zombie short stories

[sapphira84]

has anyone got any good ideas for short stories? i'm experiencing writer's block.:o:|

[Neil]

I've had a story stuck in my head for sometime... Basically a father and son (very young just 4-5yrs old), stuck somewhere with absolutely no hope... eg: In a room with the dead in mass outside. Or in a garage for example...

The story of course would need strong writing as its all about the feelings and thoughts of the situation...

And most likely the father having to put his son out of his misery! Horrible...

[brer]

Actually I have a great one. Trouble is i'm writing it at the moment.

[horrormad]

How about making the original Dawn of the dead story but Instead of the fantastic 4 story tell the story about those people they met up on the roof those people that had a boat.

[Neil]

How about making the original Dawn of the dead story but Instead of the fantastic 4 story tell the story about those people they met up on the roof those people that had a boat.

Hasn't one been done about the doc officers? Can't recall!?

[Arcades057]

Hasn't one been done about the doc officers? Can't recall!?

Yeah, someone did a story about Joe Pilato's character from Dawn being Rhodes from Day. Never read it though.

[Bub666]

How about making the original Dawn of the dead story but Instead of the fantastic 4 story tell the story about those people they met up on the roof those people that had a boat.


That would be great idea.

[brer]

or the love boat with the undead.

Are you wanting to run with straight Romeroish zombies? change it up some. Add magic.

does it have to be an end of the world type zombie apocolypse?

An obviously zombie is walking around the mall. How did it get there. Why is it walking around.

[dracenstein]

This hotel in a small town is run by this odd old couple, who kill lost people and throw them into the cellar, where something is 'living'.

Obviously, it's a zombie. Their son, who they keep feeding.

That's the basic story, with one stranger who finds out the truth, perhaps even locked in the cellar with the zombie, to be eaten alive.

...and then there were two...

[Bub666]

This hotel in a small town is run by this odd old couple, who kill lost people and throw them into the cellar, where something is 'living'.

Obviously, it's a zombie. Their son, who they keep feeding.

That's the basic story, with one stranger who finds out the truth, perhaps even locked in the cellar with the zombie, to be eaten alive.

...and then there were two...

That sounds familuar.I've heard that story before,But I can't remember where.

[dracenstein]

That sounds familuar.I've heard that story before,But I can't remember where.

The old English horror film The Ghoul?

I remembered that after posting it. Damn. I was wanting something a bit more original.

Ok, Frankenstein is making the monster from parts of various corpses, however, when Frankenstein gives his creature life, the various corpses also reanimate and become flesh eating zombies.

Can the creature save Frankenstein? Or will it want to eat human flesh as well?

[Bub666]

The old English horror film The Ghoul?

I remembered that after posting it. Damn. I was wanting something a bit more original.

Ok, Frankenstein is making the monster from parts of various corpses, however, when Frankenstein gives his creature life, the various corpses also reanimate and become flesh eating zombies.

Can the creature save Frankenstein? Or will it want to eat human flesh as well?

I've never heard that before.That sounds like it could be good.

[horrormad]

Never seen the Ghoul but will at some point.

[dracenstein]

Bub666, the Frankenstein stuff, I made up for the short story idea.

For the Ghoul, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073042/.

[brer]

Me, I know I'm rough at writing. I figure the only way I'll get better is to write more. One story in the archive, one awaiting Neil to update.

There are quite a few authors here, that if I could write as good as they do, I would quit my job and make a living off of being a wordsmith.

That being said. One of my big turn offs about a lot of the fiction here is its predictability. I am not trying to be critical of this site, I have read every story here and have enjoyed the vast majority of them.

Go as far left field as you need to find a new idea or angle. Don't rehash the same stuff a lot of other authors have already done.

We have enough ultimate zombie killers already. Page after page of the protagonist wading through the dismembered bodies that he has laid to their final rest gets old after a while. I think that dissatisfaction shows in quite a few of the stories other authors have written. I'm pretty sure that Muppets of the living dead is a very good example of this.

While I am a very poor author at the moment, I am a very good reader. I can spot a standard plot device a mile away.

So in response to the OP

Things that have not been done to death:

Tales told from the point of a child. Instant suspense, we all naturally feel for children because they are relatively helpless. Bad ass protagonists get old after a while.

Tales told from the point of someone infected. While even knowing at the beginning how the story will eventually end, the trip there can be very entertaining.

Cowards with enough spine to survive. In the zpaw I imagine there will be quite a few more of them around then heroes. You know, a protagonist that leaves the hot chick or the busload of handicapped orphans behind.

The buildup to the zpaw. It likely aint gonna happen overnight. A story with a buildup of weeks without being written in a diary format could work well.

Non-Romero type zombies. I know Romero zeds are standard fare, but lets change a feature or two here and there. ie A little more intelligence, fast until rigor mortis sets in, or complex group behavior.

