Currently untitled short story: prologue

[Simon_Jester]

Simon, I chose the french spelling over the english spelling for an unimportant IU reason. Spoiler

They were first spotted in Cherbourg, France, and got the nickname there. Later, when the French refugees in England saw them they used this nickname and the brits picked it up, spelling and all.

That is a subtlety so subtle that it is indistinguishable from a mistake. It makes the author look illiterate, not clever.

[avianmosquito]

Simon, I chose the french spelling over the english spelling for an unimportant IU reason. Spoiler

They were first spotted in Cherbourg, France, and got the nickname there. Later, when the French refugees in England saw them they used this nickname and the brits picked it up, spelling and all.

That is a subtlety so subtle that it is indistinguishable from a mistake. It makes the author look illiterate, not clever.

I know, I know. The real world explanation is to seperate it from "cadaver" as in "dead body." Either way, you still need an IU explanation, don't you? Never the less, it's an extremely minor detail, so what's it matter? Hell, I only used the spoiler banner because I felt like it.

[Simon_Jester]

Skeet, I don't need or want an in-universe explanation for why the author is spelling words wrong. I want the author to spell words right. Either use words that are spelled properly in standard English, or use words visibly different enough from standard English that the reader can tell they aren't misspelled English words. Because otherwise, they won't read "cadavres" as some bizarre whatever-the-hell. They'll read them as dead bodies, and assume the author can't spell.

[avianmosquito]

Should I upload the acts as they are completed or all at once?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Give us what you have, when you have it. I believe they're called 'chapters', unless this is a play.

[avianmosquito]

Give us what you have, when you have it. I believe they're called 'chapters', unless this is a play.

Fine. It'll be under a different thread, and be sometime tomorrow. It would be tonight, but it's late. I'm not finishing it now.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Give us what you have, when you have it. I believe they're called 'chapters', unless this is a play.

Fine. It'll be under a different thread, and be sometime tomorrow. It would be tonight, but it's late. I'm not finishing it now.

Doesn't need its' own thread, in fact we discourage people putting multiple chapters in different threads.

[Mayabird]

Post it here, please, or I shall be quite upset.
[line 2]

[avianmosquito]

Post it here, please, or I shall be quite upset.
[line 2]

Certainly, if its really that important not to just scrap this thread.

Give us what you have, when you have it. I believe they're called 'chapters', unless this is a play.

Fine. It'll be under a different thread, and be sometime tomorrow. It would be tonight, but it's late. I'm not finishing it now.

Doesn't need its' own thread, in fact we discourage people putting multiple chapters in different threads.

That wasn't what I was thinking. I was thinking of putting them all in one thread seperate from this one, so people don't think the bit up there is still part of it. It doesn't really matter, maybe I could put a giant red "defunct" banner over the original post now that I can edit it?

[Mayabird]

Alright, if it is now a different story or close enough to it, you can go ahead and start a new thread, but for now on if it's going to be new chapters in the same story, put them in the same thread. Or I shall be quite upset.

[avianmosquito]

Alright, if it is now a different story or close enough to it, you can go ahead and start a new thread, but for now on if it's going to be new chapters in the same story, put them in the same thread. Or I shall be quite upset.

Well, it's still the same story, but the bit above me is not part of it any more.

[avianmosquito]

{I NEED A TITLE}
Act I

5/18/22
I waited. What for I knew not, but I was waiting for something. That was the one thing I knew: I was waiting for something.

I became aware of movement, it was familiar and slow to start, as always. I began to wonder what caused this movement, what it was that was moving, but this ceased quickly. I reached out in front of me, and found something there, soft but unyielding. It surrounded me, giving me a little room to stretch out, but no more.

I put a foot out, it hit the wall harder than I’d intended, and the movement around me suddenly changed. It was faster, more excited. It startled me, I pulled back my foot. But then curiosity overcame this fear, I kicked the wall again, and again it moved. Soon I heard noises coming from above me, a voice. It sounded like it usually did, but exited. I could hear another voice, coming from somewhere beyond the wall, the first sign that there was something beyond the world I knew.

Time passed. How much time I had no idea, but time passed. I kept waiting for something, whatever this something was, and started to wonder if I was waiting for nothing. I wanted to go, to see what was outside of my little world, I kicked the wall, damning it for holding me in. I wished it wasn’t there, I wished I was somewhere else, whatever else there may be. For the moment, however, I resigned myself to the boredom that seemed my fate.

