Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind.
These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat,
irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if
anything comes of them.
H Trope: The
Abandoned Mall…
In the 1978 horror flick, DAWN OF THE
DEAD (written and directed by the master horror director, George Romero), after
the zombie apocalypse, a mall becomes a refuge for a couple of humans who clean
out the zombies and go on a wild shopping spree. Of course, that doesn’t last
long and the zombies get in and go on a nasty eating spree…But no one EVER
talks about what happened AFTER all the zombies are done eating brains and
Humans are all gone…or ever more, what happens if we figure out a way to deal
with them, and it becomes a government venture, and then someone has to retire
from a job of taking care of the zombies...
“Maybe you aren’t
bored with zombies,” said the reporter on the thinscreen computer, “but me and
the rest of the Young Alive are zeroing in on stultified unto Death! Zombs are
old news, and old news is no news,” she paused. “You are all that’s left of the
Crew of the first International Zombie Containment Area, there’s got to be
something interesting going on there!”
Ryan Martense
rested his chin in his hand. The woman on the screen was young and looked like
a celebrity. She was some sort of broadpodcaster or something. He said, “The
difference between you and me is that you can ignore zombies. I can’t. Zombies are
my business.”
“My point exactly!
My generation should learn their history a helluva lot better than they have! I’m
trying really…very…hard to not ignore zombies, but I need an relevant, current
story in order to interest my listeners and viewers, Mister um,” she looked off
screen for an instant, “Martin.”
“It’s Martense
and…”
“I need a good
interview if you want me to put you back in the spotlight,” she scowled
fiercely at him, sighed, adding, “If you think of anything,” she hung up on him.
Ryan made a
face, sighed and said, “…call you.” He pushed the creaky old chair away from
the desk and touched the thinscreen. It turned transparent. He stared through
it, and through the Workhouse’s only real picture window before he finally stood
up. Outside, the sun was just rising in all of its watery February glory. It
was, of course, a Monday. “The rollers have to roll,” he muttered as he stood
up. He crossed his office and opened the door, plucking his jacket from the
coatrack, and pulling it on as he hunched against a cold blast of air. Strictly
speaking, he didn’t have to roll the Area during the winter because in Minnesota,
the ground was frozen solid. But all he had to do was recall the Christmas
Uprising twenty-eight years ago, and he’d be out in any weather to keep the
buried undead down, revving up the engine and rolling the zombie bones.
He breathed in
through his nose, and hurried from the Workhouse across the gravel parking lot
as he pulled on his thermal gloves. The last working roller was parked up
against the charging plate. Forty-five steel-reinforced natural vulcanized
rubber tires in five rows, nine wheels across supported a one million kilo
payload bay filled with basalt, steel, and lead and designed to compact rock,
sand, and gravel soil as well as crush human bones. The cab was nearly five
meters up and then two meters tall itself. The roller had been painted neon
green except for black numbers, and varicolored logos and warning signs. Access
to the control cabin was by a metal staircase. He stepped up the first flight,
stopped on the landing and slapped the retraction pad. The flight folded up so
that it rode a meter or so above the surface. As he climbed, he counted the
rust patches; remembering why this step bent down and twenty-three clumps later,
that step bent up. A gust of frigid air nipped exposed bare skin whenever he reached
up for the handrails. Once on the platform, he opened the cab door and slid
into the freezing cold bucket seat, jerking the door shut behind himself. Built
for a crew of six, he’d used sheets of insulation to make a two-meter-wide cab
out of the five-meter-wide original control room. He stabbed the green INITIATE
button, and the roller hummed to life.
He stopped shivering
as the heater kicked up and a wan sunrise spilled golden light across the
Containment Area. He tapped the computer to life. Based on the charging stall
he’d parked in, it produced an optimal roll pattern. Ryan settled into the
pilot seat and with a control stick in each hand, he pushed both forward and
set out, the roller slowly picking up speed.
The eighty
hectare IZCA had once been a gravel pit. Originally eight hundred hectares, it
had been intensely developed in the decade before the world-wide zombie
conflict. When the virus appeared – either some mutation of the flu and Ebola
or entirely artificial – it swept around the world. The Conflict started before
Ryan graduated from high school, closing all public institutions. After that,
he got a job in fast food for a while, paying below minimum wage, leading
exactly nowhere. Then the zombies almost won until a physicist from Haiti
figured out that a precisely tuned electromagnetic pulse would stun the undead
for six to eight hours…
Names: ♂ American
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