Geron Kees

You're hired! I don't pay much, but you get stock in the company (such as it is) and we have a picnic every summer. And you have to be patient with the boss. It's a rule.

I love a good cliffhanger every now and then. It keeps you guessing, right? There is a crazy sort of satisfaction to getting to the end of a chapter, and groaning and going, "Aw...come on! You can't stop THERE!"

Shame on you! Um...what email?

I called John Williams about writing a musical score for the story, but he said he didn't work for writers no one has ever heard of.

Happy you are enjoying the read. More background comes out as the story progresses, but the characters pretty much will not know the entire story until you do.

You are absolutely forgiven for forgetting one detail.

Yep, we definitely have them here, too. I was just not aware that the formulations were so different that they could actually lead to problems if used in the wrong season. PM? What's that??

See! I knew I had radios in there, somewhere! I was assuming that fact was missed or forgotten about by that commenter. It happens to the best of us!

Well...you'll have to wait and see, I'm afraid!

Doubt it will be the last time, either!

Oh, I learned a lot about gasoline while writing this story. I learned that winter blends and summer blends are different, and that a winter blend can actually volatilize in the tank in hot weather and make it hard to start your car. so never fill your gas tank in December and then not drive the car until June! Well...I hate to issue spoilers, but who said the group didn't have radios, just because they haven't used them in the story yet? I do have a pic of myself in shorts, yes, from when i first came here from Nederlands. But I would be embarrassed to show it in public.

Part of what I do for a living entails some fairly serious research into all sorts of things, so I cannot simply write about anything unless I feel comfortable about doing so. There are some things I already know and feel comfortable with, but I am immediately conscious of the fact when I do not know something well enough to talk about it in print, and will try to research it to some degree before continuing. Even so, I missed some things here, most notably on the Thompsons used in the story. Research counts, but experience wins, just about every time. One thing about writing science fiction or fantasy is that you almost have to take some liberties with facts. The basics are usually the same - a gallon of gasoline is still the same - but once you step beyond real life experience, you have to smile a lot, wink now and then, and hope no one calls you a major bullshitter right to your face.

Hmm. Are you reading over my shoulder? You'll see what I mean further on. Batteries today have a shelf life easily of three to five years. I just bought some the other day that had a 'best if used by' date of March 2023 on them. I think batteries today are really rather amazing. I remember the ones that were around when i was a kid in the eighties. Turn on a flashlight, and twenty minutes later it was dimming out. Not today. With LED bulbs, portable lights seem to last forever. Certainly, if only used occasionally, they will last for some years.

Well, I live in a kind of a cause and effect world, and it is my nature to (usually, at least) examine causes to determine possible effects before they become a problem. So in one of my tales, I cannot see Richie going and leaving his gun for any reason. It just wouldn't happen. In a situation like this world, no one in their right mind would go off unarmed. I just cannot imagine a situation where anyone would leave the camp without a gun. By that point it would be second nature, and amount to walking outside naked, forgetting one's clothing. It just cannot happen. So I am like you, and annoyed when I see someone do this in a story. There are mitigating factors that can allow me to accept it, say, where a character has been on the go for two days without sleep, or has been pursued until physically exhausted. People easily screw up under those kind of circumstances. But normally, no.

Aw, you peeked! Thanks, Ivor. Always fun to have you come by to poke me in the ribs!

I agree that impatience is usually a part of many a boyhood. Fear can tend to reign that in a bit, and I think that is what would happen here, especially with Richie and Jeremy, who saw firsthand the results of ignoring the rules with Jack and the zombie in Mitersville. I'll refer you to my answer to Bhopper on the gasoline. You are both correct, and I took a little liberty with that one. Oh, see, there is my lack of actual experience with a Thompson showing again. You see guys pulling back the bolt before firing in all these movies and TV shows, and now I have to wonder how accurate they were. Thanks for the explanation. Actually, they have four Thompsons, and only two are with the guys in town. I don't think I ever said in print how many they had, but that's the number I settled upon at the beginning of the tale, and visualized as events were happening. So the camp is not totally undefended. Radios? What are they?

