Whats that Smell? Fire and Flesh? Oh...

Chapter Two: What’s that smell? Fire and flesh? Oh…

Now Alice is on her own.  She is alone on the barren road with no way to go. Memories harm her existence but that won’t fade this fast. The last year of being beat, forced sex and the rare zombie encounter was mainly over, well at least for the first two, hopefully.

Alice loads a pistol of her dads. Six bullets are all she has till she finds a new home or just a new place then here. She packs up a bag of two outfits, one with a bright as the sun yellow top and the other as a deep passionate purple top. Both matched with old good will jeans.

Next she throws in a few days of food in her brown leather pack. She tries up her hair into a ponytail then she heads out the door of her sad and lonely home, never to return again.

 

Alice did do one more thing before she left. She emptied every last damn devil juice that is father’s alcohol on to and around the house. Alice lights a match she got from the cabinet and she throws it towards the house.

The house is filled with flames as Alice walks down the dark streets now filled with carnage of blood and bodies of all types. But how did the world get to this point?

Well it’s actually simple in a bible sense.

God figuratively said: Go f**k yourself human race, I’m going to hit the reset button on you guys and hope that who will remain will find their inner strength to survive. They had to be better than unlucky b*****d who were killed, turned or eaten. It was hard which to hope for.

Or maybe God would just create a new race of super human people or trees that talked and walked. Either way the human didn’t stand a chance.

Next came his deal with the devil or what his close friends called him, Satan. The contract written in blood between the Devil and God included, the Devil getting control of half of the earth if he would uses his forces to clean up the current ugly mess of the world. And clean up meant, kill everything that moved.

So the Devil created and launched all the ugly and evil things he could think of based on years of lore and some reality of what was already living on the dreaded planet. The Devil did this to fulfill his deal and just because he loved destruction and chaos.

Let’s just say that the humans lost pretty fast. *cough* two days.

Two days for the world to complete fold over and collapse in on itself.

Humans did survive in some parts but they were a quickly dying race.

…

In the present day. Alice was walking around, unknowingly cross the line where the world was divided into halves. One half for the Devil and his army of darkness. And one half for God and his winged angel b******s.  Alice’s left foot presses off the ground as she unluckily enters the half that becomes to the dark.

Alice continues walking not knowing really how bad this world has turned into or where the f**k she was going to go. The streets are windy with the smell of fire in the air and clouds of ashes can be seen in the distance. An extra smell hits her nose. She doesn’t know it but it’s the awful smell of rotten flesh.

The world looks almost the same. Cars were useless, no gas and a lot of the time there were piles of them stuck on the road so traveling on main roads was difficult and dangerous. Houses were broken in to but other humans or creatures trying to get in. Office buildings were empty or burnt, sometimes even still on fire because of the endless chairs and table to rage up the fires.

She continues and continues, aimlessly moving.  She enters a dark forest. Even though it was the middle of the day, she could barely see inside the forest. Alice hears a great deal of unique noises from behind her so she takes off into the forest.

The noises seem to be following her. She runs dodging trees trying to get away. Suddenly the soft green leafy ground disappears from under her and her whole body collapse inside a huge hole.

A voice rings out, “I got one.”

Reviews

[C.F. Boehlke]

Echoing Coyote's review, slow down and immerse yourself in the world :) savor it. Writing a publish-worthy novel is a marathon, not a sprint. I am enjoying the action so far, and the voice of the main character. Zombie stories are usually a hard sell for me because they have become so trendy lately, and it seems as if they are all the same. That said, I don't feel that way about your story. My friends would tell you that is quite an accomplishment!

Focus on fleshing out your tale. Why is she walking? Where is she going? Who is she hoping to see? Why did God hit the reset button, to the best of her assumptions? What was the world like before? Is this set in 2015 or 3059? Who is she besides a survivor of sexual abuse and a zombie apocalypse?

