Day One

I promised my husband I would write 500 words per day. I am sitting in front of the computer wondering what to write. I have so many vignettes in my brain...snippets of stories...undeveloped characters just waiting for me to expand and explore. Worlds swirling, twisting and turning. Odd characters, mythical, mystical animals and beings. Never before seen flora and fauna. Trying to make sense of it all. 

I am not one of those writers who say they started writing stories before they could walk or who worked diligently on their high school newspaper or studied creative writing in college. I am simply a woman who loves the written word. I started reading very early, I remember watching sesame street and being amazed when I knew how to turn those funny things into a word. The alphabet intrigued me. Before computers, before typewriters I would doodle words for hours. Didn't matter to me what the words were...I just like the way they looked on paper. Learning a new word was another door to another world. I read and still read voraciously. I have no patience for dry technical books or manuals. My world is rich with fantasy, words strung together creating characters, worlds, lives that I'll never live and yet I do. I soar with dragons, hunt with vampires, change with werewolves, love and live again and again. 

Words are an authors' paint. Books are portraits into the mind and imagination. There are no limits. There are no rules. I could write a 4000 page book using one word. One letter. No one else has to understand or care what I write. I have written short paragraphs and poems. I have tried longer stories, novels but I get distracted. I distance myself. I stare at a blank page and wonder why I can't finish the story in my head. 

My goal of writing 500 words per day is daunting. Do I pick a single story and go with it or do I free fall and write whatever comes to mind? I worry too much. I skip from page to page. I have writers ADD. 

I have tried to be disciplined with it and create and outline. But this is not a term paper. It is a world, a lifetime I am creating. It has to evolve and grow. It has to be nurtured and understood. There are characters I don't like anymore. I started out liking them but they just seem stupid or bland or silly to me now. Not quite sure how to handle that. I have to respect their personalities. Else why put them into the plot? Good question. I will have to ponder that one. 

I believe today I will write about world after the apocalypse. I do not want to do the same old zombie apocalypse so I am wondering why the world ended. Or do I even care? I care more about how the survivors are, well, surviving. My first question is always HOW would I survive. Where would I go? What kind of survivor would I be? Am I strong enough? What does it take to survive?  Let's visit one of my vignettes and see what evolves.


