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Permalink Reply by KOMRAD RHINO☭ on December 28, 2013 at 9:50pm

i'll go check it out. thanks for the info.

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on December 28, 2013 at 10:59pm

thank you.  I'll add a few more stories in the next few days, and then buckle down for some re-writes and new material.  I plan on putting the draft chapters on line before making them e-books, depending on their size.

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Permalink Reply by KOMRAD RHINO☭ on December 28, 2013 at 11:21pm

sweet. looking forward to it.

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on December 29, 2013 at 7:34pm

published Zombie Apocalypse Survivor: the Office Worker(free)

at http://fieldtrollbooks.com/officeworker.html or download a copy https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/392696

description "Rather than party at his friend's house for the end of the world, Jared elects to spend his last day before the zombie apocalypse in the office in the hopes that he can get to know pretty Sheila. When the zombie's do arrive, neither he, Sheila, or their boss are ready."

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Permalink Reply by Wicked Death☭ on December 30, 2013 at 11:23pm

Sounds awesome I am going to read it. Thanks Field Troll!~

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on January 1, 2014 at 3:27pm

Published my original Zombie Apocalypse Story to Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/393618

It's also double posted on the website.

Even with the right plans and preparation, change and adaptation are necessary for the best zombie apocalypse survivor. This is the blog of a successful survivor that follows his experiences, successes and failures, as he hides away in his attic during the initial stages of the zombie plague to his eventual success in dealing with the hordes. It serves as a loose intro to other stories of the Zombie Apocalypse Survivor short stories and sketches by Jason Thornton.
It is written as a first person, 'just the facts, Ma'am', account of how to handle life in the zombie apocalypse.

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Permalink Reply by Komrad Gas Mask Killer☭ on January 3, 2014 at 2:08pm

Exciting new reading for the New Year!

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on January 6, 2014 at 10:54pm

(re-edit for later release)

Zombie Apocalypse Survivor:
the Mountaineer

Ken sat quietly on the rock, sipping coffee out of a rugged red plastic mug. It was one of their camping mugs, a part of the set that they kept in the camp trailer. It saved them time already having their dishes stowed in the trailer. Time was an important factor when they first came here.

It was turning out to be a beautiful sunset and the view was fantastic from atop the high granite outcroppings. From his perch he could see deep into the Danskin Mountains to the east, down into the plains of the Treasure Valley and all the way westward to the Snake River on Oregon-Idaho border. Since his family had moved into the mountains the air over the Boise valley had finally cleared of the constant haze of smog. At night, he could finally gaze at the stars and the glowing trail of the Milky Way without the glare of the region's legion of electric lights fading them to a whisper of their glory. He could see the peaks of the Owyhee Mountains on the horizon to the southwest, their dark peaks contrasting sharply with the golden sky to the west. It was still warm from the high heat earlier in the day, but a light mountain breeze helped to cool the worst of it on a late summer day. Later in the evening, the temperature would dive to near freezing and the winds would rage across their hill top home, rocking their camp trailer like a swarm of undead.

The rock he sat on was where they pulled watch duties overlooking their new homestead. It had such an excellent and long distance view. Even at night they could still see for miles if the moon happened to be out. Ken was on watch while his wife Janine and their teenaged daughter, Meghan, were out getting fresh water. Hopefully they'd also catch some fresh game for dinner. He had another daughter but she had move to California several years ago and quit calling home soon afterwards. He still hoped against hope that she'd come home, but just as he didn't expect it to happen before the apocalypse, he didn't expect it to happen now.

Once his wife and daughter returned to camp, he would stay perched on the rock for several more hours, long enough for one of them to rest before coming to relieve him. It was hard work carrying water back to camp and each day they had to go further and further as the summer progressed.

Scanning the valley below, where his family had gone, Ken saw a lone figure trudging along the road towards their camp. He lifted his rifle and peered through the scope.

Bringing the sights to bare on the figure, he saw that it was his daughter Meghan. With a start, he realized that she was alone and he quickly scrambled down from the high crest of his rock perch. Reaching the dusty road below the outcropping, he ran reckless downhill along the road's twisted and rutted path until he reached her, both now a long distance from camp.

Coming to a stop in front of her, she looked up and he could see that she was crying. Her cap was missing and her tangled hair fluttered in the breeze. Her clothing was covered with dust and debris. She saw him. She sobbed, “Dad" and fell into his arms. Ken held her for several minutes. He was thinking about his wife and desperately wanted to ask Meghan where she was.

