I cringed as my footsteps echo through the hall, attracting them to the sound. I grip the baseball bat in my hands tighter as I turn sharp into the next hallway. Five or six of them walked down the hall i just turned into, their lifeless arms reaching out to pull me in. Quickly, I ducked below the first one, took out his knee caps and bashed his head as hard as I could with the bat. Brain matter splashed across the wall as the undead thing fell over.
The others groaned and stumbled towards me, not bothering to worry about others. I brought the bat back up and bashed four more of their heads, making the bat a sickly red color. I stopped to catch my breath, my chest rising and falling rapidly.
I have to get to the roof to signal for help! I thought to myself as I started up my sprint again, heading for the staircase. I climbed them as fast as I could, and broke through the door way at the top. Blinding light hit my face as I came out from the darkness of the school.
The sun was directly above, and there was nobody else to alive. Everybody had died, and come back to life as undead cannibals. I ran to the edge of the roof and looked out upon the city. I dropped to my knees as I gazed upon the landscape.
Black smoke billowed in the air from the distance, and fires roared from untold destruction. The dead had taken over the city, and probably the world in a matter of an hour. I put my head against my knees, feeling the despair flow through me.
Help wasn’t coming....
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137,625 Literary Works • 672,053 Reviews
Hey! Forever here with a short review!!
This was certainly a very interesting story here. I really liked the little scene that you presented us with. Into the review now.
First and foremost, the first line and the second line had grammatical mistakes. Not very important but enough to distract the readers away from the story.
This should be
Next, I loved the world building here. As I interpreted it, the narrator is the only living being in the whole city and the deads have taken over the city, now the deads are trying to kill the narrator and turn them to “undead cannibals”. That’s quite intriguing. I wonder how the dead really took over the city. Maybe you could drop one or two hints about it? Maybe not very concrete hints or absolute hints but some open-ended ones which the readers could interpret as they like. That would be interesting.
I loved the ending. I liked how you left it to the readers to interpret the fate of the narrator. As it seems, their death is inevitable because help wasn’t coming as they themselves mentioned but yes, the readers are indeed left with some hopes. Also, the use of past tense gives me some more hopes. Like you see, if they were dead, they couldn’t have written it. Now as they have actually written it, they are still alive.
You managed to create a good atmosphere overall. The readers could feel the horror and the terror while reading the story. The act of taking a city overt by deads actually sound very terrorizing.
Here, I do wonder a bit about the use of italics. Like I don’t see why it needs to be highlighted. You could write it in normal and it would have the same effect on the readers.
Keep Writing!!
~Forever
Hi Jalmoc,
Mailice here with a short review!
A very exciting short story that feels more like the beginning of a longer novel, as it leaves the reader with many questions.
You make a good start, beginning in the middle of the action and thus not giving the reader time to have a breather. I like how direct you are on many points, especially combined with the first-person narration. It gives more depth to the character.
I think that already gives the character a good first look and you get the info that the character is in himself, quite a brave person. Because you describe very little about the fear, but it seems more like the hero is a bit astonished and shocked by things. That gives me a good feeling about the horror, but it also leaves me with some questions. How solid is the character? Does she live alone? etc... Because that gives me pause about how quickly it came.
You're creating a typical heroic character who starts from 0 to 100. That's why I think it would feel better to write the story longer and make it several chapters, where we can learn more about the character, the events, etc...
Because that's something that continues to linger in the back of my mind when I think about it, and that's why I'm a bit puzzled.
Nevertheless, I like the way you tell the story and especially how you go on with a good description at some points, giving the reader the feeling of being there. I also like that the character shows the thoughts, especially because we are in a horror story here.
In summary, you build a good foundation here, I see this short story more like a kind of prologue to something longer.
Have fun writing!
Mailice