Out of this boredom, I started to become curious about my body, and began to check it. It started off rather rough, and I found an opening. Below this, it dropped off, and then steadily rose again. There was something protruding from my body, I found another a little ways away from it. These were amusing for a second, but curiosity pulled my hands onwards. I found another protrusion, some kind of fleshy cord. It moved away from me, reaching out and connecting to something on the wall. I thought of pulling it off, but something in my mind stayed my hand.

I went back to where I was, and continued downwards. I found that my body curved, legs coming out from here. Near them there was an opening, this drew my attention more than anything else. It bore a vague resemblance to the opening higher up, but it was facing differently and didn‘t feel the same. I lingered for a second before curiosity pulled my hand away again.

I couldn’t reach much lower than this, but I could reach the other side of my body. I checked this side and found another opening. I could tell it wasn’t like the last one, but not how so. I kept moving on to find that I couldn’t reach a spot on my back. This puzzled me, but didn’t surprise me. I had explored my body as much as I could. I had a brief sense of accomplishment, but it soon faded into boredom again.

The static routine of time continued. Nothing ever changed, I was still aware I was waiting for something, but I never knew what. This angered me. I wished whatever it was would happen already so I could stop waiting.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

Everything started moving again, but this time it was different, violent. The wall itself was moving, pushing me, and after a while something near my head gave way, and I started moving in that direction, suddenly aware that this was downwards. Was this what I was waiting for? I was moving downwards, slowly, towards some unknown destination. The voices were back, more frantic than ever, and an opening appeared before me, and I was grabbed. The cold, dry outside air hit me. For the first and last time, I was scared.

I opened my eyes.

I was on the roof of the building I had found the night before. I was cold, but I was used to it. Waking up slowly, I stood and took a look around for Alex. She was at the edge of the roof.

“Morning Sarah. Sleep well?”
“Not really.” She seemed worried, I was going to ask her why, but she spoke before I could.
“They seem restless today.” I looked down at the necros in the streets, then up at the sky. It was overcast as usual.
“It’s probably just going to rain.” Sarah sighed.
“No, I don’t think that’s it. Something is happening.”
“Of course, but what?”

It was a normal day, assuming by “normal” you mean “like the one before it, and likely the one after it.” By any other definition, you could hardly call it normal, but in this context the most peculiar thing was that there was no fog on the streets of London. There were a good dozen or so necros on the street below us, but we knew this would be the case. They seemed a little uneasy, but no source of their unease could be located until we heard the sound of rotor blades, a helicopter flying in from the east.

It flew it towards where we were, landing on the roof of a hospital a little ways off. A group of men stepped out, rifles in hand. They took a few minutes, one of them stepped out to the front and readied his weapon. He looked down through the scope for a minute, then fired, putting a bullet through the heart of a necros on the street. That just wasn’t right. He hadn’t even done anything yet, and already he was being shot.

The rest were startled by the sound, looking around for the source. The sniper fired again, killing another necros, and the rest started rushing towards him as fast as necros can move, which is more of a drunken stagger than much else. The fools should of ran, but necros have never been that smart.

The soldiers on the roof took aim and began firing, one shot after another, killing these weakling necros before they even got close, even the ones that looked that were still standing after the first shot collapsed before they made it to the soldiers, but this massacre wasn’t done yet. Many necros, including a few ghouls, were now coming now from across the city, following the sound of the gunfire. One of the soldiers stupidly lit a cigarette, giving the necros even more to follow, and then noticed us. He talked to the others, but at this distance I couldn‘t make out what he was saying, before they all got off the roof. Alex and I followed suit.

We went down, pissed off over what had just happened, and looking for food. We found the coffee wagon still had food on it, and the food was still good, probably due to being loaded with preservatives. We started a pot of coffee, took a few donuts out of the box, and sat down for breakfast. “Cocky bastards just came in shooting.” This was true, and this was wrong, but that isn’t the point.
“It’s done and over with. We’ve got to find a way to stop them from killing any more, but getting upset is just going to make that harder.”
“There are more necros coming, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“The rest of the necros don’t know what’s happened. We can just duck them and they’ll forget about it soon enough. Provided, of course, that we can convince the soldiers to engage their safeties.

