When They Came

I really liked the beginning of your story, and it was quite well written. There are a few nitpicks I'll point out, but most of your problem is that you change tenses making the story read choppily. The first 6 paragraphs were fine, I didn't find anything wrong with them, so I'll start after the intro.

I ran down the street as fast as I could. “Amelia! Wait up!” Ok here you're in past tense ' I ran'

She dashes down the road ahead of me, giggling, her bright orange hair flying in the wind like streams of water, her brown eyes sparkling in the sunlight. She stops at the bottom, waiting for me to stumble along behind her. I place my hands on my knees while I wheeze out a laugh, while she stands tall, barely panting, and is smiling down at me. How could you loose to her again? I ask annoyed to myself.(this sentence is written strangely, maybe change it to 'annoyed at myself) Amelia had always been a faster runner than me since kindergarten. Here you are writing in present tense 'she dashes'

“Ha! It’s amazing how slow you are, Mitchell. How are you suppose to run away from anything?”

And she sure liked to wave it my face too. Past tense

“Will I be needing to run from any alien invaders any time soon?” I play along. Sweat drips from my long, dull brown hair. Present tense

“Oh, don’t be silly. They’ll just vaporize you! I’m talking about hungry packs of wolves,” She teases.

“Ah, I see,” I acknowledge. I’ve stopped panting, and stand up straight, and wipe sweat off my forehead, and look over at Amelia. She’s smiling at me with a wide grin, in a playful way. I smile back. (too many 'and's in this paragraph)

Amelia was one of those rare, one and a million people who seemed to be packed with love, care and kindness. Rare people that had smiles that could bring the sun out on a rainy day; smiles that never seemed to die. Those people with warm, welcoming eyes that would greet you asking, “Do you want to be my friend?” Those brave, passionate, optimistic, hardworking people who were able to move mountains. Those people who seemed perfect in every way, and would literally glow like angels. Those people you would dread the thought of loosing. I really like the way you describe Amelia here, it's so easy for me to picture her personality, good job!

I wasn’t anything like her. I was your dull, average, boring Joe. A waste of a effort as one may put it.. I wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, go on computer, eat, bed. That’s it. I don’t do anything interesting, and don’t have an interesting life. This is present tense and in the next sentence you change to past. I didn’t have an everlasting smile like she did, but instead, moped around feeling sorry for myself. I didn’t have everlasting energy, which could explain why I can’t run faster then her. Now you change back to present. I don’t have talent, otherwise I would have joined something by now. I’m just your mediocre, mundane American teenager.

However, Amelia had always been fascinated with me for some reason. She could always see the best characteristics about any person; she was good at that too. She was good at lots of things.

And the funny thing was, Bailey who's is Bailey? did you mean Amelia? had nothing in life she could be happy about. That may be an exaggeration, but she’s not exactly the richest person I know. Her dad was a grocery store owner. Mine designed video games. Her mother stayed at home. Mine traveled the world designing cloths. And my sister was a freakishly super talented too. She wrote books, comics, and was good at painting and drawing too, which helped her when writing books. I was the disappointment, although my parents don’t say that. It’s only me who thinks it. You change tenses a lot here too, I won't mention anymore, but you shoud go through and change them.

“What cha’ thinkin’ about?” She asks me, tilting her head, her brown, sparkling eyes confused.

“Nothing,” I say plainly and turn my head to look down at the road. Amelia turns her head too.

“Hmm, you’ve changed. A lot. In fact, you’ve never been the same since Highschool started.” How and why?

I don’t reply, and stand silent, still staring down the road. It was a quiet street, which is why me and Amelia liked to take this route. No one else was on it as far as we could see. The buildings in Stone Brook were so crammed together that they seemed to form walls of buildings in-between the streets, like they are in Europe and Japan.

Then, I spotted him. Just barely at the end of the street, I see a man in a business suit. I point to him, and Amelia looks down to see him as well. He’s limping, and his clothes looked as though he had been attacked by a wild animal. His skin is pale, wrinkled and grey, and his eyes seem like they are rolled into the back of his head. As he limps closer, I can hear him moan, and see blood stains on his clothes. an ugly stench starts to fill the air. It’s almost as though he’s dea…. But before I finish my though, Amelia darts down to confront the man.

“Are you okay? You look like your hurt! Do you want to use my cell phone? I can call an ambulance if you like!” She says, ready to help the man.

He gives her a dead stare, as though he had not heard a word she had said, and is wheezing as though he is on his last breath. Then, out of the blue, he lunges towards Amelia, arms extended in front of him, his hands groping the air.

Almost like an instinctual reaction, Amelia kicks the man hard. He stumbles backwards, but the n regains his stances, and continues to charge towards her. She jumps, kicks him, and then trips him while she lands. He lands flat on the ground. For a few seconds, we exchange glances, and assume that he’s knocked out cold. But his eyes are still open, and he struggles to stand up.

“Run!” I holler at Amelia, “He’s not going to give up!”

Amelia just stands in shock, bewildered at the mans persistence.

“Come on!” I practically scream. We can get help back at the school, I think.

Amelia turns and runs back up towards me.

“Let’s go.”

We run back up the street. AT the top, we look both directions. Amelia screams

“Mitchell, look!” She gasps her hands over her mouth. She points down the eastern road. There, two figures are knealed over a body lying on the ground, their mouths and noses practically inches away from the body. Are they sniffing it? I pointlessly ask myself and wonder. But as I look closer, I can the two figures eating the flesh of the body. It was probably the most horrific sight I’d ever saw. Or so I had thought.

“I think I’m going to puke,” I mutter. Mutter makes it seem like the person's bored, maybe change it to whisper or something, to show us what they're feeling.

The figures look up, struggle to stand up just like the man had, and start wandering towards us, limping.

