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Young Writers Society


Death comes in numbers



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Mon Aug 15, 2011 11:38 pm
scifyfantacywriter01 says...



Chapter 1 "The plague of madness"


In the colony police station, Jacob Rutherford, a police officer working on several murder cases, is sitting at his desk looking at some pictures from a recent murder-suicide. Scenes where a man had lashed out with a circular machete, a device with a short rod and a large circular saw blade at the tip, killing three people and then using the weapon on himself. As he looked at the holographic screen, he scratched his head. "What is with these people?" He thought to himself. All the cases he was working on were all committed by Mortaligists. It was like they just snapped. "Mr. Rutherford, someone is here to see you." His coworker, Lindsey Mead, says. "I'll be right there." He looks back at the screen. He could see the reflection of his long blond hair, that was in a pony tale, his light brown eyes, and his lightly tanned skin in the screen. He then hits the power button and the screen disappears.
Out in the station room, it was absolutely hectic. The metal floors were filled with officers, victims, suspects, est. The only thing that you could see was the huge window that looked out over the city. In front of the window were people at computers and behind them were the stairs that went up to some lockers and the exit was to the right of them. As Jacob walked walked out of his office he notice someone from the croud "L.J., it's been too long." Jacob said with a grin. "That it has old friend. It's good to see you." L.J. replied. L.J. was a tall man with light brown hair and light tan skin. He was wearing a solder's uniform with a vitalmeter, a device with a glowing red meter on the shoulder of most clothing that shows how healthy the wearer is, on the right shoulder. Jacob walked over and shook his friend's hand. "So what are you doin here?" Jacob asked with a curious grin. "I'm here to pick up the body of man by the name of Kindle Jackson." L.J. answered with a serious expression. "The guy who killed all his minning teammates? He's down in the morgue. I'm working his case." Jacob responded. "I'm afraid i have to take the case off your hands." L.J. said in an apologetic tone. "Be my guest. I've got too many as it is." Jacob said with an assuring tone. " Just give me a sec to grab my pistol." Jacob headed back into his office, he grabed the silver, black handled, gun and slid it into the holster as he walked back out.
They headed up the steps to the exit. Out in the hall were two other men wearing the same uniform as L.J. "Jacob, this is private Michaels and private Hollister." L.J.said with a proud voice. Michaels was a young man with a shaved head and Hollister was an older man with dark skin and a bold head. “Nice to meet you sire.” The privates sayid correspondingly. “Nice to meet you too.” Jacob replied. They then turn to walk down to the end of the hall and step into the elevater. Couple floors down, the elevator opened into the morgue. There was a desk with a huge stack of papers and a computer with the screen projecting from the base. There were also several chairs on the opposite side, and another door at the end of the room. They walked to the door and stepped inside. The lights were down. The only light in the place was the light from the holographic screen of a computer in the corner. There were several stretchers with bodies covered with white sheets. On one of the stretchers was the body of Dennis Taylor, the head mortician, with a large piece of glass protruding from his right eye. Jacob drew his pistol and L.J. and his privates reached into their uniforms and pulled out pistols as well. “What’s going on here Jacob?!” L.J. says with an angry yet horrified tone. “I’m not sure. But it can’t be good.” Jacob answers seriously. They then walk towards the body of the man and out of the shadows they hear a scream and a man charged at them with a scalpel in hand. Jacob turned and shot the crazed man right between the eyes. The man hit the floor with a thud. They hurry to examine the body. “What’s going on Jacob? This place is a mad house!” L.J. asked again. “I don’t know!” Jacob answered. “There has been these kinds of things all over the colony.” “Well I’m not going to end up like that guy. Boys, lets move out.” L.J. commanded the two other boys. With guns in hand they headed out of the morgue through a door at the back of the morgue. They find an emergency exit. They opened the door to be met with a man holding a sharp piece of metal high over his head. They aimed their guns at him, but he plunged the metal into his stomach and dropped to the ground. Out on the streets, it was like a massacre. People were killing each other and themselves.
