My first contribution to HPOTD, DeadFall, will be ten years old this month. It was a bit of a struggle to wrestle the novella into a form suitable for Neil's site( we almost had to do it in separate chapters ) but everything finally worked out. Of all my submissions, I think it's still my favorite, since the manuscript had been gathering dust for two or three years before that.

Actually, I did e-mail a earlier copy to some fellas from Minnesota, The Milfords. They published one of the better small press zines, The Zombie Chronicles, between mid-1995 to mid-96. A very cool crew who had to drop out of the zine scene because of family business.

While it's been some time since my last contribution, I do have some very rough short fiction; two DeadFall stories and a sequel to "Tuesday Morning Pick Up. " on file.
The novel length adaption of Preservation is still in Flux, very rough and only half complete. Like Larry the Cable Guy would say "Gotta get er done. "

What I'm gonna do to celebrate is post some select paragraphs, kind of like samples at a supermarket, see what you guys like.

Enjoy and we'll see if I can't come up with something neat.

Wayne Z
DeadFall; The Retreat.
August 7th, 1995;
Lynchburg, Virginia.
On the outskirts of an ongoing battle, a befuddled soldier hardly looked the part. He was grossly overweight, sporting a brilliant orange vest which sadly clashed with his tattered camouflage gear as he crossed along a line of trees. He was feeling very much the idiot, all alone in the woods.
The good old boy was militia, a proud son of Virginia who heeded the call of his country when a terrible crisis swept the nation. But like many of his kind, thrust unprepared into an odd mix of conscript civilians and regular army, the former middle aged grocer found himself easily confused by military protocol ...