Don't all stories fairy tales begin with "it was a dark and stormy night"?  Unfortunately this was no fairy tale and it was actually noon.  You may ask if it's the end of the world how do you know what time it is? You look at the sun. Directly overhead. Noon. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Other than that I know when it's morning, afternoon, dusk and night. Pretty good for a college drop out after the apocalypse. It is also hot. So hot the sweat dries immediately on my skin. I can see heat shimmers off the street. Of course it helps that I found a nice pair of ray bans on my last scavenge. Crouching behind an overflowing dumpster on a very hot day at noon is not ideal however it does keep them from scenting me. My personal hygiene notwithstanding the overpowering stench of rot and decay masks my purely human scent. I knew coming out during the day was a stretch but I had no choice. I am dangerously low on food. I wiped out the last of the canned food from the Piggly Wiggly last week so I am currently scouting the local Food King. It looks relatively untouched. No broken windows. Door intact. Well, except for the one big bloated dead guy with his head caught between the doors. You would think that I would be used to dead people but it just never gets easier. This is certainly not how the end of the world was portrayed on television and in movies. They just didn't cover certain aspects such and the unending stomach churning smells. I keep thinking that I will get used to it but each day there seems to be a new scent. A new depth to the decay. I wrap the scarf a little tighter around my face, adjust my new ray ban sunglasses and tug the ball cap a little tighter on my head. Fingerless gloves, leather jacket, grime crusted jeans tucked into genuine combat boots courtesy of the army navy store down the street and you have the stereotypical apocalyptic survivor. Complete with a battery of assorted weapons I have unfortunately gotten a crash course in using. I have actually become quite proficient with both hand guns and my rifle. Not so much the knives. I prefer distance work. Up close and personal is just too dangerous. Knives are a last resort. In a pinch I have been know to use a hammer. Oh and once I used a cast iron skillet. No matter what the weapon the end result is the same. Someone dies. Hopefully it is not me. In all of the movies I watched and books I read the worst times were at night. The bogymen all came out to play after dark. And they were always portrayed as slow. Mindless and slow. Well that is not the case with the current apocalypse. The bogeyman are crazy fast and smart. They can adapt. And learn. They very quickly how to stalk and how to hide. They can avoid most traps and pain doesn't seem to phase them. Before the world went silent I heard them called "runners". There was a lot of finger pointing and shouting by all the government mucky mucks but the truth was no one really knew what happened. Or how it happened. At first there were scattered reports of odd deaths. Folks found murdered and half eaten. Some blamed it on animals while others blamed crazy cults. Satanic, voodoo. Some folks said it was chemical warfare.  It didn't matter. The reports just got more frequent. And closer to home. Pretty soon it was clear there was something uncontrollable out there. People panicked. Rioting happened. Pretty much standard apocalyptic fare. Someone somewhere ordered the big guns to take control and the fighting started. As far as world war 3 goes it ended rather quickly. I guess we will never know why no one ever shot off the big ones but I guess for those of us surviving it is a good thing. No nuclear winter to deal with on top of everything else. Find your silver lining I suppose. All I know is that the runners are out there and I am not fast enough to get away. So I learned to sneak. To blend in and to stay under their radar. I don't kid myself that I am stronger or that I could successfully fight a group of them. I can handle a loner. Or even two if I have the shot. Basically I just scavenge and move. If I don't stay in one spot they can't find me. At least that is what I hope. It has worked so far. Being alone is kind of a bummer though. I never thought the end of the world would be so quiet. 
Nothing has moved. No sounds. Time to try for the grocery store. Yes it is the obvious place for an ambush. Yes it is the obvious place to have been picked clean months ago when this all started. I at least have to try. I need food. It is just that simple. 
Easing my way past the overflowing dumpster I keep a sharp eye out for any movement. Taking a deep breath I sprint across the road, ducking behind a big SUV half on half off the sidewalk. My heart beats in my ears but I don't hear anything else. I scan the street. No movement other than heat shimmers. Surveying the corpse in the doorway I  push one of the doors enough to slip past. Heat blasts me as I pause. The stench of spoiled food slams a fist into my gut. Blinking and swallowing back the gag reflex I grab a basket. The shelves look pretty full all things considered. I head for the canned food. Stuff I know will still be fine to eat. I pause at the feminine hygiene aisle. Some things go on even during the apocalypse. Shoving some supplies in the basket I move on to canned goods. Ahhh yes. The shelves are still decently stocked. I grab and stuff as many cans as I can carry into the basket, my pockets. I head for the bottled water. Looks like my luck is holding. There are still cases of water. Realizing I won't be able to carry much more I put some bottles in my knapsack. A snick of sound captures my attention. Setting my bounty on the floor I slowly look around. I press my back against the shelves. The snick snick seems to be coming from the next aisle. Taking a deep breath I ease down the aisle, drawing my pistol. If it is a runner I won't have but one shot. I have to be ready. I sneak quietly to the end of the aisle and peek around the end. No one in view so I slither to my left and lean forward to glance at the next aisle. I clamp down on the scream fighting its way out of my throat. A runner was using kitchen shears to cut the fingers off of a fresh kill. Blood pooled the floor around it. Gore spattered the shelves and the runner itself. And it just sat there, gnawing on fingers. Easing back I readied my pistol. One shot and one shot only. No time to think or I would be lying in a pool of blood with my own fingers being hacked off. Counting off in my head I rounded the corner aimed and pulled the trigger on three. The runner gaped at me as it fell backward. Bulls eye. Right between the eyes. I knew the sound of the gunshot would bring other runners. I had to grab my supplies and get out before I was surrounded. The sound of breaking glass let me know my way in was not going to be my way out. Looking around I decided to take my chances in the back room. Not fond of the dark but it was a bit better than being eaten alive. Pushing through the double doors I eased them shut behind me. Sprinting through the stock room I narrowly avoid decapitating myself on the raised tines of a fork lift. The warehouse loading bay doors were closed but there was a fire exit door right beside them. I shove the door open, praying the alley was clear. Stepping back into the sunlight I had to pause to get my bearings. Slapping my ray bans back onto my face I took off running down the alley. The runners in the store wouldn't be far behind. 

Well, our heroine does seem to have herself in a bit of a pickle now doesn't she? Where oh where to go now? Does she get to safety? Do the runners catch her? What ARE the runners? How has she survived? Who was she before? How old is she? Are there other survivors? Taking a break but I'll be back soon to answer those questions and more....stay tuned.