Finally her sobs diminished and Ken guided his daughter back to camp. Knowing that it might cause her to break down again, he asked anyway, “Where's your Mom?”
She took a few moments to answer. When she spoke, it was slow as if she was trying to keep from breaking out in tears, “We were in a draw getting water. It was quiet, and there were trees along the stream. It was cool in the shade and I sat down to rest. They came out of the trees Dad. They knocked me down and they were on top of me. Mom,” She paused, unable to continue for a moment, “Mom, she saved me. She knocked them off of me and she told me to run. I ran. I left Mom. I heard her shooting. Daddy, is she OK? Please tell me she'll be OK.”

Ken tried to comfort his daughter as they slowly walked back uphill to their camp. She kept breaking into tears and pausing, or would ramble incoherently about her mother and try to turn around. Finally coaxing her all the way back, they entered the trailer where he made her sit upon one of the plaid cushions of the polyester dinette seats. Keeping a watchful eye on her and forcing his own thoughts about his wife to the back of his mind, he gave Meghan the last of their water and heated up a can of soup to help calm her nerves.

When she had settled down some, he asked where the attack had occurred. She explained that they had followed the road for about five miles without finding any water. Then they crossed a cattle fence and followed the road into open range. Ken mapped the route in his head as she described it and felt it would be easy enough to follow. He would find his wife Janine.

He packed a small backpack with a blanket, some extra warm clothes for himself and his wife, and an extra box of ammunition for his rifle. He said to his daughter as he was leaving the trailer, “I'm going to go and find your Mom. I want you to rest. OK? When I get back we'll pack up and move somewhere closer to water. Be safe while I'm gone. Keep your rifle handy. I love you Meghan.”

...more to follow...

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Permalink Reply by Komrad Gas Mask Killer☭ on January 7, 2014 at 8:44am

Noooooo DON'T leave Meghan!

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on January 9, 2014 at 10:05pm

Still teary eyed, she replied, “I'll be safe here Daddy.  Be careful and tell Mom I'm sorry for not waiting.  I love you, too.”  She reached across and gave him another hug.

Ken backed out of the trailer and closed the door firmly behind him.  He set out to find his wife, following the treacherous road as it wound downhill.  The night was getting darker and the wind was blowing harder.

Ken stumbled down the dark road for nearly an hour.  The stark whiteness of the dusty road was visible even on the darkest of nights.  On this night, the moon was just a sliver in the sky, but its meager light was enough that he could see the figure walking towards him in the distance.  Instead of sprinting recklessly to see if it was his wife trudging ahead, Ken forced himself to keep his pace slow in order to to avoid tripping in the ruts.

Even in the dark, as he got nearer he could tell that the figure was his wife.  She was wearing her light blue and gray wind-breaker and her favorite rifle was strapped across her back.  She looked exhausted and would be even more exhausted when they finally trekked all the way back to their camp.  He could see she didn't have the water jugs she set out with and he himself didn't have any water to offer her.

Finally, when Ken was within 20 feet of her, he called out her name, “Janine.”

 

***

 

Janine looked up at Ken.  She was indeed very tired and very badly needed him.  She raised her arms and quickened her pace.  She called out to him, “Aaa!”

 

***

 

Ken froze.  He was looking at his wife's face.  All he saw was an eye.  The rest was gone.  Her beautiful hair.  Her smooth skin.  All of it was gone.  The left side of her face was bare bloody skull exposed to the dusty winds of the desert mountain.  Her nose was gone.  Her lower jaw was gone.  Her throat was a ragged mass of torn and missing flesh, stripped and ravaged all the way to her chest.

 

***

 

Janine grabbed him and moved in to feed.  In the feeble reasoning of her undead soul, she was snapping her teeth into Ken's flesh.  Only, she did not taste flesh...or the nectar of blood...or the divinity of his fleshy organs.

 

***

 

As Janine grabbed him, Ken could see the muscles in her neck pulsing.  He fought to push her back but her grip upon him was too tight.  He struggled with her and lost his footing in the trail ruts, falling.  Janine fell with him.

As he fell, the butt of his rifle, which was now hanging useless from the crook of his elbow, struck the dirt first.  The muzzle impaled itself in the mass of gore that was Janine's neck.  The rifle forcefully broke her fall and also broke her grip upon Ken.  She flailed her arms wildly towards him, trying to bring him into her grasp.  She stared balefully at him with her one remaining eye.

