Fleshing Out TRANSPORT Part 1

The entire TRANSPORT novella series and short stories started with a desire to write something within the Military Thriller / Military Sci-Fi genre. I also have a big interest in all things Military. I decided to take a spin outside my usual writing of Sword & Sorcery, and roll into some Military action-adventure.

The world of TRANSPORT was born.

The story takes place in Grand Rapids, Michigan circa 2025. After a pandemicly serious strain of H7N9 (avian influenza virus or bird flu virus), the world has been turned on its head. You are either fortunate enough to not be affected, or unfortunate and affected. INFECTED. If you are infected, you go one of two ways: you die, completely, dead-dead, or you become a walking maggot factory.

Grand Rapids, as most of the other LARGE cities in the country, has become a walled bastion for humanity of the true living type. Industries have moved back close to the hub of the city if they had been stationed in the outskirts. Other than the tall concrete walls, gates and concertina-wire fences, it is business as usual; day to day survival, luxuries still of home (just packed with more close neighbors)...

...But with that constant niggling feeling everything to drop into the shitter in the blink of an eye.

Why?

Because outside City Central, people, creatures, towns and smaller habitations fight BIG TIME for survival. The niceties and necessities of life are quite a bit more... challenging.

The mighty Grand River separates the east side of Grand Rapids (City Central, the hub) and the west side neighborhoods. As mentioned, on the east side, the Living. On the west side, the big city's undead roam.

Okay. Zombies. The walking dead. Rotters. Shamblers.

But these rotting-faced, face-chewing folk are something more.

I didn't want the same old ZOMBIE THANG going on. You know, people running around, running away from the undead, fighting the undead, the undead wanting to tear them up, eat their brains.

Nah.

The world of TRANSPORT takes place in a post-post (zombie) apocalyptic time. The virus is more or less a thing of the past (happens in 2013) and Humanity, so far as usual, has survived to live another day and try and start anew. The undead are still around. The unforunate Grand Rapids undead civilians are contained on the west side of town behind a huge fence line. They are fed doped meat to keep them docile. There are laws about the Military or anyone else shooting them, doing them harm as they are "less fortunate friends and relatives" who are still cared for. More or less. The living city folk let the Military have the crap job and go in and feed them and protect them if shit hits the fan.

There are still your angry FERAL zombies that want to rend you to pieces and sup on your flesh and blood. Outside the city limits, outside the barricaded villages miles away from Grand Rapids, these "wild dog" type zombies still wander and will attack if provoked or are simply hungry.

It is better to walk softly and carry a loaded machine gun than make a shit load of noise and attract every pissed-off undead thing in your vicinity. Even if you are in an armored vehicle, getting gang-piled by snarling, snapping Zees...not so good.

There are a few other types of ZOMBIES in the series/storyline that I think stand apart from the usual serving of the undead within the genre. I will talk about those and other things, like, why Grand rapids, Michigan? Why the Military? Why a 1950's gas station attendant zombie in my next FLESHING OUT posts.

Until next time.

Don't fear the dead, they don't have to deal with living like the living do.

ZOMBIE TROOPERS, a new TRANSPORT World related series I am working on.
No publisher yet but good Pos-Apoc Military goodness.