Zombies!

I have a thing for stories with zombies in them. Well, really all movies about the appocolypse. I have no idea why but I just love them. Jericho, 28 Days ( /weeks) later, Dawn of the Dead, Zombieland and my absolute favourite right now, The Walking Dead. I love the whole the world has been turned upside down and you have to sneak around to just find something to eat. It probably started from my love for the Tomorrow series by John Marsden when I was in primary school.

However, I always think they do things wrong, and I always find myself thinking about what I would do if I was in the same situation. The same thing goes for viral outbreaks (think Contagion). I've done a few semesters of microbiology, including one unit called biosecurity and microbial forensics so along with everything I've learnt from movies I think I'm a bit of an expert. I'd love to write a book about a zombie apocalypse. So far no one seems to have written the perfect zombie story (If you think there is one, dear god, let me know!!!). The Walking Dead comes close, but there's still a lot of annoying bits. I guess they're there to make the story interesting, but somehow I think I could do better.

Now, I'm not a writer. I was terrible at English, so much so that I googled synopsis of books I had to read so I didn't have to read them (like The Tempest. I just couldn't read it.). And then I crapped on about what little I knew and somehow managed to pass. I think I could give a story a good crack anyway. I mean, if 50 shades became a best seller, surely anyone could pull anything out of their arse and have people read it?
At the moment I'm way too busy to be writing anything, but in my winter break I wrote a page and a half and got the basic idea of where I wanted the story to go. I think the most important part is the zombie. My idea of a zombie is they move kind of like humans, not too fast but not slow walkers. It's (not sure what it is yet, virus perhaps) spread by being bitten and people turn within 24 hours but not straight away. Do they die first? I'm not sure. And killing the zombie is the classic beheading or destroying the brain. I also know that I want my main characters to be prepared, having some sort of medical and/or military background, and to involve the Australian bush (best place to go when there's a zombie outbreak imo!).
That's where I'm at now but it will be interesting to see if I ever get around to writing more.