What's eating Charles?

Sometimes you just have those days...

What’s eating Charles?

Charles Monkton wasn’t usually in bright spirits but today was a great day, today was a day to celebrate. He’d passed his driving test and was feeling top of the world. Being 5 foot 2 he’d struggled for a decade with his driving, but recently his dad had sent him a bumper cushion normally used by children. He’d attempted it 12 times, there was a bet going at his local bar how many attempts it would take poor little Monkton. He couldn't remember who the winner might be as he strolled down the road towards his house.

 He’d just passed Tom Vermont the butcher’s house... he had some tasty daughter’s thought Charles as he smiled to himself. At that moment he remembered It was old Gregory Philips who’s birthday was august the 12th, his lucky number he would often blurt out when the topic had died down. He would shout out many a late nights before he’d give out that awful laugh he did, often ending in a coughing fit. He was almost across the road at this point not bothering to look for traffic, nothing could stop him today. Before he could get across a loud scream expanded behind him, growing louder the longer it went on, it seemed to come from the Vermont’s.

He stopped and turned to face the house; it was the was the middle of the day and the light made it easier to see outside than in. Slowly walking back across the road he squinted trying to shade his eyes with his hand, all of a sudden Mr Vermont’s second youngest Daughter Paula who was only 3 years below Charles at school but looked 5 years his senior  came running down the garden steps. She was sprinting without consideration for her environment, as she drew near to the bottom her foot caught on the edge of a step. The impact send her toppling head first into the pavement, her chin hit the stone slab with a crack, Charles winced at the sight he didn’t like blood it made his stomach churn.

Paula lay flat out frozen while Charles took a minute to compose himself, he was about to go over when he saw someone coming from the same place as Paula had. It looked like Mr Vermont, but it couldn't be Jeff; Paula’s cousin, a good friend of Charles had told him only this morning that his Uncle Tom had been seriously ill with a fever for the past few days.  He wondered if this might be his way out of this bloody awful mess he’d witnessed, he waved his arms in the air pushing as much air out of his weak little chest as he could manage -‘Excuse me!’ - the unbeknown character stood there and faced him for a second, before slowly limping down the steps, - ‘Tom! Its Paula’ shouted Charles ‘she’s been hurt!’- He walked closer to Paula pointing as he shouted - ‘She's taken rather a nasty fall!’

The man had gotten to the bottom of the steps, Charles recognized it to be Mr. Vermont but he looked different, like all the blood had drained from his face. His mouth was red and bloody, his eyes sunken and black, -‘Tom ...are you ok?’ - Tom stared at him limping closer, his arms rising up and his eyes widening, Charles found himself circling the injured Paula trying to keep a safe distance between himself and a very sickly looking Mr. Vermont.

As Charles was drastically trying to think of an easy exit, Paula regained consciousness - ‘Whaggg hagpend, ougggch miii ghaaaww’ - This startled Charles, but Tom stood perfectly still. His dark blackened eyes drawing down on Paula as she weakly tried to support herself getting up. Tom fell on her sending her falling down under his weight, he grabbed her face as he bit into her neck, all the while Charles just watched with his hand over his mouth edging back in horror as Tom bit chunks of neck and shoulder muscle from his own daughter. Paula giving a weak struggle and a scream that came out as a mere gurgle through the blood and broken bone.

Charles didn't know what to think let alone what to do. He couldn't help notice how fast Tom was devouring his own daughter; usually he would feel sick if he saw a tiny bit of blood from a cut, but this... this was a million times worse and he hadn't puked a drop. Half her neck was gone; he’d eaten through half her right hand and was now munching on an ear as if he’d not eaten for weeks. Charles thought Paula must have been dead by now, all of a sudden it came to him like a burst pipe, he bent over as the vomit raced out of his mouth letting out that awful noise as his pasta and meatballs went all over the road. This awoke Tom to Charles presence he dropped his daughter’s ear as he got to his feet, snarling at Charles as if he was pray, his eyes locked on its target ready to pounce.

