Colin M. Drysdale's Blog, page 26

There’s Zombies In The Classroom! Using The Undead In Education…

Zombies are everywhere these days and it seems classrooms are no different. More and more teachers are turning to the undead to try to make their subjects more engaging. After all, isn’t any lesson enhanced with a sprinkling of flesh-munchers? Here’s a few of my favourite examples.

1. Teaching Geography With Zombies: Let’s face it, geography can get a little bit boring from time to time so why not liven it up with some walking dead? This is what Zombie-Based Learning aims to do. It presents students with a zombie apocalypse scenario in a graphic novel called Dead Reckon. This then forms the basis for lessons and projects than introduce students to geographic concepts such as what different types of maps are used for. You can find out more at http://blog.zombiebased.com/.

2. Zombie Science: Unlike vampires, zombies can have a good scientific basis and this makes it easy to weave the undead into areas of science as different as disease transmission, neurobiology and pandemic preparedness. This can help kids develop critical thinking and learn how to apply theoretical knowledge to real life scenarios. You can learn more about this here.

3. Zombies And International Politics: We live in a global society and it’s important the people learn how the world is connected. This means that everyone needs to understand how international politics can affect things like climate change, terrorism and financial contagion, and what better to way to do this than using zombies? This is the approach that Professor Dan Drezner of Tuff’s University is using. For more information on this example, click here.

4. Sociology And The Zombie Apocalypse: This is the name of a class taught by Professor Jared Cootz of Lone State College just outside of Houston, Texas. It focuses on the cultural impacts of zombies. Since the course involves reading World War Z and watching Romero movies you can bet the students don’t have trouble doing their homework! Click here to find out more.

5. Human Behavioural Responses To Catastrophes: Michigan State University also offers a course based around zombies, but this time they’re used to teach students about human behaviour, and specifically how humans react to catastrophic events. As you can imagine, zombie apocalypse scenarios provide the perfect backdrop for learning about such things. You can find out more about this here.

6. Learning Grammar With Zombies: As any author knows, using an active voice is the key to creating a gripping tale but many people have trouble telling the difference between an active and a passive voice in their writing. However, there’s a sneaky (and fun!) zombie-based way of working this out: if you can insert the phrase ‘by zombies’ after the verb in a sentence and it still makes sense (at least from a grammatical point of view!) then it’s written in the passive voice. Not seeing how this works? Here’s an example: ‘Detective Sharp was followed [by zombies] back to the police station.’ Now that’s a grammar rule anyone can remember! You can find more examples here.

7. Mathematical Zombies: Maths and zombies are natural bed-fellows, after all it’s often their sheer weight of numbers that makes them so dangerous. Zombies can be used in almost any mathematical problem to make them more interesting. For example, you can calculate how long it will take for zombies to get from your local graveyard to your house at a given shambling speed (click here for more information); you can calculate how long it will take zombies to take over the world for a given transmission rate and how you can stop it (click here to find out more); and you can calculate how long it will take you to mow down an approaching zombie horde with your machine gun given its firing rate, the number of bullets its magazine holds and how long it takes to reload (you can find out more about this 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.

What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse: No. 6 – The Mother And Child Dilemma

The woman thanks you for letting them in. She says you saved their lives and she’ll be forever in your debt. As she picks up her young child, you notice some fresh blood on his back. The woman hurriedly pulls his t-shirt down and says it’s just a scratch he got when climbing through a broken window. It looks more like a bite to you but you can’t be sure and she won’t let you examine him properly. To send them back out would mean certain death but if the child has been bitten he’ll turn, risking the lives of your family and friends. 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 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.

World War Z – Will The Film Of The Book Work?

It’s release has already been delayed by six months but finally a full length trailer is available and we can start to get an idea of what the movie version of World War Z will be like. Now the question on everyone’s lips is quite simple: will it work?

