28 Days Later: The Aftermath

28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH - A writer's survival journal. Day 5 - Final Day

(Fri 04/20/2007 07:42pm)
Friday, April 20th 2007

This is the last time you’ll hear from me.


I’ve been on the run for days. The roof thing didn’t work out too well as there seem to be military jets flying overhead and helicopters too. Bastards took potshots at me.

 
Seems like no matter which way I turn either humans or the Infected are after me. How the Hell am I supposed to finish this fucking graphic novel with the world coming to an end? I’d love to ask Lieb that, but I’m sure he’s locked away in a nice safe place with the rest of the producers and their flunkies.

 
After realizing that Lieb couldn’t spell anything I was dictating to him over the phone, I knew I had to get to a computer.

 
I located one in some abandoned office buildings near Beverley Hills. You should see Rodeo Drive. It doesn’t quite have that lifestyles of the rich and famous feel to it with the streets painted with blood and human organs.

 
Now I had to take all three stories and have them come together and once again it would take almost losing my life to give me the idea.

 
I was running from some helicopter gunfire when it dawned on me...who really is the enemy here? I didn’t think I was. It certainly wasn’t the Infected. They were a problem for certain, but they weren’t the bad guys. The poor fuckers couldn’t help what they were.

 
So once again the blame seemed land firmly in the laps of HUMANS. We truly were our own worse enemy and this experience proved it. A virus created by man ends the world, or comes damn near close to it. That’s just beautiful.

 
Night is falling once again and I’ve decided to stay in the office building. Outside the skyline is alight with smoke and fire. I can hear Infected below in the streets barking and expectorating looking for someone to beat to death, and every once in a while I hear a gunshot ring out or I hear a distant cry for help and I realize I am not alone.

 
There are, and will be, other survivors.

 
So that’s what I wrote the last chapter about; the people who fought their way through the first three chapters will all come together and lead us into the future.

 
But what kind of future will it be? I can’t say for sure but if we don’t all work together we will all perish from this planet.

 
I completed the last story for AFTERMATH a little after midnight on 4/20 and then I stood in the shattered office windows and watched Los Angeles burn.

 
That was when I spotted them coming.

 
Below, in the darkness, dressed in black. It was Lieb and his flunkies coming for me. The deadline was the day before. I guess they were serious.

 
Fine.

 
If Lieb wanted a fight he had a fight.

 
Luckily I saw them before they saw me and I managed to take out two pretty quick. One was a Tech named Andre something-or-other. I put a sniper shot right in his face. The second and third I gunned down as they attempted to enter the building.

 
And finally, with one last thugs throat slashed, it was down to me and Lieb.

 
I could hear him yelling below, his voice bellowing through the empty building. If he didn’t shut up or die soon every Infected from here to Santa Monica would be on us.

 
Luckily Lieb got careless. While I waited patently, squatting in the dark just above the first floor mezzanine, Lieb came stopping into the building like a storm trooper. He was weighed down with weaponry. He’d come to kill me. I was sure of it.

 
I leapt the railing and landed right on Herr Lieb’s shoulders sending him flailing to the floor.

 
Blamm! Blamm!

 
I put one in the back of each of his kneecaps to take the fight out of him, then kicked him over on his back and jammed the rifle in his face.

 
I didn’t trust him.

 
“Why are you here?” I barked.

 
Lieb winced in pain and stammered, “Just wanted...to show you...advanced proof of the book. I...it looks g…good.”

 
And then he reached for his sidearm. 

 
I put a bullet, clean, right through his forehead. His body went limp and a flat package fell out of his flak jacket.

 
It was an advanced copy of 28 Day Later: The Aftermath.

 
Lieb was right. It looked good, plus it had my check as a bookmark.


Then I saw the writing credit...story by Steve Biles.


Son-of-bitch!


The end!

28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH - A writer's survival journal. Day 4

(Thu 04/19/2007 12:48am)
Wednesday, April 18th 2007

Well, the shit hit the fan. Or more to the point, the Infected hit my house, the boards gave way and I had to make a fast escape.

That's the reason for this late entry.

I had been sitting at my computer working on my next Blog and I guess I got used to the sound of constant banging and screaming outside. By the time I looked up from the keyboard, not only had the boards come loose from the window by the front door, but two Infected were already flopping over the sill.

The Infected are frantic and uncoordinated to say the least. They are pure rage which makes them almost completely out of control. In this instance it worked out in my favor.

Once they saw me a dozen or more tried to come in through the window all at once clawing and punching at the air, projecting what they wanted to do to me.

But the dumb fucks were incapable of coordinating an attack. They all came at once and the crazed dolts clogged the window, and bought me enough time to grab a few things and run for the roof.

