Colin M. Drysdale's Blog, page 25

What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse: No. 9 – The Group Survival Dilemma

You’ve joined up with some other survivors. You only met them yesterday and you haven’t had time to know them properly yet. The group has set up a camp in a forest clearing and you’ve pitched your tent slightly away from the rest of them to give you a bit of privacy. You get up in early the next morning and find not only has the lookout fallen asleep but there’s a horde of zombies surging towards the camp. By some miracle, they don’t seem to have noticed you and are, instead, heading for the rest of the tents where everyone else is sleeping. If you sneak quietly away, you’ll survive but the others will be taken by surprise and they’ll be slaughtered by the swarm of undead that’s about to descend on them. If you shout a warning, you’ll alert the zombies to your presence making your successful escape much less likely but it will give the others a chance of getting away as well. What do you do?

Take Our Poll

 

As always, this dilemma is just here to make you think, so there’s no right or wrong answer. Vote in the poll to let others know what you do if you were in this situation, and if you want to give a more detailed answer, leave a comment on this posting.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

The Custom Of The Sea – A Short Diary From A Zombie Apocalypse

A PDF of this short story can be downloaded from here.

16th May: This is the 20th day since the dead came back to life. Well, not really life but a pale imitation of it which comes with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. I don’t know why I’ve decided to start keeping a diary now, but I have; I think it’s to do with Martin’s death. He died this morning; probably from starvation. We’re all pretty close but he was the first to go and now there’s only seven of us. I always hated this place, yet now it looks like I’ll spend what little is left of my miserable life here with the colleagues I despise so much. Martin was the only one I liked; now he’s gone I feel lonely and abandoned. I knew we should have run right at the beginning when we still had the chance but the others persuaded me it would be better to pull down the shutters, lock ourselves in and wait for the authorities to deal with the dead that were wandering the streets and attacking the living. Within a day it was clear there were too many of them for the army or anyone else to deal with but by then we were trapped, just the eight of us in the warehouse. We’d be okay if the company we worked for sold food but it didn’t; it sold stationary. We’ve tried going outside to search for supplies but the dead are everywhere and they always chase us back in before we got more than a few feet. We’ve seen from the upper windows what happens when the dead catch the living; it’s not pretty, and none of us want to go that way, but still we need to find something to eat or, like Martin, we’ll starve to death, and there’s nothing to eat in here.

17th May: I woke this morning to find the others discussing what to do with Martin’s body. We kept away from it at first, frightened he might come back but he didn’t, he just lay there: eyes sunken, cheeks hollow, his arms as thin as sticks. Steve was talking about starting a fire and initially I thought he was suggesting we cremate Martin. Then I realised Steve was talking about cooking and eating him. The very thought of doing that makes my stomach churn with disgust and I can’t believe he’d even suggested doing something so awful. Surely he can’t be serious.

18th May: For the first time since it happened I have a full belly but it makes me feel sick to think of what I’ve done. Steve was the one who did it; who cut Martin up into thin slices with a box cutter and cooked him on a fire he made from the reams of A4 paper that surrounded us. At first, I didn’t want to eat but the smell of the cooking meat was too tantalising; it smelled just like bacon and my body couldn’t resist. It wasn’t like we killed him and I’m sure Martin would have wanted us to do all we could to survive.

25th May: We ate the last of Martin four days ago and we’re starting to get hungry again. Steve keeps going on about something he calls ‘The Custom Of The Sea’. He says it’s an unspoken rule for people who find themselves trapped like us. He says it’s better for one of us to die so that the others can live long enough to be rescued than for all of us to die. I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about but I don’t like the sound of it.

26th May: Steve has finally made it clear what ‘The Custom Of The Sea’ is. He wants us to draw lots. Whoever picks the short straw would then kill themselves so that the rest of us could eat. Thankfully no one seems keen on the idea.

28th May: We drew lots today and it was Jimmy who lost. He looked dumbfounded at first then he started shouting that he wasn’t going to do it. Steve said that was okay, that it had to be voluntary but that we’d all agreed to the rules before we’d drawn lots and that he had a moral obligation to honour his word. Jimmy just refused.