Ken continued to fall and landed on the ground.  The butt his rifle slipped from where it had first struck and came to rest in the dirt at his arm pit.  Janine continued to flail wildly above him until both she and the rifle tipped to the side.  Ken immediately tried to stand up, but both he and Janine were still tangled in the rifle's strap.  She was jerking and clawing for him, shaking both him and the rifle back and forth.

The thought to pull the trigger came to his mind, and without hesitation he pulled it.  The boom shattered the silence of the night and the muzzle flash flared out behind Janine's neck.

 

***

 

Janine heard the gun fire and felt the bullet pass through her.  It didn't mean anything to her.  She still wanted Ken and called out again, “Aaaa!”

 

***

 

Ken heard the strange noise emanating from the hole where her neck had once entered her chest.  In the distance her heard another answering moan, and then another, and then more.  The hills were alive with the undead.

Ken used his free hand to force the rifle and sling off of his arm.  Finally free of both Janine and the rifle, he turned and ran.

He sprinted like he had never sprinted before.  In his panicked state he became hyper aware of even the tiniest stone in the road that would have tripped as he sprinted up the trail.  He was also aware of the wailing and moans of the undead.  They were behind him, to the sides and even to the front.

He reached the trailer in less than half an hour.  He could see that Meghan had lit a candle inside by the warm yellow glow of the windows.  She would have to put it out when they loaded into the truck.  They were leaving.  They had to.  Without Janine.  They would be able to leave quickly, the trailer was still hitched to the pickup truck and they never left any supplies or equipment lying outside that would need to be packed up.

Ken opened the door and climbed into the trailer, “Meghan come on we have to go now!”  That was all he could say before she slammed into him.  This time he gripped her by the upper arms, keeping her face away and preventing her hands from gripping or scratching at him.

Looking at his daughter in the glow of the candle, Ken saw a series of deep scratches on her forehead.  She had cleaned the dust from her pale skin while Ken was gone, exposing the death sentence that had been written upon her skin by the malicious dead.  Vile bruises of ugly yellow and red, the colors of infection, bloomed across her pale porcelain skin.  Her foggy eyes glared at him with malevolent hunger.  The pale and flawless skin of her youth was even paler, now tinged with the blue of death.  Her breath stank of rotted meat.

Ken shoved his daughter away from him.  She slammed backwards into the camper’s small table, falling onto the top and then rolling sideways into the bench seats.

Ken twisted in the cramped space and jumped out through the trailer’s compact door.  It slammed it shut behind him.  From the slopes to either side of his camp, he heard the moans of zombies.  They were close.  Looking down the road that he had just run up, he could see several of them swaying up the trail towards him.  They were all around him!  Meghan screamed an angry moan from within the trailer. 

Ken felt his blood turn to ice.  His mind shut down.  He ran.

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on January 11, 2014 at 1:18pm

Zombie Apocalypse Survivor:

the Mountaineer

 

Copyright 2014 by Jason Thornton

 

He ran without a sense of time, speed or distance, following the trail further uphill away from the valley below and into the wild mountains.  The zombies continued to call out.  Each howling moan sounded as if it was directly beside him.  Each time it caused him to run faster.

The dusty dirt trail transformed itself into a gravel road before abruptly ending at a rustic cattle gate built from barb-wire.  Just beyond the gate was another gravel road road which ran perpendicular to his path.  It was the main route that would lead him to the interstate highway in the valley below if he chose to follow it downward.  Upward, it would continue further into the mountains, breaking into smaller and smaller trailheads, before eventually becoming nothing more than wild game trails.

Ken stopped to catch his breath and look around.  The hills echoed with the moans of the undead.  Looking down the road in both directions, he could just barely see in the murkiness of midnight darkness the swaying shadows of the undead shambling towards him.  Glancing about, taking in the view all around him, he could see the slow plodding movement of them throughout the hills.

He scrambled over the fence and cut straight across the gravel road.  On the other side of the road he scaled another fence and continued forward, slower but focused in his movements.  He quickly found himself following a trickling stream into a small rocky, steep-sided ravine.  Rattlesnakes!  He realized that he was in prime rattlesnake territory, but he immediately swore away the thought.  Rattlesnakes weren't his problem.

Suddenly he was physically stopped dead in his tracks with a painful jolt.  The panic that had so recently driven his forward progress, now without direction caused his body to shake and quiver uncontrollably.  He fought hard mentally to grasp what had happened and realized he had run straight into a hidden barbed wire fence camouflaged by the dead of night.  He pushed back, thankful he hadn't been running and thankful that he was wearing a thick jacket and denim pants to protect him from the rusty barbs.