The living dead as the good guys?

A living dead scenario where the ressurrection of the dead is defined geographically by the event that spawned it.

I am currently working on one at the moment that is basically a first person story told in the context of an old man recounting events that happened some years before that included the living dead. It may suck, it may blow chunks, but it will be as original and as nonstandard fare as I can make it.

[zombieparanoia]

Heres the thing, I get that bad ass protagonists are overplayed but I think if done properly this idea could work.

Based on a terminator timeline, SKYNET designs and sends back the cause of zombies, the resistance as usual is only able to send back a single terminator unit charged to protect John Connor and get him and other humans to safety(wherever that is) until the resistance of the future can design, make and send back a cure using the captured SKYNET technology.

I think it could work because even though a terminator is a killer robot and therefore immune to pain, fatigue or zombification it still has to protect the humans it collects from zombies and each other. And a single unit could only kill so many zombies at a time while protecting the humans in transit.

[dracenstein]

Won't work.

What if a crucial Skynet employee is killed by a zombie and Skynet itself ceases to exist?

Like a software programmer or something.

[Bub666]

Heres the thing, I get that bad ass protagonists are overplayed but I think if done properly this idea could work.

Based on a terminator timeline, SKYNET designs and sends back the cause of zombies, the resistance as usual is only able to send back a single terminator unit charged to protect John Connor and get him and other humans to safety(wherever that is) until the resistance of the future can design, make and send back a cure using the captured SKYNET technology.

I think it could work because even though a terminator is a killer robot and therefore immune to pain, fatigue or zombification it still has to protect the humans it collects from zombies and each other. And a single unit could only kill so many zombies at a time while protecting the humans in transit.



Sounds like it could be good.

[Mutineer]

I have one

And ain't sharing it. :D :cool:

[zombieparanoia]

Won't work.

What if a crucial Skynet employee is killed by a zombie and Skynet itself ceases to exist?

Like a software programmer or something.

Thats good too. So Skynet would send a terminator back to protect and therewould be some kind of response from the future resistance or what?

[brer]

Well if the skynet crucial employee is killed, then skynet doesnt exist, then it wont send the cause of a zombie outbreak back in time, then the employee will live, then skynet will exit, then skynet will send the cause of the zombie outbreak back in time,,, ad infitum

[zombieparanoia]

While we're ripping er, borrowing movie ideas I also like the idea of a 12 monkeys kind of hunt for the original zombie, possibly as a person while they are still alive.

Or something where the same thing that causes the zombie outbeak causes some kind of random occurrence of "Heroes"superpower type mutations in people. I think this could work because IMHO actually discovering, getting some understanding of and then learning to control spontaneously manifesting superpowers in a perfect world(ie peter parker playing with his powers in spiderman) would be difficult enough but in a zombie outbreak world would be interesting storytelling and also that I think the sudden emergence of people with these powers whatever they are would be met with some fear and suspicion or even exploitation of these people.

[dracenstein]

How about a modified zombie virus sent into the future that reanimates dead machines which go around trashing other machines!

[Wyldwraith]

Hmm,
I don't think wildly new plot devices are needed, just sharp attention to detail, attention to the characters involved as thinking/feeling beings, not just acting ones, and something besides the "We're trapped in X place by zombies". If you wanted to mix it up some then don't utilize the zombies directly to pin someone inside a location. As an indirect mechanism, desperately wanting to avoid them making someone terrified of leaving shelter, sure. New settings, or new decisions by protagonists might help shake things up, but the most important thing really is drawing the reader in. Making them care about what happens to the characters and their world. That's only accomplished if the readers can relate in some way to the characters, which is generally why Fearless Zombie-Slayer archetypes often fall flat. Nothing wrong with the protagonists being able to handle themselves (at least some of them), it just can't be what defines them.

I've been kicking around an idea about a teenager running from the living dead falling down an old mine shaft and discovering a small but extremely well-supplied shelter that's critical flaw is having no sensory input from the outside once he's inside. Emphasizing his thinking that for all he knows if he opened the shelter door after the first time he went to sleep the mine outside could be completely thick with the zombies that were chasing him.

First arc would be with him dealing with being torn between being safe and secure, and his world being reduced to the size of two medium-sized rooms. Second arc would be him finally emerging some months later and dealing with a situation he's now hopelessly out of touch with.

::shrugs:: It's an idea.

[zombieparanoia]

Dracenstein: I think that'll probably be the next zack snyder zombie remake plot. it'll be called "night of the living dead with a greenscreen"

I have another story idea.

How about if a very small percentage of zombies retain some intelligence and are able to control their urges to eat living people(say 1 in 100,000), one of these zombies for whatever reason retains most or all of his predeceased intelligence levels and happens to meet another zombie like him but with far less retention. So the smart zombie wants to try to fnd the others like him and find some way for the intelligent zombies to develop some kind of community of their own away from the battle between the living and undead. sort of a zombie Moses kind of thing.


