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The morning when everything began, the morning of terror as some people say, was just a normal Thursday   morning. The first appearance of the living terror happened somewhere around noon. The first zombie that ever appeared on earth was the result of a research against one of the deadliest virus in the world  called mummification because it was making the infected organisms look like mummies and  after that they were dying. The research was based on infected people whose families approved of experiments that could save them. The mistake happened when the researchers injected the half-made antidote in an already dead person. That person had started to struggle and then he bit its first victim.

  That day a supposedly regular teenager   was getting ready to go to school having no idea what would happen. The boy’s name was Alan,  he was a guy with lifeless eyes, he was an otaku but not a hardcore one and he hated himself and the world. He was angry, sleepy and bored most of the time. He was a guy that wasn’t very talkative unless he knew someone. Until last year he was an excellent student even if   he was studying rarely and he had good grades. However the first year he went to high school for some reason he became senseless and he started to not give a damn about the world.

He was forced by his parents to do a sport so he chose a martial art that was  somewhat brought out from medieval ages something that he was fascinated with at that time. However a big cause for his decision was that  he really liked an anime which had many  swords fights in it and he thought of the sword as a weapon for the strong. He was practicing  kendo for a year  without being able to make some friends because he was somewhat of a shut in to himself person and couldn’t act normally in front of people he didn’t know well. However, the day of his coach’s birthday he got a bit drunk and he was very talkative with people that day. He may have said one or two things more than the usual but at least he showed to them his true side and they were approaching him more. After that day he made some friends, he got out of his shell and he was able to talk freely without being  afraid anymore. After a while he started liking a girl that was more talkative with him because at  the party he told her that on the group chat she was more talkative than “live” but she told him that she just wasn’t talking to him.  He was too afraid to confess because, if he did it  he knew that he would lose every relationship he had  with her.  That was something that he couldn’t allow  to himself. His heart was pounding when he was next to her and he was begging either for his feelings to reach her without  the risk of losing their somewhat friendship or to be buried in the abyss depths.

He was always angry because of his physical and mental weaknesses when he wasn’t strong enough to beat someone  and when he couldn’t afford the pain of being weak in the confession section . He  was so bored because there was nothing interesting going on the monotone of everyday’s weaknesses that were hitting him hard and he couldn’t do anything but feeling sleepy after that stress. The only time he was awake at least at the three quarters of his body was when he was practicing kendo and he was filling up with adrenaline and enjoyment.

 That Thursday afternoon when he finished his afternoon classes he went home he changed into his kendo uniform and he left for the kendo club. When he got there his eyes were filed with excitement because he could finally see and talk to her again. When he was skeptically going to open trying to hide his excitement with his usual look of boredom , the door opened and she bumped onto him.   “What  are you doing?!?!?”, he asked surprised, ”I’m running for my life!!”,she yelled with a shaking in her voice, ”Why??”, he said ready to laugh, however when he saw that she was ready to burst into tears he took her in his arms and asked her to calm down and tell him what was wrong, “everybody in there turned into some sort of zombies” she said shaking. He opened the door because he found it difficult to believe. Once he opened it, he  came face to face with a monster which it definitely was human before and on the glimpse he took, he realized that it was her mother. He shut the door with lots of violence not being able to believe what he just saw. He punched his face to get a hold of himself, he took her hand and said with a shaking voice to her “Amy, relax I will get us out of here and we will survive, don’t be afraid and come with me”. She got up and she grabbed his hand. Alan opened his bag, took out his bamboo sword and said with a smile on his face “ It’s not that this wooden sword can do something but it’s better than nothing. Anyway, do you have  the keys to your mother’s car??”. “Let me check” , she said checking her pockets, “ here they are!!” she said with some enthusiasm in her voice. Alan took the keys and headed towards the car he unlocked it, he turned on the engine and then he  pulled the handbrake. “Put your belt on, because after this I have no idea what to do and I will have to check it a bit , he said with a cheerful tone,” whhhaaa……” she said when the car suddenly moved ahead since he started  ‘playing’ with the pedals and the gear box. “I think I’ve got  the hang of it now”, he said. Alan said to Amy to start calling everyone she knew and tell them about the zombies, then Alan called his parents, his friends and his grandparents but in the end it proved fatal and he threw the phone with rage because nobody believed him. When Amy finished nobody believed her either and she was pretty angry too. So, Alan turned  on the radio to hear how the zombie virus began  but the radio stations were casually continuing with  their programs with nothing strange going on. 

