Geron Kees

Hmm. Is that a little back of the hand I see there? Thank you for being disobedient!

That sounds good to me! Thank you.

I thought all zombies could heal themselves! What's the use of being a fierce, scary zombie if you just drop the moment someone shoots you!

Chris isn't in this tale, so what does he have to worry about? He just grinned and flipped me the bird as he drove on by!

Oh. In that case, thanks! With all that gets posted around here daily, people can be looking and still miss things.

Haha. Short cuts are for when you're in a hurry. I think the length of most of my stories would suggest that I am never in a hurry! Ulp. Have to admit to not knowing what the Drop in Centre chat is. Will it hurt?

This one is a good ol' American GMC. I would have used the Renault, but Chris was using it to haul old junk to the next Thrift Shop tale...

I cannot imagine a story not being about the people in it. I guess that's the whole purpose of it, to put people you would like to know into a story that takes you along with them in their struggles and adventures. I like likable people, and I guess I tend to make most of my characters in that mold. It may not always be totally realistic, but it is emotionally satisfying to see people you have come to care about conquer their problems and come to a successful ending. I could try the other type of tale, the darker type. I could kill everybody off, destroy the world, and leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth... Oh, hell. Who am I kidding? No, I can't!

I read Tim's story, too. That's what I mean by different. I didn't want people to turn a page in my tale and find Brad Pitt grinning out at them. The word zombie has come to elicit a certain image in our minds these days. Anyone who has seen any of the old b/w zombie flicks will recall that they were a different breed back then, nothing like the ones you see on TV or in the movies today. So while I wanted the word zombie to be used here, I didn't want it to mean the same thing to my characters as most people will visualize. Not exactly, anyway!

Thank you. I hope it can hold your interest. It did mine!

Thank you! I didn't want the SyFy channel, I wanted my own idea of a zombie tale. I hope this will qualify as a little different than the norm.

This entire tale is already written. I plan to post a chapter about every other day until it's complete. It was written as a single tale, as I so often do, but came in at 73,000 words - a bit too much for one read. So I broke it up into chapters. Because it had to be broken at logical points to read correctly, it means that some chapters are shorter than others. Nothing to be done about that. I was trying for something other than the standard zombie story. Guess we'll see.

Chapter One Richie Kincannon squatted atop the rocky outcrop and trained his binoculars on the field of waving grass below, watching with a grim sense of fascination the drama unfolding in the reddened evening sunlight. A buck - a big 10-pointer, at the very least - was in full flight across the landscape, froth flying from its nose as it charged across the fields where Ben Johansen had once upon a time grown sugar beets and oats. Those fields were now covered in foxtail, which off

The world had ended in the middle of the night. For Richie Kincannon and a small group of young survivors, it was the beginning of a struggle for life, against an unknown force that had altered their world, seemingly forever. Now, two years after the Changes, the group must once again fight for their right to life, against an enemy of incredible ability - one they didn't understand, but knew once had been human...

Another interesting chapter. The complexity of emotions, and the way we are so often at their mercy, is vividly on display here. Our hearts held hostage behind the unreasoning mask. Life would be so much simpler without them, and so much less fulfilling, too, huh? Very well done. Had to smile at the line about hating coffee. Another topic with a dual perspective. The drink ranks well up there in feel-good foods that can (seemingly) calm us down and fortify us in times of trouble - and then keep us up all night thinking about it. Looking forward to the next chapter.

I think we are talking about two different things. Agreed, creative works from the past have fallen into the copyright vacuum between generations, both of people and of storage mediums. I am referring to the fact that creative works placed into the public view today are much more likely to still exist in a century, than are those older items you refer to that are fading away. That is because of our ability to digitize everything these days. Movies and TV shows are created with digital cameras now, without the need to transfer works from another medium like film or videotape. Many books eventually appear in e-book form with or without the copyright holder's consent, all over the Internet, with new versions popping up the moment the law squashes another..The legitimate use of archival procedures is often hampered by law, but the illegal use of these procedures by collectors, horders, bootleggers, and outright pirates ensures that nearly everything creative is at some point digitized, and that means that the likelihood that today's works will still be available in some form a hundred years from now is much greater than if a work only ever existed in book or film form. The reason that the RIA and the MPAA are so tough on the law is exactly because of this illegal use of intellectual property. But they will no more stop these illicit procedures with laws than they ever have stopped the bootlegging of anything profitable in the past. Add to the money-making aspect the sheer love of art, film, and literature by collectors, and you ensure that most works will find at least someone willing to keep a digital copy around for the sake of having it always available. I just mean that, with our ability to save things on our computers, the likelihood that they will still be available in digital form long after the original works themselves have vanished, is much greater than at any time in human history. It is sad that so much of the past is being lost, but anything that makes it into digital form today is likely never to be lost completely, short of the complete collapse of technological civilization itself.

