[Vorcla]

I mean, come on, how could I resist? It's prompt #13. It's October. Halloween's coming.

And it's Vorcla doing the prompt!

What else would you expect?

Anyway, this is a zombie movie scenario. You and your partner are the only survivors of a holocaust that transformed everyone else into flesh eating zombies. If you're a guy, you have a wife or girl friend; if you're a girl, you have a husband or boy friend. You can name your partner whatever you want; I just used Gerry in the prompt because it can be pretty gender non-specific. Read it over, have at it, and have fun.

Warning: if you're squeamish, this ain't for you!

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!




The world ended on Halloween.

A green cloud came in and covered the earth. We don’t know what it was made of. Radioactive maybe, or perhaps a side effect of global warming – Mother Nature getting even with us.

Kids out trick or treating dropped in their tracks, dead. So did the parents who were chaperoning them. Even those who were inside weren’t safe. The cloud killed 90% of the earth’s population, but many of the dead rose again as reanimated, flesh eating corpses. Zombies, if you will.

I never thought I would be living out the rest of my life in a George Romero movie.

The things aren’t particular. If they can’t find live food, they’ll eat carrion. Not to sound callous, but that wasn’t all bad. All the corpses that were lying around would have been a health hazard. All kinds of potential diseases, not to mention the stench. Between the zombies and the buzzards, our town’s been pretty well cleaned up.

My wife/husband Gerry and I were lucky(?) enough to survive. There’s no one else in our small town of Monroeville who made it through – at least not now, not that we know of. We teamed up with our neighbors Tom and Jenni Blanchard at first. It didn’t last long. We didn’t realize that you shouldn’t be outside at night at first.

Poor Jenni – such a pretty little thing. She got separated from us. A group of about twenty of them caught her. We heard her screaming. One of them jumped her and tore off the right side of her face, and then the rest attacked. They were eating her alive. I’ll never forget the sight. One of those walking ghouls gnawing on her severed leg like it was a KFC drumstick. We didn’t have enough bullets with us to take them all out, and they rushed us, shambling along with that weird, shuffling run. Jim got bitten by one of them in the melee.

Somehow we got away. I looked over my shoulder and saw them spreading open Jenni’s ribs and scooping out her insides. One of them was chewing on her heart.

It’s hard to run and throw up at the same time.

Tom’s bite looked horrible. It turned green and started seeping pus. His skin turned gray. He ran a high fever. He woke up screaming in the middle of the night. He had changed into one of them.

Gerry blew off his head with a shotgun.

You had to shoot them in the head. Nothing else worked.

We holed up in the bank at night. They can’t get in there. Gerry worked there and he/she had keys.

Today we went out looking for food and water. It was eerie; everything was so quiet. No light, no power, no heat. Houses and yards were still decorated for Halloween, with fake cobwebs and gravestones and witches and black cats and plastic skeletons. The more elaborate displays had Frankenstein’s monsters and vampires and werewolves set up to menace the population.

And here and there was…a zombie.

We broke into Pressman’s department store. We had hit the motherlode. All kinds of non-perishable food and bottled water. We stopped in the furniture department and stretched out on the bed. We realized then just how hopeless things were. We comforted each other, hugging and kissing and caressing. One thing led to another, and before long were making love – madly, passionately, as if there was no tomorrow.

Because for all we knew, there might not be a tomorrow.

That was a mistake.

The sun was going down when we woke up. We dressed frantically and ran for it, forgetting the food. We could come back for that tomorrow – if we lived through the night. The zombies were on the move. We cut down as many of them as we could, but they were converging on the bank. They caught up to us and it was hand to hand as we fought our way to the door.

Gerry shotgunned one of them in the head and there was blood and brains everywhere – all over her/him, all over me, all over the zombies. I held down the trigger of my AK 47 and sprayed it like a hose while, behind me, Gerry got the door open. Zombie heads exploded like overripe melons.

We made it inside and locked the door.

“Jesus, that was close!” I cried.

Then I heard screaming. I looked outside, and then I screamed.

It was Gerry! The zombie bastards were feasting on him/her, tearing him/her apart, ripping him/her limb from limb! God, no!

But if he/she was out there, then who…?

I turned, and...

YOU FINISH IT UP! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

[Vorcla]

BTW - for our non-American members - There's a reference to a "KFC drumstick." Just in case you don't have them where you live, KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, purveyors of haute cuisine in the USA. So the zombie was gnawing on the poor girl's leg like it was a chicken drumstick.

[Mr Morbid]

Wait...so, with the EMWE, does it just have to be re-written?

[Vorcla]

Yep. That's all you do. Make it better.More descriptive, better sentence variety, etc.

It's really hard for me to moderate this prompt. The teacher in me really has to work hard to try not to correct myself and smooth it out. I want this to be rough so YOU guys can make it better, and I have to fight this tendency to edit myself.

Go for it, Nathan.

[Mr Morbid]

Is there a word limit? And what date is it due?

[Vorcla]

No word limit, although you don't want to go too far afield from the prompt. Look at some of the past entries and compare them to their prompts to get an idea.

As for deadline - I don't have one yet, really. Nobody's entered yet.

[Vorcla]

okay - I'll Give This A Couple More Days. If There Are No Takers, I'll Yank It Down And Put Up A Generic Prompt.

['Ginnis]

I'm planning on doing it but yeah, if you don't hear anything from anyone, rip it. Won't hurt my feelings.

[Vorcla]

I can wait. Just wanted to see if anyone was interested. Usually some people will post saying they're interested, and some will actually do it. So, I'll leave it up for now, Kara.

[Zoidberg]

Hey Rick, how's it going?

I guess I will start visiting more, and as part of my return, I guess it is only fair if I try this out.

When you get a deadline, tell me so I can get going.