After a while, the radio presenter said that breaking news would be on air and that the military had an announcement to make. The representative of the military said “The army wishes that all the citizens will get into their houses and not to panic with what they will hear. As crazy and sci-fi as it sounds a zombie virus has been spreading around for half an hour from the lab where top scientists were trying to find the antidote for the mummification virus. However, after making a mistake, injecting a half made antidote into an already dead human…. The result was a zombie. The army will do anything it can to in order to destroy the zombies however we wish that  citizens won’t come out of their houses unless we say it’s okay, because there may be  collateral damage since soldiers have been ordered what ever is moving.”

As soon as they heard that Alan said to her, “ Wanna  call your father to see if he is okay????  Once you call him I think that he should hear what you have to say to him face to face so you can help each other get over it. My opinion is that we should go to my house since its  isolated and there won’t be any zombies… maybe . You can tell him to come there, so that you will be together and I can check on my folks. However if you wanna go check on him first I won’t say no.”  “I think I am gonna call him for now and I will tell him what happened but if he doesn’t we will go check on him.” Amy called her dad he asked him if he was okay and she asked him to come to Alan’s house because there supposedly were more chances of survival.

Once they went home Alan realized that his parents’ cars weren’t in the garage, he tried calling them but they wouldn’t answer. He rushed to the door and unlocked it, he started shouting and checking every room one by one. However, no answer came and he couldn’t believe that even his own family was dead, he gave a series of punches to the wall while he was crying and cursing his own fate, once Amy realized what was happening she rushed to his side and she hugged him  trying to calm him down, but in the end she started crying with him , because she was no longer able to maintain her cool. After their eyes dried up they finally stopped crying and they sat on the floor shaking realizing the reality that looked more like a video game.

After 10 minutes when they had somehow calmed down  a message notification sound came out of Amy’s phone, she opened the message  and she started shaking again , a second later she burst into tears again. Alan took the phone of her hands having a really bad feeling about it, he saw the message. It was from her dad and the only thing it said was “I am sorry”.

When  Alan finally managed to calm her down, she fell asleep,  he took her in his arms with a bridal carry and she put her to bed. He stared at her for a while, and he moved her hair from her face and the only thing that came to his mind that was that he had to protect that innocent smile. He started processing about what he could do, he got up and he went downstairs, he checked for their supplies, like water and food, he checked if the electricity was working and he was pretty surprised when it actually was.  When he saw that everything was okay and that their supplies were enough, he went to the basement. The basement was a pretty dusty place in order for no one to realize that there was actually something very valuable in there. There were many tools in the floor, ones that you could find in every house, but there also were  two cupboards. The first one had toys in it for small children, from the time Alan was just a baby. However, the second one had a military gun and many of it’s bullets, there was also a knife collection, a  katana sword, a dozen of shurikens and a  sharpener that was working with electricity.  He first took his father’s gun, the one he had to get to the army since he was a military’s reservist. He checked it and he  took it with all of it’s bullets with him. Then he took his own  katana that once used to belong to his grandfather, but he gave it to him since he started kendo. He unsheathed it and he passed his finger on the  blade to check it’s sharpness,  he then  realized that because of the long time that it hasn’t been used it was no longer sharp and it couldn’t cut anything. He then took a small sharpening wheel out of the cupboard, he plugged it on and he started sharpening his katana. Once he finished he took a couple of knives and six of the shurikens and he sharpened them so much that even with a touch on it you would start bleeding.

Once he finished he put his weapons in his father’s army vest and he left it in his room. He then  went to check on Amy, he was staring at her for a long time, while he wasn’t able to move his eyes off her angelic face.  He was staring at her, thinking of how he could be able to protect, his conclusion was that he could be her mental strength, never dying so that she knew that she could cling on someone since she wouldn’t lose him.  While he was immersed in his thoughts, he heard the bell from downstairs ringing, when he heard it, he immediately rushed downstairs and he opened the door.