Not wanting to risk any more injury by trying to climb over the fence in the dark and within the treacherous ravine, he decided to crawl beneath it.  Getting down on his belly he stuck his hands into the marshy creek that he had been following.  It stank strongly of cattle manure.  Sliding a foot or two away from the stream, he belly crawled under the fence, trying his best to stay out of the muck of the stream and its muddy banks.  His backpack snagged on the barbs of the fence.  Twisting and rocking, he managed to free it from the fence, but soaked himself in the stream by doing so.

Once he was clear of the fence, he followed the stream further down into the ravine.  The further he went, the rockier and narrower its walls became and the more stones and boulders lay across his path.

After what felt like twenty minutes of travel, he clambered over a large rock in the middle of the ravine and stopped when he heard the sound of water falling into a pool.  He sat there for a minute, listening for the sounds of pursuit.  He heard nothing.  Thankful for a moment to rest, he stuck his hand into the pool of water below the rock and brought it to his nose.  It didn't smell of cow manure.  He tasted it.  It tasted pure and cool.

He spent several more minutes at the rock, resting and drinking as much water as he could.  He continued listening for sound of pursuit, for nearby moans or the rustling of undead in the brush, but he heard nothing.

Not wanting to try his luck any further with remaining within the cramped space of the ravine, he continued on, following the creek downstream.  Abruptly the walls of the ravine opened up, exposing him to the full view of the sky.  He had come to the end of the narrow confined trail.  Here it joined with a small canyon, its slopes still steep but not nearly as steep as the walls of where he had just been.  In the middle, where the ravine and small canyon met, was a large vertical mass of stone.  Ken reasoned that it was most likely created by a trick of erosion from both streams over thousands of years.  It was at least ten feet in height on the upstream side and well over thirty feet above the valley floor at its lower end within the canyon.  If he were able to scale it to the top, he would have a safe place to rest for the night.

Climbing the mass of stone proved to be easy for him.  It was composed of very thin flat stones stacked like numerous decks of cards, one on top of the other.  Some of the stones were loose when he placed his hands upon them, but most were very stable, being embedded deep within the mass as a whole which prevented them from separating or working loose.

Ascending the rocks, he could smell the presence of rock chucks, marmots, a large grass eating rodent that favored the rock piles common to southern Idaho’s volcanic landscape.  He was also worried about being bitten by rattlesnakes that might be making their homes within the gaps of the stones as well , but there was nothing he could do.

Once on top, he found the area to be relatively wide and nearly flat.  He found a smoother area and set his pack down.  Then he lay down, using his pack as a pillow on the hard rocks.  He fell asleep before he had time to ponder just how uncomfortable it was to sleep on rocks.

Zombie Apocalypse Survivor:

 

the Mountaineer

 

Copyright 2014 by Jason Thornton

 

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Permalink Reply by Field Troll on January 15, 2014 at 12:38am

Zombie Apocalypse Survivor:
the Mountaineer (4)
by Jason R. Thornton
Copyright © 2013 JASON R. THORNTON

In his dreams he was comfortably asleep in his bedroom at home, curled up in a thick down comforter and clean white linen sheets. Stretching he felt the smooth fabric across his skin. He could hear his wife and daughter in the living room, laughing over something funny.

The dream slowly faded as his subconscious registered the hard stone beneath him and the cold damp of the morning air. Slowly becoming aware that he was conscious, a great weight settled upon his soul, the weight of his loss. His wife and daughter were gone. They had all fled their home together, the home that was in his dream. It was most likely surrounded by swarms of the undead, probably wholly untouched since no one had remained behind to draw their destructive hunger. Some of his neighbors had elected to stay within their homes. They were now most likely zombies themselves. Everyone was a zombie now. Janine was gone. Dead. A zombie. Meghan. Meghan too. He lay there in his grief for several minutes, trying to remember every detail of who they were, the shape of their faces, the color of their eyes, their voices, everything...before opening his watery eyes.

The eastern sky was aglow with the radiant gold and pink hues of dawn. Ken sat up and immediately regretted the action. His head spun, pain screeched behind his eyes and his stomach heaved. He crawled to the edge of the rocks and tried to vomit. His stomach was empty and each time it convulsed it produced nothing but pain. It felt as if his stomach muscles clenched so tightly that they touched upon his spine.

http://fieldtrollbooks.com/mountain_3.html

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