In my opinion, this will depend on three things. Firstly, how it reflects the book on which it’s based. From the trailer, it’s quite clear this is not a faithful film of the original book and I strongly suspect that Max Brooks fans who go to the cinema thinking this is what they’ll see will come away disappointed. In particular, those expecting to see their favourite vignettes from the book immortalised on the big screen may be left feeling a little cheated when they find they’re not there. Instead, the trailer suggests that rather than being a film of the book, this movie is a film set in the same world as the book. It’s a small but important distinction. This doesn’t mean it will necessarily be a bad film, and you could argue a film that was completely faithful to the book would have been both impossible to make and be too incoherent, but it does mean it might not be quite what some are expecting. If you can get this crucial distinction into your head before you see the movie, I suspect you’re much more likely to enjoy it.

Secondly, what type of film it is. Again this is clear from the trailer: this is not a traditional zombie flick. Instead, it’s a thriller-action movie with zombies. This means if you go in expecting to see the next 28 Days Later or Dawn Of The Dead, you may well come out wanting your money back. However, when viewed from the perspective of a thriller-action movie with zombies in it, it looks like it might be a rather good one. From the trailer, the scene where Brad Pitt is being pick up from a roof by a helicopter as the zombies stream towards him looks particularly effective and there’s a nice scene set on a plane which really grabbed my attention.

Finally, will the film be a success at the box office? Undoubtedly this film will bring in a humongous amount of money since it’s going to be the summer blockbuster for 2013. A lot of this money will come not from zombie fans but instead from audiences who are going to see it for the action sequences and because it stars Brad Pitt. This is likely to bring zombie films even further into the mainstream, just as The Walking Dead has done in television and the book World War Z has done in publishing. This, in my opinion, can only be a good thing for zombie fans as it will mean that all the Hollywood studios will be scrambling around to have their own zombie-based hit.

So will it work? Based on the latest trailer, for those looking for a thriller-action movie that features zombies and who are not big fans of the book it looks like the answer will almost certainly be a resounding yes! However, I suspect some dedicated zombie fans (particularly big fans of book) and those who prefer traditional zombie films and horror movies will leave feeling a little disappointed. This is not because it’s a bad movie but rather because it’s not the movie they thought and hoped it was going to be. This means the key to enjoying World War Z will be the attitude you take with you into the cinema when you go to see it. Expect an action-thriller set in the same world as the book and not the book brought faithfully to life or another 28 Days Later.

At this stage, I should admit a vested interest. Part of this movie was filmed in my native Glasgow (standing in for Pittsburgh, which in turn is standing in for Yonkers – as in The Battle for Yonkers – which is all a bit confusing but you’d never be able to tell from the footage) and I’m looking forward to seeing it transformed into an American city on the large screen. I’ll also be watching eagerly to see if I can spot any one I recognise – and specifically myself! You see, I was lucky enough to find myself working as an extra on the Glasgow set and it was this that finally made me pluck up the courage to sit down and write my debut novel, For Those In Peril On The Sea. I’d had the idea for this boat-based zombie-type story floating around in my head for a while and to pass the time I told a few of my fellow extras about it – there was a lot of standing around waiting for someone to shout action interspersed with brief periods of running from zombies and we had to talk about something. Their responses were sufficiently encouraging to make me think I should stop prevaricating and just write it. And so, my fledgling career as a zombie author began …

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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.

Three Men In A Boat – A Flash Fiction Zombie Story

There’s three of us crammed into a row boat built for two, floating in the middle of the mill pond. It seemed like such a good idea when we scrambled into it to escape the horde of undead that descended on our village without warning but now we realise it was the wrong thing to do. We can see the zombies crowding the nearby shores, moaning and shuffling, surrounding us on all sides; they know we’re here, they can sense us but they can’t get to us so it seems like we’re safe. Yet, there’s no way we can escape either and we don’t have any thing we can eat. All we can do is huddle together, making sure the dingy doesn’t drift too close to the shore and hoping that somehow, someone comes and rescues us.

***

Flash (or micro) fiction aims to tell a whole story within a specific short word limit. For this one, the target was 150 words and it comes in at 137. 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 the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review (where it scored five stars out of five) of For Those In Peril On The Sea click here or visit https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/for-those-in-peril-on-the-sea/

The Self-Preservation Instinct And The Zombie Apocalpyse

I recently started a series of posts under the theme of ‘What would you do if …’. These present dilemmas you might face when a zombie apocalypse strikes and asks you to consider how you’d deal with them. From the comments on the first one it became clear that people would almost certainly prioritize their own survival over that of others (possibly at all costs and to a greater extent the longer they managed to survive). This got me thinking, how will the natural human self-preservation instinct affect the way people interact with each other in the face of a zombie apocalypse?

