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    Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts
    Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts
    Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts
    Ebook51 pages41 minutes

    Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts

    By Edwin Stark

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    About this ebook

    Eleven years have gone by since the Z-Day, the day when the Zombie Apocalypse broke out and took away most of humanity during the outbreak. Meet Danny Cargill, a boy who was fated to being born during the heyday of the epidemic; he has grown up in a post-zombie apocalyptic world and knows nothing of how things were in the past. He’s witnessing all the major changes the world has experienced... and he’s about to find out if zombies are worse than humans

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEdwin Stark
    Release dateSep 4, 2013
    ISBN9781301576982
    Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts
    Author

    Edwin Stark

    Hello, my name's Edwin Stark, and I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. That's South America for the few geographically-challenged ones out there. I suppose that somehow the stork had just stumbled out from a pub while it was delivering me, (it was confused to say the least) and mishandled my humble persona, leaving me stranded in this unlikely place. Having German ancestry, I spoke that language as a toddler, but my Mom had the misconception that I'd fit better here if I spoke Spanish, so that tongue was lost during my growing years. I grew up dreaming crazy tales and was my teacher's pet when it came to composition class—but not in deportment: that was for certain—and as I grew up I tried to get noticed as a writer by submitting to every magazine and writing contest available in my home country. No such luck; the publishing market in Venezuela is utterly locked out: you can only see your words in print if you're already a notorious politician or a TV celebrity. Since I wasn't in the inclination of becoming a serial murderer to achieve notoriousness and get published, the need to rethink the approach to my writing career became a must. Eventually, I decided to switch languages and start writing in English. I was already proficient in that language... but was I good enough to tell stories in that fashion? I then started to write short stories, effectively dumping my native language. I wrote nearly 200 short stories during a period of about eighteen months, slowly learning the nuances of story-telling in another language than your own. I already had the benefit of having the knack of telling a tale; I only had to adjust. 190 of them short tales certainly sucked; 10 were really neat, but the important thing was the learning process. These ten tales eventually made it into Cuentos, the short story collection which became my third book. I succeeded so well in tearing myself apart from Spanish, that almost everyone I meet online says: "I CAN'T BELIEVE ENGLISH ISN'T YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE!" So far, I wrote four books: AI Rebellion, a rather preachy cyberpunk thriller that still shows the struggle of switching languages (and I only recommend people to read it if they're on an archeological mood, as in if they're interested in seeing my progress as a writer), Eco Station One, a very bizarre and funny satire, the aforementioned Cuentos, and The Clayton Chronicles, a rather cookie-cut vampire tale. All these are available for the Kindle reader on Amazon, in paperbacks and all e-book formats in Smashwords.

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    • 3/5
      Not bad.. I really enjoyed Aftermath, wouldn't mind more of that world.. What happens to the group, etc. Zombie Cab was ok.. Short but not bad.. Didn't care for the last story.. I know it was tongue in cheek. But it just wasn't for me.

    Book preview

    Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts - Edwin Stark

    AFTERMATH (and other zombie shorts)

    By Edwin Stark

    Copyright 2013

    Smashwords Edition

    For David; because he wouldn’t…

    If this is being at the top of your list,

    I’d hate to see the poor guy who’s at its bottom.

    Contents

    Forewarning:

    There be Zombies

    Aftermath

    Zombie Cab

    The Day Zombies roamed Venezuela

    Forewarning: There Be Zombies

    Welcome aboard, gentle reader. Before you start reading, I must forewarn you about a few things: First, English is my second language and it still shows sometimes. If you’re a grammar Nazi or care much about typos, then you better put this book down and forget about it. I must either triumph in spite of this liability or perish in the process. It has certainly developed into my personal voice.

    So don’t sweat it.

    I can’t even hire an editor; I live in Venezuela and there’s a little something in my home country known as CADIVI, which prevents me from paying an editor for his or her services. Do a little homework and Google it, if you don’t believe me. There’s a good Wiki page on the subject somewhere out there.

    Second, this is a collection of short zombie tales. This is not another warning by itself. It may not please the zombie purist, mainly for the following facts:

    A) Aftermath may be one of the first zombie tales that has so few zombies in it that you may end up asking ‘Where’s the beef, man?’ I came up with Aftermath’s plot with the main idea of exploring what would a near future be, ten years after a zombie outbreak.

    The tale was written almost overnight, right after a rather influential zombie author urged me to write a short tale for the anthology he was whipping up. The idea, characters, plot, motivations… all were in my head for the longest time, all these single puzzle pieces slowly clicking together… It only needed this other author’s suggestion to gel up. The day after I wrote ‘The End’, I e-mailed the whole thing to the guy.

    That was sometime around the 1st of February. This guy’s reply was all gushing with praise… but he was sorry to tell me the tale didn’t fit with the main theme of his anthology. Crap. But he was so enthusiastic about it and he suggested I write a full novel; no, let me correct that: he even suggested we ought to write a collaboration together; he would edit, since that’s one of my greatest failings. So I sent him a general outline of the tale, which roughly sketched where the story would go. I would do the skeleton of the story, and he would flesh it up with details of his own.

    Too bad this didn’t work. I wrote nearly forty thousand words on my side. The little work he sent back had beautiful strokes of realism, like that sand hourglass excerpt that would go into chapter two, telling how one of the characters used it to keep time. Simply charming. But when I warned him that it would clash with a fact about another character later on in the story, this seemed to derail him on any progress, somehow. June came by and not a single edited page came back, so I scrapped the whole project. Man, how long does it take to edit an eight thousand word short story?

    (He thinks he’s still working on it, but I know deep in my heart that he really doesn’t want his pristine writing career tarnished by his association with such a mediocre writer as I. So, Dudalicious Dave, there you have it).

    Ok, I had a good short story, six months ripe. What to do? Well, what else but publish it. I mustered all the short zombie stories I had around and put them all together in a nice package. Here’s where the

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