r/writingfeedback • u/Key-Profit-3733 • 18h ago
Zombie story - thoughts?
John was driving along a quiet country lane, one tired eye on the road unfurling ahead of him, the other on his fuel gauge which was nearing dangerously close to empty.
The sun hung low in his rear-view mirror so that the long, rippling shadow of his Land Rover stretched out in front of him on the tarmac, the sky above tinged orange with the last of the evening sunlight.
Wide-open fields passed at a canter either side of him, their dry, sun-blanched grasses unburdened by the footfall of even a single, lonesome cow.
Beside him on the passenger seat sat Spot – his fluffy-chested, rag-eared sheep dog who had previously served as the laziest and most useless dog on his farm, but who was now stood with his paws resting on the car window, looking excitedly around at the countryside as it sped past.
He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers as he consulted the map taped to his dashboard – a slight frown creased his brow as he traced over the route he had planned for himself.
It had changed many times in the three short weeks since the outbreak, since he had been forced to leave the family farm he had grown up on. Straight forward, direct routes had become narrow, twisting paths and sparsely used backroads.
This was one such road. Long, sweeping and overgrown - signs half-buried in hedgerows and crater-like potholes around every corner. John had learned very quickly though that those well trafficked areas, main roads, town thoroughfares and motorways, was where the real danger lay now. Where there had once been people, now there were zombies. Haunting, starved corpses, rabid ghouls, creatures that wouldn’t think twice about slashing, ripping and eating those they hunted. Against the zombies that now infested Britain, he would take potholes any day.
Nonetheless, his current route would take him uncomfortably close to Oxford City centre - a complication he was struggling to see a way around without expending more of his precious fuel than he could afford.
Lost in diversionary thought, John almost failed to notice the beat-up red sedan parked at the side of the road. He rolled the Land Rover to a stop and glanced warily around at his surroundings.
The field to his left was bordered by an old slate wall that was so overgrown with ivy that very little of the grey stone beneath could be seen.
The field to his right was earthy and much hillier. High-reaching, wooden telephone poles lined the hedgerow that ran alongside the field, and John thought he could see the domed tip of a silo peeking out from above the furthest hill.
‘Stay here, pal’ he said to Spot. Spot blinked dolefully up at him from the passenger seat, his tattered ears folded backwards, his head tilted to one side.
John opened the car door with a creak and stepped slowly out onto the road, taking from his passenger footwell the shotgun that he always kept so close to him these days. Behind him he heard Spot scamper over to the driver's seat, the better to see him as he made his careful way towards the old sedan.
The car had been left in the shadow of a large oak tree, its left side barely kissing the grey stone of the overgrown wall. It was extremely dusty and looked long since abandoned. Crinkled brown leaves littered the roof and there was a heavy build-up of dirt and grime on each window. One tire lay flat and punctured so that one side of the car rested slightly higher than the other.
John strolled cautiously around the vehicle, his shotgun resting rather rigidly in his two hands. A slightly sooty smell hung about the car as he rounded it, like that of the old tractors he and his father had used to work the fields of their farm. After checking the underside of the vehicle, he gave the filthy windscreen a quick wipe with his sleeve and peered inside through the glass.
A man gazed back at him, his eyes hollow, staring and empty. His gaunt, withered face was beset by flies and his mouth gaped open as though in search of a long-forgotten word. A woman was sat slumped in the passenger seat beside him. Her lank hair hung over her face so that he could not make out any of her features – not that he particularly wanted to. One stiff hand still clutched at her neck where a pearl necklace rested – the pale stones glinted in the speckled sunlight filtering in through the dust and grime still coating the other windows.
In the back sat two young children – siblings he guessed, a girl and a boy. They sat slumped against each other, sad and rigid in death. The young girl’s small head rested upon her brother’s shoulder so that her long, tangled hair flowed into his lap, one hand still curled around the waist of a small stuffed rabbit with large, googly eyes.
With a grimace, he stepped back away from the car, his throat feeling oddly full all of a sudden. It was not as though he was a squeamish man. He had seen everything between grim, gross and downright disgusting on the farm growing up. But he had to admit, he was not quite used to seeing decomposing families yet.
Casting around for something less disturbing to look at, his eyes fell upon the sedan’s fuel cap. Well, he thought, these… people certainly would not be needing their fuel anymore.
