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Young Writers Society


-Post (Chapter 1, #1)



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Gender: Male
Points: 6235
Reviews: 57
Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:31 am
Wariofart says...



Rated 16+ for alcohol, and sexual references, cursing and blood/gore (oh my!)

Spoiler! :
This is the first chapter(s) of my latest NaNo novel. I had a really hard time deciding what to categorize this as. It's science-fiction in that it's a zombie apocalypse novel, romance becomes very important later on, and there's also a good number of action-y scenes. So general fiction it goes. :? The novel is told through two narrators, Grii (writing in a journal) and Rat (normal first person), hence the two "first chapters". I think that's enough for the 'back-flap' information. Looking forward to feedback! :smt003

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Chapter 1

I was awake.
The thought came slowly to me, like something pushing through water. I must have been awake before I realized I was, but suddenly the trace of subconscious was broken. I felt a sudden surge of awareness and looked around wildly at where I was. But it was all a blurry haze. Everything seemed disconnected and wrong, and I couldn't tell why. It was like I could see, but there was no meaning. I lifted my hands up to my face. Even though I consciously moved them, they felt separate from me, detached from the rest of my being.
I tried to still my vision, concentrating on my hands. Meaning started to flow back to me. They were red with something... something... smooth. Then, it hit me.
Blood. My hands were covered in blood. I felt something on my face. I frantically grabbed something and pointed at myself. There was blood all over my face. I felt my heartbeat race, my breath quickening. I have to stay calm, I'm going to stay calm, I told myself. But the panic was bubbling up inside me uncontrollably and it felt like in a moment I would burst. I just needed to figure out where I was, what had happened.
My eyes moved up to where my hand was holding something. It took me a second to make out it was a rear view mirror. That meant I must have been in my car... My memories felt as fuzzy as my vision was. There must have been an accident. An accident...
---
I really should move. I barely could see the news on the T.V. from where I was sitting on the coach, but to get up would require moving, which I really didn’t want to do. Rather just sit there like a lazy ass and squint at the television like a 70 year old ass. So I did. It didn't make things easier that people were walking by the tiny 15 inch screen every few seconds, spilling beer or their clothes as they went past.
"Hey Rat," Edie said. I glanced over at him before looking back at the T.V. He was just in his underwear, which surprised me a bit, even for him. I mean, what, this party had just started like... 15 minutes ago? Seemed a bit premature. But then, who am I to judge sex hungry people? I was a regular fucking slut.
"You look really philosophical, staring," he continued. "Like... you know, that guy?"
"Aristotle?" That was always the one he would default to when talking about anyone remotely smart.
"Yeah. Whatcha thinking about?"
I thought for a moment, my eyes still squinting to see the TV. "...Seventy year old asses," I said.
He laughed a bit. "Right... you have fun with that." He got up, grabbing his drink and walked off somewhere. I heard him yell something like "Sexy time bitches!" as he walked away.
"You have fun too Edie," I said to no one. I took a random cup that was lying around and sipped whatever was in it. Trying to watch T.V. wasn't working, so might as well drink myself to death. I took another sip and thought how fucking stupid I was, being at this frat party drinking something I didn't even know what it was. Then, my eyes glanced at something on the screen that caught my attention. It looked serious. Like... no, it couldn't be. I focused again on what I was seeing.
A bomb.
----
I took one hand and gripped the side of the car seat, desperately trying to unbuckle myself, while the other hand smashed against the unlock handle. I needed to get out of the car, I needed to. I felt something click and all of a sudden I jerked forward out of the car. I yelled and felt my hands shoot out, crashing into the black ground. My eyes turned to see what had happened. All of my body was out of the car, except for my leg which was wrapped up in a seat belt. I reached up and grabbed it, trying to free my leg.
I got up and wiped the gravel off of my arms and legs. There was blood where my hands had been, but I hoped it was just from my previous wounds. Grabbing my hair and pushing it back, I looked around me. My mind was still in a daze, and I couldn't understand what I was seeing. I could make out cars all around me, like they were locked in traffic, but they weren't. Even for bumper-to-bumper traffic, it was too still, motionless. I blinked, willing my brain to make sense of it all. The meaning came slowly, and in chunks.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of cars all around me. Woods were on either side of the cars. A highway. Nothing was moving. There was no sound. Some cars seemed damaged. Were crumpled, or had red streaks on them. It looked like a massive car accident. But no, it was more than that. Every car for as far as I could see was totally still. I felt a feeling of terror wash over me. Death. Something was very wrong here. I tried to put everything I had seen into one clear picture.
I was on a highway, with thousands of deserted cars placed scattered randomly around me. And I was completely alone.
------
On the TV, they were showing through a grainy video what looked like a huge green metallic bomb, falling. At the bottom of the screen was a flashing message I couldn't make out. It looked like something they broadcasted only during actual emergencies. Which meant...