This is important because it will affect any decisions you make about whether to join up with others or go it alone. There are lots of advantages to being part of a group but the main ones are increased vigilance (the more people there are, the more eyes there’ll be to spot trouble – and there will be people to keep a look out as you do things like rest, sleep and eat), communal defence (the greater the number of people, the better chance you have of repelling any attacks from zombie or other groups of survivors who are after your stuff) and division of labour (it allows some people to concentrate on things like getting supplies while others defend or guard your camp or safe house).

Yet, any group will be made up of individuals and because of the natural human self-preservation instinct, come the zombie apocalypse, these individuals will most likely behave like pet cats. That is, as long as their survival needs align with yours, they’ll be your friend but the moment a rift develops between what’s in their best interest and what’s in yours, you’ll be on your own, or worse they’ll turn on you or abandon you to the zombie hordes just so they can get away. This means that in any group you become part of, you need to try to ensure that there is as little difference as possible between what’s good for you and what’s good for all others within it.

How do you do this? Well, you can think of this as a trade-off. The more similar and compatible the personalities of all the individuals, the smaller the group, the better they know each other and the more closely related they are, the more everyone’s survival needs will align. The greater the disparity in personality types, the larger the group and the less well known or related to each other the individuals in it are, the higher the likelihood that there will be serious mis-matches in the survival needs of different individuals within the group and this will mean they are less dependable and, indeed, the actions of individuals within it may become highly unpredictable.

For any given set of circumstances, there’s going to be an optimal group size and composition as far as your survival needs are concerned. Sometimes you’ll find your optimal group size is quite large and include a wide range of people. These will be times when everyone has the same best interests in terms of their survival, such as when you’re defending a large compound from outside aggressors who are likely to kill you all if they get in. At others, it might be as low and as narrow as just you on your own because what’s best for you conflicts with what might be best for others, such as sneaking silently away from an approaching zombie horde while the rest of the camp sleeps because you know that rousing them would only alert the approaching undead to your presence and then you too would risk being killed.

The extent to which people let this self-preservation instinct rule how they respond to others is likely to change over time. When the apocalypse starts, people are probably going to try to help each other as much as they can but as time goes on, they’re likely to become more and more self-centred as they become hardened to their new world. That or you’ll find that those who survive the longest are the ones most willing to put their own needs above those of others. Either way, the longer the zombie apocalypse goes on, the more people are going to put their own interests first and the less likely they’ll be to help others, and especially strangers.

So what does all this means? Firstly, when the dead start to walk again, don’t assume you’ll always be better off in a group. If your thinking about joining one make sure that it’s needs align well with yours. Personally, I’d avoid large groups and groups where a lot of people don’t know each other well as this increases the chances that there will be a conflict between different members of the group and that’s never a good thing for your long-term survival. If you do join a group, remember that things can change and if they do, you may need to leave right away, so always have a plan and equipment packed ready and waiting just in case. Finally, remember that no matter what, when trying to survive in a world filled with zombies, you will never be able to truly rely on those around you to help you when things go bad, and the benefits of being in a group can evaporate in an instant, especially when you come under attack from the undead. After all, when the apocalypse comes, everyone who survives will eventually reach the point where they’d abandon their own granny to the zombies because they realise they can only run fast enough to escape if they leave her behind.




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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 an 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. 5 – The Family Dilemma

You’re in your car waiting in a queue to drive onto a ferry. It’s just arrived but when the bow doors open you’re surprised to see a seething mass of people pour onto the quayside. It takes you a moment before you realise something’s wrong but by then they’ve started running towards you, attacking anyone they can catch. That’s when you realise the zombie apocalypse has begun. The zombie horde will be on you in seconds and your only chance is to get out and run. You look round to where your three children are sitting in the back seat. If you try to take them all with you, it’ll slow you down too much and you almost certainly get caught and if that happens you’ll all die. With two kids in tow, your chances of surviving are better but still only 50:50. If you only take one, you’re almost certain you’ll be able to move fast enough to get away. 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 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.