29th May: I woke this morning to find Jimmy was dead. Steve told me he’d seen reason and had slit his throat in the bathroom but something seems wrong there. Jimmy was so against the idea last night and I can’t see what would have changed his mind. I was going to say something but before I could, the smell of cooking flesh started to swirl around me. It made my mouth water and all I could think about was how great it would taste in my mouth. When it was ready, I ate as greedily as the rest of them but afterwards, when I had time to think about what I’d just done, I almost threw up. Somehow I managed to keep it down though. Later I went upstairs and looked out of the window. The dead are everywhere: stumbling and shuffling around. I think they must know we’re in here because they’re crowding tightly around the shuttered doors now, trying to force their way in. I was hoping I could see a way out but I can’t; there’s just too many of them. I went into the office where I used to worked; the one administrator overseeing those on the warehouse floor. The phone lines are still down and with no power I can’t turn on the TV. I did find an old battery-powered radio but all I could find on it was static. It’s like we’re the only people left in the world. In a sudden and all-consuming fit of frustration and rage at what I’d been reduced to, I picked up my chair and smashed it repeatedly against the wall; it didn’t do anything to change our situation but as I surveyed the broken pieces of wood scattered across the floor, I felt better for it.

3rd June: Steve’s talking about drawing lots again but this time he says we have to draw twice; once to see who we’ll eat and once to see who’ll kill them. He says this is so that the person can’t back out like Jimmy did. This confuses me because I thought Jimmy killed himself; then I realise he didn’t and that Steve must have done it in the night. At first I can’t believe Steve would do that but then I think about it and realise it’s exactly the type of thing he’d do. I’ve always had him pegged as a bit of a psychopath, what with the way he’s always manipulating and bullying people to get his own way.

28th June: There’s just the two of us left now: me and Steve. Tomorrow we’ll draw lots to see who kills whom. I know he’s been fixing the draws, using them to control everyone else and to make sure he not only stays alive but isn’t the one who has to kill anyone. After all no one gets that lucky. I know I haven’t been; so far I’ve been forced to kill twice. What I don’t understand is why Steve has kept me alive so long. Maybe he doesn’t see me as a threat because it’s clear that since Jimmy, he’s been picking off those most likely to stand up to him. He hides it well, but I swear he’s enjoying what he’s been making us do.

5th July: I’ve just finished the last scrap of Steve, and now, if I want to eat again, my only choice is to go outside and face the dead. I didn’t wait until the morning to draw lots because I knew Steve was going to rig it; nor did I sleep the night before we were due to do it because I didn’t trust him. Instead, I sat up, keeping watch and making sure he didn’t catch me unawares. It was about four in the morning when I realised I couldn’t do this forever and that I needed to act before he did. That was when I picked up broken chair leg I’d brought down from my office earlier in the day and smashed Steve’s head in as he slept. Now I’ve eaten him, I’m all alone and I realise I’m no better than the dead that are crowding the doors outside. In fact, I may be worse; they do it because they don’t know any better while I knew exactly what I was doing. I keep telling myself I only did what I had to do to survive but still there’s a part of me that knows it would have been better to die.

8th July: I’m going outside now …

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The title of this post refers back to a previous posting on this blog which considered whether humans, when trapped somewhere with no food and faced with the choice of going outside to face zombies or staying safe and starving to death, may well resort to cannibalism. You can read the original article here.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Life On The Ocean Waves…

Much of my writing is influenced by the sea. Lighthouses turn up regularly in my short stores (such as When Death Came To Flannan Isle and The Lighthouse At The End Of The Road) while sailing and life on the ocean waves are very much at the heart of both my debut novel (For Those In Peril On The Sea) and the sequel which I’m currently working (or at least that I should be working on but at the moment I keep getting distracted by other things – such as writing this blog and indeed the Maths With Zombies one I’ve just started). Here, I’d like to give you some idea of why the sea and sailing are so important to me, and it goes deeper than the simple fact that I’m a marine biologist.

