Junior High of the Dead: Chapters 1-6 - Rough Draft

[JurassicTimes]

(01-09-2013 10:00 PM)samuraitrev Wrote:  I enjoyed reading your new prologue although I'm confused how it relates to Junior. I liked how her life flashed before her eyes this gave the character depth. You told us a little about the setting and you didn't over do it and lose my interest. However I would rework the wording at the end of the prologue.

'The sun has still yet to rise, but it becomes clear with the large number of these attackers that whatever chaos has stricken this town, it's set in stone to be it's demise.'

It seems a little clunky. This is the hook, you have to get the reader to want to turn the page. It's okay but are we going to settle for okay?

Reading it now, it does seem a bit clunky. I'll change it soon. It doesn't immediately intertwine with Junior High, but it does as I said in chapter six, and chapter eight. It's what leads to the large amount of undead in the alleyway that leads to Sara's demise in Chapter Six.

[samuraitrev]

(01-09-2013 10:03 PM)JurassicTimes Wrote:  Reading it now, it does seem a bit clunky. I'll change it soon. It doesn't immediately intertwine with Junior High, but it does as I said in chapter six, and chapter eight. It's what leads to the large amount of undead in the alleyway that leads to Sara's demise in Chapter Six.

I see it's that alleyway. The rest I really liked by the way. I'm just being picky!

[JurassicTimes]

Posted below is the first half of chapter seven. I decided it would be better just to post it here in two parts rather than hold off the wait for one hole. As always, criticism, reviews, comments, recommendations, anything is helpful

CHAPTER SEVEN: LIVE, LOVE, DIE

Liam awakes from his sleep on the cold warehouse floor, lifting himself up, he opens his eyes and looks around. He's not in the warehouse anymore. Instead, he's sitting in the middle of a street. He rises up onto his feet, it's freezing cold and it's pouring rain. The buildings around him are all glass, but they've been splattered with blood, lots of blood, tinting the buildings a red hue. He holds himself shivering from the weather when he notices that he's entirely naked. The rain begins to fall down harder and starts to freeze, turning into little ice pellets that sting upon contact with his skin. Liam looks around for any sort of shelter, but it's useless, none of the buildings have doors. Wherever he is, he's trapped out in the open. He turns around and see's a car parked alongside the road. It's a right hand drive parked alongside the left side of the road, an unusual sight considering he lived in Canada. But Liam doesn't bother with the details, he has to focus on where he is and all the more important questions running through his head. He rushes over to the car to see if there is a sweater inside or something to cover himself with, but the door is locked, and even inside there is nothing but an empty seat.

"Damn it." he curses out loud. He leans against the car, curls his hand into a fist and bangs on the roof in disappointment. Right now his mind is filled with questions like "How did I get here?" and "What's going on?". He closes his eyes as the smell of rain water fills his nose when something catches him off guard, the sensation of warm soft hands wrapping around him and the rain stopping. He opens his eyes and can't believe what he sees through the reflection of the glass. He turns around as his eyes do not deceive him as standing there right before his very eyes is a girl, he admires her like an angel with her neck length blonde hair to her sparkling blue eyes, she too is completely naked. He stutters to find the right words to say and instead only mutters.

"K---Kyana?" he is shocked as to what his eyes are showing him, and turns to the only logical solution he can think of; "I must have gone insane" he figures, blinking his eyes to see if the image will disappear. But yet, it doesn't. Kyana smiles as Liam raises his hand to her face to feel if she's actually there or if she's just an illusion, a hallucination of some sort, but he knows once his hand touches her soft smooth face this is not the case, he stays in shock, admiring her smooth complexion and beautiful smile. She turns down and frowns and sadly cries.

"Why did you lock me up?" she ask, tears streaming down her face. Liam looks at her confusingly and becomes worried, what does she mean? He looks down to see a sight that contradicts everything that had happened the minute before. Her hands were now locked in handcuffs. Liam notices this and tries to break the chain using his hand. Miraculously, the chain breaks.