Charles didn’t see Tom coming until his faint shadow from the sun covered him, Charles looked round as Tom grabbed his face, Charles grabbed his hand and tried to free himself, Tom’s jaw snapping back and forth letting out an awful groan, Charles pleaded in a painful struggle -‘Pleaaaa urghhh!’ - for a second he manages to catch his breath, - ’please Mr.Vermont! Don’t hurrrrt agghhhhhh!’ - Snap! Snap! Snap! Went Mr. Vermont’s jaw as they both fell to the ground, the impact had caused Charles a deep scratch above his eye from where Toms grip had tightened around his face, every time he pushed one hand away another would grab at his face.

Tom was gaining control, slowly getting on top of Charles trapping him to the floor.He grabbed Charles jaw and pulled ‘Arghghhh’ screamed Charles as the muscle and bone was being ripped lose and finally disconnecting from his face all together.  As Charles lost unconsciousness from the pain his head hit the ground, the last thing he saw was Paula’s face looking up at him dripping with blood as she began to get up, that same deathly groan ringing in his ears.

 

Reviews

[Shep]

Very intense reading i have always liked zombies. they tickle my funny bone. I have two suggestions. The font you have chosen makes it had to read. I normally stick to times roman size 12 pt. the second is take things out like ‘Pleaaaa urghhh!’ because it detracts from the story you have enough detail and you don't needed it. Excellent story wishing there was more. TO see what happens to the zombie and what made him a zombie in the first place.

[Jake Dyson]

Thank you for that fantastic review it had made me think a lot about it. You are right the font is very strange, Writerscafe seems to keep making the font go funny everytime I copy and paste but I will look into it. I didn't know that about the speaking when she's broke her jaw that it disrupts the flow of the story, thank you I will start to think about this more often. There is actually a whole back story to this but I haven't posted it yet as I am working on The Queen Bee but it will be up in the future. Thanks so much for the feedback appreciate it and I will read more of your work soon I am just a little busy at the moment.

[Shep]

I have the same problem with WC Font But i have found after you copy and paste it. that if you re highlighted as if you are about to copy it you can change the font and size then it will look the way you wanted it .

[Douglas White]

Zombies, while fun for a while in the movies, begin to pall after a while. This story isn’t bad, but on the dull and predictable side, which is the number one problem with zombies. You can’t do a whole lot with them. If you have your heart set on zombies, then pay attention to the really good zombie stories – the zombies, themselves, are really all background scenery. The real horror in zombie stories is what the survivors may have to do to survive. After all, dying is easy – everyone does it at some point.

The real question is: what would you do to survive?

Apply that question to Charles, and then start asking other questions: Who is Charles, really? Is there anyone else that you can bring along for the ride? How could you make this bad situation even worse, and still keep at least some of your characters alive? (Or just kill them all?) Could Charles be infected and suffer a long lingering death before becoming undead? If he’s infected, will he be selfish and try to hide it, or will he try to save others?

These are all questions that you can ask yourself and use to make your story stronger, more interesting, and more horrifying. Give it a try, you’ll probably surprise yourself with how horrible it can become by focusing more on characters, less on zombies.

[The Good Luck Victoriou..]

An engaging read.

If this is only meant to be a one-shot I'd say it's fine, but if you'd like to turn it not a longer story (a book maybe?) I'd suggest drawing out your descriptions and explanations. For example, the second paragraph has a lot of things going on: there's the driving, the though of the daughters, the lucky number and the scream. That's a lot of stuff that was skimmed over in one paragraph. For the sake of continuity I'd really like to see all of these things expanded and explored in more detail. As it is, it seemed like a hodge-podge of ideas thrown together with no link between them.

That being said I did like the pace of the book- things actually happened, it wasn't all just back story and useless dialogue. Maybe just give me a little more of an explanation and try to link things together instead of jumping from one thought to the next.