The elevator was called down to them, but before it reached the bottom gunfire erupted below us. We could hear the sound of screaming wounded, and slowly got up and moved from our seats. We took the stairs down once we were convinced they were no longer coming up, and when we got to the ground floor we cautiously took a look. There were dead looters on the ground, and one wounded SAS member. It looked like the looters had been the aggressor, otherwise the SAS wouldn‘t have any wounded. “You two, get over here.” I hadn’t realised they’d spotted us. “They with you?”

I calmly answered him, maintaining my composure. “No, we were just hiding out on the roof.” He flicked his cigarette onto the floor and took out a new one before continuing.
“Care telling me why you were up there instead of at home?” He lit up his second cigarette.
“My house isn’t there anymore.” That was true for the most part, thank the bombing for that.
“Shit happens. Still, why the roof?” This seemed a stupid question to me, but I had been through two weeks of this.

“Avoiding necros and looters. If they find you sleeping they won’t hurt you, per se, but they will rummage through your possessions.” This seemed to puzzled him.
“Why would they do that? I mean, I understand the looters, but why the zombie-necros-things?” Again, this seemed a stupid question.
“Well, they’re like the looters, except where looters are looking for money, electronics, jewellery, that sort of thing, necros are looking for food.” Can’t really blame them, it’s not like they have much choice in the matter.

He lit a third cigarette, making me wonder (if this was anything to go by) how he was still breathing. “If they want food, why don’t they just go to a grocery store?” Dumb question.
“They tried, the problem is they don’t understand that the owners want to be paid, and even if they did they don’t understand how to get money.”
“Then why doesn’t someone explain it to them.” He put out his cigarette and took out another one, but upon seeing the looks of his squad-mates quickly put it back. “It shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Yeah, but that’s like trying to explain it to a dog and expecting them to be self-sufficient afterwards.” He looked at me like that was the weirdest thing he’d ever heard.
“You know, you’re one strange little girl.”
“Thank you.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”

I sat down for a few minutes, explained what little I knew about the necros, everything from the bombing to how the conflicts between them and humans started, to the arrival of the enemy soldiers, and even the more recent bombings that happened last week and yesterday. I talked to him and managed to convince him to stop shooting necros on sight and to avoid this crowd, although he maintained that he would shoot any that he believed posed a threat.

About then one of the soldiers noticed and killed a passing necros, setting off the entire area. The chain-smoking soldier, who I could now see was a lieutenant, turned and smacked him. “What the bloody hell is wrong with you? Weren‘t you listening” Every necros in the area was inbound now, and if I was right, their chance to avoid conflict was forfeit, likely along with their lives unless they were carrying a lot more ammunition than it looked like they were. I had to do something, but I couldn‘t think of anything. I needed time to think.

“Listen to me, we need to get to the roof, you can’t win this fight.”
“Like hell we can’t. They don’t have guns. Hell, they don’t even have that many pointed sticks.”
“There’s still a good thousand of them in this area. You don’t have enough ammunition to kill a thousand people, and unless you all have spears hidden up your...” The lieutenant gave me a look, took out a bayonet, and fixed it to his weapon.
“That won’t give you enough reach, you can’t win this fight. We need to get to the roof.” He fired a burst and took down an inbound necros, then followed me. We took the elevator to the top floor, reached the roof access, locked the door, and got ready for a fight while I thought of a step 2. The necros knew we were here, of course, and the door would only hold them for so long, considering their numbers.

While I checked my weapon, I went over to the edge of the roof and took a look at the ladder, hoping we could use it to get to another roof, but it was bolted to the side. We had maybe 5 minutes, so we couldn’t undo it. I had only one option, and it would leave us stuck here for a while. I got out my backpack and pulled out a matchbook, only to find it empty.

The lieutenant was taking out his half-empty pack of cigarettes, talking to Alex. I had an idea. “Any idea what your sister’s plan is?” He didn’t seem to have much confidence in me, but that was beside the point.
“She’s not my sister.” This should be obvious, we don’t look anything alike.
“Than what is she?” We were running out of time. I walked over to him and ripped the pack of cigarettes and lighter out of his hand. “What the hell?”

I walked over to the door, pulled it open, and waited for the necros to reach the landing below me. “What in the bloody hell do you think you‘re doing?” The lieutenant had followed me. “Scaring them off.” The lieutenant cursed under his breath. “You sure you want to do that?”
He turned, hollering for Alex. “Come stop her, she’s going to set them on fire.”

