what happened was a freak, one-in-a-million occurrence. The sort of thing nobody could’ve predicted.

I haven’t read that particular report, and I have no comment on whether it laid out the problems months before they occurred.

My point is, this isn’t the time to play the blame game. It’s time to look forward.

Somebody, after all, needs to do something about all the Zombies.

Satisfaction

As a child, I wanted to be the first man on Mars.

I learned, as I grew, that this was unfeasible. I adjusted.

I did musical theatre, comedy, and wrote. It wasn’t what I’d wanted as a child, but I’d put aside childish things.

I loved what I was doing. I was satisfied.

In the early days of the outbreak, I was bitten, and infected.

No more theatre, comedy or writing. Now I try to sate my hunger for human flesh.

But like childish things before, I’ve put aside human things. I love the new things I’m doing.

I’m satisfied.

Computers Vs. Zombies

The AI in charge of the buildings security system was insane, nobody denied that. In the half-minute it’d been activated, eleven people died “accidentally”.

We barely shut it down before it hit the internet.

Everyone agreed we’d never, under any circumstance, reactivate it.

That was then.

Now the dead are rising, shambling through the streets in search of flesh to sate their unholy hunger. The police, the military, the government nowhere to be seen. And we’re clustered around the mainframe, arguing. We know the security system could hold them off indefinitely.

They’re in the lobby now.

What would you do?

Our Reunion

I shamble slowly toward you, a trail of rotted flesh behind me.

You fumble with your shotgun, weeping.

“Shoot him!” Your companion screams, “I know it’s hard, but you have to remember, he’s not in there anymore!”

But I am in here. I see everything, feel every sensation. I’m conscious of your fear, equally conscious of my hunger.

Perhaps you see that flicker of consciousness in my eyes, because you hesitate before pulling the trigger.

It’s time enough.

As I tear into your flesh, I know you don’t understand why I’d do what I’m doing. But you’ll understand in time.

Crowbar (Shameless Self-Promotion)

I appear to be featured in the new online issue of Black Heart Magazine. Click the link below to read my story of the day:

http://blackheartmagazine.com/2010/03/26/crowbar/

so there you go, read it, comment on it, enjoy it! The story is creepy and violent, because sometimes y'all gotta write something creepy and violent!

the End

The barricades collapsed and the shambling hoard flooded the building. Most of us were killed in the ensuing panic, but Julie and I made it to the roof before the undead got to us.

So here we are.

On the roof.

Locked away from our guns.

Our ammunition.

Our food and clean water supply.

And the CB radio we’d used to communicate with the kids who’d sealed themselves away, behind the heavy stone walls of the university.

But I still have my pistol.

Two bullets left.

I love you, Julie.

I hope those kids fare better than we did.

Goodbye.

Zombies

In zombie movies, one guy always gets bitten, and tries to hide it from the group, and he winds up screwing things up for anyone.

And I laugh.

At his stupidity, and short sightedness.

Ignoring facts at the expense of his friends lives.

If it were me, I think to myself, I’d man up, eat a gun and save everyone a world of pain and danger.

But now, looking at the bite on my arm…

It’s barely a scratch.

And I’m so fucking scared.

I’m not ready to go.

Not like this.

I’ll tell them, I will. Just… not yet.

The Zombies of Oz

The Wizard looked out at his unusual visitors. They’d defeated the witch, and now it was time for him to give them their promised reward.

“Don’t you see, Tinman,” he exclaimed, “you had a heart the whole time, you just needed friends to help you realize it!”

“And you, friend Lion, you always had courage, you simply needed to believe in yourself for it to come out!”

“And you, rampaging hoard of zombies! You didn’t really need to eat brains of still living humans, you had brains enough for anyone!”

And that’s when the screaming began.

Because the zombies disagreed.