Wow. I really liked this piece. Throughout the story you kept me engaged and wanting to read more. You have a great writing style and there are one a few changes that I can suggest.
1. I think the Infection that wipes everyone out cannot be a "Flu Virus" as you state. "Flu Virus" has obvious biological physical connotations. The Virus should be described as "Electronic" or something so that I immediately know that you don't mean a physical microbe.
2. Your story narrator is also your protagonist. He is relating his experiences. If you had just watched everyone you love die, would you sign your final note to humanity with a cheerful, "If you've found it, and took the time to read it, thank you. Please Pass it on. Maybe there's a lesson or two yet to be learned. God Bless US All."
Let me reiterate. He has just watched everyone he knows and loves die. He is going to have a lot of strong emotions. It nearly broke my heart to see the narrator fall out of character right where you could deliver a climactic finish.
3. When you talk about the "Apartment Dwellers" attacking the residential block. You turn them into something crazy. You make them sound like Vietcong coming in through the wire, dangerous fanatics who will gladly die if they can take one of you with them. The fact that they are just scared, hungry people seems to be the fact, but it turns into something else. I don't see their motivation.
Have they regressed hundreds of years? Hardly. While it is just my opinion. I think that society would be able to get along pretty fine without the internet and computers. It would be like time traveling back into the 1950s. There wasn't the kind of bloodshed you are describing back then. So I might tone down the death figures a little bit.
Good story. Keep writing. I look forward to reading more.
That was an incredibly interesting piece. The fact that it is nonfiction adds power to it and gives it the legitimacy needed to be taken as advice and not to be shrugged off...
I would change these things to maybe make the work a little better and to help get your message across more clearly. Give all of the people names, but at the beginning state that these names have been changes so that Identities cannot be traced. If you give each subject a name then it is easier for readers to form their own conception of who someone is. It is easier to imagine distinctive identity for a woman named "Sue" than to imagine a woman who is, "My coworker's friend."
It sounds like the scumbag had no business being a pastor to begin with. I would have left the church right after the first attempted rape incident. By continuing to stay you were putting yourself in jeopardy. As a white male I suppose I would have a standoffish view though.
I really hope that you find your way in life. Christ in his love will protect you. I have faith in you.
This is a very intresting bit of work. I am starting to think that it might be better classified with philosophy due to the way you go about with your points, but the classification is not nearly as important as the words themeselves. I have a few things I have seen and heard, perhaps I can offer you some food for thought-
Your description of the reaction a woman feels to flowers seems to me to be a bit too detailed to be all realistic observation. Somewhere along the line you probably filled in the blanks with what your own suppositions are. To me it sounded a bit gaudy and steriotyped. There must be a more concise way to state the reaction with less flowery language. And to end it with "they begin to want that giver for themselves" in light of the fact that you are a man, makes the steriotypical narrative a bit more unbelieveable.
Suggestion: Clean it up by making the reaction more generic and scientific than literary.
You suppose that men and women are relatively different creatures with the same need for each other. Men are "physical" and woman are "emotional". In my experience, the minute you label a female "emotional" things start to get out of hand...
Here is what knowledge and psychology have taught me:
Men have one subliminal sexual desire. They wish to spread their seed.
Women, because they get stuck raising the kid, are torn between two different attractions. Woman are attracted to the man who will stay with them and support her and the child. And women are also attracted to the strongest male, who more often than not tends to be unable or unwilling to support the female.
Because men know that females are attracted to those who are supporters, they have an urge to go in that direction, whereas their primary primal instincts tell them to be the strongest male, period, and to spread their seed as far and wide as possible.
Basic sexual philosopy, if you want to converse, I am more than willing to, as long as it remains in the realm of abstract thought.
As a regular reader of zombie novels and short stories, I might have some preconceptions about what the genre holds and what might be cliche. I hope you might bear with me and take my advice to make your story even better than it already is.