“What the hell?” Amelia cries.

“We 've got to get back to the school!”

We head down the western road, both of us wondering about the things we had just scene. Were they cannibals? No….that guy back their….he seemed to not able to understand us, or even hear us. I concentrate on getting back to the school.

Amelia is running besides me instead of ahead, like she usually does. I think she was trying to make sure I didn’t get too far behind.

We take another right onto a road that would lead us to our school, but there we see more people in torn clothes and blood stains clawing at the gates that separated them from the school grounds. They, too, were moaning. But they didn’t seem to notice us. What is wrong with them? I think to myself. From what we had just seen, they looked as though they were sick, and were in a trance and didn’t know what they were doing. But that didn’t explain the smell.

Amelia notions me to go another way. But we weren’t sure where we were going, or what exactly we were running from. I guess we were trying to find a place where we could find people who weren’t dazed and figure out what was going on.

We decided to go down the street ahead of us instead of taking a right; we didn’t need to say it to know what each other was thinking. WE knew each other long enough to figure out how each others thought process worked. That’s what made us great friends. Sorry but way to much tense changing here.

The difference was, was that she had lots a friends, because she was one of those sunshine people that was kind and everyone loved. I was a quiet person who liked to read, and doodle. But nevertheless, she considered me one of her best friends. We’ve been friends since we were little, and grew up together. Just branched out in different ways.

I spotted a convenience store that my friend Evan works at after schools. I notion to Amelia to head in that direction. She nods, the feelings of shock and confusion dominate her face. WE rush inside, a small bell jingling to signal customers.

There, we see Even standing at the counter eyes closed, shaking his head and playing air guitar.

Evan was….well….he was Even. He was a goofy character, but was really sweet and supportive. He was a bright kid, but his head was always in the clouds, and you would often find him either day dreaming, or pretending to be something from a book or movie. He had an awesome, funny, and again, , goofy day-dreamers personality that made him likeable by many people. He had dark, brown skin, and curly, curly short black hair. you're very good at describing your characters personalities, I really enjoy it.

“Hey! Mitch! How yah doin’?” He smiles, opening his deep black eyes that reflected light like black diamond and onyx do. “Ah, hey Amelia? You guys walking home together?”

“Listen, Evan, have you seen anything weird happen today?” I ask, dead serious, with unblinking eyes.

“No….why?”

“Turn on the news. Maybe they’ve reported something, Amelia.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just turn on the news!”

“Sorry man…”

The T.V. hanging from the left corner of the flashes c on, and a reporter with long brown hair and an red jacket is displayed on the screen. Police car lights flash next to her as smoke rises in the distance

“…Emergency services are being overwhelmed as the number of victims increase and Authorities loose more and more control over the riots. Riots from western United States have hit the east coast, and the death toll from across the country continues to rise.

I’m live here on the scene behind what seems to be a police barricade into northern Stone Brook in an attempt to halt the spreading phenomenon. The National Guard has made several attempts to control and contain the attacks, but has yet to succeed.

Throughout the rest of the city, and might I add, the country, the riots are becoming overpowering. Chaos, mass hysteria and confusion rules over the country as survivors begin to loot and commit many federal felonies.

Many speculate the cause of the riots is a virus that has made many infected to go into a trance, however, eyewitnesses claim that victims who are….bitten die and come back to life and begin to attack people as well. Medics claim if the evidence is true that no virus is capable of bringing victims back to life. Experts also fear that if the claims are true there might not be a way to stop the riots….”



“Omg.” Amelia says, mouth open and eyes stunned. She takes a step back from the T.V.

“I thought they said that the National Guard was taking care of the problems in California and the west coast weeks ago?”

“I thought so too.” I reply, “so if they failed, why didn’t they say so? Why did we have to find out 3 weeks later? How long has this thing been going on? What is going on?”

Evan is still digesting the information, staring blankly at the T.V.

It’s amazing how quickly one disaster, one change, can change a person completely in a matter of seconds.

“Come on, we better gather as much food as we can in our back packs and find a safe place to hide.”

“What to you mean stuff our backpacks with food? That’s stealing!” Amelia argues.

“Amelia, we have no choice. I don’t think the manager will care.”

Amelia still looks a bit hesitant to start stealing food, but Evan is already half way done stuffing his bag. I start scooping up cans and bottles of water too, and Amelia follows.

“We’ll need weapons, too, won’t we?” Amelia suggest.

“Good point.” I say. I look around, and see a closet. Inside is a mop, and a broom. I break off the heads of the broom and mop so that all that is left if the long handle.

“Here,” I hand Amelia the mop stick. I look back at Even, but he is already holding a bad. A what?

“Dude, you must not know me well. I play video games, remember? I know to handle zombies.”

“I’m not sure that’s what they are…” I say.

“Mitch, come on man, those….things were taking bites out of people…. The dead were coming back to life. What else could they be?”

“Well I’m not going to go jumping to conclusions just yet,” I smirk. But the truth is, I was scared to death of the fact of what they were. They were zombies. They certainly weren’t human. And they were hurting people, eating people. We had to defend ourselves, and find somewhere safe. And the sooner we got out of here, the better.

“Guys, yoohoo….look.” Amelia’s whistles and points towards the large panel windows on the entrance wall of the convenience store. Outside, more of those thingswere making their way up the hill towards the school. They didn’t seem to notice us, but there were starting to become more and more of them.

“We got to get out of here, pronto.” I state, “do you have a back exist?”

“yeah,” replies Evan.

“All right, we know what we have to do.” I look at both Even and Amelia. They both nod in understanding.

“Then let’s go kick some ass.” I say with a cheeky grin, and with that, we burst through the storage area and out the back door, me leading the charge onto the battlefeild. Nice ending, makes the reader want to read more (well at least I do)

this is really good