Stein Snippet #6

Well, Halloween has come and gone.  The goblins and ghouls have went home but we’re still cranking out the stories over at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday, a group of authors and writers providing entertaining writing snippets for the masses.  Make sure you stop over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com to check them all out.  This week, we’re still following Annie trapped in the alley with only a broken bottle to save her and the zombies are closing in.  Will she make it out alive?  Or undead?  Guess we’ll have to read on to find out.  If you haven’t been following this latest collection of snippets, check out the previous ones posted here.  Enjoy!____________________________________________________________

           The herd of zombies rushed in, each looking to be the first to taste fresh blood.  Thirty feet out and the post-mortem paramedic was pulled back into the surging pack.

          Annie pulled the jagged edge of the glass up to her neck.  She could feel the sharp bite against her skin.

          Twenty feet out and Annie saw the froth forming on their mouths.  The smell of decayed and rotted flesh filled the air in the cramped space.  Blood trickled down her neck as the bottle cut deeper.

          Ten feet and she could feel the ground shake under their collective stomp.

          Annie pulled the glass away and flung it at her attackers.

          “Eat this!”

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          Poor Annie – I bet she wished this would move along faster than ten sentences a clip but that’s what makes it so much fun.  Comments are always appreciated.  Have a great weekend and see you in seven!

Stein Snippet #5

         

Halloween is just around the corner and the crew here at Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday are prepping with a new round of snippets fresh for the reading.  What better place to get your dragon/zombie/alien/assassin/bump-in-the-night fixes?  Make sure you check out all the great pieces over at the main site – SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com.  My short this week is still following Annie, trapped in an alley as a hungry pack of zombies closes in.  Feel free to check out the prior snippets from this same story posted here.  Enjoy!

          Annie searched for a weapon, a club, a pipe, a rusty nail, anything lying at her feet.  She saw the small medical kit, its contents spewed across the alley’s floor, a few bandages, some salve, and antibiotics, nothing that would save her own life in these circumstances.  She never thought of herself as a hero, but sacrificing her life in an effort to save a ten year old boy that she’d only known for a matter of weeks, staring at the herd of monstrosities looking to tear her flesh from her bones, she’d have taken the same chances.

          She picked up a broken bottle and turned.  At least she hoped to take one or two of them down with her.  The glass shook in her hand.

          “Come on!  I haven’t got all night!”

          And there you have it.  I promise the story will move out of the alley eventually but I am having fun taking it ten sentences at a clip.  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.  Enjoy the week leading up to Halloween and see you in seven.

Stein Snippet #4

        Hi all!  Welcome to another Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday.  What we have here…is not a failure to communicate.  It’s a band of authors and writers who enjoy sharing snippets of their various science fiction and fantasy works, which equates to good readin’ fun.  I’ve been sharing from a WIP story I’m writing just for the SFFSAT crowd, still untitled at this point.  To catch everyone up to speed – Annie is trapped in an alley and a zombie horde is hot on her heels.  Nowhere to run, and there’s something creepy in the dumpster.  Not her best night.  I hope you enjoy.  Please stop over at the main site – scififansat.blogspot.com to check out all the great snippets contributed by an even greater group of writers over there.

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          When Annie first learned the dead could talk, she cursed every zombie movie she’d ever watched.  It wasn’t creepy enough to have animated corpses hunting down every beating heart they could catch a whiff of, but the color commentary they spewed while doing it sent extra chills down her spine.  A limited vocabulary at best, Annie felt their words were more verbalizing some kind of primal urges than actually looking to carry on a conversation but it still freaked her out.

          A second zombie collided with its orange suited cohort, smashing its face into the wall.  One by one, more of the pack filtered into the alley until over a dozen hunting corpses sniffed wildly into the night air.  Mostly men, a few women, and one child no more than fourteen, scoured for the source of their anticipation.  More eyes focused on Annie as she stood braced against the alley wall.

          Illness and old age had become the new American dream and the prospect of making it through any given day proved a crap shoot.  Still, when death stared you in the eye, you were never ready.

          Hope you enjoyed.  If you could, leave a comment in passing.  They’re always appreciated and help fuel the writing process.  Have a great weekend! 

Stein Snippet #3

Bwahahahahaha!  Just needed to get that out of my system.  It is October, you know.  Halloween is just around the corner and even better than that, we’ve just stumbled into yet another Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday.  What is that you ask?  Well, only a group of some truly inspired sci-fi/fantasy writers that contribute weekly snippets of their work.  Don’t believe me?  Go check out the main site at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com for a complete list.  And what better time to tell a zombie story than the scariest month of the year!!  Quick recap – in the last few snippets, Annie has been on the run from the meat patrol (ravenous zombies) and took a bad turn into a dead end.  With the running dead closing fast, her only hope is jumping into a trash filled dumpster.

          Annie pulled back the lid to the dumpster and threw her leg up onto the ledge to crawl inside.  A hand shot up from inside the darkened container, slamming the top back down.  Annie stumbled away, dropping the tin medical kit she carried under her arm.

          “Mine, go ‘way!”  The voice sounded like someone choking a dog after they just let it drink drain cleaner, low and coarse, more consonants then vowels.