Sailing is something I loved from the moment I first did it. Not sailing on a dingy but proper ‘big boat’ sailing. My first time was on a 72 foot ketch called Taikoo owned and run by the Ocean Youth Club (or Ocean Youth Trust as it’s now known), a charity which aims to introduce sailing to young people. I’d grown up pottering around on the ocean’s edge but at 16 it was the first time I’d taken to the sea on something other than on a ferry, which hardly counts. Soon I found myself in thirty foot seas at the heart of a near-hurricane force storm. It was hard, physical work and pretty much everyone was sea-sick to a greater or lesser extent as we cowered in the cockpit, clipped onto the safety lines and clinging to each other to stop ourselves being thrown all over the place. At one point we ended up almost ship-wrecked when the engine gave out at a critical moment. Through all of this I discovered something: I loved every bit of it.

The only trouble with falling in love with sailing was that it wasn’t something I really had many opportunities to do. This meant it was a while before I got to do it again. When I was doing my undergraduate degree, I went to do an internship in Newfoundland and within hours of stepping off the plane in St. John’s, I found myself, quite unexpectedly, on a yacht bound for Labrador in search of humpback whales. I spent a month dodging icebergs, fighting storms, photographing whales and drinking moonshine offered to us by the locals (after all it would have been rude to refuse their hospitality!). I also learned a huge amount about life at sea from the Captain, an ex-Maine fisherman turned professional yacht skipper (I’ll confess here that there’s more than a little of him in the character Bill in my book For Those In Peril On The Sea).

My next sailing experience was around Scotland on a beautiful gaff-rigged ketch, again looking for whales and dolphins (it was all part of my training as a marine biologist). I sailed on her a couple of times, enjoying the amazing scenery and the changeable weather. That was how I ended up visiting the remote and beguiling island of Mingulay. It’s now uninhabited and is somewhere you can only get to with your own boat but with it’s white sandy beaches and crystal clear waters, it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’m going to be drawing on these memories a lot as I continue my work on the sequel to For Those In Peril On The Sea as it’s set amongst the islands of western Scotland.

From there I moved onto the Bahamas. I didn’t get to do a huge amount of sailing there, but I spent a lot of time on the water and got to know almost every inch of the beaches, bays and islands around the Sea of Abaco. Again, I was there because of work yet I also had plenty of free time to just head off and explore. It was there that I bought the first and only sailboat I’ve ever owned, an old North Star 1500 called Gone-with-the-Wind. I loved that boat more than almost anything else in the world and spent ages doing her up (she wasn’t in good shape after she’d got damaged in Hurricane Floyd). She also holds a special place in my heart because it was while I was living on her that I met Sarah, the love of my life. I sold her a few years later, the boat that is not Sarah, and it broke my heart but that was how I learned that owning your own yacht can be an extremely expensive business!

Since then while I’ve spent time more time at sea, it’s been on motorboats and ships rather than sailboats and I have to say I miss it. I long to get back to it, to feel the deck heeling under me again as the sheets strain and the sails fill. I think this was one of the reasons I enjoyed writing For Those In Peril On The Sea so much. It gave me the chance to re-live my memories of times I’d spent under sail and places I’ve visited. While the infected aren’t real and nor are any of the characters, much of the sailing and all of the places are based on my own experiences. The same is true for the sequel I’m currently working on, although it’s focussed closer to home than the Bahamas, it will again be fun to revisit the memories of my younger days.

As I have grown older, my career has taken me away from the sea and more behind a computer (both in terms of my academic life and my more recent ventures into writing fiction – well rather the sharing my fiction with the rest of the world). I will, however, take to the water under sail again, of that I’m certain. It’s simply a matter of time and circumstance and, if I’m ever to own my own boat again, a not insubstantial lottery win! Until then, I’ll have to just settle for writing, whenever I can, about life on the ocean waves.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

For Those In Peril On The Sea – Paperback Currently 1/3rd Off At Amazon.com

I’ve just noticed that the paperback version of my debut novel, For Those In Peril On the Sea, is currently available from Amazon.com for US$9.98. This is 1/3rd off the usual cover price of US$14.99. This discount is being offered by Amazon so I’m not too sure how long it will last but it’s a good opportunity to pick up a bargain. And the best thing is since Amazon are the ones offering the discount, I still get the same amount for every book sold!