Kyana instantly jumps to hug him, Liam is surprised by this, but instead embraces the moment and holds her in his arms. Liam pushes her back and they look each other in the eyes. He leans forward and they kiss, Liam continues, grasping onto her and their bodies thrusting against one another lustfully. Liam closes his eyes for a split second when he hears a sound that terrifies him. It's the sound of a pistol being fired, he knows because he's heard the sound before. He opens his eyes to feel Kyana's lifeless body falling into his arms. He instantly break to tears, and screams, he looks up to see the man who shot her, his first sight is a pear of leather boots, ripped jeans, a white tank-top and a bike-gang leather jacket, all complete with spikes and a custom logo of a burning skull and words that read 'Hell's Riders' -- and then at the top of it all he see's the face, and those unbearable eyes. Devin. He looks up at him in complete total hatred. Devin smiles. He holds out a severed hand with a ring on the middle finger and laughs.

"Thanks for the hand, now say bye-bye!" Devin comments laughing and waving the severed hand mockingly. Liam raises himself off the ground, he's about to murder the man in front of him. He catches a reflection of himself in one of the glass buildings around him and notices his eyes are glowing a ominous red as he reaches his feet.

"It's too late, Liam. This world is over for you." Devin laughs. Just as they turn to the sight of large explosions in the backdrop. The loud deafening boom of these explosions cause's Liam to fall back to his knees while Devin remains standing. Liam watches as the skyline is becoming filled with the distorted image of mushroom clouds raising from the ashes in the distant. Devin begins to laugh maniacally just as Liam plugs his ears to another extremely loud noise -- this time of what sounds to be a jet, however that's not what it is at all. He turns and looks up to see a missile, clearly that of a nuclear warhead and in a blast second, it explodes in an eruption of light, blowing everything away. Liam can only watch when ---

He open's his eyes.

Liam awakens off of the cold floor, holding himself, still fully dressed, still alive. It was all a dream, and now, half of that dream's memory is gone. He is surprised to find that almost everybody is still awake and is gathered around the center of the room which has been reorganized. Everybody except one person. Kurt. The group has taken a few couches and arranged them around a coffee table. They all look over as Liam wakes up and wanders towards them. Liam rubs the grime from his eyes and blinks a few times. He leans on one of the couches right next to Heather who smiles at him.

"About time you woke up." she jokes.

"How long was I out?" Liam asks, rubbing his hand through his hair.

"Four -- maybe five hours?" she responds. Liam looks over at David who sighs heavily, David reaches over to the table and grabs a book from it. Liam stares at the title "Gears and Engines: Understanding Your Automobile" he looks back up at David's face, Liam didn't think David had any interest in automobiles whatsoever, maybe it was just out of boredom that he had decided to start reading it? He shakes his head figuring that anything is plausible and turns his attention over at Judie who is playing a game on her phone, he listens to the beeps and boops of the device as he looks over to Amy who is listening to music and Carly who is digging through her backpack, he turns back over to Heather and looks her in the eyes.

"Where's Kurt?"

"He wandered off down that hallway a while ago, he said he wanted to be left alone. He thinks this is his fault. We've done as he asked, but I still think you should go talk to him." she points down the long hallway. Liam nods.

"It's not such a great idea to have him wandering alone, it's not safe and it's not a good idea if we want to get him back on track with surviving this. I'll go check on him, see if I can help him out in any way."

"Right." Heather responds, she watches as Liam turns around and walks down towards the hallway. He wanders through it absent-minded, as the flickering artificial lights cast an orange-yellow tint upon the hallway, he closes his eyes tightly. The light is making him feel dizzy and sick. He continues down the hallway, there are a few doors but they're all locked. He was hoping Kurt didn't go too far and wind up in the stomach of a zombie, but knowing who Kurt was made it seem less likely. But even still, was Kurt even really himself? He began to worry about Kurt -- about his sanity, how could he be alright? Kurt had watched his girlfriend get torn to shreds -- eaten alive --piece-by-piece in front of him.

