Genre Bender: Zombie Apocalypse

[Cammeh]

The point of a genre-bender is to take a well know, genre related trope or story starter and transplant it into another genre.

The Zombie Apocalypse

"Within the past couple days or hours, something very strange has happened. Maybe the Synthetic Plague the government was working on got unleashed. Maybe a voodoo priest's spell went awry. Maybe an alien space probe broadcast a weird signal at the Earth, or fell to Earth and brought radiation with it. Maybe there's just no more room in Hell.

Whatever the cause, the result is the same; the recently dead have risen, en masse, to feed on the living. With each victim they claim, their numbers swell, and no force on Earth can contain them. As society collapses, it's up to the Big Damn Heroes to fight their way to safety or keep shooting until things blow over.

The Zombie Apocalypse has arrived."


If you value your life, if you have any hope for survival, you will take this classic nightmare story theme and CHANGE IT! Change it to any other genre you want, just NO ZOMBIES! It's your only chance of escape!



Save yourselves!

 

[Åtsel]

TCHT....TCHT....TCHT.....TCHT.....

Monotony. That's all reloading magazines was. Unadulterated monotony. It was even worse right after a fight, your adrenaline still pumping in your ears like a war drum and you have to stop everything and sit there... one by one... reloading.

TCHT....TCHT....TCHT.....TCHT....

Chris looked around the torn up office space, not even wanting to count the number of dead. His forearm burned where deep scratches bled slowly into the ragged bandage tied around the wound. Rick was dead, that much was clear. He didn't know what happened to Tonya, but he assumed the worst. As he reloaded he kept a mental note of how much ammo he had left. The last .45 shell slid into one of the Glock's magazines, three in total. That was 39 rounds loaded, 40 if Chris kept one in the chamber. Another 14 rattled around in his pocket. He worried how long he could hold out. A sigh brought about by exhaustion and overwhelming odds escaped Chris' lips like a waterfall, at the end of the exhale he shakily managed to his feet. A quick check of Rick revealed he had no ammo, just a can of green beans and a knife worth salvaging. Both found their way into Chris' backpack. The office building had been a bad idea, but Tonya insisted, her mind had fantasized a bit too much about the gleaming candy and soda machines. Turned out to be a death trap.

Breath came easier once he made it back outside, the confines of a building made for hellish fighting conditions. Sunlight streamed through the high rise buildings around him and the utter silence was a stark reminder that the city was a ghost town now. A few cars littered the streets, some looked as in they were in working order while others were simply burnt out husks. As silently as he could Chris walked down the deserted streets, stopping only when something caught his eye in a store window. This was his life now, always looking over his shoulder, always afraid of the inevitable, always looking for food and water. Subconsciously he scratched at his face's thick stubble, he never had liked facial hair and now it was something he couldn't control. A sudden scream startled Chris, the cry for help echoed around him. He struggled internally, the moral dilemma tearing at his mind. Help the person and most likely die, or run. Another scream made the decision for him and he began to jog towards the commotion. He rounded an alley way and ran down it, the cries growing louder but less frequent. Worry creased his brow as he picked up his speed. Another turn into a tighter alley and Chris was greeted with one of the last things he'd ever see. Hundreds of them, thousands even. Organized, waiting patiently for their turn at the woman. Chris let out a groan at the sight and began to step back, looking over his shoulder only to find hundreds more now blocking his way. The leader of the group stepped lightly forward with flashing eyes, staring Chris down, it's hackles raised high. A slow, menacing meow escaped it's horrible feline lips, clearly the signal to attack. Hundreds upon hundreds of kitties stormed Chris, leaping upon him and shredding every piece of skin they could find with their viciously sharp claws. The sharp retort of the pistol echoed off the alley walls, but only a few shots were fired before Chris was brought down. Truly, the end of the world.

 

[noodle]

Cannons fired and bullets whistled, and the city took its last stand against the invaders. Their faces painted with blood, their hands dirty, their knuckles bleeding. People fell all around them as they ran through the burning streets, some watching the sky and others watching the streets. Even the children were immune to the screams by now, and they huddled behind the adults with stones clutched in their hands.

...not that stones would do anything against these monsters, but it made them feel at least a little safer.

Bodies littered the streets in a horrific painting of what humanity had become. A lesson to not meddle with what was meant to be left alone.

But science is a cruel mistress, and those who are her puppets cannot resist the allure of something new. They didn't expect them to be so strong. They didn't expect them to be so aggressive. And they were not careful enough.

The dragons had returned.

And they were not peaceful creatures.

 

[PoetLore]

She'd always been told that the only thing that would survive a nuclear holocaust was cockroaches. Oh how she wished that were true right now. She hadn't seen another living human in a very long time. It used to be, when she first emerged from the fallout shelter, that there were a lot of people like her family, ones who had been prepared with food and a proper shelter. But everyone's stores eventually ran out and forced them to brave the new world above ground. What had greeted them was a stark and barren land full of incredibly large spiders and a lot of insects to feed them. Eventually though the spiders grew so large that they were able to feed on humans as well as the insects, and that had been the beginning of the end.

With their unlimited food supply and none of their natural predators left to cull their numbers the spiders were on a path to becoming the top of the food chain. She looked at her supplies, "Two more flares, and two boxes of matches. Not much time left for me..." She frowned, having discovered far too late that fire was her best weapon against them. She'd used a lot of her matched frivolously to stay warm when she could have been more careful about using the embers to reignite another fire.

She pushed from the wall of the building looking around for any of the larger creatures, and not seeing any she ran into the treeline. hearing the familiar rustling behind her she loaded a flare and fired it at the dry brush. It failed to ignite and she let out a string of curses that would have made her father slap her. She loaded the last flare and fired it at the spider, which was about as big as she was. This one did ignite and the creature began to squeal as the fire consumed it.

She was running blindly and made the mistake of looking over her shoulder to see if it was still following and ran right into a giant web. She tried to pull a hand free to get to her matches but it was no use. She felt fangs sink into her side and webbing begin to encase her in its soft embrace. "Never even got to finish my matches..." was her last thought.

 

[Doctor Jax]

Tag.

She could never understand why that game had been so much fun as a kid. All you did was chase each other in an endless round, one after the other, trying to tap the other person. Yet, she remembered it had been such an immense, crazy amount of fun.

You're it.

She peeked around the corner of the half-broken building. She could see several of the Enhanced, the diode that connected them to the Aethernet - not to be confused with Ethernet, mind you - blinking from several yards away. They walked about normally, as if they were going about their business, if it weren't for the fact that they no longer had to eat, sleep, void, or talk. Connected to the Cloud. She remembered when that used to be a good thing.

Tag.

A single checkpoint appeared on the HUD of her goggles over the head of some of the Enhanced, who talked among each other - well, "talked". Every single one had an arrow over their head before she was done, the software in her gun tracking them.

You're it.

It was a little funny. She remembered what it was like being Enhanced, and it felt as if every time she took out a few, a couple more survivors would be caught and "enhanced" by Satami. She wondered if it would always be like that, an endless round of tag, as she was taken and reintegrated, broken out, then reintroduced to the fold. They never seemed to ever gain any new ground. Either side.

But what other choice did they have?

She leveled her gun at the first one, chambering an EMP patch. She'd have to work fast. There were at least ten.

"Tag," she murmured. "You're it."