Afterword

This started as a thought experiment, what is the worst possible situation in a ZPAW that is still survivable? Waking up being chewed on, and locked in somewhere you can't get out from are just long and short forms of death. So what if ... The lead character got arrested and didn't make it to jail. Handcuffs are a severe handicap while fighting zombies. Have the cops grab him getting out of the shower ... or better yet, grab her.

Marla was intended to be the strong female character who triumphed over extreme situations. But ... it turned out that Marla was not as strong her friends and relations thought she was, and under the stress, she broke. She didn't quite shatter completely, but she is broken.

She sees herself as property. She belongs to Eckert and she likes it that way. She doesn't have to make the big decisions she's scared of, or worry about tomorrow. Instead she can just deal with everything as it comes, enjoying every minute of life. She acts independently to help others because her owner wants her to.

In the short term, for her situation, this is a valid survival tactic and will help keep her alive. Long term, it creates other problems, not least because she is fine with it and will not want to change. But living in a world where the dead roam the streets seeking out the living, long term may be a moot point.

I started with the story idea as I said, and outlined it in five pages. From past experience, I expected about twelve thousand words, I wound up with thirty-seven thousand words, three times what I was aiming for. Marla was supposed emerge from her ordeals a stronger, more independent person than she started.

You ever hear an author say the characters do things unexpected? I never really believed it until I started writing seriously. Marla is a prime example of this phenomenon. The story diverged from the outline right in the first scene. She was supposed to let him in, he would turn and she'd shoot him. The police would arrest her for killing him, but would have treated her a lot better. So right from the start she was in a worse position than originally intended.

The second divergence came when the biker who was supposed to 'rescue' her didn't show up. I must have argued with him for an hour, but he insisted he would not have stayed in the city that long. He was not nearly as evil a person as the MS-13 gang-banger who did finally make an appearance, and while he would have done what he wanted with her, without even asking, she wouldn't have said no.

So I changed the outline, a matter of a few lines and it really tied in better with the other stories anyway. So then, after I make the adjustments, and he is about to force her ... She laughs at him. I was shocked, seriously, but it was what she would have done. She saw him for what he really was, a posturing kid. I think that's where the story changed. He didn't force himself on her, couldn't really not with her laughing but his pride was wounded. Initially he would have settled for obedience, but his machismo demanded unconditional surrender. Pushed beyond her limit, that's just what she would have given him.

The escape scene was not as originally planned, but I think was better than the initial notion. (Having obtained grudging obedience, he would have let his guard down and she would drive away in the car, leaving the door to the house open.)

The other gang members who chased her just showed up, popped up out of nowhere. Because they chased her, she wound up wrecked, and instead of saving Eckert by running down some zombies and picking him up, he wound up saving her. Result? The plot was totally derailed but in the end, it turned out to be a more powerful story.