Prologue

A Chapter by Megan

You are introduced to Jenna's apocalyptic world.

It all started in the year 2023. By this time, the ideas of zombies and apocalypses were ridiculously popular. There were online games and public events where people of all ages pretended to be enduring a zombie apocalypse. People wrote books about it, they made money off this idea. And God, did everyone love it. You’d have thought they did it on purpose.

Surprisingly enough, people did not like having a zombie apocalypse when it finally came around. Everyone thought it was a joke, actually. A nation-wide joke. Really? I was always very socially inept. The biggest setback of that was that I wasn't really involved in world-wide happenings. But my family was, so normally I’d know about it within days. As luck would have it, I had just started my road trip when the first incident happened.

Over summer, my (close) family ventured out from Missouri to southern California to see the rest of our family. When I was little, we would go by plane, my parents, sister, brother, and I. But cost of airplane tickets started going up, and they haven’t stopped rising ever since. We started taking road trips for our annual visits instead. On the summer of 2023, I was the only one who could go. My dad had passed away three years ago, my mother was clustered by work, my brother had gone missing on a trip to the Amazon (for the sixth time), and my sister was busy… being a disappointment. I don’t like to talk about her.

So it was just me this year. It had been two years since I’d seen my distant family (being busy had become a trend in my family), and I was missing them rather dearly. It was just after I left the house that the first bit of news hit the US’s central states. It didn't really hit the country too hard initially, after that incident ten or so years ago, with the face-eating man in Florida. Or the one just two years ago, with those cannibals in Idaho. Just another drug-addict, as far as anyone cared.

It took me five days to reach Los Angeles, on account of the detour I had to take in Arizona. A brush fire popped up near the main highway. I was driving fourteen hours a day, so I was too exhausted to really care to catch up on the news when I reached my respective hotels. And most of the time the signal down there is crap, so I never caught any of my mom’s calls. It wasn't until I reached my grandma’s house in LA that I finally heard something was wrong.

I was greeted with very eager hugs from my grandma and aunts and cousins. They all questioned me thoroughly about any incidents I’d had. In the next half hour, I went through the series of reactions that America went through in the last five days.

Hesitant humor. “Heh, I wonder what kind of synthesized drugs he was on.”

Denial. “Spreading? Oh, it must have been a joke… Pretty wide-spread joke.”

Incredulity. “A thousand people?! That’s not possible…”

Horror. “My god… How could this have happened?”

And there it was. I was caught up with the rest of the world. The price of international flights had skyrocketed, emigration as well as immigration was being monitored heavily, and businesses were failing by the dozens. The cost of everything was through the roof. It was like the New Year’s Eve of 1999 all over again, but on a much larger scale. The apocalypse had begun.

Even border control within the states was monitored with a heavier hand. California was informally separated in half for easier border control. No one was allowed in, no one out. Nebraska was the point of origin, so it was the first state to be pronounced a no man’s land, meaning it was guessed to be entirely populated by zombies. Then Kansas, Colorado, New York, Iowa, Wyoming, and Arizona went. Most other places quickly became partially infected states. The only entirely un-infected states were Southern California, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Hawaii, and most of the Caribbean islands. Several northern states had merged with Canada, who was protecting their borders very well.

I wasn't worried about the others back in Missouri. They lived just outside of a small town, and our property was rather large. They immediately bordered off a section of their land with high, barbed fences and invited as much of the community as they could to live with them. They brought farm animals and within three weeks they had a thriving little community. This news had been brought to me through one of the Equestrian Messengers (a group of young, daring men and women with horses charging a limb to get messages through the barren wasteland of America).

My family was all safe. I should have stayed where I was until another country lent us a hand. That would have been the smart thing to do. But I've never been patient. My Californian family was as safe as you could get in this nightmare of reality. But my mom and sister? They could die any day now… I had to go to them. I didn't tell any of the family I was staying with. Just left a note on my way out.

I sent a letter by EM to my mom telling her that I was on my way. For a week I gathered non-perishable foods. I didn't think it’d be enough, but I couldn't wait any longer. Despite my bargaining, no EM would take me with them. Just when I’d lost all hope, I discovered a secret system with the train. The train was used to pillage abandoned towns for food. A dangerous job, and not always worth the pay. A handful of the workers would sneak on a person or two for those seeking to leave. I spent the remainder of my cash on my ticket out of California. They’d be stopping at a station just two day’s travel north of where my mom was.

This is where my story started, and probably when I began to question my own sanity.

next chapter

© 2013 Megan

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Featured Review

Trigorin

Great exposition, and although your concept is a little overdone, you've managed to still grab the reader's attention and keep it through the entire piece. You've avoided awkward language very well and the thing as a whole was very readable. Very nice.

Posted 11 Years Ago

1 of 1 people found this review constructive.

Reviews

Darren Dumas

I like the first person approach. It helps give a unique "personality" to the story, as it is told from the perspective of the storyteller. A 3rd person approach means you can include things not known to the main character, whereas a first person approach allows you to play with the perceptions of the main character/narrator and let facts pop out as they are experienced by the main character/narrator. But, it is tricky. You have to include thoughts and experiences, but not all experiences are expressed as thoughts, so how you write them is important in making the reader "feel" the experience, too. I hope that makes sense!

Your writing style is very quick. I bet you do a lot of first draft writings, even just incomplete snippets (I have a whole notebook full of 'scenes' or openers that never went anywhere and I draw off them from time to time). I can tell you are a natural expressive (like me!)...

There are some more efficient or clear ways to word some of your sentences and paragraphs, which is too difficult to point out in a review. I like to call it "Tactical Writing". It's something that just comes from studying how others write and what works best with your own style of thinking and communicating. For instance, I (and many other expressive talkers) use lots of body language. The joke with me is "tie my hands and I can't say a word"! But, when writing, I have to find ways to communicate without using expressive body language, voice changes, etc. So, Tactical Writing has become my way of achieving that in writing.

Keep working your craft and refining 'how' you communicate. You are a passionate storyteller, which is the most important point. Skill comes later. Good job - keep going!