Won't work.

What if a crucial Skynet employee is killed by a zombie and Skynet itself ceases to exist?

Like a software programmer or something.


I was thinking about this, and it would be easily avoided by simply having the zombie initiator sent back to a point after skynet is constructed but before the nuclear war.

[Bub666]

How about if a very small percentage of zombies retain some intelligence and are able to control their urges to eat living people(say 1 in 100,000), one of these zombies for whatever reason retains most or all of his predeceased intelligence levels and happens to meet another zombie like him but with far less retention. So the smart zombie wants to try to fnd the others like him and find some way for the intelligent zombies to develop some kind of community of their own away from the battle between the living and undead. sort of a zombie Moses kind of thing.


That sounds really cool.

[Wyldwraith]

How about if a very small percentage of zombies retain some intelligence and are able to control their urges to eat living people(say 1 in 100,000), one of these zombies for whatever reason retains most or all of his predeceased intelligence levels and happens to meet another zombie like him but with far less retention. So the smart zombie wants to try to fnd the others like him and find some way for the intelligent zombies to develop some kind of community of their own away from the battle between the living and undead. sort of a zombie Moses kind of thing.


http://www.brokentype.com/monster/000263.html

That's the link to a free e-book called Monster Island. If you read the series (there's a trilogy of books, all free to read, entertaining and right there on the site) you'll find a lot of the elements about various sorts of intelligent zombies of all types. It could be useful to get your creative ichor oozing so to speak ;)

(And NO, I am NOT plugging a site. I am in NO way affiliated with the author of those books/admin of that site, or in any other way involved with it as anything more than a web surfer who found the site/read all the books.)

BTW, check out Plague Zone on the same site. No intelligent zombies, but it has a significantly different methodology than the GAR universe, while retaining everything cool about Romero's shamblers. (Except for some points of fuzzy motivation by a few characters.)

[brer]

Or an attack on a rural school during the initial outbreak? Medium to fast moving zombies would likely work best to get a good storyline out of this one. Availability of firearms and low population densities would keep slow zombies from being more than a very unnerving experience.

Lotsa dying and zombifying kids to add to the fear factor. Community involvement to secure the school. Parental concern for their little rugrats. Authority of deputies and teachers versus common sense. Rural values vice urban values.

Lotta different angles that havent been overly played before.

[jim102016]

Or an attack on a rural school during the initial outbreak? Medium to fast moving zombies would likely work best to get a good storyline out of this one. Availability of firearms and low population densities would keep slow zombies from being more than a very unnerving experience.

Lotsa dying and zombifying kids to add to the fear factor. Community involvement to secure the school. Parental concern for their little rugrats. Authority of deputies and teachers versus common sense. Rural values vice urban values.

Lotta different angles that havent been overly played before.


Oh ****, not another plot involving teenagers or college kids. Unless we know from the get-go that it's not a serious type flick. I can't handle another GAR-style letdown.


Hasn't one been done about the doc officers? Can't recall!?

Does sound familiar, any idea when it was written? I searched earlier to no avail.

[brer]

Nah, I was thinking more along the lines of my local public school. K-12 and less than 200 students.

Some teenagers thrown in, but also a lot of young'uns and a lot of teachers. Plus one out of date deputy that wouldnt survive working anywhere else.

Plus for some reason, Ive had this really weird adolescent fantasy working for the last twenty something years about seeing one of my coaches eaten by zombies and rescuing a very hot science teacher in distress. Don't worry, I'm getting therapy for it.

[BrianBlessed]

The idea of a school under siege has been done a lot, but I think it could be done really well if the story focused on how the school develops into a mini society instead of just showing the nerdy but secretly badass kid saving the hot cheerleader. I had an idea about Nottingham University in Britain, where I study at the moment. It's in the middle of a built up city, so it'd be surrounded by zombies in no time, but it's walled off from the rest of the city, has its own shops and is even part of the city hospital. I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if the military cadets from the reserve officer training core took control and how long it would take for the place to devolve into a feudalistic society with the cadets on the walls, forcing everyone else to grow crops in the playinf fields. How does that sound?

[brer]

I backburnered the current story I'm writing to start one based on an undead attack on a school in the theme I'm talking about.

I'll try to get it in before the next fiction update.