Everything inside me froze. The party around me seemed to disappear and all I could see was that screen. I could only make out the faintest bits of noise coming from it "- fall", "one hundred-" , "- declared." "-post." I felt my body moved towards the noise, focused completely on it. Then, I felt myself get knocked out of the focus by a voice.
"Hey boy, here again?"
The world crashed back around me, and I saw a large older student with a gruffy beard. I felt his hand move up behind my shirt, caressing my chest. He smiled mischievously.
"Get the fuck off me!" I said and with one hard motion pushed him off and back. I must have met him before at another party, I thought vaguely, psycho. I turned back and tried to focus again.
But suddenly, my body was thrown backwards and into the chest of someone, him. I felt leather against my back. His hand was wrapped around me, binding. I felt his arm pressed against my lips, his sweat and beer forced into my nostrils.
"What the fuck did you say to me?!" he said loudly into my ear.
I braced myself to break loose when someone ran into the room. His face was panicked and his whole body looked unnaturally white.
"A atta-, New Y-" he said, stammering incoherently but with a urgency in his voice that instantly quieted the room. "Terrorists- there was a terrorist- weapon, huge, went off- in, New York and-... DC"
-----
I felt my body give. I quickly grabbed onto something to keep me from collapsing. I could barely breath. This can't be happening, I said. I took my hand and pinched into it. I tried again harder. Again, so hard I felt the skin break and fresh blood flow. I had to wake up. I did it again, crying out from the pain. Then, the last of my strength disappeared. I felt myself collapse to the ground, and smash against it. I couldn't move. All my muscles were literally useless. I was frozen. Left paralyzed, I was trapped in my brain, desperately trying to find a way out.
Only one thought phased through my mind. "No."
------
The room was completely silent except for the TV which now sounded impossibly loud. It was dead silence, the kind where nothing speaks or moves. Then, one person spoke.
"We have to run."
That sound jump started everything back into motion. An avalanche of sound cascaded over the room and everyone began to reanimate at once. I reached up my foot and smashed it into the man behind me. His grip loosened with a cry and I sprang at the chance breaking away from his and running towards the door. People completely obscured my vision, all I could see were them. Half by muscle memory, half by random guess, I ran through the crowd towards any stairwell that lead outside the building. I ended up at the back one, which wasn't majorly overcrowded. I flew down the stairs past other college students, being pushed at every moment by a person trying as frantically as I was to get out. Someone smashed into my left side, and I crashed down onto a step. I rolled myself up off before I could be trampled and jumped off onto the main ground. From there I ran out the door I thought was closest toy car. Without letting myself waste a second, I unlocked the car jumped into it and closed the door.
The sound of my panting filled the air. I was safe from the bearded student for now, but... As it quieted down, I was able to finally think semi-clearly about what I had just witnessed, really just witnessed.
I knew there was some sort of attack at DC and New York, which probably happened simultaneously. There was something about a bomb, and I thought I remembered seeing fog, smoke. I tried to think what I should do. Should I call the police? No, they obviously must know about it, if I knew. But I couldn't just sit there, I had to do something, run, hide, fight, SOMETHING.
"Damn it, think!" I yelled at myself. But I couldn't. I felt so overwhelmed and useless, my brain buckled. All I could do was stare.
There were still students, some half-dressed, running out of the building. It vaguely occurred to me that running out of the building wouldn't make anyone any safer from an attack all the way in NYC, but people knew they had to do something. Who knew how big the attack was. I turned away from the building and across the campus. Everywhere, cars were packing up and people were running across. Even through the windows I could hear the muffle of endless sounds crashing into indecipherable noise. While I was scanning the chaos, I noticed something way off in the distance, so tiny I could have mistaken it for my imagination.
It was a mushroom cloud, off in the direction of New York City.
-----
"No." The word screamed inside mind, bouncing off desperately trying to escape. No no no no no. It didn't matter that my body was frozen, because it was a mental freeze too; I was in a state of pure denial. No. No. No. I didn't even understand what I was saying no to, nothing, everything.
My eyes were looking ahead at a tire of one car. Beside it, there was a stain of blood covering a razor blade. For some reason, my eyes focused on that. I might have stayed there forever looking at it, if I hadn't heard a voice behind me.
----
The cloud was colored a faint green. Even from 30 miles away for D.C. I was still able to see it, even make out the basic shape. It looked like the pictures of Hiroshima. It felt so out of place, photoshopped in. It couldn't be real. But somewhere, maybe in my primal brain, something finally clicked. It hit me.
We were being attacked and I had to get away. Suddenly, I felt insane for not moving. I grabbed the steering wheel, pushed the pedal and drove. Out the lot and through campus. My vision started to blur into just the road ahead. I felt my heart speed up and so did the car. As my panic built, I kept going faster and faster. I had to get away.
I turned onto the highway and accelerated even more, going close to 80 now. I had to get someone safe, somewhere that I could hide, somewhere that wouldn't be atta-
There was a shriek, then darkness.

