Fun With Fiction: Is This the Future of Meltdown?

I feel that my very first foray into writing - Meltdown - will be my very last. Meltdown has always been my baby - certainly not my most active writing interest, but one day it should be completed as my life's work. Will it happen that way? I doubt it, but I do revisit my original opus from time to time, and lately I have been tackling my survival-horror story not as a novel concept, but as I originally envisioned it way back in the eighth grade: a series of short stories tied together by an over-arching plot.

Here is a quick sample of something I wrote this week. This is a sample of a scene set somewhere near the middle of the overall story.

(Note: I have never had final names for my cast of six characters in Meltdown, so for now I am using my own name as a placeholder. Probably a bad idea.)

Brandon's fingers were numb from the cold, his hands and arms not far behind. His hands were filthy - crusted with dirt and blood. They stunk, too, like something rotting, something spoiled, and something sour. The group had yet to find any halfway clean water in three days. Day after day of rationing water was killing Brandon - he wanted to drink and drink and drink, but their next batch of clean water might just be for his hands.

Brandon wondered about things from his old life. Important things. Things like who his family were - the faces of his mom and dad were distant memories. The sound of their voices were no longer distinguishable from the dozens of other sounds echoing through his broken memories. There was no used in trying to remember what joy they brought to his life as a child - that was something long gone and increasingly painful to recall.

Painful was the gun in his hand. Painful was raising a thick, heavy pistol toward the sky and putting two or three bullets through the thin, pale body of a teenage girl as she shambled near him. Boredom had a new meaning - sitting there outside the RV, waiting for Pat and Jana to get back with more food rations.

The monsters were slow to move and twice as stupid as they were ugly. Some ripped into their own flesh for a quick meal. Others took notice of Brandon and approached him out of curiosity. An older man hobbled near the side of the RV, his khaki pants and worn leather belt tangled around his ankles. "Do you understand me?" Brandon shouted at the man. The wrinkled face stared back for a second and the man took just a step before tripping over his pants, falling face first to the ground. The man gasped for air as he screamed in pain. He rolled over onto his back, looked at Brandon, and held an arm up. "Do you need my help? Do you understand me?"

The old man's screams turned to whimpers as he held his legs. His pants became more tangled as he tried to stand up. "Sorry old man, you don't get me."

Brandon aimed the gun at the man's head and shot twice. The first bullet scraped the man's shoulder, the second punched through a fleshy jaw and tore the man's head off. Blood splattered up the side of the RV, and the body fell to the ground, sitting lifeless.

There was a time when shooting another human was inconceivable to Brandon. That notion was back with his mother's voice, his father's face, and Brandon's warm, clean hands.

B3 out.