For Those In Peril On The Sea.

Primarily set in the northern Bahamas, For Those In Peril On the Sea weaves its tale of post-apocalyptic survival into the local sub-tropical seascape and the sailing culture that can be found there. With its evocative use of real locations haunted by zombie-like infected and atmospheric depictions of the trials of life at sea drawn from the author’s own experiences, this debut novel from Colin M. Drysdale provides a new and unusual take on the traditional post-apocalyptic and zombie genres.

What The Official Reviewers Say:

‘… For Those in Peril on the Sea is not a mere imitator of currently popular zombie books and films. Drysdale’s novel proves different and superior in concept as well as content. The infected are unusual in ways that make them seem terrifyingly real, and the idea of the survivors being trapped offshore is an imaginative and effective twist. While some scenes in the book can be graphic and brutal, Drysdale never allows them to become gratuitous, and each disturbing moment serves a purpose in the plot. The tone of barely suppressed terror is emphasized by the author’s willingness to write as ruthlessly as his story demands: readers will quickly learn that even those who seem most deserving of survival can quite easily fall victim to the infected. …’ ‘Five Stars (out of five).’ – Foreword Clarion Reviews (click here to read the whole review).

What Readers Say:

‘As a long term fan of post apocalyptic fiction (The Stand, The Passage, World War Z etc.) I’m always keen to try out a new author. However, I must confess to a growing weariness with zombie fiction as it so often involves the same old stereotypes and locations – it’s been done to death – no pun intended. So I was pleasantly surprised that “For Those in Peril” served up some genuinely fresh ideas. So often tales of the zombie apocalypse centre around a group of survivors trapped in some urban location trying to escape to some safe haven, quite often the ocean, and when they finally get their hands on a boat they either suffer some cruel last minute attack or sail off into the sunset. But what happens next? Well that’s where this book comes in, exploring the consequences of life after the apocalypse. …’ Four Stars out of Five. Click here to read the whole review.

‘This is a quick read and fun for those into the zombie genre … I found I couldn’t put the book down and whizzed through it, while sitting on a sunny deck with a drink in my other hand. The author has obviously thought a lot about the practicalities of being stuck on a boat during a zombie infestation. …’ Five Stars out of Five. Click here to read the whole review.

Preview The Book:

Extracts from the first three chapters can be downloaded as a PDF from the book’s website (www.forthoseinperil.net) by clicking here.

From the back of the book:

After a six week voyage across the Atlantic, they couldn’t wait to get to shore. When they got there, they found the land would never be safe again…

There was nothing to suggest it would be anything other than a routine delivery. Four people thrown together by chance, sailing a newly-built catamaran from South Africa to Miami. But while they were away, something happened, something none of them could ever have imagined. When they get back to civilisation, they find it no longer exists. The land is no longer safe. Their only option is to stay on the boat and try to survive.

Join Bill, Rob, Jon and CJ as they travel around their frightening new world. One where they must struggle against the infected that now rule the land, the elements and each other.

 About The Author:

As a marine biologist, Colin M. Drysdale has spent plenty of time at sea with no land in sight but he is always glad when he finally gets back to shore. This novel is inspired by a thought that often plagues him during his voyages. What would he do if something happened while he was away and he could never go back?

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse: No. 8 – The Crying Baby Dilemma

You’re in a group of eight people including your husband and your two older children, a boy aged twelve and a girl aged ten. There’s zombies nearby and you’re trying to keep as quite as possible so they don’t know you’re there as you creep away. Then your youngest child, a nine-month-old baby, starts to whimper. It’s quiet now but you know it’s a prelude to crying that’s only going to get louder and louder until it attracts the attention of the zombies. You have two other children to think about and the rest of the group but no matter what you do the child won’t stop crying. What do you do?*

Take Our Poll

As always, this dilemma is just here to make you think, so there’s no right or wrong answer. Vote in the poll to let others know what you do if you were in this situation, and if you want to give a more detailed answer, leave a comment on this posting.

