Musings About Zombies

Alright...so I'm waist deep in Zombacolypse! The young adult zombie novel I'm writing.

So far the story goes as thus...

You have a group of high school kids from a Catholic School in Portland, OR. It's summer and their Latin teacher Father Rockford (yes...I know...cool huh?) is taking them on a trip to Rome.

While at the airport they find body bags on the tarmac. The bags are moving - so they go down to stop the beginnings of the zombie invasion.

"How so?" You ask.

Well these kids are not really Latin students...they have been hand picked to be members of a secret society based out of The Vatican called "The Order of Lux Lucis" or "The Order of Daylight". They have been trained to use magic to fight the forces of evil.

So, our little band of students nuke the zombies, but one gets loose. Homeland Security arrests our heroes and while in custody all hell breaks loose.

So you got about thirty pages of them getting out the airport.

Another twenty pages where they call the local Catholic Vampire Hunter (trained trough a different branch at the Vatican) who promptly comes to save them.

Another twenty pages where the zombies attack and they all get separated.

Anyway, these two kids (Randy and Lunchbox) end up with another priest, and they go to this church where Father John thinks they'll be safe.

Problem is, the zombies got there first. Total carnage. The zombies have desecrated the church. The kids ask the priest why the zombies would do such a thing. And Father John says...well, here. Let me just show you...

Randy shrugged, "But can you tell me something Father?"
"I can try."
"Why would they do this," he waved his hand across the room,
encompassing everything with one motion. "I mean, what
exactly did they hope to accomplish?"
"Whether or not you call them zombies or vampires," the priest
said. "They are still just the living dead. And the living dead work
much the same way as demons. They wait for the soul to leave the
body and then they swoop in and take over. In essence you end up
with a corpse that for all practical purposes is alive, but without a
soul."
"That doesn't explain what happened here," Lunchbox interrupted.
"Without a soul you aren't connected to God," Father John turned to
Lunchbox. "Let me ask you. If you were disconnected from God, how
would that make you feel?"
"I think I'd be sad," Lunchbox admitted.
"Naw," Randy looked around the desecrated church. "You'd be

very, very pissed."

Now I don't know why I put this scene in. As a matter of fact I considered cutting the whole thing all together, because it didn't really fit with anything. But I thought it was cool so I kept it.

And then something strange happened.

As the story has progressed, the zombies have been evolving. To make things harder for the main characters I've been making them progressively smarter.

In the last scene I wrote Father Rockford is about to cut a swath through a massive mob of zombies, and then one of them speaks! The evolved zombie asks his help, so they can find out what or who has created them.

You know, when I started writing this book, it was just supposed to be about a bunch of kids with super powers fighting the undead in an abandoned city.

Which by itself would have been pretty cool.

But now it's taken on these huge life, theological, philosophical questions. The scene above now fits in with what the zombies are up to. They are angry at God because they feel abandoned by him.

Now, I've got the military killing them and the kids are beginning to ask if the evolved zombies deserve to live or die. They are beginning to question who the monsters are...the zombies or the military.

And that's what's so cool about writing! This story has begun to take on a much larger life on it's own...it's almost out of my control, and I'm just transcribing at this point.

You know, something just occurred to me! This novel has become MY evolved zombie!

Whoa...

That's pretty deep...