[zombieparanoia]

I have another idea for a short story. It would be a small midwest farming community which due to the dispersion of people in farming areas has not been hit virtually at all by the zombie rising. the townspeople generally came together as the details were coming in as the "outside world" collapsed and put together a plan on how to deal effectively with townsfolk who became zombies. So life for them mostly carries on as normal through the summer but just before harvest it turns out that there is a mass zombie exodus(hundreds of thousands of zombies) making its way across the country eating everything alive in its path and their town is right in its apparent path. The town only gets a few days warning and has to come up with a plan in a hurry, some people want to flee some want to stay, knowing that pretty much the whole world is zombies now. Anyways, in my idea it ends up being where the town comes up with a plan to dig pits, take out a strategic bridge over a river that cuts off the path of the horde. The pits fill and there are so many zombies that the river gets clogged and they end being able to cross on the backs of each other like army ants. So the townspeople end up coming up with a last ditch plan to use the last of their combined fuel reserves to douse the fields between the horde and their town and burn them. Of course the problem is that they then would be out of fuel and in the middle of a massive fire as their entire town is effectively surrounded by fields full of tinder dry crops and as the size of the horde becomes apparent to them it seems the fire may not be enough and the people have to start shooting zombies and then, out of ammo, consider the possibility of having to fight a crowd of flaming zombies hand to hand all while trying to keep their town from burning down with them in it. I'd like it if in the end some people survived to try to rebuild but thats not a must.

[Bub666]

I have another idea for a short story. It would be a small midwest farming community which due to the dispersion of people in farming areas has not been hit virtually at all by the zombie rising. the townspeople generally came together as the details were coming in as the "outside world" collapsed and put together a plan on how to deal effectively with townsfolk who became zombies. So life for them mostly carries on as normal through the summer but just before harvest it turns out that there is a mass zombie exodus(hundreds of thousands of zombies) making its way across the country eating everything alive in its path and their town is right in its apparent path. The town only gets a few days warning and has to come up with a plan in a hurry, some people want to flee some want to stay, knowing that pretty much the whole world is zombies now. Anyways, in my idea it ends up being where the town comes up with a plan to dig pits, take out a strategic bridge over a river that cuts off the path of the horde. The pits fill and there are so many zombies that the river gets clogged and they end being able to cross on the backs of each other like army ants. So the townspeople end up coming up with a last ditch plan to use the last of their combined fuel reserves to douse the fields between the horde and their town and burn them. Of course the problem is that they then would be out of fuel and in the middle of a massive fire as their entire town is effectively surrounded by fields full of tinder dry crops and as the size of the horde becomes apparent to them it seems the fire may not be enough and the people have to start shooting zombies and then, out of ammo, consider the possibility of having to fight a crowd of flaming zombies hand to hand all while trying to keep their town from burning down with them in it. I'd like it if in the end some people survived to try to rebuild but thats not a must.

Thats a really good zombie story.

[zombieparanoia]

If you or anyone wants to use it give'er I am not much of a writer, not enough to produce an entire story anyways, I'd get a page or 5 in an taper off and leave it on a pile of files.

I don't think its based on a movie either. But I could be wrong.

[zombieparanoia]

How about this, a story about a group of people who find themselves trapped together in a oddly safe, well supplied location of limited size. The conversation eventually comes around to the big questions "Why? and How?" The people would each be from a specific viewpoint like say a priest, a doctor, a biologist, a banker, a government official, a blue collar worker worker, a recent third world immigrant etc. In the end I'd like it if they all killed each other because they couldn't/wouldn't agree. To me the zombie genre has always been more about the people being so f'd up than the zombies although zombies are pretty f'ing cool.

[Cartma7546]

I have another idea for a short story. It would be a small midwest farming community which due to the dispersion of people in farming areas has not been hit virtually at all by the zombie rising. the townspeople generally came together as the details were coming in as the "outside world" collapsed and put together a plan on how to deal effectively with townsfolk who became zombies. So life for them mostly carries on as normal through the summer but just before harvest it turns out that there is a mass zombie exodus(hundreds of thousands of zombies) making its way across the country eating everything alive in its path and their town is right in its apparent path. The town only gets a few days warning and has to come up with a plan in a hurry, some people want to flee some want to stay, knowing that pretty much the whole world is zombies now. Anyways, in my idea it ends up being where the town comes up with a plan to dig pits, take out a strategic bridge over a river that cuts off the path of the horde. The pits fill and there are so many zombies that the river gets clogged and they end being able to cross on the backs of each other like army ants. So the townspeople end up coming up with a last ditch plan to use the last of their combined fuel reserves to douse the fields between the horde and their town and burn them. Of course the problem is that they then would be out of fuel and in the middle of a massive fire as their entire town is effectively surrounded by fields full of tinder dry crops and as the size of the horde becomes apparent to them it seems the fire may not be enough and the people have to start shooting zombies and then, out of ammo, consider the possibility of having to fight a crowd of flaming zombies hand to hand all while trying to keep their town from burning down with them in it. I'd like it if in the end some people survived to try to rebuild but thats not a must.
Oh man that would be an awesome story. I don't know if its because i just finished the Jericho series or what but I think this sort of thing could work and be outstanding if properly written