I agree that a lot will be lost over time, but that has always been the case. Humans are just plain stupid when it comes to preserving their literary and artistic heritage. There are hints of some wonderful works by ancient authors that existed in the past, but that were lost. The destruction of the library at Alexandria vanquished much of our early literary history to ash and dust. People seem to exist in two forms: those who care about the things we all create, and wish to save them, and share them; and those to which only the things they consider important matter. Everywhere, and in every time, there have been those that have tried to preserve the intellectual heritage of the human race. And everywhere, and in every time, there are the Khans, the Hitlers, the Stalins, who wish to destroy anything that 'doesn't matter' or runs contradictory to their own world view. That's without even mentioning the indifferent, who simply don't care enough about things like that. A huge amount of the early films created in the silent era have vanished. Books written even in the last century can be hard to find. Yet there are those out there attempting to preserve such things, and with the aid of computers and mass storage media, it's a hell of a lot easier to do. We cannot depend on governments or laws to save the things that we treasure. We cannot depend on critics to say what matters and what does not. There are a number of organizations out there trying to save everything, and that includes things published on the Internet. So while it it true that much of the past created before the computer age has vanished, the probability that any work created in our own time will still exist in a hundred years is far greater now than it was even fifty years ago. For some people, all creative endeavors are worth saving. Hopefully, despite those who do not care or are indifferent, what we all create will continue to be shared long after we ourselves are gone.

Some things have to be assumed. The basics of daily existence common to us all are kind of mundane to write about. Look how many stories have plots covering days, weeks, months, or even years of time, and where no one eats, sleeps, drinks, bathes, or does any of the other daily things we all take for granted. You may get a couple-of-word mention in a line that someone ate, etc, but that's it. In many stories, it's a wonder no one starves to death. Unless someone is attending a banquet, or one of those functions is a part of the tale (showering with a sweet friend, for instance), it just gets glossed over. Most people don't miss it. They assume it gets done at some point. Hopefully!

It's great that the guys have found some time to relax between all the bouts of mayhem going on in their lives. Their bond has proven to be capable of keeping them strong through just about anything, hasn't it? One more argument for the power of love. And it surely cannot hurt that one of them can cook, too. Love is great, but eating well doesn't hurt a relationship one bit, either! Another good chapter, Ivor.

Already have some written on the third story. Just have to find the time to finish. Thanks for the prod, though. Might move things a little faster!

Just as a follow up, I am fairly good at sifting the net for information. I placed searches on multiple unique lines of text from both the Door stories, and only returned matches from GA, Iomfats, and TSL. While not 100% final, this at least indicates that none of these lines of text appear exactly in any other story online except mine. Pretty hard to fool Google. That's about all they're good for, too. Also checked out FictionPress. Interesting site, but a search there also proved negative, and I looked through the sci-fi and fantasy sections for stories posted after I posted mine. So I am hoping there is no plagiarism going on here. Have you been to either Iomfats or TSL?

Thanks for the info. I am not familiar with that site. The story was also posted in Iomfats and The Story Lover, but no other site is authorized to have it. I'll check it out. This is what lawyers are for!

Thanks for saying. There will be more to come!

Hello. Thanks for taking a moment to leave your comment. There is a second story after this one, yes. And there is a third in the works. This story line has the potential for a lot of tales. Can you say where you read the story initially? I would be interested in knowing. Thanks again. Best, Geron

I can only imagine how difficult it might have been to be gay at that time. It wasn't easy when I was a kid, even, so I can guess that it was really tough 'back in the day'. I know that my own homeland of Nederlands had its own difficulties, but that gay life there had eased considerably by 1970, when it was pretty much accepted legally, even in the military. Coming to the US in 1976 was a scary step backwards for me. I was just a kid, but already I knew about gay life, and what was here was completely hidden by necessity. I did not go into how tough it would be for the guys in this story to go on together after the war, because the story was pretty much over when it was over. But living a secretive life would be expected, and there would always be those that suspected any two guys living together. I'm sure it would have had its harrowing moments. Thanks for the info. When I am feeling a little braver, I'll look up Tom and see what he has to say.