The Weekly Challenge

I'm gonna go ahead and say it.

I'm proud of myself.

That's right, three weeks in a row of writing short stories.  Thank you Chuck Wendig for the regular challenges, because otherwise I'd probably flail around an fail to come up with an idea.

Speaking of, this week the challenge was to take a list of pop culture items and combine two of them into one story.  I went with Star Wars and the Walking Dead.  Once again I had fun just thinking about it, I brainstormed all the things I thought were themes of the pop culture items I knew and those two jumped out at me.  Almost went with Batman but the vigilantism angle just wasn't working this time.

So yeah, we're back on zombies.  That didn't take long now did it?

The main thing I wanted to avoid here was having just a crossover fanfiction.  I didn't want to have the Walking Dead survivors find lightsabers and use the Force, or put zombies in space (they've done that, it's called Death Troopers...good book actually.)  Instead I tried to combine what I felt some of the themes were, and ended up with a zombie apocalypse ruled by a totalitarian government.  Enjoy.

P.S. My word count is rising, I broke 900 this time.  XD

Wasteland

“Hey boss, I think he’s coming to.”

            You open your eyes to a small concrete room with weak lighting coming from an old camping lamp off to one side.  Two people, a man and a woman, are leaning over you as you try to sit up.  Ragged clothing and matted hair are the uniform traits.  Behind them are shelves with an assortment of what looks like emergency survival gear.

            “Where-“ your voice cracks, they hand you a canteen and a flask.

You drink from both.

            “Where am I?” you ask.

            One of them, the guy, grins, “You’re alive.”  He laughs at his own joke.

            “Ignore Marcus,” the woman says with a shrug.

            “Hey, Mara, come on!”

            “Where am I?  And who are you people?” you ask.

“We’re with the Underground,” Mara says.  “We’re smugglers.”

“And right now we’re smuggling you,” says Marcus.  “Congratulations buddy, you just got recruited.”

Turning back to you Mara says, “We pulled you from the wastes.  What do you remember?”

            At the question, it comes back to you.  The walking and the fear.  The hunger and the thirst…especially the thirst.

            You take another swig from the flask, you’re not nearly drunk enough for this.

            “Hey, hey, hey!  Easy on that, that’s mine!”  Marcus shouts.

            “What he means,” Mara interrupts, “is that you’re dehydrated.  Stick to the water for now.”

            She reaches for the flask and you take one last drink before handing it back.

            “Shouldn’t have let me have it in the first place then,” you grumble.

            “It was to make my job easier,” she looks down sympathetically.

            You follow her gaze and see your leg.  You remember twisting it as you fell from the Republic’s Criminal Execution chute, falling outside the city wall and into the wasteland.  The splint you made has been removed, it makes a pile of old debris and the remains of your coat in the corner.

            “I was waiting for you to wake up before we set it,” she says.  “This is going to hurt.”

            “Geez Mara, can you work on your bedside manner?”  Marcus says.

            Mara ignores him.  “Here.”  She hands you a thick piece of wood.  “Bite down on this.  Marcus, hold his shoulders down and keep him still.”

            You lie back and try to relax, putting the block in your mouth.

            Mara counts down, “Three…Two…”

You take a deep breath.

“One!”

            With a wet crunch the twist in your leg is reset and you dig your teeth into the wood as you cry out, the pain making you sweat.

            “Crap, give him my flask before he passes out again.”  Marcus hands you the flask and you take another drink before giving it back and drinking some water to wash out the foul taste that suddenly fills your mouth.

            The pain clears your head, and something nags at the back of your mind but you can’t remember what it is.

            “Easy there, man.”  Marcus helps you sit up.  “We’ve got you.”

            Mara is replacing the splint around your leg.  She looks up.  “How long were you in the wastes?”

            “More importantly,” Marcus cuts in.  “What did you do to piss off the Republic?”

            Your head still hurts, the room is too warm.  Taking another drink, you say, “I think I got drunk…tore down some propaganda.  Maybe beat up some Enforcers?”

            “Yep, that’ll do it!”  Marcus laughs.

            Mara takes another look at you, waiting for an answer to her question.

            You wipe the sweat off your face.  You’re still thirsty and you take another drink.

            “I don’t think it was that long, it’s a little hazy.”  The memory of your exile is still a blur.

            “Do you have any other injuries you need me to look at?” she asks.

            “No,” you cough.  “I’m fine.”

            You take another drink while scratching at an itch on your chest.

            “Your splint was pretty well put together.  This was your coat right?”

            “Right.”  The room is getting warmer.

            Mara holds up the shirt.

“Any idea how it got so bloody?” she asks, with a concerned look.

            The silence in the room is stifling.  You wrack your brain but you can’t remember anything, the heat is making it hard to think.  You swallow water but the taste turns your stomach and you spit it back out.

            The water hits the floor flecked with bile and red with blood.

            “Oh shit,” Marcus whispers.

            The sight of the blood brings your memory back.  Limping away from the city wall, trying to move as quickly as you could, knowing you had to find shelter before it got dark.

            Before the Corpses came looking.

            “I was bitten.”  You say, your hand going to your chest.  The memory of the bite comes back as you feel the tear in your skin through the fabric.

            “Oh shit, shitshitshit!”  Marcus is backing away from you, crawling towards the wall.  “Mara, Mara we have to dump him.”

            “Shut up Marcus, we should have enough meds to help him,” she says.

            “He’s already coughing up blood,” Marcus is reaching behind him.

            “Marcus, sit down and shut up!” Mara yells at him.

            Marcus ignores her and pulls out a pistol, aiming it at you.  Before he can fire Mara grabs his arm, wrenching the pistol out of his grip.  The two fall back and slam into the far wall and the pistol clatters to the floor.

