Zombie Mega Apocalypse

Woo hoo! A lot of editing has passed since I thought it was finished two months ago, but my new short story, Zombie Mega Apocalypse, is now finished and available for you to read. The story comes from a question that I had floating around in my mind for a while: "what would happen if we knew the world was going to end, and had a definite date for the destruction of humanity?". How would society cope? This popped into my head around the time of the riots last August, when the fragile string holding decency in place frayed and people began to disregard the law, doing whatever they wanted. In the face of this I realised just how tenuous our grip on civility is: if people decide to just do what they want, en masse, how can they be stopped? Often this question is asked with regards to positive consequences such as the overthrowing of dictatorships, but it also applies to basic human decency. For a couple of days it seemed as if England was on the verge of something very bad happening, but luckily decent people came together and eventually overpowered the thugs. But if the world was going to end anyway, what motivation would the decent have to continue their battle?

I tied in my own disillusion with our technology-riddled society, and how it has changed living on Earth into an existence far removed from our original states of being. The more I think about it, the more I think that I might be an Anarchist. Politics and society have appealed to me less and less in recent years, and I want them gone, and nature to reign supreme once more. All of this comes together in a big fat melting pot to form Zombie Mega Apocalypse. Check out the beginning below and then follow the link to read the rest:

Zombie Mega Apocalypse

Until that night, I hadn’t looked up at the night sky in years. I stepped off the train and, rather than staring at the ground and ploughing the ten minutes to my door as usual, the biting February air wrenched my gaze upwards. The low-lying crescent moon sucked at my eyes, the deep dark blue of the early evening sky magnifying its luminescence. As my eyes adjusted, I noticed stars glistening in the formerly pitch-black. It was rare to see the stars around here. I inhaled deeply and my nostrils fought through the smog to the clean winter air beneath. It was beautiful, I thought; why did I never look up at this majesty, this free gift from Earth? It struck me then that I’d lost my way in life: ten years out of university, and ten years since I’d paid attention to anything natural. When did I lose my wonder? The accident, I guess. I thought back with envy to my younger self, so mesmerised by everything, so happy, untainted by the horrors of modern society circling and snapping like sharks. At least, I think I was like that. Nowadays, whenever I think back to a younger version of myself that person is a wide-eyed innocent, never moody, never angry. Until that night I had been drifting, ignoring my surroundings, and the innocence of my younger self was long gone.

I took two trains to work, and two home. In between, I crammed onto the tube with millions of other commuters, often seemingly squished into the same carriage as them all. On my journey I listened to music, ignored existence. I thought that people walking in front of me who moved unexpectedly to the side and blocked my way, without any knowledge that I was trying to weave a high-speed path past them, were idiots. I sprinted for tubes and squeezed through the doors and up against endless bodies, even though another train would be along two minutes later. Every second counted. Everything pissed me off. I worked a boring job but didn’t quit, as every other job was just as dull anyway, as ultimately pointless as the next. I hated what I had become, how annoyed I was by this world of rubbish; hated my iPhone when it worked, but burned with rage when it didn’t, and when it eventually broke. Then I took it to the Apple shop and got a new one. That night, though, I stopped. I gazed lovingly at the night sky and recognised it as the most wondrous thing I had ever seen, could ever see; and even though I’d spent ten wasted years not looking at it, that was okay because there were fifty-odd more in which to marvel every evening until I died. The following day the news was revealed.

Read on...