          The first of the zombies crashed into the wall at the mouth of the alley, clinging to the bricked wall with rotted fingers.  One of the arms from his orange jump suit hung empty at its side.  Annie guessed it for a paramedic or E.M.T. that came across the wrong patient.  Their eyes locked on to each other’s in the little light the corridor provided as its eyes glazed over with the hunger.

          “Pretty food.”

          And there you have it.  I'm still working on a title.  Hope you enjoyed and come back next week to see what happens to Annie and the rat pack.  Please, leave a comment before you go.  They’re always appreciated.

Twelve Sunsets

What’s that I hear in the distance?  Is it thunder?  The ice-cream man?  No.  Then it must be another installment of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday.  Due to universal forces out of my control, I missed posting last week but I did add some to the WIP I posted from the last few times.  I was all ready to post from there again but, to my own amazement, I caught the message that this was cue word week, like college week on Wheel Of Fortune but cooler.  Anyway, the word suns appeared nowhere in that snippet, considering it’s night in the scene, so instead I got all prose-like and came up with this.  I hope sunsets make the cut – it was as close as I could get.  Something a little different but staying in the zombie state of mind (Is that a Billy Joel song?).  Enjoy and check out all the other great suns related snippets over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com.

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Twelve sunsets lay rid

The ghost town of Manhattan

Where zombies dwell in the spas and

Walk through fountains

With weekend hats and plastic souls

Driving down brick laden paths

To farmer's market filled with

Spoiled fruits from forgotten realms

Burning out their retinas

Watching blurred horizons

I never claimed to be a poet.  Seeya next week where I’ll return to Annie trapped in an alley while being chased by a ravenous pack of zombies.  Maybe they’re vegans?

Stein Snippet #2

Here we go on another Science Fiction Fantasy weekend go round.  I’m back into the swing after taking a few weeks off and last week I decided to start a new story (is this like writer therapy? – share with the group).  This one is still untitled but it’s moving along nicely.  I think.  I’ve toyed around with some zombie adventures before but I figured this was a great venue to spread my un-dead wings and see where it takes me.  We pick up directly from last week and Annie’s on the run from a hungry zombie mob.  Let’s see where her decisions take her.  Arrgghhh…urrggg (that was zombie speak – like pig latin but without the finesse).   Enjoy and don’t forget to click over to SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com and check out all the other writing goodness happening there.
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          She darted to the left, between two old warehouses, and then a quick right into what she hoped was a service entrance leading back out to the main road.  Instead, she found herself trapped in a delivery bay designed for big rigs to back their cargo up to a large bay door.  She pulled up on the latch, which held fast.

          “Great.”

          The guttural roars echoing behind her told her the pack had turned the same corners she had and would be filtering into the cargo bay any minute.  Frantically, she searched for another access door, a fire ladder leading up the roof.  Nothing.

          She leaned against a wall, trying to catch her breath, and spotted a rotted metal garbage dumpster against the far side of the alley.  Annie figured it was her best shot, provide some protection, maybe mask her scent.  That and it was her only available option.

          Short, sweet, and directly into a dead end.  Dum dum dum.  Hope you enjoyed.  Please leave a comment or two.  They are always appreciated.  You can even use zombie-speak, I just can’t promise to know how to respond.  It’s a very tricky dialect and they’re such a sensitive lot.

Stein Snippet #1

          Well, here we are again.  Another dose of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday fun.  I finished up the last short story I shared a couple weeks ago, Snips And Snails, and I had a lot of fun doing it.  While I'm waiting for the release date of my novel, Welcome To GreenGrass, to get closer, I was deciding what to share next.  I decided to take a page out of T.K.'s playbook and just run with it on a week to week basis, so I sat down and cranked out a few paragraphs.  I'm not a pantster by any means but I figured it would be a fun exercise.  No title yet - just some fun zombie rampaging.  I have a kinda cool idea where I want it go but we'll see where it goes.  Hope you enjoy!  Go check out all the great writers over at SciFiFanSat.blogspot.com.  You'll be glad you did.
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          Whoever said always turn left and you’ll never get lost, never had a pack of rampaging zombies chasing them through the back alleys in the middle of the night.  Annie sprinted right at the next corner, changing her path and, she hoped, her outcome.  She knew better than to scavenge that late but Zach’s arm wasn’t healing and without some type of medicine, he was a walking advertisement for the meat patrols.  She pulled an old pizza rack down behind her as she ran.  Another universal un-truth - the undead sauntered along, dragging wayward appendage in their wake, was a crock.  They were fast…and hungry, always a bad combination.

          One of the rabid corpses tumbled into the metal shelving she toppled, the crash echoing down the alley.  The rest of the pack shrieked as their meal gained some much needed distance.

          The boy wasn’t her responsibility, she knew that, but in a world that had forgotten how to care for one another, Zach became her line in the sand.  If she let him down, she feared she’d loose what was left of her own humanity.

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          Well?  I hope you enjoyed it.  Let me know what you thought by leaving a comment.  They're one of the best parts of contributing to SFFSat.  Enjoy the weekend!