The necros had arrived. They were clearly furious, especially the ones that had witnessed the death of their comrades in the street, heading my way as fast as they could. I lit all of the cigarettes, startling the necros with the sudden fire. Alex ran towards me, screaming at me to stop, but I had already thrown the pack. Alex hit the ground, suddenly silent. The pack hit the leg of a necros, causing it to burst into flame. It surprised me, human flesh shouldn’t be able to burn like that.

The other necros were terrified, trying to get past one another, bringing each other down like dominoes, and rolling their way down the staircase to get away from the flame. Unfortunately for them, the flaming necros came down on top of them, setting them on fire as well. I hadn’t meant this.

The fire spread throughout the office, following the necros both through contact and even through the air, as if the fire was a predator chasing its prey, and left none alive. I nearly fainted when I realized it, but I had just killed a thousand people. “What happened?” The lieutenant knelt down behind me, as if trying to comfort me, but no words of comfort came from him.

“Ethylene. It’s a gas, mildly toxic and extremely flammable. We’ve been picking up exceedingly high levels of it since we got here, particularly around the necros. It looks to me like they’re producing it, although I can’t figure why.” Now he tells me. “You can’t burn one without burning all the others. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing you can do for them now. The ones that aren’t dead will be soon.”

I was just hoisted on my own petard.

[CaptainChewbacca]

So... zombie apocalypse with extra-flammable zombies.

Wacky. Also, you have alot of missing question marks.

[avianmosquito]

So... zombie apocalypse with extra-flammable zombies.

Wacky. Also, you have alot of missing question marks.

Zombies? Not really, but never the less. Also, they have another major weakness, but that's a spoiler, so I'm not telling you yet.

I don't see any missing quotation marks, where do you see them?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Question mark and quotation mark are two different things.

If these varmints explode from cigarettes, why doesn't every squad have a flamethrower?

[avianmosquito]

Question mark and quotation mark are two different things.

If these varmints explode from cigarettes, why doesn't every squad have a flamethrower?

*exaggerated sigh* I can't see a thing on this tiny screen...

As far as flamethrowers, this would work quite well, although the splash damage makes it unusable in CQB. However, this is 2 weeks after the bombing, and the necros only came out of their comas a week ago. We don't know a damn thing about them yet, and no official action has been taken except sending an SAS team to asess the situation. You can't expect them to be fully prepared yet.

[Dark Hellion]

Skeet, I am going to very quickly demonstrate two things to you that hopefully help. The first is just an interesting bit of board technology. The second is a very important literary idea that you seemingly fail to grasp. Here goes:

First I type

Code: Select all

[spoiler=][/spoiler]

and put stuff inside the spoilers for this cool hiding effect. I can do things like:
Spoiler

Tom Robinson is found guilty. Atticus Finch loses the trial.

or Spoiler

Rosebud is a sled.

even Spoiler

Soylent green is people!!!

perhaps Spoiler

Bruce Willis is a ghost. Oh, he's also unbreakable.

or for a classic Spoiler

Odysseus makes it home safely. He then stabs some dude in the dick and bangs his wife.

Now, I have spoiled a number of classics. But then again I haven't. What makes these stories good is that knowing the plot and relevant plot points does not detract from the overall merit of the work. People have known that Odysseus will make it home for over 2000 years now and yet the work retains status because of the way in which it constructs his hero myth. To Kill a Mockingbird has a plot that can be laid out in under a paragraph and yet it is still one of my favorite books because the STORY is actually about integrity and dignity and when to keep them and when we must look the other way. You have repeatedly referenced that revealing certain information would be a spoiler but if your work is actually decent there should be no need to hide information from the audience except for use in invoking irony. You don't build mystery and suspense by not telling the audience things. First it is generally better to show than tell. Secondly, you build mystery by showing the audience that there are things that are known to the universe of the story that they don't know. If it is a murder plot you actually give them everything but who the murderer is. You just don't let them know how to actually fit it together, that is what you have a detective for.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Agreed. If a book isn't good until its over, then it isn't good.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, it's still the same story, but the bit above me is not part of it any more.

Even better. Nothing wrong with posting a new draft of the same first chapter.

You have repeatedly referenced that revealing certain information would be a spoiler but if your work is actually decent there should be no need to hide information from the audience except for use in invoking irony.

There are occasional exceptions to this rule, where the story is in part about the characters' reaction to something they didn't know at the beginning. For example, Star Wars keeps the fact that Darth Vader is Luke's father a secret for almost two thirds of the original trilogy, and it works. It works because Vader and Luke coming to terms with the fact that they're father and son even though they're on opposite sides of a civil war is a big part of the story.