I'm sure some of these questions will become answered in future
Chapters but I think you can give more insight here too. Also, remember that a typical fiction novel ranges from 60-100K words.. It's good to flesh out your chapters so you don't end up with 200 of them! :)

Again, compelling and interesting! Turning the figurative page as we speak!

CFB

[Shep]

First off you have kept my interst so far. And the chapter is an eye opener, meaning it is good regarding details. But will be straight and true. Grammer. ..way off in places, need to smooth it out and listen to your readers comments. As you know I perfer large novels and if writen in a series I am there. But if you don' t smooth it out tense problems won' t be your only headache. Like said so farstory alone you have got my attention. Moving on to the next chapter.

[xx]

It's 3:00 am for me, so this review may be a bit too brief to be really constructive, but I'll try my best:

There's some inappropriate tense switching, from past to present to past again. Even though you have flashbacks, the way you used them actually requires that you stay with whatever tense you intend to dominate the story with.

There's a bit of punctuation lacking, mainly apostrophes. Remember to use apostrophes to indicate possessiveness.

Also, remember that things like "*cough*" - actions indicated by asterisks and so on - don't really belong in conventional literature.

There's a choppiness to the story that makes it harder for me to stay concentrated on reading the story in its entirety - you might want to consider fleshing out sentences, descriptions, combining sentences, even, to achieve some more complexity of narrative? Again, this is my own personal recommendation; if you don't feel as if this would really improve the quality of the story, then feel free to pass over this suggestion.

I do like how you ended this chapter, however - it's an interesting twist to the plot. Perhaps the pit is symbolic of the now-primitive state of the world, now that everything has been thrown into chaos and been utterly broken down?

Keep writing - everyone improves with time. Editing is key! So again, keep writing, because you can easily turn this into a masterpiece in time. :)

-Mina

[Your Perfect Disaster]

Woah, i feel sad that i neglected to keep reading this. I really love it ^-^

[Imagination-mage]

WHOA WHAT HAPPENED?!

[Archia]

I like how you established more in this chapter, such as the deal with the devil and god, it's an interesting idea. I think though that more of a balance is needed. At times it needs more description, however it doesn't need to slow down. It's a hard balance to achieve. I enjoyed how the last line ended in suspense, to hook the reader to continue to the next chapter.

[Coffee Vampier]

Zombies sent from God? Man we would all be screwed!!

Anyway this "The streets are windy with the smell of fire in the air and clouds of ashes can be seen in the distance. An extra smell hits her nose. She doesn’t know it but it’s the awful smell of rotten flesh."

Makes me want to sing
"Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Hush! hush! hush! hush!
We’re all tumbled down
Ring a ring a Rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town
Ring for little Josie.
A ring, a ring o' roses,
A pocket full o’posies-
Atishoo atishoo we all fall down"

Children would sing this during The Plague. As bodies were in the streets and while people where collecting the dead. The Children came up with this song and out posies in their pocket to make the smell of death fade away.

100% for your originality

[patricia]

I like how you started the chapter with a summary of what had happened in the first. Then described the good versus evil setting and Alice beginning her different life. Thanks.

[Popble]

I'd say it's gotten better, and only really needs grammatical editing; I don't think you need to slow down. Being fast-paced is what keeps me reading!

[HaruHau-Chan]

Slow down just a little bit and write in some more details. Also, is this story supposed to be happening in present tense or past tense? It's a bit hard to tell, and it's confusing for the reader. Also, when you wrote *cough* it sounded more like you were talking to someone or texting someone than explaining it story-wise.
Again, it's got some things that need to be fixed, but otherwise, very intriguing. With some work, this could become a great novel.

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

I actually get what you are doing with the clipped wing chapters~ I read the first one and this~ and looked at the comments here~ where others may see the brevity and skeletal frame I completely see the deep meat effect inherent in the so much more than brusqe illusion~ the irony is like a scalpel~ and may discomfit most~ me~ I'm eating up the dark and delighting in the snapshots that deliver penetrating shots~ this tale does not beg for detail and descriptions ad nauseum because each and every line delivers a quick slash ripe with story~