As they walked through the streets they were attached several times. People would rush at them carrying knives, bits of sharp metal, needles, and what ever else. They killed everyone who attacked them with little hessitation. Everytime they did, Jacob would take a short second to look apon the bodies of them to think to himself, "I'm sorry." They finally found themselves at City Hall. As they walked on to the threshold of the building, private Michaels let out a scream. The group turned to see that a man with a crowbar was beating him. Jacob shot the man in the chest and he fell to the ground. L.J. ran over to Michaels, lifted his head and rested it on his knee. “I don’t think Ill make it sir.” He said in a fadding voice. “Don’t give up yet solder. You’re not going to die here.” L.J. said in anger and hidden sadness. “It was a privilege working with you sir.” Michaels said. He then closed his eyes and his body body limp. L.J. laid his head down gently. There was a silence among them for a second. It was like the sounds of self mutalation and murder just disappeared for a brief moment. “Lets move.” L.J. said in a serious voice. Inside, they tried to shut the main door. When they got the door most of the way shut, several people try to fight their way into the building. L.J. and Hollister tried to keep the door shut. “Jacob! Grab that plasma welder and some of that metal over there and weld this shut!” he said pointing at the welder then at the metal. Jacob fran to over to the welder. It had little weight to it. It was about as long as a dollar bill. It was black with two small vents on the sides and a knob on the top. He then ran over to the metal. “It looks like something had ripped it from the ceiling.” he thought to himself. He grabbed a few large pieces and ran back to the door. L.J. and Hollister held the metal on the door and Jacob took three steps back. He aimed the welder at the top of the metal and pulled the trigger. A straight beam of blue came from the small device. Jacob followed the top of the metal and then the bottom. L.J. and Hollister then placed another piece on top of the previous two and did so again. After a few minutes they finally got the metal secure. They could see the crazed people through the cracks that the metal didn’t cover but the door wasn’t wide enough for someone to slip through. “That was a close one.” Jacob sighed in relief. “It won’t matter, we’ll never survive.” Hollister said under his breath. “What was that?” L.J. asked. “Nothing, nothing sir.” He stuttered. “Don’t be losing it just yet private.” Jacob said. “Jacob, keep that welder, it could come in handy.” L.J. said. “On it.” Jacob replied. They headed to a do that opened to a flight of stairs. “Where are we going?” L.J. asked frustrated. “Where going to the city arsenal, it’ll have all the fire power we’ll need.” Jacob said assuringly. Two floors up, they come to a door that opened to a hallway. The hall was dark, except for a few flickering lights. They headed down the hall and take a right. They then discover a horrifying sight. They came to a group of solders that had been massacred. They looked as if they were cut with massive scalples. Some were decapitated, others were cut in half, and some had been cut in several pieces. “What could have done this?” Jacob asked. “I don’t know. But I don’t want to find out.” L.J. answered. They walked past the bodies and come to the arsenal. Inside were enough weapons for a small army. “Alright Jacob, you came through!” L.J. said. Then, from out of no where, Hollister pistol-whipped L.J. in the back of the head. L.J. fell to the ground out cold. “What the hell Hollister!” Jacob said turning and pointing his gun at Hollister’s head. “I can’t… I won’t… I won’t let you kill me!” He screamed. He then came charging at Jacob. Jacob fires a shot but missed. Hollister drove his head into Jacob’s chest and knocks him to the ground and sended his pistol across the room. Hollister then got on top of Jacob and started to claw at his face.Jacob then threw up his arms in defense. Jacob noticed the plasma welder just out of arms reach. He then grabbed Hollister by the neck and flipped him on to his back. Jacob made a grab for the welder. As soon as he grabbed it, Hollister was just a few feet away with his arm drawn back, ready to strike Jacob. Jacob then pulled the trigger and spun around swinging the blue beam around and right through Hollister’s neck with a red glowing mark left where the beam hit. Hollister’s head then falls forward and his body followed. Jacob dropped to the floor breathing heavily.
“Aw…my head…Hollister… where?” L.J. said getting up from the floor and turning to see Hollister’s headless body. He got up and runs to Jacob. “You alright Jacob?” He asked in somewhat of a caring way. They then dragged themselves up and start to collect some weapons. “What should we get?” Jacob asked. “Just get some ammo for your pistol and grab a beam rifle as well.” L.J. said. Jacob walked over to the rifles. They were a light weight and about as long as his arm, fully black and a large cylinder battery hung from the bottom. The rifles fired high powered EMPs at high speeds. They grabbed one rilfe for both and plenty of ammo. they then walked back into the hallway and started for the stairs. Half way down, L.J. said "Hey, theres an elevator. Looks like its working too." He then presses the button. When the door opened, Jacob takes one step and feels L.J’s hand on his shoulder and felt nothing under his foot, then all he could see was the bottomless pit of the elevator shaft. L.J. then pulled him back and he stuttered backwards breathing heavily.
“Are you ok?” L.J. asks seriously. “Yeah, just give me a sec.” Jacob says gasping for air. “No time. We need to get out of here.” He says in an uncaring tone. He then walks over to a door next to the elevator shaft and opens it. “Guess we’re taken the stairs.” He says. Jacob then follows him through the door.
Last edited by scifyfantacywriter01 on Tue Aug 23, 2011 10:05 pm, edited 7 times in total.
When people think of beauty, they think of bright colors, purity, or goodness. When I think of beauty, I think of the darkness. Beauty has a dark side, and I like it. Light is pretty but darkness is passionate, sinister, and sexy as hell.
  