*This dilemma originates in an episode of M*A*S*H, or at least that’s where I first remember coming across it (I could be wrong on this front so don’t quote me on that!).

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Survival Skills – A Flash Fiction Zombie Story

Something’s wrong. I can’t put my finger on what yet but I’ve always been able to sense when things are amiss. It’s what’s kept me alive since the dead unexpectedly and inexplicably rose from their graves. Some saw this as a sign of the Second Coming and ran forward, arms open in greeting; no sooner had this welcoming committee reached the no-longer-quite-so-deceased than they were devoured. The dead might be dead but it hadn’t dented their hunger and it seemed that, above all, they craved human flesh. Maybe they just wanted what they no longer had – blood coursing through veins, a still-beating heart, a brain sizzling with electricity.

Once the true believers had been consumed, the dead turned their attention to the rest of us: chasing us down, pursuing us like prey. They might stagger and stumble but they’re relentless; grinding down your resistance day after day after day. When it started, the army were sent in to stop them but soldiers are trained to kill and they didn’t know quite what to do when faced with an enemy that was dead already. This is not to say they didn’t try, they did; it’s just they didn’t do much good. After that, it was every man for himself or, in my case, every woman.

Suddenly I realise what’s wrong: the birds have stopped singing and the forest around me has fallen silent. That, I’ve learned, is a sure sign the dead are approaching. I freeze, listening, trying to work out where they are and how I can escape one more time. I don’t really know what I’m doing but I must be doing something right; after all, I may well be the only one still breathing in this world where the dead now stalk the living.

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Flash (or micro) fiction aims to tell a whole story within a specific short word limit. For this one, the target was 300 words and it comes in at 296. A PDF of this story can be downloaded from here. Other flash fiction and short stories which I’ve written can be found here.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

The Seven Phases Of A Zombie Apocalypse

When we think of a zombie apocalypse, we generally consider it to be a single event, yet if you examine it more closely you’ll see it can be divided into a number of distinct phases. Within each phase the responses of both the authorities and of the people around you will differ, and so will your best strategy for survival. This means it’s important that you understand these phases and are able to tell the difference between them. This will give you your best chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse if you are unlucky enough to find yourself caught up in one. So what are these phases?

Phase One – Mutation: Here I’m assuming that a zombie apocalypse is most likely to be caused by a previously unknown disease that either causes living people to become zombie-like infected (my preferred scenario) or kills people but takes over their bodies, causing the dead to walk again. In such a scenario, the first phase of the apocalypse will be the mutation that changes the disease from whatever it previously was (whether that’s an existing human disease, such as rabies, or a disease that currently only affects animals) into something that causes people to turn into zombies. No one will know when this phase begins (unless someone does it on purpose using genetic engineering in a research lab!) and it’s likely that you, the authorities and everyone else on the planet will remain completely oblivious that a zombie apocalypse has begun. This means there’s little you can do in this phase to increase your chances of survival. All you can do is hope it hasn’t happened yet!

Phase Two – Patient Zero: Patient zero is the first person who contracts the disease. How they contract it may never be clear and it’s quite likely that this will go unnoticed by pretty much everyone except those closest to this person when they fall ill and then turn. They may report what happens to the authorities only to be rebuffed or ignored. If only they were more receptive to reports on unusual events any burgeoning zombie apocalypse could be stopped in it’s tracks in phase two. Yet, this is unlikely to happen. This is because the policies and practices of those in charge are based on past experiences and are not designed to deal with something completely different from any challenge they’ve ever faced before. It’s also unlikely that the general public will become aware that a zombie apocalypse has started during phase two unless they are amongst the unfortunate few to be directly associated with patient zero. However, if you keep your ear to the ground and carefully sift through all the gossip and rumours that are forever circulating you might just get lucky and pick up on it. If you do, this will give you your best chance of surviving. Grab your gear and put your zombie apocalypse survival plan into action. You’ll be way ahead of everyone else so the roads will be clear and there will be nothing to get in your way so your plan will run smoothly. You do have a zombie apocalypse survival plan, don’t you?

