Fri - 10pm
Well, I survived another night of stocking shelves at the supermarket. And, I didn't rip Dave's throat out yet, so I guess that's a win. Fucking management and their quotas and catty bullshit. Doesn't matter if Jeff stocks 3 times less than me, he's going to get employee of the month every month anyway. Enough of that though, it's the weekend! I got a new videogame yesterday that I've been itching to try so I'm going to stay up late gaming.
Sat - 12pm
Void Bastards is fantastic. I was up until almost 4am playing it! Neighbors must've been throwing a party because even through my headphones there was a fuck of a lot of noise and yelling over there. I think they were setting off fireworks too somewhere close by from all the pops and bangs I heard (until I cranked the volume on my headset at least).
Woke up today at around noon when the town's tornado siren went off. It stopped a little bit ago finally, fucking thing must be on the fritz, there isn't a cloud in the sky today.
Creepy Janis is just standing in her yard again like a crazy person. I watched her stand there for over an hour while I drank my coffee. I should probably go check on her but I don't want to get another 45 minute rant about Bob and Teresa's dog, like happened last time I went to find out why the hell she was standing in her yard zoned out like some crackhead. If she's still out there in a few hours I'll go talk to her I guess.
Sat - 1 pm
TV has been cutting out off and on all day, across all channels. I tried calling the cable company but per usual nobody answers and I'm not going to wait on hold for 45 minutes just to be told nothing. Maybe I'll head out to visit James at the prison. Nearly his break, and if I'm lucky he'll let me pop up into the tower again. It's fucking cool up there.
1:15pm
Okay this is... things are fucked. What the fuck. My car is gone. I went out to go see James and it's just fucking gone! And the guy from down the street was just standing there in my driveway. I asked him if he saw anything and when he turned around... his... his face was all fucked up. He had blood streaming down his jaw and his cheeks were ripped open but he didn't even seem to care - he just lunged for me and tried to fucking bite me like some kind of zombie, so... I... I pushed him over and stomped on his face until he stopped moving. And that's when I noticed Creepy Janis. She was coming straight for me with some other lady right behind her and they were both fucked right up. The old lady behind Janis had big flaps of skin just hanging off of her. Janis was walking on a clearly busted ankle like it was nothing, even as I could hear the bones crunching with every step. I grabbed a hammer from the garage and... well, I don't want to think about that too much. I'm still shaking so much I can barely type this. Zombies aren't fucking real!! What the fuck is going on.
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I'm going to check Bob and Teresa's place. I saw someone moving around in there just after I woke up at noon so... god I hope they're okay. If not... I gotta get a car, see if I can meet up with James. If this shit is happening all over town he's probably barricaded in the watch-tower at the prison. I'm sure he's fine.
Check Bob and Teresa. Get a car. Get to the prison.
I can do this.
Sat 1:45pm
Well, I found Bob and Teresa. Bob was in the front yard, snarling and ripping at the door. He rushed me as soon as he heard me. Teresa was around the side of the house, banging her head on a window. They're in a better place now.
Their car was gone too. Found a duffle bag in their storage room though, so I loaded up a few bottles of water and a couple of cans of whatever was in their cupboard... I'll take a better stock of what I have when I find a fucking car and can get to the tower.
3pm
4:20pm
FOUND ONE!! Near the Dean's Office at the University. Keys just sitting in the ignition, totally unlocked. Thank fucking god. Had a pack on my heels and if I hadn't gotten lucky there... I don't want to think about what would have happened. I don't think I could've run much further.
Prison now. God I hope James is there. He's got to be.
5pm
The whole city is overrun. The shops downtown are smashed and/or full of zombies. The road out of town... god, there were so many of them. I hope other people survived but looking at all this... makes me worry that the only people who survived were smart enough to leave last night. Guess I know what all the noise and 'fireworks' were last night. Fuck I'm stupid. Should've checked. Should've... well, no point dwelling on that. I've just got to get to the prison. Even if James didn't make it, I can hole up in the tower for the night and maybe get the fuck out of town tomorrow.
6pm
The prison looked perfect from the outside, but... one step into the main doors and... well, safe to say I don't think James is going to be at the tower. There had to be a hundred of them in just that main entrance part of the prison. I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I'm parked in front of the tower now. I don't see any movement up there but maybe he's just staying away from the windows, or is holed up in the stairwell.
Guess it's time to try the door.
6:20pm
The door was unlocked. The interior lights on the watch tower were all off, leaving the stairwell in complete darkness. I used the light from my phone to find the stairs and then just ran up them until I got to the top. James isn't here. Maybe he never was. Doesn't look like anyone was in the tower at all today. Everything is neatly put away... but it was unlocked... so... I don't know what to make of that. Maybe James is still alive and is planning to come back here. I'm going to take a chance by going onto the observation deck and seeing if I can see anything.
"It's uh... almost seven P.M. or so. I've switched to recording on my phone while I'm walking around out here on the observation walkway. There's fires in the city I think. Big towers of smoke. No sirens though, so... I'm guessing there's nobody left to care about putting them out. I heard gunshots a while ago. They were close, I think within the prison itself... but I haven't seen anything, and even the zombies - god that's weird to say - seem to still be mostly indoors. I haven't seen anyone or anything in the yard, or near my tower. So that's good, at least. I'm going to - the fuck was that?! AAAAHHH!"
Crunch
This was an entry to @snook's #zombiewritingcontest. When I spotted it last night I knew immediately how I wanted to do this story, so I spent some time this morning playing Project Zomboid to get the screenshots to accompany my little tale! I thought pairing my story with game screenshots would be a fun and unique way of doing this, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it!
Edit: Sorry mobile users! It's been mentioned to me that the screenshots are suuuuper small and hard to see on mobile devices, which is something I had not considered. I'll be making sure to edit these down in the future if I do more of these little PZ-spinoff stories.
Your current Rank (108) in the battle Arena of Holybread has granted you an Upvote of 44%
OMGosh this was perfect!!
What a great way to pair the game with your story :D (I have that game by the way LOL)
I love how you walked us through being caught in the middle of everything. I can totally see someone doing that.
Oh, the sound will go away. I can finally relax. LOL
Perfect story and the screenshots are the best!!
Bravo!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D It was an absolute blast to write.
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!
I am so happy you had fun :D That is what I was hoping for :D
Ha ha! That was awesome!
Thank you! Very glad you enjoyed it!
Ah this is awesome. YOu really got the feel for a horror zombie thing going on, and I guess playing that game will get you in the mood, right? What I love about zombie stories is that there are just infinite, infinite stories because there are so many people to play around with. Who were they, how did they get caught up it, how did they cope, what did they do? So much fun. Relaly enjoyed this - thanks. I dont think HIVE has enough zombie fiction - we should do a collection!
I love writing zombie fiction. Project Zomboid is fantastic and almost every playthrough I make it my mission to find a blank notebook and a pen in-game, as with those tools you can write in the notebook in the game - so I have a character journal very similar to this style in almost every single playthrough I do. This is just the first time I've managed to actually take screenshots and then pull the story out of the game and use it for something greater than my own personal entertainment. I'm very glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for the comment!
i needed a bowl of popcorn for that one, super fantastic job.
Thank you so much! I'm very glad you enjoyed it. It was a blast to write!
Zombie stories are fun to do, both the writing of and reading of.
When multiplayer is finally out on the beta branch we'll have to invite you to our server.
I'm absolutely down for that! :)
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