On The Horns Of A Dilemma – Or Should That Be Dilemna?

I woke this morning and had one of those moments that always makes me go cold. I was listening to my usual breakfast radio show when, still half asleep, I heard the DJ (a certain Mr. Shaun W. Keaveny) say something along the lines of ‘ …. dilemma, of course it’s spelt di-lem-na …’. First, I thought ‘is it?’; then I did a mental forehead slap and thought, ‘of course it is’ followed by ‘Oh my god, I’ve spelt that word wrong all over my blog’. That was the moment the panic shot through me. About a month ago, I’d started a new section of this blog called ‘What Would You Do If … Dilemmas In A Zombie Apocalypse’ and according to Mr. Keaveny I’d been misspelled the ‘D’ word in every post. This, I thought, is devastating for my reputation as a writer. Why, oh why, I wondered, hadn’t my trusty spell-checker picked this up?

At this point, I should say my natural spelling ability is atrocious (you should see how that was written before it was spell-checked!). It’s something I was heavily criticised for at school; I was picked on, even bullied because of it. Yet it was not, as you might think, my fellow pupils who did this but my English teachers. My classroom experiences were so mentally bruising, they put me off writing, or at least sharing my writing with others (nothing was going to stop me wanting to express myself), for many, many years.

I’m almost certainly dyslexic (pretty much my entire family is, so it would be somewhat surprising if I’m not). Until recently, it’s something I’ve never really admitted, even to myself, and because of the way I was treated at school, I remain acutely embarrassed that, at almost 41 years old, I still have problems with even basic spelling and grammar.

I have real trouble working out when I should use ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’, I regularly mix up ‘breaks’ and ‘brakes’ and I can’t spell ‘desperate’ and ‘separate’ without a lot of thought or outside assistance (it just doesn’t make sense to me that the fifth-last letter in the first is an ‘e’ while in the second it’s an ‘a’ when the two words sound so similar). Even more confusing is ‘definitely’; Why? Because here in my native Glasgow, the majority of people clearly pronounce it ‘defin-ately’, with the emphasise very much on the non-existent ‘a’ in ‘ately’.

Word processors and spell-checkers are invaluable to me and allow me to correct many mistakes before I show my work to others. Using a computer also allows me to pass off those I miss as ‘typos’ caused by poor keyboard skills – much more acceptable for an almost middle-aged man – rather than an inability to spell, but they don’t spot everything. They can’t, for example, tell me when I’ve confused ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ if both are spelt the right way or, much more embarrassingly, if I’ve missed out the ‘l’ in public.

This means I have to repeatedly read everything over many, many times, making sure I double-check all the words I know I always have problems with. It’s time consuming but it has the added benefit that I’ll improve my work on each and every pass. As a result, I undoubtedly end up with a better piece of writing because I have to put in so much effort just to make sure I have the basic grammar and spelling right. I also get my long-suffering girlfriend to read over my stories, red pen in hand; she is blessed with great editing skills, and her comments and suggestions improve my work dramatically.

For my debut novel, I knew I’d only get one chance to make a first impression, so I got four or five friends to read over it and report any errors back, and had my girlfriend go over it with a fine-toothed comb several times. I then took it to a professional editor who double-checked everything again, suggested some changes and helped polish it. That way I knew I had a book that not only I could be proud of but that I could release into the world, confident it wouldn’t give away my inability to spell. All this paid off when I got the first official review back: it not only got five stars out of five (only rarely awarded – I checked just to make sure!) but a glowing review (you can read it here if you’re interested). Finally, I felt I could put the ghosts of all the criticism I’d received in my high school English classes to rest.