When he opened the door he was surprised, instead of his hopes that he would see his parents,  there he saw his childhood friend and classmate Charlotte, and another classmate called Tina. Once he opened it, both of them rushed in and they shouted at him to close the door.  When he closed the door the two girls relaxed a bit but then, probably because they weren’t afraid anymore they burst into tears. He put them to sit on the sofa he made them a tea that would reveal their stress and he asked them what had happened. Charlotte started to narrate what happened ”When we heard about the zombies, we were in my family’s car since Tina was going to stay over my house for  7 days, ‘cos her parents went on a trip. After we took her, in our way home we heard about the zombies, my parents said that we should hurry home. However, a while after we were stuck in the traffic, probably many people have heard about it and they left their jobs or whatever they were doing and they were driving their cars in order to get home.  An hour later we were a quarter away from home, then  my father said that we should park the car and move on feet, well the reason he said it was actually because people who might have thought that going home by feet should be faster have abandoned their in the middle of the street. The only way to go through them was with a pretty small car or to get on the pavement. While we were going home, we heard a scream, we rushed towards the way it came from and there we saw it. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life, a zombie, a disgusting creature that should have been dead grabbed a woman from the neck and he bit he skull, once he removed his teeth, you could see her brain, then the woman fell down. My father  threw a dustbin on the zombie’s face and both of my parents rushed to the woman’s side. When they got close to her and they sit next to her so that they could give her first aids, she bit my mother’s neck while the one that my father shot down with the dust bin grabbed my father’s hand and he fetched it towards to his face and then he bit it.  Once we were able to see the 4 of them, we realized that they looked  greener and like they were buried for a year and their bodies had started to decomposed. When we saw all that we started screaming and running, and then we realized that we had nowhere to go, we checked behind to see if they were coming behind us, and since they weren’t we sat a moment to think what we could do. When I realized where we were, that means 5 minutes away from your house, we started running because we saw something moving 100 meters away and we came here. What about you?”. -“ With no unnecessary details I went to the kendo club, I saw Amy running, she told me what about the zombies she saw before any army’s announcement, we took her already zombie mother’s car keys and I drove us home, my folks weren’t around and they didn’t answer any of my calls , so I suppose they died, a while after a text came from her saying I am sorry and we assume that he died”.  Once they  heard all of that, they asked where Amy was, Alan told them that she fell sleep so he put her to bed. Then Alan having a serious look on his facetold them to be quiet and he went  to the window.

Once he went to the window he rushed to his room, he grabbed  his katana, he went to Amy he kissed her forehead vowing that he would even give his life for her and then he went back downstairs. In the meantime Charlotte and Tina went to the window out of curiosity to see what made him look so serious. Once  Alan saw the look on their faces he took their hands and he said with bursting from confidence  “I want you to promise me that whatever happens you won’t come out, I am strong enough to protect my ow self but I don’t think that in my current  I can protect you too. So promise me that you won’t come out, okay?” both of them said okay so he opened the door and he said in a totally relaxed tone, with a smile on his face  “I am going out for some zombie slaying “,  then he closed the door laughing at himself and he approached the first zombies.

  

Author's Note

If you please you could give me your honest opinions

Reviews

[Daniel Rodriguez]

Zombies is a tough genre and the stories are best when they are unique. Romero's Night of the Living Dead was interesting in how it portrayed race relations, Walking Dead focuses on characters and the hostile environment to draw the desperation out of humanity.

I am not sure if we are going for action, drama, or potentially romantic comedy set in the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. It is early in the novel but you hint at action elements, comedy, and romance.

Some of your paragraphs I think could be broken up more. I myself know that writing a sentence and reading a sentence can flow different and have different impact.

My other comment would be over stating plot points. We find out what the virus is in the opening but then we reread what caused the virus not long after. Unless the Mumification virus is going to be a very important plot point, the story is just going over itself. Dont get me wrong, i love the idea of the Mumification virus, and the "well we should never have tried it on dead people" take on it. I also love the idea that the hero is a shut in otaku. Outside of his weaponry and that he came from a Kendo Class, haven't seen much of that nerdy personality from him yet. Telling us a character is a certain way and having them act a certain way are two different things. The last bit is not a criticism but i feel going forward I want to see more of his nerdness, see how that contrasts with those around him and you hint that the story is going to be alot about how he is going to get out of his shell in conflict with the need to survive and protect.

I feel you got a great start and with a good plot and direction going forward this could be entertaining. Ps. Excited to see the Shurikens and get to know these characters even more!