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Mon Aug 15, 2011 11:54 pm
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Suddenly says...



Very nice! I felt like i was actually there :)
Not much more i could say as it was quite short but very nice work, i hope to see more of this story :)
We create, we destroy, we rebuild
  





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Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:07 pm
scifyfantacywriter01 says...



yeah im sorry it was so short. i hit submit when i ment to hit save but whatcha gonna do. but im glad u liked what i put up :)
When people think of beauty, they think of bright colors, purity, or goodness. When I think of beauty, I think of the darkness. Beauty has a dark side, and I like it. Light is pretty but darkness is passionate, sinister, and sexy as hell.
  





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Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:25 pm
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McMourning says...



Hello.
Yes, it is short, but it's a start, and a pretty good one at that.

In the colony police station, Jacob Rutherford, police officers working on several murder cases, is sitting at his desk looking at some pictures from a recent murder/suicide. As he looked at the holographic screen, he scratched his head.

There's a comma needed there, but I also think you should rewrite the first sentence. You say "Jacob Rutherford" but then describe the other police officers. It doesn't sound right to me. Perhaps you could say, In the colony police station, the polices officers are working on several murder cases and Jacob Rutherford is looking at some pictures from a recent murder-suicide. You might also want to add some more details here. What's in these pictures? A bloody body?

In front of the window were people at computers

Simple typo.

As Jacob walked out of his office, he recognized a man from the crowd.

A comma goes here, too. You put commas after these because they are introductory phrases. The rest of the sentence can stand alone, but this phrase is added as a description, a sort of introduction.

Right, so, other than a few minor grammar problems, I didn't find anything wrong. It seems like you have a good start. You introduced your characters, technology (holographic screen, vitalmeter), and your problem. I'd love to see how it ends.

McMourning
"One voice can be stronger than a thousand voices, " Captain Kathryn Janeway
  





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Tue Aug 16, 2011 10:24 pm
scifyfantacywriter01 says...



yeah the first sentence thing was a typo. it's supposed to say "Jacob Rutherford, a police officer" but thanks for the other info. need as much as i can get
When people think of beauty, they think of bright colors, purity, or goodness. When I think of beauty, I think of the darkness. Beauty has a dark side, and I like it. Light is pretty but darkness is passionate, sinister, and sexy as hell.
  





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Tue Aug 16, 2011 11:04 pm
scifyfantacywriter01 says...



this is finally the whole chapter. took a while but i finally got it. im sure theres a lot of mistakes but the more feed back the better off i am
When people think of beauty, they think of bright colors, purity, or goodness. When I think of beauty, I think of the darkness. Beauty has a dark side, and I like it. Light is pretty but darkness is passionate, sinister, and sexy as hell.
  





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Fri Aug 19, 2011 10:24 pm
Ranger Hawk says...



Hey there! Hawk here for a review. :D

All right, so first off I just want to say that I really like the premise of your story. You seem to have the world figured out pretty well and I like the idea of blending CSI with sci-fi. I'm a fan of both genres, so this sounds like a good story.

However, I found it very difficult to read. There are a lot of grammatical errors that need to be fixed up so it reads smoothly overall. For instance, you switch tenses all throughout the story; changing from past tense (things happened in the past) to present (things are happening now) is far too confusing. You need to keep it consistent. Choose one tense and stick to it; double-check your work, too, by looking for key words like "were" vs. "are" and "was" vs. "is".

Another grammatical issue I noticed was your paragraphing. Every time someone new speaks, a new paragraph should be made for them. That way it's just easier for the reader to tell who's speaking. Look at this for example:
"So what are you doin here?" Jacob asks with a curious grin. "I'm here to pick up the body of man by the name of Kindle Jackson." L.J. answers with a serious expression. "The guy who killed all his minning teammates? He'd down in the morgue. I'm working his case." Jacob responds.

Kind of difficult to know who's saying what. Now if you were to put those in paragraphs, it'd look like this:
"So what are you doin here?" Jacob asks with a curious grin.
"I'm here to pick up the body of man by the name of Kindle Jackson." L.J. answers with a serious expression.
"The guy who killed all his minning teammates? He'd down in the morgue. I'm working his case." Jacob responds.

Now that's much easier to read! You know who's speaking and it's not a confusing mass of quotations marks. Try to separate those sections out; it'll make reading your story a lot easier.

One more thing I'd like to mention about the dialogue are the basic punctuation rules; looks like you're having difficulty with them (and all of those little commas and capital letters can be quite tricky!), so I'd like you to read this excellent link about dialogue punctuation. It does a great job informing you where you're supposed to place commas and such.

Now that we've covered the grammatical issues, I'd like to talk a bit about the story. Something I'd really like to see more of is characterization; basically, I don't know anything about the people in the story, because you haven't described any of their appearances or personality traits, and it's very hard to get invested in characters that I don't know about. It's all very well placing them in interesting and dangerous positions, but if we, as readers, don't really care for the characters and aren't invested in them, then we don't really care what happens to them. It doesn't matter to us whether L.J. survives, or whether Jacob catches this disease or not. And if we don't really care what happens to the characters, then we don't have much luring us in to read more and continue on with the story. So give us some details about the characters; dialogue is great for this. You can show that someone's funny, or gruff, or kind, through the way they speak and present him or herself. Really emphasize this in your story so we have people to identify with and care for. That'll really strengthen your story.

All right, so that's all I've got to say. Please let me know if you've got any questions about anything I said. I hope this helps.

God bless!
~Hawk
There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people:
psychopaths and mystery writers.

I'm the kind that pays better.
~Rick Castle
  








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