------------------------------------

(#1: Oct. 15)
Hi.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this. Maybe I think writing will help calm me somehow. Or get my mind off things. Take me away from this place. Something like that.
The light’s constantly flickering above me. It makes it hard to write in a straight line, hardly being able to see. I haven’t noticed it before. I guess the power must be starting to work again. It stopped working a while back. Well, I guess it was only a day ago.
It seems a lot longer than that.

My name is Jacob. If anyone finds this, I want them to know that at least. Some people call me Jake, a lot of people call me Grii, but my birth name is Jacob.
It seems like I should be writing why I’m here, what happened. But I can’t. It’s too close. Too painful. Now, even thinking about it…

I’m in a high school, Richard Cardin High School in Sullivan, Massachusetts, hiding in room 1064, a storage room, with the door bolted shut and the metal screen pulled down tight with duck tape around it to reinforce it for protection. I was here, just outside this room when I heard it happen that day, eating lunch up against the wall, and maybe that’s why I chose this room, it was fresh in my mind. The screen also makes this a good choice, cuz it lets me see out without opening the door. I've been alone here for hours, sitting against the wall and staring at the door. I found a pencil and took a crumpled piece of paper out of my backpack and wrote on it. My backpack is mostly empty, I took out everything useless, now there’s just a water bottle, paper, dead cell phone, $10, duck tape, my glasses, anything to pull my mind away, scraps of metal and stone that were in the halls before I went back to this room, 1064, this damn room.

Every so often there are sounds from the outside. Mostly just creaks and bumps. All of them could just be nothing, but I they still scare the crap out of me. I think I heard a moan once. It was raspy, unlike an animal’s or human’s, mechanical, dread. I woke up to it, stood up with my back against the wall, stopped breathing and waited. But it was completely silent after that, like it knew, like it was toying with me. I wanted to yell, but knew I couldn’t, I wasn’t going to be that stupid. After a long time, I just let myself slide down the wall and tried to go back to sleep.
I’m alone.
"This is a song for a scribbled out name
That my love keeps writing again and again
And again"
  





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Gender: Female
Points: 15446
Reviews: 136
Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:00 am
fiction903 says...



Hello, Since this is really large I am going to do the first two sections now, and the rest tomorrow. I think the introduction of your story drones on a little bit too long. Everything in the introduction of a story should have a clear concise meaning to entice the reader to keep reading.

The thought came slowly to me, like something pushing through water.]
Your opening line should be strong. Whenever you use a simile, you need to paint a picture with words.
I would say something like, the thought came to me slowly like drift wood snaking its way through a long, winding river.


But it was all a blurry haze.
I am pretty sure this is a sentence fragment.
It was like I could see, but there was no meaning.
I would refraine this. I would say something like,
I could not derive meaning from the blurry haze my eyes beheld.
I would suggest that you replace all the
Something
with more relavent things.

Rather just sit there like a lazy ass and squint at the television like a 70 year old ass.
Please refrain from using Ass twice in one sentence. It makes the main character seem like a middle school boy trying to empress his friends.
I mean, what, this party had just started like... 15 minutes ago? Seemed a bit premature. But then, who am I to judge sex hungry people? I was a regular fucking slut.
"You look really philosophical, staring," he continued. "Like... you know, that guy?"
"Aristotle?" That was always the one he would default to when talking about anyone remotely smart.
"Yeah. Whatcha thinking about?"
I thought for a moment, my eyes still squinting to see the TV. "...Seventy year old asses," I said.
He laughed a bit. "Right... you have fun with that." He got up, grabbing his drink and walked off somewhere. I heard him yell something like "Sexy time bitches!" as he walked away.
"You have fun too Edie," I said to no one. I took a random cup that was lying around and sipped whatever was in it. Trying to watch T.V. wasn't working, so might as well drink myself to death. I took another sip and thought how fucking stupid I was, being at this frat party drinking something I didn't even know what it was.
It seems like you are trying too hard to make your character dirty. I think it should be more subtle because the actual people I have met that are like that sort of ooze those negative character traits.
I will finish doing this tomorrow,I hope that you liked the first part of my review. Have a great night.
  








No one achieves anything alone.
— Leslie Knope