September 2019 Writing Prompt

September Writing Prompt:

As Halloween is approaching, I thought we could do a little horror writing this month. This challenge will be in the style of a diary/journal entry. You can either continue in the style of the sample below, or create a new character, but the event will remain the same.

Zombie apocalypse!

Prompt entry:

September 14, 2019

This is a first for me...writing in a journal...but I have little to do now but this. My friends are gone...my family...and I don't even know where I am. I was forced to leave my house two days ago. They broke in...forced us out...and now...

Well, now I am in someone else's house. It's empty, but the dead are outside at the moment and I know they will get in eventually and I will have to run again. My brother is most likely dead, as are my two friends...and it seems so much worse now that I am alone. I'm not sure if we got separated or if the dead got them. We all ran in a blind panic! Two days...seems so long ago now. The dead...they are not slow like in the movies. They run and never seem to tire. I'm not sure how I will survive, but at least I have a place to rest. Rainbows and unicorns...lol. That's what I'm looking at now...the room I am in is decorated for a toddler. Somehow it is calming and makes the sounds of the hands slapping against the house's side more tolerable.

I will try to get some sleep and travel in the morning...my time is up here. At least I had a day without their noise. From what I have noticed so far, the dead don't seem as active during the day. Do they even sleep? I'm not sure...but I do need to...so I will try to write more tomorrow. Heaven knows it's better than doing nothing.

September 21st, 2020
I'm not the original writer and it took me a few days before I managed to find one of the calendars prior to Day Zero that included enough days into the following year for me to actually figure out what today's date was.




I can't believe it's been over a year now.

Life's been.....decent. Nothing compared to what had existed Prior but it's better than the poor soul who died in the child's bedroom. The whole place was so collapsed and returned to nature that I hadn't even realized there had been a house there to begin with till I fell through the rotting roof.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. This book only has a few details in it but nothing on what happened after that date.

Maybe it's a good idea if I record it. Not that I'm certain anyone's going to be able to read my scribbling. I've been out of practice and the pencil had been a lucky find.


There had been many names for the things that swarmed the planet. There had been a major fight against calling them zombies - the original entry here calls them 'the dead' which was another common name - but in the end, zombie was the name that most will use now when recollecting those first few.....we'll call them months.

I didn't keep track of time during those months. The zombies surged across the planet like nothing many of us had been prepared for. Some held their own but it was clear that the human race was going to fall if something didn't change.

I was told that the zombie hoards had made it to every corner of the planet covering the land in shambling bodies that animals fled from. Attacks of any kind drew the hoards like piranha and the animals seemed to know this instinctively. Not that that kept some of them from attacking anyways.

But just as quickly as the wave of zombies suddenly sprang into existence, it died. Literally. The zombies just up and started dropping. They didn't even twitch as they hit the ground. In all of two hours, every zombie in existence was properly dead once more. It was.....strange. But with our numbers so scattered and small, the billions of bodies decayed and became part of the ecosystem. Some areas saw mounds of zombies become rolling hills or the scattered bodies become home to new trees. Whatever had made them move so swiftly seemed to have encouraged some rapid growth in the plant life but nothing that's been disconcerting. Or dangerous.

After that, there was no dead and the only task that came about was surviving. I had managed to make it on my own for those handful of months before I came across a town that had survived, more or less. If nothing else, there were other people there. I didn't stick around. Turned out it was a cult of sorts and I got out of there as quickly as I could with few new friends.

At the time there had only been four of us. Now there's eighteen; nineteen when Anna gives birth in a few weeks. We're lucky to have her around despite her condition. Mark is probably our strongest - yet sweetest - and he dotes on her making it so that she isn't even a burden on anyone but him and he would probably never call her a burden even as a joke. It's her brother, though, that's been the largest asset and why her pregnancy - though perilous - hasn't negatively impacted the group (Mark notwithstanding). Zach's a doctor. A really good, very knowledgeable doctor even with the lack of 'modern technology'.

Doesn't hurt that she can cook really well, either.

Most of us have our uses like that, which makes it easy for everyone willing to pitch in. Peter's a fricken horse whisperer despite his argument that anyone that had grown up on a farm could do what he does with the 'wild' ones we come across. I don't think we've had to walk for months now because of him. We've even got a few goats and a couple of chickens because of him but he says it was Jewel. - who, mind you, grew up in the city Prior. Jewel just coos at all the animals so no one's convinced she's had any part of it.

I'm still betting that the small pack of dogs and cats we have are because of her despite her nonchalant attitude about it. The way she commands them and the way they listens is like the livestock with Peter; they heed her command and answer her call as if she had raised them from birth. At this point, a few of them have been, but that's beside the point.

Lyle grew up on a farm too but he's shit with the animals. He's good with helping cultivate the edible supplies, though. He's not great at it but an extra hand that knows how to preserve things is always a large help. The fact that he has the patience and stamina to make butter is impressive in and of itself.

Tanner's good at making fabric from the wool. Bella mastered making thread for sewing despite her being just as good of a cook as Anna. She won't listen to anyone but I think Tanner enjoys the company.

Sam's a fricken compass and has yet to get us horribly lost. Sam's twin Luca is our cartographer and is brilliant at it. We trade duplicated maps at settlements and towns we pass through.

Cole's started figuring out how to work any metal we find. We still trade a lot of tools but he's good to have around for repairs. He's been able to fix just about everything we have. Well, anything that doesn't require sewing. I'm still not great at that but I'm the only one that knows enough of the 'how' to be able to actually keep up on repairs. Sam and Luca are learning and Tanner's not bad, but their patience never lasts long. I find it soothing.

It would seem Mark's starting to stir so my watch shift is over. This whole journal thing is weird but I think it would be cool to catalog what's happened.

Not that I did a good job with this entry. Kind of got talking about those around me.

Maybe that's a good thing. In this world beyond the Prior and Day Zero, that's all we have. Though I may have to explain -why- we're traveling rather than settling in some town.

Maybe tomorrow when I'm on watch again. If I can keep my brain from wandering.

@asharsahara; Brava! I found your writing prompt characters very interesting, and the excerpt as a whole very absorbing. I have no idea how to give you credit, or points or anything for this, but I really enjoyed your piece.