Tuesday, May 1, 2012

My Zombie Apocalypse Team, Part 4ish: Assessing the Underground

[Premise: The idea is that your team consists of you and the protagonists of the last three things you watched/read/played.  For me that means JC DentonTsukasa, and Bella Swan.]
[Previously: Part 1, Part 2, General thoughts, Timeline]
[Where's part 3?  Well I'll get around to writing it at some point, it involves discussion of what to do moving forward, and meeting the people who live in the subway tunnels.  Also, possibly, rat burgers.]
[This takes place in an abandoned subway station, looking through the bars that have been installed to restrict access to the tunnels.]


Bella: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Me: That depends on what you're thinking.

Bella: Don't be a smartass.

Me: I'm not Edward, I can't read minds.

Bella: Edward couldn't read minds if you gave footnotes, endnotes, cultural commentary and a running gloss, I don't care what his powerset says.

Me: What are you thinking?

Bella: I asked first.

Me: I'm thinking that if we could open these tunnels we could use the subway system as a way to get around the city avoiding the checkpoints above and allowing us to move a lot of people without having to turn the truck into a taxi service.

Bella: And once we got the people here this should be easily defensible because it's only accessible via other tunnels, all of them encased in concrete. No windows or doors or soft wooden walls for zombies to break through.

Me: And all we'd need to do to expand is press forward to the next station and guard a few more tunnels.

Bella: And all we'd need to do to fall back is abandon it and station guards at the tunnel we fell back through, no risky moving in the open through uncertain territory.

Me: But I worry about water and food. Water is siphoned off of the city's supply. In the event of a major outbreak can we count on the city's supply to stay flowing?

Bella: No idea, but we could look into that.

Me: And on the food side...

Bella: You're worried that New York City is going to run out rats?

Me: Maybe.

Bella: When has the city ever been without rats?

Me: But if the rats start nomming on zombies, and then the people eat the rats... what becomes of the people?

*pause*

Bella: We need a vaccine.

Me: Yeah, but where?

*pause*

Bella: You keep saying you know this story. Who can help us?

Me: The story isn't supposed to contain a zombie plague.

Bella: But it is supposed to contain a plague.

Me: X-51 is the organization that actually does the work of manufacturing a cure, but that's to a nanotechnology based virus and the equipment for that won't be online until next year. I don't know if they can help us with the zombies now.

Bella: We're headed out there anyway, we could ask.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not big on zombie apocalypse fiction, but I am enjoying yours. It's the wonderfully sensible protagonists, I think.

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  2. I'm always a bit wary of metafiction such as the Thursday Next series - I think it's the extremes of cruelty implied by voluntarily putting actual people into some stories, which authors rarely tackle because hey, cool ideas - but I like the way you're handling it here.

    As for zombie apocalyptes... the bit I find narratively interesting is the initial outbreak and the destruction (or otherwise) of society, not the holing up somewhere with people shouting at each other or the rebuilding afterwards. If I ever write a story of this sort, that's where it's going to happen - maybe with an ambulance crew.

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