Phase Three – Outbreak: This phase begins once patient zero starts infecting others and they, in turn, infect still more. It’s only once the authorities get multiple more or less independent reports of the same thing happening that they’ll finally realise something unusual is going on. They’ll most likely send in police and medical personnel to try to get to the bottom of what’s happening but these poor people will be unprepared for what they are being sent to face. This means many of these first responders will either get killed or become infected, greatly reducing the authorities ability to get the disease under control. However, the infection will still remain localised around wherever patient zero was when they first turned. At this stage it’s likely that reports will start appearing on local news channels and internet sites but they’ll be confused and poorly informed. This means that while people will start talking about it, most will remain unconcerned and few will respond unless they are directly affected by it. If you realise what’s going on at this phase, you still have time for a well-planned evacuation. A few other people may also have twigged that something is happening and the roads might be slightly busier than usual but you should still find escape relatively easy.

Phase Four – Containment: Once the authorities realise exactly what they’re up against, containment will almost certainly be their primary response. They will attempt to seal off the affected area using police and military personnel. The aim of containment will be to stop anyone getting in and, more importantly, out. The presence of gun-totting soldiers on the streets means people will start to panic, especially if they don’t really understand what’s going on. There’s a possibility that the soldiers won’t understand either and they may have trouble telling those infected with the disease from the uninfected who are just trying to get out and some will respond with what is euphemistically known as excessive force. This makes being in the containment zone incredibly dangerous as you have to face not just the ever-growing number of zombies but also a panicked populous and a military that’s unsure of exactly who their enemy is (as history has repeatedly shown us this is never a good situation). If you find yourself within the containment zone, you must get out by any means possible. This is not only because it’s dangerous but also because as soon as the military realise they cannot simply keep it sealed off and treat those who are infected, they are very likely to resort to trying to put a stop to the outbreak by destroying every living thing within the containment zone. They’ll do this with whatever types of ordinance they have available (think bunker-busters, fuel-air bombs and possibly even nukes if the containment zone is a sufficiently large area). Even if you’re outside the containment zone, you should try to get as far away as you can. This is because containment will almost certainly fail and it’s likely that the zone will be expanded repeatedly as the disease escapes and spreads and whatever happens you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of any defensive line.

Phase Five – Uncontrolled Spread: The shift from containment to uncontrolled spread will be marked by outbreaks in multiple locations and the abject failure of all attempts to keep the disease in check. During this phase, the authorities are likely to start losing control both of the population at large and of the military. The disease will have reached a tipping point from which there will be very little chance of the world recovering. Being out on the streets in this phase will be incredibly dangerous as there will be ever-increasing numbers of zombies roaming the streets looking for human flesh to feast on. The time for implementing any pre-prepared plans will be long gone and if you haven’t already made it out to your preferred safe house your best option will be to find the nearest place you can safely hole up and barricade yourself in. In this phase, you will owe your survival more to luck that planning and there will be little you can do about it.

Phase Six – The Fall Of Humanity: The only way the uncontrolled spread phase can end is with the fall of humanity. This is marked by the point at which almost everyone has been turned into zombies. There will be a few pockets of survivors here and there, all struggling to stay safe and remain uninfected. If you didn’t implement a apocalypse-preparedness plan before the zombie apocalypse entered phase five, the chances are you won’t be amongst them. For those few humans that remain, life will be extremely hard and they’ll be able to concentrate on little more than keeping themselves, and those around them, alive.