My first reaction to your main character is the sense that he is part of a cliche style. The nerd who somewhere along the line turns out to be a hero. In regards to this aspect I might suggest that you acknowledge that he is a bit cliche in your writing. Your narrative style seems to be third person restricted. So many pieces are written in this style that it is easy to find that they all stick together. I would suggest taking a few lines every once and a while to take your opportunity as a narrator to highlight the irony of morbidity of a situation.
A second reaction to your characters reaction to Becky. In many cases an audience will not care for a character who is not willing to help himself. Perhaps give this guy a little more guts, make him about to ask her out for the first time when Lizzy breaks the spell. Maybe that will make your character more likeable, and the audience can empathize more.
In regards to foreshadowing. Because of the sudden and abrupt manner in which you present the virus manifesting itself in this setting, I think some foreshadowing is needed. In all my years I have never come across a zombie fiction in which things developed so rapidly and there was no hint in the environment.
Perhaps you can have the main character notice that the neighbors dogs are not barking, or perhaps there is a puddle of blood on his front step, which is likely since his mother chased someone away. It sounds to me like the virus has already spread pretty deeply into the area, so it makes since that there would be signs of destruction.
His father, I would have prefered a noticeable wound. He seems to be just sickly and pale, but there is no bloody bitemark or scratch from an infected fingernail upon his skin that we see. Perhaps you can make him hallucinogenic or perhaps a bit more visibly shaken?
On the telephone message he gets from 911, the fact that an emergency broadcast signal is up is another indication that the infection is in it's further stages. Generally police and firefighters are the first to go because they go toward what they think is normal danger without prior knowledge. The dispatchers are generally safe until the infection has reached its later stages. This all conflicts with the idea that the infection is in it's early stages.
My suggestion, perhaps the phone rings, but nobody picks up because the lines are all off and the dispatcher just cannot pick them up fast enough. Maybe she does pick up and urges him to get the hell out quickly. Maybe she admits that she cannot get any of her units to pick up their radios...
The mother stinks of rotting flesh you say, but if she was just fine when he left this morning, she wouldn't already be in such a stage of deterioration, unless your imagined virus causes some sort of rapid necrosis.
And my final bit of advice, on the slaying of the infected parents. Your main character shows almost no emotional reaction to the fact that his mother has appeared to him in a condition that in other cases is enough to make lumberjacks crap themselves. Yes, we might be able to guess what he is feeling, but you could do a better jobs and explain to us through things that he might scream, or perhaps through trembling movements.
When his friend slays his mother, your main character's only reaction is a simple question. I think you might be able to expand his thoughts and emotions at this tremendous moment by telling us just what the heck is going through is mind. Maybe he is speaking things outloud without knowing it. Those who are heavily traumatized can do some pretty crazy things. On the weapon that his friend uses- I think you mean to describe it as a "crusifix", that large staff in church with the brass ornamental cross sticking out of the top? Perhaps when it hits her head, it simply sinks into her brain instead of making it sound like her head exploded. It seems like if she is a fresh zombie, it might take a few strokes to penetrate her skull as well.
Just my thoughts. I love a good zombie story, and hope you will send me when the next chapter comes out.
A wonderfully developed arguement with logical bases and as far as I can tell, a flawless conclusion. My only request would be if you might put a brief paragraph at the end summarizing all of your conclusions into precise, bullet point, easily digested, truths. I would have to recommend this to anyone who has ever faced and atheist friend who has asked them this question. I might just have to print it up and store it in my files just to whip out when that fateful day comes...
The only other suggestion I have is that you might "define" existance in both of the ways it might be used. To the Naturalist only those things that have physical presence and thereby atomic structure exist. To the Supurnaturalist... well you already understand my arguement better than I do probably.
Nice pacing, I could envision it as perhaps a ballad if it were extended. You might have capitalized the starts of each line, but that is all that I can nitpick for you. The only question now is... whether or not this little work of poem is based from faces of your mind, or the past.
Not something that I personally can connect with, but good nonetheless. Thoughtful for certain.
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