Liam continued to the end of the hallway opening the final door, the only one that wasn't locked. He looks around, inside the room. It's clearly a changing room, complete with lockers and all. It felt kind of out of place in a warehouse. Heck, even Liam's school didn't have changing rooms as far as he knew. He is distracted by the sound of -- something. Liam can't quite place the sound but it was coming from this room. He walks in and looks around, he finds a table to his right, there's a plastic bag filled with deodorants, body wash and shampoos sitting on top of a stack of towels all folded up neatly, next to them is a pair of clothes that match Liam's style, a dark black t-shirt and black track pants, he ignores the clothes as he continues down the changing room towards the last corner where he comes across a doorway, in which the door is wide open, he stops.

He doesn't know what he'll find inside. It could be Kurt, or it could be the remains of Kurt and a zombie hungry for more flesh. He peeks around the corner and see's nothing. Thus he turns his body around the corner, when something catches his eye. He turns his head around to notice Kurt sitting in the corner, his tears dried up, staring at his image reflected in a mirror.

"Kurt?" Liam calls out.

"What do you want?" Kurt replies, a cold and dark tone in his voice.

"To talk."

"There's nothing to talk about." he snaps back, Liam hears the slight rasp in his voice from all the screaming he had done earlier. He had probably strained his throat.

"Kurt, I'm sorry about what happened to Sara. But it's not your fault." Liam tries to assure him. Kurt laughs him off with his sore throat, which turns to coughing. Kurt closes his eyes, it hurts for him to do anything.

"What the hell are you talking about? Of course it's my fault. She was injured and when those things poured out of the alleyway, I just ran like a coward, and left her behind. Then when I tried to run back she was already ---" Liam cuts him off.

"Kurt, if this is anybodies fault this is mine. Even if you didn't run, it'd just mean we'd have lost two people out there instead of just one. I'm the reason she hurt herself, I stabbed Devin, got off the bus and didn't stop walking. If this is anyone's fault this is mine. Regardless if I want to be or not, I'm the guy in charge. Nothing I can do is going to change that. I didn't ask for this position, It's been put on me. But I'm not gonna let what I want to get in the way of my duties, and that's to make sure my friends get out of here alive." Kurt turns to Liam, a look of despair and pain in his eyes.

"If this is your fault. Then give me one reason why I shouldn't break your neck right now." Kurt threatens.

"Because, that's not you. I know you'll do whats right, because that's the only thing that makes us any better than those monstrosities out there. Now, I know you, and I know you're gonna bounce right back from this. You just have to trust me."

Kurt nods. Liam smiles. Kurt looks up to him and turns away. He yawns and stretches.

"Now. Do you think you're ready to come join the others?" Liam asks.

"I think, I'm just going to take a nap right now. Just close that door on your way out." Kurt requests. Liam nods and raises back up. Kurt stretches out and lays on the cold tiled floor. He sigh's heavily. Liam walks back around the corner closing the door in the process. He walks over to one of the benches in the changing room and sits down, he takes off Heather's fishing cap and places it next to him on the bench as he rubs his hand through his hair causing a then his attention turns back over to the hygiene products and clothes, then at his grimy, sweaty self, then the showers in the back behinds him. He laughs.

"For the first time in my life, I want to take a shower. " he speaks to himself, walking out of the room. He heads back out to the hallways with flickering lights that reek of gasoline, continuing back out into the front room where he had initially woken up. He walks back in, everybody looking back over to the couch. He yawns and sits down next to Heather, she stares at him.

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. It's fine, he's in there taking a nap, It doesn't seem like there's any back entrances, so this place should be fine, but we should check it over later." Liam sighs, he's had enough for one day. He turns over and looks at everyone, they're still doing the same things they were a few minutes prior. Liam see's Carly is still fiddling through her bag.

"Carly, I got to ask. You've carried that thing with you on your back since we left Mrs. Hait's room at the school, what could you possibly have in there that is so important?" Liam asks jokingly.

[samuraitrev]

Keep it coming JT. Great chapter title! I enjoyed the surreal dream sequence. It's a bit slow but that's a good thing. There's good character building with Kurt.
Is Kurt planning to do something stupid?

I see Liam has assumed the leadership role of the group.
Will this descision be contested?
As you know all great stories have conflict. I look forward to the rest of the chapter.

[JurassicTimes]

Don't worry, I already have the answers to those questions planned. The rest of Chapter Seven should be up shortly.