Then came this morning and the dilemma/dilemna dilemma. I leapt from my bed, reached for the internet (yes all of it) and confirmed that … I was right: the second last letter is an ‘m’ and not an ‘n’ as the DJ had suggested. Relieved, I dug a little deeper and found not only is this a widespread misconception but many people have been specifically taught the wrong spelling at school (so much for English teachers!). The version with the ‘n’ in it might be commonly used but it’s not even a recognised variant; nor is it simply an old-fashioned spelling, it’s always appeared in dictionaries with a double ‘m’; putting an ‘n’ in ‘dilemma’ is just plain wrong. This is clear from its roots in the Greek words ‘di’ meaning two and ‘lemma’ meaning premise. In contrast, ‘lemna’ is a genus of free-floating aquatic plants, so ‘dilemna’ with an ‘n’ is a pair of pond weeds!

So what can I conclude from my experience this morning? Firstly, thanks to the way my English teachers treated me, I still cringe with embarrassment if I even think I’ve made a spelling mistake in public (I always triple-check that last word just to make sure all the required letters are there) and it saps my confidence on a regular basis. I don’t think teachers realise the life-long effects their disparaging remarks can have on the children they teach, and more should be aware of this. Thanks to my experiences at school, it took me more than 20 years to build up confidence to even think about sharing my work with others, and that’s 20 plus years of writing I can never get back. How many other budding writers have been similarly put off by the very people who are paid to teach and encourage them?

Secondly, if you’re in a similar situation to me (regardless of whether you’re dyslexic or just lack confidence in your abilities), don’t let it put you off writing. Instead, find yourself a good editor (this can be a friend or another writer and need not be a professional). They can help you shore up any areas where you might not be naturally strong. Don’t feel embarrassed about doing this, even famous authors rely on their editors (some more heavily than others) and, after all, that’s what editors do. Getting outside advice has the potential to improve your work no end and it’s something all writers should do. It’ll also help you develop your craft; I think I learned more about writing from my editor’s comments on my book than I did from all of my school teachers.

Finally, and most importantly, just because someone else tells you you’re spelling something wrong don’t automatically believe them, check it out for yourself – it may well turn out they’re wrong, not you. That’s certainly how my dilemma dilemma turned out.




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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.

Zombies Can’t Swim – A Short Story About Escaping From The Undead

A PDF of this story can be downloaded from here.

The first time I saw the sign at the entrance to the boat yard I laughed so hard I almost crashed my car but once I regained my composure I figured it was nothing more than a great bit of advertising. Now as I smash through the gates in a stolen SUV, I wonder if the old man who ran it had somehow foreseen what was going to happen. Right now, it doesn’t matter if he did or not, only whether he was right. I shoot past the sign with it’s faded black letters standing proud against a once-white background that’s now a dull, dishwater grey, proclaiming its message to the world: Zombies Can’t Swim, Buy A Boat!. I glance nervously in my rear-view mirror to make sure I’m not being followed: zombies might not be able to swim but they sure as hell can run.

***

When the zombie apocalypse came it didn’t happen in the way it was portrayed in the movies. Rather than the dead rising from their graves, it was, instead, caused by a virus that infected the living, stripping them of everything that made them human and leaving a body ruled by one single urge: to infect others. That in itself wasn’t a problem rather it was the way they spread the virus – not through coughs and sneezes but by the infected attacking and biting others. If this reminds you of rabies that’s because it was rabies, only it had mutated. It no longer killed; instead it just drove people mad, whipping them into a frenzy where they’d attack anyone who was near. It also acted much faster than rabies used to, taking over infected people’s brains in hours or minutes rather than weeks or months.

It had built slowly, almost without anyone really noticing. It started with just a few cases in Haiti but with everything else going on there it was hardly surprising that no one pick up on what was happening until it was too late. After all, at first, it was hard to tell the difference between attacks by those infected with the virus and the violent protests against the US biotech firm that had sprung up across the country. The locals had found out it had been illegally testing it’s new and highly controversial vaccine in the capital’s slums and they weren’t pleased. Then again, maybe the two weren’t really that different since it was the vaccine that had caused the virus to mutate in the first place. Regardless of what going on in Haiti, the virus didn’t really take off until it reached Miami. I still wasn’t quite clear about what had happened there but then again, it seemed no one else was either. All I knew was that the infected and the infection had swept through the city within hours, forcing those who survived to flee. Some of them were carrying the infection but were as yet unturned and that just spread the disease further and faster across the country.

