I mentioned a couple of days ago a dream I had that I may turn into a short story. Over the last couple of days I have worked on the idea a little and it’s starting to flesh out a little (pardon the pun… the pun will become apparent). In the dream, I was on a zombie run with two friends… which unexpectedly ended up having real zombies. The dream – as most are – just was just damned weird. This story is going to be a little more conventional. Here’s a short snippet.
They pushed their way through the scrub but stopped suddenly when Mike shouted. Just beyond the brush in the middle of a clearing was an apparent dead body of a runner, a hole where the stomach used to be and a zombie kneeling over it apparently thrusting lumps of flesh into its mouth. The corpse had the sensor tags attached and the timer chip – which had a gnaw bite – lay next to the foot.
‘That’s bloody clever,’ said Tony, ‘it’s amazing what they can do with prosthetics these days. What do you think he’s really eating?’
‘He’s probably not eating it,’ Mike replied.
‘I’m seriously impressed. Look at him – he’s going at it like a Uruguayan footballer,’ said Tony.
‘So what are we going to do to get up there?’ Mike scratched his head.
‘Climb over him.’
Mike spread his arms wide. ‘We can’t. All he’ll need to do is reach out and grab our ankle sensors as we pass and we’ve lost some time – all three of us.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ asked Jim.
‘Oi mate,’ Tony snapped at the zombie, ‘come on out the way so we can get our paint and you can carry on eating… whatever it is. I mean, what are you eating?’ he stepped closer.
The zombie looked up, snarled and returned to feeding.
‘He clearly loves his job!’ exclaimed Jim. ‘Do you think he does this because he was turned down by the Royal Shakespeare Company?’ Jim leaned forward. ‘Don’t worry mate, you’re earning your money’s worth today!’
‘I think you’re taking this a bit too seriously, mate. Look, we’ll help you drag that… corpse over there so we can go and get our dye,’ said Tony.
The zombie stopped and slowly, turned his head to face the three men.
‘Come on out the way,’ Tony repeated, ‘so we can get to the Dye Station.’
The zombie reached out his arms and staggered forward.
‘Bloody hell mate, yeah we’re scared… you make a really fucking scary zombie now come out the way.’
The zombie lunged forward, making a grab for Tony’s shoulder. Instinctively, Tony leapt backwards and the zombie missed. ‘Take it easy mate, we know you have a job to do.’
The zombie growled and lunged.
At first I envisioned a movie set, you know, one of those kind of hokie movies that the actors, who are playing actors, don’t know that some real shit is about to go down, but then I wondered if maybe it wasn’t some sort of elaborate game. Like laser tag or something, but more real. Not yet sure exactly what you have going here, but I was easily able to form a world around the characters’ situation, and dialogue. Nice work.
Hi Nathan, thanks for your comment. Your second guess is closer to how I see it… though I haven’t fully fleshed out my idea.
Two of the biggest novelty running events over here are Zombie Evacuation – a 5k run / obstacle course where people dressed up as zombies will chase you and ambush you around the course. The other is Colour Me Rad. It too is a 5K run but people really go to get covered in paint! I see a mix of the two, a kind of Spartan Race with zombies.
The reference to dye stations, I should have explained that in this race, there are eight places where they collect a sample of liquid. For each different colour they collect, time is knocked off of their official race time. For each “life” they lose (each time they get touched by a zombie) time is added to their race time.
I will post more as the story fleshes out.
Thanks again!
Cool. We definitely don’t have anything like that here in good old North America. 😦
That’s an interesting story idea. I like ‘I’m seriously impressed. Look at him – he’s going at it like a Uruguayan footballer,’ said Tony. haha!
Thanks! I really want to go for the dark humour in this one