Phase Seven – Reconstruction: Reconstruction is the least certain phase of a zombie apocalypse and it may never be reached. If all remaining humans are killed or infected, or if the zombies themselves don’t start to die off, the reconstruction phase simply will not happen. This is because it can only begin once the threats from zombies and infection have receded to a point where people can start thinking about things beyond their day-to-day survival. It’s also very uncertain exactly what will happen during this phase. It may be that those who remain alive will happily work together to rebuild a fully-functional and equitable society. However, there’s also the real possibility that a few would-be megalomaniacs will make a grab for power. If they can get themselves established, there will be little that can be done to bring them down. Therefore, if you see this starting to happen, you need to do everything within your power to stop them (unless of course that’s you – in which case good luck with your plans for world domination!). There’s also the possibility that the disease will break out again, sending the world back towards earlier phases of the apocalypse, particularly phases two or five. This may happen again and again, gradually whittling away at the remnants of humanity until the world is permanently trapped in phase six. Either way, if a zombie apocalypse happens and you somehow survive long enough, entering phase seven is unlikely to be the end of your struggle for survival.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Cargo – A Short Zombie Film Everyone Should Watch

This is a brilliant little short zombie film that is a finalist in the Tropfest Australia Short Film Festival. One of the requirements for Tropfest is that each film must include a specific Tropfest Signature Item (TSI); this time round it was a balloon.

Cargo’s only seven minutes long but it’s truly amazing and the themes it explores are thought-provoking to say the least.

You can watch it on You Tube on in the window below.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse: No. 7 – The Bite Dilemma

You examine your hand carefully. The bite doesn’t seem to have broken the skin but you can’t be sure. If it has, you’ll have been infected. If it hasn’t you’ll be okay. No one else saw what happened but if you tell the rest of the group they’ll throw you out no matter what just to be on the safe side. If they do, the zombies will get and you’ll die for sure. If you don’t say anything and you’ve been infected, they’ll have no warning when you turn and attack them, and many of them will probably die. What do you do?

Take Our Poll

As always, this dilemma is just here to make you think, so there’s no right or wrong answer. Vote in the poll to let others know what you do if you were in this situation, and if you want to give a more detailed answer, leave a comment on this posting.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

The Lighthouse At End Of The Road – A Short Zombie Story

A PDF of this story can be downloaded from here.

The dog’s ears prick up and he growls quietly but whatever it is that’s caught his attention it’s not enough to make him sit up. Instead, he remains lying on his side in front of the glowing embers in the fireplace. I reach over and scratch him behind his left ear as he falls silent again. A second later he’s on his feet, facing the door, hackles raised, a deep rumble coming from his throat. Now I know he’s sensing something out there in the darkness, I hope it’s only a fox and not one of them. This is my third hideout in four weeks, each more remote than the last; if we have to leave I don’t know where we’d go from here. Surrounded by sea on three sides, the lighthouse is about as far from civilisation as I can get. Right up on the northwest tip of Scotland, it’s miles from anywhere and any human habitation. There isn’t even a road here, just a track that starts at a small pier on a narrow inlet and ends at the lighthouse itself. We’d had to leave the car on the other side of the water, walk round the end and then onwards up the last ten miles; I can’t see how any of them could have made it here, not yet anyway. The dog steps backwards one leg at a time and growls again, ears up, lips curled back, head down sniffing at the wind whistling under the door, trying to get a scent of whatever it is he hears out there. This is what he was like just before the last place was over-run.

There’d been five of us there but only me and the dog made it out alive, and that was only because his superior senses gave me just enough advanced warning before they attacked. I’d learned from the first safe house that to stay and fight was a sure way to end up dead so I’d started scrambling for the back door the moment I realised why he was acting strangely. Before I could warn the others the first of them came crashing through the door. Jen and Mike had been killed before they made it out of their sleeping bags; Jack got as far as the kitchen and Sam was just behind me when they grabbed him. That extra second, that extra foot the dog’s warning had given me was what made the difference between escape and death. Even though I’d only known them for a week I’d liked those guys and it was devastating to know they were now gone. As I’d driven away I’d sworn to myself I wasn’t going to get attached to anyone else again; from then on it was always going to be just me and the dog.

The dog barks. I’ve tried to get him to stop doing that ever since I found him wandering along an otherwise empty road but it seems it’s just part of his nature. This was before I met up with Mike and his friends. I’d been on my own for three days by that point and I’d been glad of the company. The dog felt the same way and once he’d sniffed me enough to be certain I wasn’t one of them he was all over me. Since then, regardless of whether we were somewhere nice and warm or out in the open, we’d barely left each other’s side. I’d only been on that road because of what happened at the first place I’d found myself in.