Once I heard the rumours that the infected had reached Virginia I’d started getting myself prepared. At first I stayed put, after all it was what the government was telling us to do, and I set to work collecting the recommended supplies: canned foods, bags of rice, water, medicines. I also joined the ill-tempered crowds that queued for fuel at the town’s only gas station and at the hardware store for plywood to board up the windows. It was just like what happened whenever a hurricane threatened, only ten times worse. With hurricanes people at least knew what they were dealing with, with this disease no one really knew what to expect.

As the virus and the infected that carried it grew ever closer, things started getting out of control. One evening as I was driving home, I saw the town’s two deputies threatening a woman with their guns as her terrified kids huddled in the back of her car. It was clear they were after the food that filled every available space in her vehicle. By the time I’d passed, I could see her standing at the side of the road holding her kids and crying as the police officers drove off: one in their patrol car, the other in hers. That was when I started thinking it might be an idea to get out before things got any worse but I wanted to make sure this was the right thing to do. I figured I should sleep on it for the night before moving on. That turned out to be a big mistake and I woke in the morning to find the first of the infected among us. I was lucky, my apartment overlooked main street and I’d glanced through a crack between the boards I’d hastily nailed across the windows before going outside. What I saw shocked me. There were two people lying in the street with others huddled round them. At first I thought they were trying to help, then I realised they were clawing the peoples’ torsos with their hands and ripping off strips of flesh with their teeth. I watched, horror-struck, as the abdomen of first one person and then the other was torn open. Blood and guts spilled onto the dusty pavement and I had to fight hard not to throw up.

Suddenly, a man appeared out of a side street carrying a small child on his back. He had his head turned, talking to the toddler so he didn’t see the infected before they saw him. With a speed that was almost unbelievable, they leapt to their feet and raced towards him. They must have made a sound because his head suddenly snapped round. Seeing the infected racing towards him, he froze for a moment before turning and running but with the child on his back he barely moved faster than if he was walking. Glancing desperately over one shoulder then the other he saw the infected rapidly closing on him. Then he did the only thing that gave him a chance of escape: he dropped the child. Unencumbered, he finally started to draw away while two of the infected descended on the screaming child, biting and tearing at it until there was little left but scraps of blood-soaked clothing and scattered lumps of flesh. The only thing that was still recognisable was the head and I could see the child’s eyes frozen in terror as one of the infected gnawed on it’s left cheek.

At that moment, I knew if I didn’t leave soon I’d never get out but I needed a plan. I wracked my brains trying to think of somewhere I could go where the infected wouldn’t find me. Then, as if out of nowhere, the sign popped into my head. I knew these weren’t really zombies but surely if the virus wiped out everything human within them, they mightn’t remember how to swim. After all, swimming’s not like walking or running, it doesn’t come naturally; it’s something you have to specifically learn. With no other options coming to mind, I decided it was the best chance I had.

***

I slam on the brakes and the SUV skids to a halt at the end of the dirt track leading from the gates to the boat yard’s single dock. I sit there with the engine idling, my eyes darting round nervously, trying to work out what to do next. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around so at least I shouldn’t have to worry about infected. I don’t really know anything about boats so I don’t know which one I should choose or how I’m going to drive it but I figure it can’t be that much different from driving a car.

A movement in the rear-view mirror catches my eye; it’s off in the distance and little more than dust being kicked up into the air but it means something’s coming this way. It might just be people trying to escape but it could just as easily be infected and I’m not going wait around to find out. Leaving the engine running and the door open, I leap from the car and run down to the wooden pontoon that stretches out into the water. Boats of all shapes and sizes are tied up there and at first I’m at a loss as to which one to take. Then I see it: a long, sleek speed boat with two huge engines on the back, and I know it’s the one for me. I run to it and jump onboard before racing over to the steering wheel. When I get there I’m surprised to see that you need a key and there’s no obvious way to hot-wire it. I climb back onto the dock and scratch my head, wondering what I’m going to do now. As I do, I become aware of a noise that I can’t quite place. It’s like the sound of water rushing over the edge of a massive waterfall and crashing into the pool far below; then I realise it’s the sound of people, or more likely infected, pounding along the road towards me.