I live in a row house so traveling the rooftops is the safest. Most of them are down on the streets. As long as they didn't see they'd stay away. But no sooner had the thought crossed my mind when the roof access door from my place burst open and I heard the rasping bark of one of the Infected.

It was woman. She was a nurse once. She still had on her uniform, but now it was soaked with her own vomit-blood.

I stood frozen in the dark for I don't know how long, gripping the duffle filled with my last remaining personal effects. The Infected swung its head fiercely from side to side and if I didn't know better, she seemed to be not only rasping, but sniffing.

It dawned on me then, I'd seen Infected with eyes so swollen, some even gouged out, and still they were able to locate their victims.

This, I thought, was worth noting.

And I grabbed for my note pad.

I was an idiot.

She heard me. I was sitting there wondering about their fucking ability to smell and forgot they could hear pretty fucking good.

I ran.

I had about twenty-five yards of roof left when she came running at me. I couldn't make the jump to the next building. They were separated by a street on that end. She blocked the sides divided by jumpable alleys.

With nowhere to go I turned at the edge and watched her come towards me like a stark raving lunatic covered with blood. She came at me fast. I dropped into a ball at the very last second and felt her legs hit my curled body hard.

A second later I heard her shatter on the pavement below, right on the burn marks from the cocktails I'd thrown the night before to clear my head.

And that's what gave me the idea for the third story. What would it be like to be torn from your home, your neighborhood, your state, your country? Maybe some wouldn't leave. I'd just proven that the Infected can be out-witted; maybe they could even be out-fought.

After I jumped to a safe roof I planted myself and handwrote this entry. I had to leave the computer behind when I'd fled.

It wasn't too bad though. I phoned Lieb and made him type it all out.

Even with the world falling apart around me, it was a nice moment of justice.

Next...final entry

28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH - A writer's survival journal. Day 3

(Tue 04/17/2007 08:58pm)
Tuesday April 17th 2007

My God, it's late. It's dark out and the Infected are at the windows pounding and making that disgusting sound they make. It's like high-powered expectorating or something, all mucus and rasp.

GHAAAAGH!

Fucking gross.

As if the Infected weren't enough, I also had Lieb on me, calling constantly with threats and new deadlines. If I was going to get through this, escape the virus and Lieb, I would have to get the job done faster.

I tried to get some news from the outside world, but all I could get on TV was The Hills Have Eyes parts 1 & 2. That bastard Lieb had high-jacked my cable.
 
I had completed the first chapter, the one about what happened inside the lab with Warren, Clive and the monkeys and how the animal rights activists assisted releasing the virus. Way to go animal activists!

Now it was time to tell how the virus spread from the lab in Cambridge to London and across the UK. It was no easy task.

There were holes in what we were being told happened and what actually happened so I had to reach out to a friend, Dave who lived in the UK. Dave Allcock helped me with some horrific tales of his country and how the Infected had and still were overrunning it.

He told me what he could but the phone line went dead in the middle of our chat and I'm afraid I haven't heard from Dave since. Granted, Dave is an artist so disappearing is part of the job, but it's been months and I fear Dave is one of THEM now.

The second story picked up literally hours after the first one stops. This time instead of the lab and the scientists it was time to tell the story of some of the citizens and the horrors they experienced (and continue to experience I hear).

I constructed a story about a family plucked from bits of fact. I had heard about some of the lab apes attacking a small child and thought that would be the perfect, although agonizing, way to depict the horrors of the virus.

I mean, can you imagine watching your family die? Or even worse can you imagine your mom, dad, sister or brother becoming one of the Infected and coming after you.

Some say most people died (became infected) at the hands of loved ones because they couldn't believe they had changed.
 
Well, believe it people. The World is ending and if you see your mom coming at you and her eyes are bleeding red, kill her. Kill her right away. You have no choice. It's the only way we will survive this time in history.

And that in a nutshell was what I attempted to capture in the second chapter; the spread of the infection and the loss of family.

The boards are coming loose again.

I think I'll go up on the roof and throw down some Molotov cocktails to clear my head.

More soon...

28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH - A writer's survival journal. Day 2

(Mon 04/16/2007 09:11pm)
Monday, April 16th 2007

My days are numbered. I know that now. At least that's what Lieb keeps telling me.

But I did a little snooping and I found out Lieb wasn't the true mastermind. He was the enforcer. There's was a more insidious evil pulling the strings.

They were 'The Producers'

They were the puppet-master pulling Herr Lieb's strings. All of them forcing me to face the fact that I had to address the Rage Virus while the city and as far as I knew the world, was under quarantine.

Somehow I focused, even with big brother watching. Hell, he was standing on my head.