When the dead started to rise and attack the living, those of us who were prepared grabbed our gear and ran. We chose to head north to where there were fewer people and so fewer bodies to crawl from what were meant to be their final resting places. After a couple of days, I’d found myself at a farmhouse set into the hills above Loch Ness along with nineteen or twenty others, all refugees from places further south: Fort William, Perth, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh. There’d even been a couple who’d managed to make it all the way up from Newcastle without getting killed which, given the circumstances, was pretty impressive.

The farmhouse lasted two weeks before the dead started turning up – shambling along the track leading to the front door or over the grass-covered hill behind it. I don’t know where they came from or what attracted them to us but they came none-the-less. At first they only came in ones and twos and we could keep them under control but gradually the numbers built and we found it more and more difficult to stay on top of the situation. Then came the night they breached our defences. We started to fight back but very quickly it became clear this was a losing strategy and it wasn’t long before the few of us who survived more than a couple of minutes turned and fled. This was no organised retreat, it was pure panic; each of us simply picked a direction and ran, hoping we wouldn’t crash head-long into any of them in the darkness. Some probably died but others, like me, must have got lucky and made it out; if they did, I’d never find out because I knew I’d never see any of them again.

After that, I always made sure I had an exit strategy no matter where I found myself. At least I had until I’d reach the lighthouse at the end of the road. It was so remote and I was so tired that when I’d arrived just as the sun was going down I figured I could wait until the morning to scope out the place in full. Now, with the dog growling beside me, I quickly scan the room. There’s three windows in the circular room that forms the base of the lighthouse but none of them are big enough for me to crawl through. I curse myself for mistakenly thinking I’d be safe here but I still can’t work out where any dead could have come from. As far as I know, no one’s lived this far out since the lighthouse was automated nearly thirty years ago but, then again, maybe I hadn’t been the only one to think it might be the ultimate safe house. Someone could have been injured by one of the risen dead and made it here, or close to it, before finally succumbing to whatever it was that was passed on when one of them bit you.

There’s another snarl followed by a short, sharp bark. I try to keep him quiet by holding his muzzle but he struggles free and barks again. There’s definitely something out there but I don’t know what and there’s no way I’m opening the door to find out. All I can do is crouch beside my faithful companion and hope it’s not one of them.

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Author’s Note: The Cape Wrath Lighthouse, where this story is set, marks the northwestern tip of the Scottish mainland and while this part of the country was more heavily inhabited before the Clearances, it’s now one of the most sparsely populated regions of western Europe. This would make it an appealing location to anyone trying to survive in a zombie apocalypse. If you want to find out more about where it is you can follow this link to see its location in Google Earth (this requires that you have either Google Earth or a Google Earth Mobile app installed on your ebook device). Since 2009 there’s been a cafe there, called the Ozone Cafe, so it’s no longer completely uninhabited (as it was when I was growing up). On the cafe’s website, there’s a statement that’s so at odds with the modern world, it only serves to emphasize it’s isolation: ‘Unfortunately, due to the remoteness of The Ozone Café, an e-mail address is unavailable.’ (quoted from here).

A theme within this story is the benefits of having a dog as a companion in a zombie apocalypse. A dog would almost certainly give you advanced warning of any approaching undead but you may find their tendency to bark at inappropriate moments only serves to draw the walking dead to you. Personally, I think the benefits would outweigh the risks but it would very much depend on the individual dog you had with you.

Oddly, this story was directly inspired by real events – not the zombie bits but the actions of the dog. At one point in my life I stayed in a remote lighthouse on an island in the Bahamas (the one at Hole-in-the-Wall on Abaco) and for a while I was there alone with the exception of a pair of dogs (or potcakes as the local strays are called and which are a mix of every breed that’s ever visited the islands). One of them had the unnerving habit of suddenly scrambling to her feet in middle of the night before standing stock still, staring towards the door while growling menacingly. After a minute or so she’d lie down again as if nothing had happened but it always made me wonder what she was sensing out there in the darkness that I couldn’t detect.




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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.