Growing ever more desperate, I try motorboat after motorboat, while all the time the noise grows louder and louder, but I can’t get any of them started. Finally, right on the end of the dock, I see a sailboat, no more than twenty feet long, and I realise it’s my salvation: I won’t need any keys because I won’t need to start the engine, all I’ll need to do is raise the sails and I’ll be away. I’ve never sailed before but I figure it can’t be that difficult. I jump onboard and just as I start untying the ropes I glance up to see the first of the infected entering the boat yard. At first they don’t know where to go but they must have sensed my movements because before I know it, they’re hurtling towards the dock. By the time I get the last rope free and have pushed the boat away from the shore, they’re streaming along the pontoon, mouths open, roaring and snarling. I feel a gentle breeze on the back of my neck as I stare at them, both terrified and hypnotized by the sight of the infected sweeping towards me. The first of the infected reach the end of the pontoon and stop while the ones behind them keep going, pushing those ahead of them into the water. I watch as they thrash around before sinking from sight. Just as the sign predicted, zombies can’t swim.

Then I notice something: little by little I’m drifting back towards the dock. I’m not too sure what I should be doing but I figure I need to get the sails up. The mast seems a logical place to start since that’s what the sails are attached to so I run forward but find there’s ropes everywhere and I can’t work out which does what. I try randomly pulling on them but nothing happens. I glance desperately back to the pontoon; it’s only ten feet way now and the closer I get the more the infected are being whipped into a frenzy. I turn my attention back to the boat and I realise there are straps tied round the sail. I figure these are what’s stopping me from pulling it up so I frantically undo them one by one and stumble back to the mast and I pull randomly on ropes again. This time I find one which raises the sail and I start pulling on it as hard as I can. The sail goes up and fills with wind but it pushes me towards the land I’m trying so hard to get away from. I let the rope go and with a crash the sail drops onto the dock. While the boat slows, it’s still drifting inexorably towards the dock and the infected that wait for me there. That’s when it finally dawns on me: while zombies can’t swim, I can’t sail so it’s not really going to help me survive after all.

***

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by a photograph of a real sign I came across in the web that was genuinely used as advertising in a boat yard and proclaimed ‘Zombies Can’t Swim, Get A Boat’. Looking into this a further it seems such signs are not as uncommon as you might think. I don’t know if several people have independently come up with the same slogan or if there was one original that all the others have copied but either way it struck me as a great title for a story, and it was one I couldn’t resist writing.




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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

The custom of the sea is a commonly-used euphemism for cannibalism. Not your every day cannibalism (if there is such a thing) but a very specific type. It has occurred regularly for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years but it’s also something that’s never talked about in polite company, even by those who resort to it. So what is the custom of the sea? In the days before satellite phones and emergency beacons if a ship went down while crossing an ocean, it wasn’t unusual for a few survivors to find themselves bobbing around in a lifeboat or life raft with no way to tell any would-be rescuers where they were. If the were lucky they might get picked up by another ship after a few days but if they weren’t, they could find themselves out there in the middle of nowhere for weeks or even months.

When they ended up in this position, sailors were faced with a stark choice: starve or turn to whatever food source that was available to them. So what could they eat? Well, they might have some basic supplies with them and after they ran out there’d be fish or seabirds, maybe even a turtle or two if they could catch them. The trouble is without the right equipment that’s extremely difficult to do. There’s one food source, however, they could easily get their hands on: human flesh. In some cases they’d wait for someone to die of natural causes before consuming them but in others the custom of the sea was much more unsavoury. When there was no other option, one survivor would be killed and eaten so that the rest could live. It is said there were very specific, if unwritten, rules as to how this was done and it involved drawing lots. However, in practice it seems things weren’t always so democratic and instead it was the most junior or unpopular crew member who was eaten first.

One of the most famous examples occurred when a whaling ship called the Essex was attacked and sunk by a male sperm whale in the middle of the South Pacific in 1820 (if this sounds familiar it’s because Herman Melville based his epic Moby Dick on these event). The surviving whalers found themselves in three small boats and more than 1000 miles from the nearest land. The few that lasted the three months until they were finally picked up by other ships survived, in part, by following the custom of the sea and eating some of their fellow crew members after they died.