The first story was tough. How do you explain what happened in that lab to those poor monkeys. How do well-meaning, intelligent men and women of science come to the decision that rage and Ebola should be combined as one and then shot into the veins of our primate ancestors?

There were no simple answers.

The first mission was the cast: Warren and Clive. Both of these men were not only at the top of their field and yet they fell into the trap so many researches fall into, they let a combination of curiosity and greed take them over, and for what?

I suppose the experiments were innocent enough at first. I mean who wouldn't want to understand what makes us angry, what makes us rage, what makes us hurt and kill each other.

I decided Warren would be the one to push the experiments, but it would be Clive who had the emotional arc. Both guys are bastards in their way, but Clive still had some remnant of a human heart and a conscience.

The first experiments were on humans. The weren't even trying to create a Rage Virus, believe it or not. They were creating a rage inhibitor.

It's funny how things work out sometimes.

So I began constructing the first story. I had Clive and Warren. I had these experiments they were doing, at first on humans (stupid! stupid! stupid!). And then when that turned into a bloody mess (for real) Warren gave the go ahead to start on primates. But if the inhibitor didn't work on humans, what would it do to our less intelligent ancestors.

What I wrote is a document of human cruelty and stupidity. I only wish it wasn't true. Writing fiction is so much more fun...but since we're all going to die soon, what's the point?

But of all the stupidity that will lead ultimately to our demise, nothing quite equaled the foolishness of those who meant the best, who wore their hearts of their sleeves. The animal activists, for all their concern of animals, did not take the time to consider the human element.

It's almost funny; animal activists free animals being tested on and end the world. How about a big steaming cup of irony to go with the end of the world, eh?

I'm sorry. I wander. My head hurts. The noise outside is deafening. People screaming, gunfire.

The Infected are pounding at my door now. I had to secure the boards and then get back to the typewriter. I had to get Warren and Clive's tragic tale on paper before it was too late.

If 'The Producers' and their flunky Herr Lieb didn't get me, surely the Infected would.

It was about far more than a page rate now.

28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH - A writer's survival journal. Day 1

(Fri 04/13/2007 03:13pm)
Friday 13th 2007

It’s just short of midnight, only minutes before Friday the 13th 2007 as I sit and write this. Up until now I have kept the shocking events leading up to the creation of AFTERMATH a secret.

But now that I fear for my life, I feel the tale must be told. If anybody out there reads this, spread the word. Tell the world. Tell them I didn’t miss my deadline and I’m not dead.

It all began with Lieb. Fucking Lieb. Evil, evil Lieb.

Don’t let his boyish looks fool you. He is a soul-sucking creature of the night and will stop at nothing to create terrifying and entertaining comics.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I can’t seem to think straight. I’m locked away in a room waiting for some word from the outside world it’s safe to come out.

When Lieb approached me about creating a comic that would bridge Danny Boyle’s classic horror film 28 Days Later with the new film 28 Weeks Later, I had no idea what I would be exposing myself to; chaos, infection, madness and really, really tight deadlines.

But I was hungry and Lieb dangled the bait; working with Jimmy P and some of the best artists working in the industry. How could I refuse? I couldn’t. I signed on the dotted line with my blood and prayed I wasn’t infected.

I spent the first few days in total darkness watching 28 Days Later over and over until my eyes bled like one of the infected in the film. Then while I waited in the darkness for morsels of information, Lieb slipped me the script for the sequel into my cell.

I read it by candle light. My last candle.

It was good. Damn good.

Now I had to figure out how to bridge the first flick with the second. I wrote outline after outline sitting in that dark cell on the Fox lot. Have you ever tried to write in the dark? It’s hard. Trust me.

In the beginning I thought one Eighty-eight page story would do the trick, but then, as I unraveled more and more of the ugly truth behind the virus and the infected I realized no ONE story could be told.

I decided to take a chance. I was already trapped. What did I have to lose?

I pitched four separate stories through the peephole in my cell to a group of movie executives, producers, and of course, the mastermind Herr Lieb.

I told them we needed to understand certain aspects of the first movie to bridge fans into the second. The idea was to create a comic book (or graphic novel as they say at the studios) that not only filled in some of the blanks but to also deliver the fans right to the doorstep of 28 Weeks Later.

It had been days since I’d had anything to eat or drink. My mouth was dry and delivering a dramatic, convincing comic book script wasn’t easy.

After the pitch, there was a long silence and then I heard the sound of keys unlocking my cell.

“Okay,” the executives said, “Go home and write those stories, but remember, there’s a quarantine so you’d better watch your step heading back home.”

I had to get home to my boarded up house, to my trusty keyboard, but it wouldn’t be easy, and once I got there I had a mission of utmost importance.

I had four 28 Days stories to write.