Stronger, Faster, Deader

This was a story submitted for a flash fiction anthology, it was not selected, but I like it anyways, and perhaps will lengthen it and make a story out of it as this has never been breached in Zombie type movies before.

The baby let out a howling cry much to the relief of those surrounding the table.  The mother had been practically cut in half to get at the baby.  With no doctor handy, they did their best. 

            Cutting the umbilical cord was the first thing Mark did.  He wanted no connection between mother and baby.  The baby boy was pale, and had stopped crying, looking around the room.

***

            Mark was walking in the woods with Rachel.  They were survivors of the viral outbreak.  They still weren’t sure what it was, just that it was bad.  Some sort of vitamin cure all gone wrong.  Certain people who took it lost their minds.

            Science for a better tomorrow, trying to make people smarter.  Instead, this pill made some people into raving cannibalistic monsters.  They lost all sense of self and gave in to their primal instincts.  They were driven by their Id, stripped of all inhibitions. 

            At first it was a small portion of the people that were infected.  There was no need to worry.  a week later, someone was bit and the mass infection began.  The CDC, police, and military tried to quell the chaos, but failed.

            Thousands were infected; there was nothing to be done.  The military was taken out when the subjects they chose to study got loose and infected the brightest minds in the world, thus making them useless.  Those that were killed rotted in rivers, lake, and oceans.  Water supplies infected millions.

            In other countries the same thing was happening.  In a world where people believed popping a pill would make them smarter, skinnier, happier, or sexier the Ultra-Vitamin flew off the shelves.

            A year later pockets of survivors were spread out across the world.  They had learned the hard way to boil water, and eat pre-packaged food. They lived in small communities far from civilization.

            Mark looked over at Rachel and her protruding belly.  They had met and fallen in love immediately.  Rachel got pregnant and they were as happy as they were scared for the blessing.  Mark was always worrying.  Rachel on the other hand had an unusually optimistic way of looking at things.

            Mark, if I get infected, get the baby, then kill me…because it won’t be me anymore.

            “This is the spot.”

            Mark looked around and felt safe enough.  They had planned a picnic.  Far enough away for privacy, but close enough to be heard in an emergency.

            Just as they were sitting down, one of the infected came out of the tree line.  It was on Rachel in seconds.  Mark pulled it off of her and shot it, but he was too late.  Rachel was bitten.

            “Mark, you know the plan…do it.”

            Mark picked up Rachel and went back to camp.

***

            As Mark held his son he felt nibbling on his finger.

            “Oh he’s probably just hungry…I’ll warm up some milk”.

            Mark looked into eyes a bit too intelligent and began to worry.

Starting up again...

When I first got the idea to write a blog it was under the notion that I would focus on my writing.  My goal was to blog until I got published in some sort of legitimate magazine, anthology, or my own book.

In order to do that though I had to mainly focus on my writing which left little time for this blog, and therefore it went to the back of my mind.

Well now things are different.  In a few months I have been accepted into four different anthologies, and a calendar for 2012.

So now my blog will have some new things that I will focus on.

1.      1. Continue to submit to anthologies and take the good with the bad.  Ill share both acceptance and as hard as it will be to do rejections with whoever reads this.

2.      2.  I will also continue to work on my own books.  I have two that are close to having rough drafts completed.

3.      3.  When I can I will write or put up short stories/flash fiction for people to read and or critique, although compliments are always welcome too.

I hope that whoever reads this enjoys it, and perhaps can take away a few lessons from it.  If you dream of writing, try it because you never know what can happen.  I wanted to write but never actively pursued it, when I did I started to get acceptances so give yourself a chance…WRITE

Hello Readers

As the title of this post indicates, this is my first post.  That would mean that I have to make this somewhat interesting or at least give some background on me that would make the random passer by stick around and read this.

What makes my point of view interesting, at least to me is that I’m writing from what I like to call an anxiety ridden mind. For years I have had panic disorder.  This has left me with me a unique perspective of the most mundane of situations.  I need to also point out here that after being anxious for almost half of my life I am irrational in the most logical of ways.  That will make sense to you, the reader, at a later time.

In essence after 14 years of living with constant anxiety there is not an escape plan I have not thought of.  Zombies on the space station, I got you covered.  Tsunami hits the coast, again I got a plan.  There is not a worst case scenario I have not come up with from a trip to the grocery store, or something more serious such as the mall or family reunions.

There is not a situation in which I have not imagined myself going insane, dancing around like a lunatic, and of course confessing all my secrets.  Most days that I venture out I have to convince myself that if I do go insane, if this is the day that the line at the ATM causes my mind to crack then at least people will leave me alone.

Instead of looking at this disorder as a curse (which it is), I have chosen to try and turn it into something positive.  Of course the positive is going to be stories in which I write about what an idiot I look like, and how I can interpret simple things as the most dangerous things.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.