I have to admit that I love a cliffhanger every now and then. It's one of the things I do like about serial writing. I had a talk with a couple of chemist friends about the gasoline before I wrote this chapter, one of whom is a petroleum engineer. He said that gasoline does not break down in a human lifetime. What is does do is undergo molecular change, become diluted by moisture, get infested with microbes that can actually digest it, and have the more volatile parts vaporize and eventually lower the octane to the point where it will not run in an engine. He said that a gallon of gas stored in a vacuum would last indefinitely. But in the real world, a multitude of factors come into play. Volume also has an effect, and the more gasoline you have in one place, the longer the parts of it not exposed to atmosphere will last. A five-gallon can of gasoline will lose part of its energy potential stored over one winter in your garage. Five.thousand gallons stored in an in-ground tank will leave the gasoline between the surface exposed to air and the surface exposed to water at the bottom - in other words, the middle of the tank - usable anywhere from two to seven years, depending on factors like weather and condensation. So I asked him if it would be safe to say that the guys would have gasoline for several years to come, and he said, "Sure, why not!" He did also say to dump some stabilizer into the tank, but I forgot to mention that in the chapter. But I did figure that, in a real-world situation like this, the guys would need to be figuring something out pretty quickly or start walking everywhere. They have had two years on this tank of gasoline already!

Most of what these guys do was learned from Jack, who was a survivor of the initial Changes in the city. If I were Jack, I would want these kids to have every chance at survival, and would have simply drilled into them the need for watchfulness and care and rules for everything they did. The fact that the one time that Jack ignored his own rules and left the Thompsons in the truck resulted in his own death, would not be lost on Richie and Jeremy. Nothing hurts like experience. At the same time, this sort of thing becomes rote, and discourages adaptation and individual evolution. Richie has to be his own leader, and he is struggling a little under what he learned from Jack. He sees the reason and usefulness in all the things they have learned, but he worries that Jack's wisdom will not cover every eventuality. And he is coming to understand that Jack did not know everything. I think anyone faced with a genuinely dangerous situation would develop some cautious, careful ways, and maintain them. It is unrealistic to me to go marching about boldly in a war zone, and I also am annoyed when characters drop their guards in movies or novels and get killed uselessly in situations they should have seen coming. The sad fact is, though, that this does happen. Human beings screw up, and you cannot be perfect every minute of every day. Every time I see a wild animal trainer mauled or killed by one of their 'babies', I wonder how anyone could drop their guard around a 600 pound lion or a 900 pound grizzly bear. But it happens. And soldiers everywhere in the world die, every day, because of one brief moment of carelessness. Human beings are not built to be deadly fight machines 24/7. If they were, i think it would be the zombies that would be moving about carefully and under cover.

Shopping is what you get out of it, in this case. I think every single person who works for a living has briefly imagined what it would be like to be able to walk into stores and just load up with whatever you needed. Of course, we don't want to bring about the end of civilization just to get to do it, but it is kind of fun to imagine!

Chapter Three The big GMC had a tendency to bounce in the rutted lane leading towards the main road, and Richie smiled as Jeremy guided the truck carefully along at a decent pace. They were in no hurry, definitely. Better to see everything clearly before you got to it, these days. Richie sat in the middle, between Jeremy and Mike. The latter boy had his Thompson tilted upwards against his shoulder, the butt of the stock resting on the seat between his legs, the muzzle pointed at th

Haha. Here we go again! I am prepared for a nice, long story here. You won't disappoint us, will you?

Say, didn't I just see you over at chapter one? I tried to imagine what it would be like if something like this happened in the real world, without the least bit of forewarning. Something completely unprecedented, with results that were simply beyond anything you knew anything about. The odds of you ever finding out the cause would be slim to none, barring a meeting up with someone who actually knew the answer and could tell you. I won't say you will never know the answer, but I may suggest that you will have to wait for it!

Isn't that the truth! I always take note, no matter where I am waiting, of the number of people that come in, sit, and immediately pull out their phone and then just sort of fade from view. Doctor's office, auto shop - wherever. I understand how entertaining a mini-computer can be while you're waiting for something to happen, but becoming so immersed in it that your name can be called seven times before you even realize it is just ridiculous. The other part of this is what you said - people actually walking about with a phone in hand. The landscape is covered with them, talking, texting, playing games - whatever. And completely oblivious to everything else. The only good thing I can say about these sort of zombies is that at least they don't pull your arms off in a fit of rage.

Agreed. Now we just need to find out where some zombies hang out. Any ideas?

Thank you for the very nice comment!