Of course, this type of cannibalism doesn’t just happen at sea but in any circumstances where people find themselves trapped with no other sources of food. Probably the most famous modern example happened after a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes in 1972 and involved the survivors eating those killed in the crash in order to sustain themselves long enough to be rescued. All this raises an interesting question. Were a zombie apocalypse ever to happen, it’s likely that there’d be small groups of people trapped in houses, offices, hotel rooms, bank vaults, military bunkers and almost every other possible hidey-hole and safe place you could imagine. Many of these groups would have little food and they’d be faced with having to choose between staying safe and starving to death or going outside and facing the zombie hordes in order to find food. Assuming only those infected by whatever’s causing the zombism in the first place will become zombies and not just everyone who dies, would such survivors, like so many have done before them, resort to the custom of the sea?

Based on what we know about how people have responded to similar circumstances in the past, I suspect that in a lot of cases, the answer may well be yes, at least towards the beginning of event when they still have hope and think that rescue might be a possibility. This is because in a zombie apocalypse, the world outside would be a truly terrifying place and if they feel safe, most people will choose to stay where they are rather than going outside and risk being attacked by zombies. Some may try a few foraging trips first but if these fail or if those that try are killed by the undead, it’s likely that the rest will simply stop trying and just hunker down where they are, and where they know they’re safe, waiting and hoping that someone will rescue them. Of those that do resort to cannibalism, most will probably wait until someone dies a natural death before consuming them. Some people may volunteer to die to help those around them survive, while those in other groups may draw lots to decide who’s going to get sacrificed. There will also undoubtedly be a few where things will be less democratic and selfless, and they’ll gang up on the weak, the elderly or just the plain old unpopular.

The custom of the sea, therefore, has an interesting, if rarely considered, implication were a zombie apocalypse were ever to happen: if, when it starts, you find yourself part of a group that’s trapped and there’s no other readily available food, it’s quite likely that it won’t just be the zombies that will be eyeing you up as a potential meal!




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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 an 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.

Release Of Interactive Map To Accompany ‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’

For Those In Peril On The Sea is a novel about survival in a post-apocalyptic world that’s set in and around the northern Bahamas. Since this is not a part of the world many people are familiar with, I’ve put together an interactive map based around Google Earth which allows the readers to explore the real world locations and the landscapes where the book is set. Using this map, you can see where key events take place and also look at the routes the characters take between these locations.

The map (which can be found here) comes in different sections, each of which is specific to an individual chapter. For example, this is the map section for chapter two (this and the other screenshots for this post were taken on my Nexus 7):

Map Section For Chapter Two

This shows the locations mentioned in this chapter, as well as the route the characters took as they move from the lighthouse at Hole-in-the-Wall, where they first realise something is wrong with the world towards their intended destination of Miami. You can also zoom in and look at what happened at a finer scale. For example, you could zoom in on the area around Hole-in-the-Wall lighthouse (at the right-hand end of the above map) and examine the events that happen there, like this:

The Events At Hole In The Wall

If you click on any of the symbols, an information window appears that provides a brief summary of what happened in the book there (warning: these may contain plot spoilers, so it’s better to look at the map section for each chapter once you’ve read it). Here’s one example of an information window for one of the locations at Hole-in-the-Wall:

Information About The First Attack

Different colours are used for different groups of characters, so you can tell what each of they are doing. For example, blue is always used for events involving the central characters in the book (called Bill, Rob, Jon and CJ), while green is used for another group that they meet up with near Miami, as shown below in the map section for chapter three.

Events At Miami

You can find the full map here on the website that’s been put together to accompany For Those In Peril On The Sea. I hope you find this a useful addition to the book itself and that it increases your enjoyment of the story told in it.

If you want to find out more about creating interactive map layers to accompany your stories, you can click here to find another post on this subject.

If you would be interested in having such layers created to accompany any of your own work, please email me at info[at]forthoseinperil.net and we can discuss it further.

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