            Your chest itches like it’s on fire.  You’re sweating bullets and the room is oppressively hot.  You’re thirsty but can’t stand the thought of water.

            Your two rescuers keep fighting.  The room begins to spin.

            You reach for the gun.  You know what you have to do.

Choices: Moral and Otherwise

I recently finished the Walking Dead game.  The short version of the plot would be that you play Lee Everett, a survivor who has taken an orphan girl named Clementine under his care.  The game is essentially a choose your own adventure novel, presenting you with various choices during conversations that will impact how the other characters treat you later on, as well as being given choices like which of two people to save from death or who to feed when supplies are running low.

Some choices were easy, in one chapter the cast is threatened by other survivors and you're presented with the choice of killing them or showing mercy after you've beaten them.  I chose to let them live, at least until the Walkers in the background closed in and finished the job for me.  An easy choice honestly.

But more than once I had to set the controller down and think about what I would do, what I could justify doing.  One that still stands out in my mind was when the group finds an abandoned vehicle, lights on and engine running so clearly not abandoned for long, full of supplies.  The group debates what to do but shortly, cold and hungry, decide to take everything.  You're given the choice of joining the looting or staying off to the side.  Initially I didn't join in, finishing the chapter without taking anything that didn't belong to me.  But after thinking about what I would do, the choices that I would make, I went back and replayed that scene and changed the choice I had made.

Because that's what this game is really about.  You're not playing a character named Lee Everett.  Lee is a voice for you to act through.  The choices and actions you make are not scripted by the game, they're determined by you, the player.  And it's done so in a more immersive way than any other game I have ever played.

I've played games with moral choice systems, Fallout 3 and the Infamous series.  But those use the moral choice less to impact plot and more to effect the gameplay.  Even with Infamous having alternate endings depending on your moral alignment still feels like the game is the one making the key choices and you're just telling it if you'd like to hear the good or evil story.

I've mentioned more than once how much I love the Mass Effect games, and while it often presented difficult decisions to make, those choices were either too broad and universal to effect me personally, or I could boil it down to see the impact on the characters I did have a connection with.  Either the choice was too big to relate to me, or so personal that I wasn't viewing it at the scale the game presented.

Again, in The Walking Dead you are the one making the choices, and you are the one they're effecting.  Without giving anything away, the game does not, under any circumstances, have a happy ending.  No choice you make will result in rainbows and sunshine.  This is a game about a zombie apocalypse, it's not about winning, it's about surviving.

In the last chapter the game confronts you about the choices you made at various points, and you can either apologize or justify your actions.  Each time I felt the knife twist a little deeper and realized just how guilty some of my choices had made me feel.  Could I really live with myself if I robbed that car and deprived the owner of what they needed?

SPOILERS AHEAD NOW YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

After that scene Lee and Clementine reach the end of the game.  Lee, having been bitten is dying.  He talks Clementine through what she needs to know to survive.  But again, Lee is only saying what you choose to say.  I told that sweet little girl to stay safe, to learn how to hide, to always keep moving, and to never trust anyone again.

I told her to go on without me.

I did not ask her to shoot me to stop me from turning.  I refused to take that last light of hope from her.

I told her to leave and not to look back.

And then I died.

Goodbye Dale

So if it wasn't obvious from my Friday Five posts (that reminds me, I need to do more of those) about the undead, I'm a fan of zombies.  As such, I'm a fan of The Walking Dead.  Both the comic and the AMC series.


From this point on there will be spoilers, you have been warned.

In yesterday's episode the group was discussing what to do with someone they had captured a few episodes ago.  They had saved him from zombies, fixed up his injuries, and then decided to kill him because of the potential threat he might at some point represent.

I was not happy with seeing characters I liked choosing to kill someone who was otherwise harmless, I'd like to think people are better than that.  But what I do like about the show is how the characters are being portrayed in their decisions.  I don't like the decision, but it's clear that the characters aren't happy about it either.

Most vocal about this was Dale.  Rick was upset about it but willing to kill a living, human, captive.  Rick was unhappy, but Dale was outspoken.  I've always liked Dale.  From the first episode he appeared in I liked how he was not just the moral center of the group but also a connection to the world they had lost.

A large part of this was his age.  Dale was, aside from Hershel, the oldest character on the cast.  So it was understandable that he would cling the strongest to the 'civilized way' of doing things.  Again, I think this helped him also be the moral compass.  One of my favorites moments of his was in the first season when he argued to allow a dying man the choice of how to die.  Not to kill him, but to give him the choice.

Even when the show first began airing, AMC put up a character test on their website.  And lo and behold, turns out the character I'm most like is Dale.  Like I said, I always liked Dale.

And now he's dead.

Rewinding my rambling a moment, in this past episode Dale spent the entire time arguing for the life of their prisoner.  First individually with other members of the group, even moving forward Shane's character development away from a complete psychopath.  Then later with every member of the cast.

What really caught my attention was that during the group conversation Dale was the only one standing in the light.  Rick was caught between the light and the shadows and everyone else was standing in shadows.  At first I thought it was a bit of a blatant use of lighting and staging to show Dale's standpoint compared to everyone else, but it worked for the scene and kept the attention where it needed to be.

Then Dale died and I started thinking.  Earlier in the episode there was also a brief conversation regarding Heaven and belief.  I'd like to think that Dale's death could actually be interpreted not only as a moment of redemption for the group (as the next episode promo seems to imply) but also as a way for him to get to where he deserves to be.

I'm not saying I personally believe in Heaven.  But I feel that Dale stepped into the light.