But even there, you could have told someone at the beginning of Episode IV (the movie that came out first) that Vader was secretly Luke's father and it wouldn't make the movies worse. So I guess in a larger sense you're right: while some plots depend on hiding information from the characters, even then it usually isn't strictly necessary to hide it from the audience.

Also, in a case like this, the author should be looking for commentary on the plot and content of the story. For which purposes keeping bits of the plot secret until he's thirty thousand words in is a bad idea.

You don't build mystery and suspense by not telling the audience things.

This is true. It's not good for a story to pull random elements out in the middle of the story. One or two carefully foreshadowed secrets that cast earlier events in a new light can be good, especially if the characters' response to them is made into a piece of the story. But if it's just "Wow, we can defeat these monsters easily with Zeta Rays!" followed by our heroes mopping up the monsters with Zeta Rays... that doesn't make for a stronger story.

Secondly, you build mystery by showing the audience that there are things that are known to the universe of the story that they don't know. If it is a murder plot you actually give them everything but who the murderer is. You just don't let them know how to actually fit it together, that is what you have a detective for.

Or you do let them know (or guess) how to make it all fit together. Much of the pleasure in mystery stories comes from trying to guess the mystery before the detective can figure it out.

[avianmosquito]

Skeet, I am going to very quickly demonstrate two things to you that hopefully help. The first is just an interesting bit of board technology. The second is a very important literary idea that you seemingly fail to grasp. Here goes:

First I type

Code: Select all

[spoiler=][/spoiler]

and put stuff inside the spoilers for this cool hiding effect. I can do things like:
Spoiler

Tom Robinson is found guilty. Atticus Finch loses the trial.

or Spoiler

Rosebud is a sled.

even Spoiler

Soylent green is people!!!

perhaps Spoiler

Bruce Willis is a ghost. Oh, he's also unbreakable.

or for a classic Spoiler

Odysseus makes it home safely. He then stabs some dude in the dick and bangs his wife.

Now, I have spoiled a number of classics. But then again I haven't. What makes these stories good is that knowing the plot and relevant plot points does not detract from the overall merit of the work. People have known that Odysseus will make it home for over 2000 years now and yet the work retains status because of the way in which it constructs his hero myth. To Kill a Mockingbird has a plot that can be laid out in under a paragraph and yet it is still one of my favorite books because the STORY is actually about integrity and dignity and when to keep them and when we must look the other way. You have repeatedly referenced that revealing certain information would be a spoiler but if your work is actually decent there should be no need to hide information from the audience except for use in invoking irony. You don't build mystery and suspense by not telling the audience things. First it is generally better to show than tell. Secondly, you build mystery by showing the audience that there are things that are known to the universe of the story that they don't know. If it is a murder plot you actually give them everything but who the murderer is. You just don't let them know how to actually fit it together, that is what you have a detective for.

I know how to use the spoiler banner, in fact I used it while talking to Simon_Jester earlier on this thread.

Further, the spoiler is minor, but it has a more important revelation coming after it. The weakness of the necros would give this away early, and although I know I could hide it under the spoiler banner, I know people really just disregard the banner and click "reveal" anyway, with no regard for the suspense, like christian children peeking at their christmas presents.

[Simon_Jester]

The real point, though, is that suspense is not nearly as valuable as you might believe. Especially not if the weakness is the kind of thing I suspect it's going to be, given the overall quality of your past work.

[avianmosquito]

The real point, though, is that suspense is not nearly as valuable as you might believe. Especially not if the weakness is the kind of thing I suspect it's going to be, given the overall quality of your past work.

And what would that be?

[Norade]

The real point, though, is that suspense is not nearly as valuable as you might believe. Especially not if the weakness is the kind of thing I suspect it's going to be, given the overall quality of your past work.

And what would that be?

Your work is a thin layer of detail over paper thin depth most of the time. You can fool idiots with that, but the people here tend to like a bit of depth.

[avianmosquito]

The real point, though, is that suspense is not nearly as valuable as you might believe. Especially not if the weakness is the kind of thing I suspect it's going to be, given the overall quality of your past work.

And what would that be?

Your work is a thin layer of detail over paper thin depth most of the time. You can fool idiots with that, but the people here tend to like a bit of depth.

Was I talking to you, asshole?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Was I talking to you, asshole?

He's not wrong. You can rise to the occasion or not, but cursing at your readers won't make your writing better.