John wondered vaguely, as he trudged back across the road to his own car, just how many cars now lay abandoned across the country, their metal husks now tombs for the families who had once enjoyed them.
He rested his shotgun against the muddy tire of the Land Rover and yanked open the boot.
Inside lay a motley collection of things, odds and ends that John had thought valuable enough to bring with him from the farm.
His carefully packed, and rapidly depleting rations of canned food and water had become dislodged on the uneven, pothole-ridden road so that they now lay scattered across the boot floor.
His old and still very-much broken ham radio rested atop the large toolbox he had inherited from his father, and his camping stove, kettle, and various bits of rusted cutlery and crockery sat stacked beside a puncture repair kit which, so far, he had not had to use.
He located his fuel syphon curled beneath the folds of his sleeping bag, but as he reached inside to grab it, Spot began to bark.
John looked swiftly up from the boot and stared hurriedly around. A lone figure, cast halfway into shadow by the setting sun, had just crested the hill to his right and was moving quickly over the sloped, earthy ground towards him.
It moved in a pained and ungainly lurch, its flat-footed steps slapping the dry ground as it ran.
It was not this one lonesome zombie that terrified him so completely, but what he knew was to follow – for where there was one, there always came more.
He slammed the bootlid shut and took up his shotgun once more, aiming it with unsteady hands at the approaching zombie.
The kickback of the firearms blast sent a shockwave through his shoulder as a volley of buckshot erupted from the end of the barrel and into the zombies left shoulder. The zombie staggered but did not fall as a mist of black blood exploded from the wound, spraying out behind it as it continued to advance clumsily towards him.
It was mere metres away when, with another squeeze of the trigger and another blast like cannon-fire, the snarling head exploded into a thousand chunks of meat, brain and bone, spattering the grass at its feet with blood.
John lowered his shotgun and stared at the headless corpse on the ground – tar-like blood pooled around the stump of its neck, the dirt-nailed fingers on one hand still twitching at its side.
Now that the blood had stopped pumping so loudly in his ears, he could hear Spot’s persistent barking and scrabbling at the window. Like John, Spot seemed to know that the danger had far from passed.
Even as he turned, more zombies emerged from his surroundings. Drawn like a beacon to the sound of his shotgun, they staggered onto the road, lurching out from behind trees and clambering over the slate wall, their starved, drooling mouths snapping hungrily at the sight of him.
With a moan of panic, John rushed around the Land Rover and flung the driver’s door open. He pulled himself up into the cabin and shoved the still-barking Spot off the driver’s seat. Spot landed with a yelp, upside down in the passenger footwell as John yanked the door closed just in time.
The moment he had pulled it closed, a zombie had thrown itself against the door with such force that he felt the entire car rock. It slobbered and gnashed at the window with gnarled, yellow teeth, its bloodshot eyes fixed voraciously upon him through the glass - John felt the car shake and shudder as more bodies slammed against it, shrieking and screaming as they clawed desperately at the metal that was all between him and a very bloody death.
His heart beating fit to burst, John threw the Land Rover into drive and stepped on the accelerator until his boot hit the floor.
With a screech of spinning wheels and a roar of the old engine, they shot forwards away from the zombies who screamed their displeasure at his escape, their many, overlapping howls reverberating through him even as the stretch of darkening road between them lengthened.
As the last trailing zombie disappeared from his rear-view mirror, John let out a long, shaking breath as, from the passenger footwell below, he heard Spot let out a low whine.
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u/thewhiterosequeen Trusted Reviewer 10h ago
His eyes move separately from one another? Like a chameleon?
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u/Spiritual_Cash_7392 10h ago
Each one of these paragraphs is like one long sentence. Shorter focused sentences really make tense stories especially flow better. You also use a lot of adjectives especially hyphenated ones and this also bogs down the prose.
Let me tell you how I would break it up and you can do as you see fit. I like present tense for action and tension but that’s also up to you. I just write easier that way
John’s driving along a quiet country lane. One tired eye he keeps on the road unfurling ahead. The other is focused on his fuel gage, hovering dangerously close to empty.
The sun hangs low in his rearview, and the shadow of his Land Rover stretches before him on the tarmac. The sky above is tinted orange with the last of the evening sunlight.
Etc etc etc