The Dead Game Of Life - Blog Posts
Question about The Deadly Game of Life:
How did all the kids find each other and group up?
Erica Triggs, Knox Triggs, Vic Triggs, Alda Triggs, and Berk Triggs are cousins who live next door to each other.
Knox and Vic are brothers.
Erica, Alda, and Berk are siblings who live with their mom while their other siblings live with their dads.
The five of them were home alone with Erica, Alda, and Berk’s mom (Bobby-Day) when the zombies got inside the states.
They were playing in the trailer park while Bobby-Day was…preoccupied inside.
They managed to get inside the trailer only to get attacked by a freshly turned Bobby Day, who Knoc managed to successfully take out. After that they stayed inside, trying to figure out what to do (while panicking, of course). Luckily, Erica had a special interest in the zombies they'd never seen before and with the help of her best friends, Bryce and Logan, had created plans to prepare for this exact situation.
(Corduroy Triggs being a doomsday prepper and an electrician came in handy for something after all).
The first thing on their plan was to pack the important stuff (i.e stuff they need to survive and the sentimental stuff they absolutely cannot go without). The second thing was for them to get supplies and the third thing was for them to try and find each other with their walkie talkies.
So that's what they did.
It takes them a week or so to get to Bryce.
They find Melinoë locked inside a slab in the morgue—she'd been hauled up in the morgue with her stepmother, Kore, when she'd gotten the news about the zombies and locked the shop down. Unfortunately, about a day or two before the zombies managed to break in. She'd been shut in there because Kore hoped it would save her.
Unfortunately for Melinoë she couldn't get out of it on her own, despite the fact that it wasn't closed. Luckily for her, no one had a gun at that point and Erica was both thoughtful and brave enough to check to see if it was or wasn't a zombie.
They continued on—having to stop on the way to find directions to where Bryce was. Since he'd been at a family reunion when the whole thing started and no one knew where it was.
Melinoë and the Triggs cousins ran into the Murdock brothers (Buster and Casey) and their cousin, Donovan Houdini, next. They came across one another while scavenging for supplies (Melionë lost her mind when she found out they didn't have a first aid kit and demanded they look for one immediately because “NO! ibuprofen, Allergy medicine, bandaids, and cold medicine is not enough to help us!”).
After a conversation and maybe a minor scuffle (haven't decided yet), the nine of them decide that it's best for them to stick together for at least the foreseeable future. Because after all, a bunch of kids (a four year, two five year olds, a seven year old, three nine year olds, and a ten year old) are better together in a big group than split into two groups.
They pick up Bryce after that.
Saving him from his grandparents’ zombie infested ranch. That's filled with his zombified relatives. He'd been holed up in his grandpa’s bunker (his grandpa was a war veteran and built it in case of emergencies).
After that, they try to clear the ranch of zombies and try to find more supplies so the ten of them are more prepared and they settle for the night. All of them agreeing that it's best for them to plan ahead before they continue on to find Logan (even Logan himself agrees that while he's scared he'll be more scared if they get hurt because they rushed his rescue).
When they leave the ranch (after trying to do a little burial for Bryce's big family. I say trying because, well, the oldest of them is ten. They can't lift full grown adults and have to settle for burying little items of theirs) none of them look back. None of them think of staying there.
They can't get rid of the bodies.
And even if they could, it's not like Bryce would want to stay there. He heard and saw his family all die. His grandparents, his mom, his cousins, his siblings—his nieces and nephews. He saw even the ones younger than him die. He couldn't save them.
It haunts him.
None of them think of staying there because they understand his pain.
The ten of them struggle to find River because he moved to a different town nearby due to his single mom getting a job offer that paid her better. So none of them know where to find him based on memory and have to find the directions based on an address with the maps app on Bobby-Day’s cellphone (that has spotty connection) and a paper map that none of them are actually able to read too well.
They have to put a hold on finding Logan for a bit because Casey, Berk, and Alda all came down with a nasty cold. Likely due to them all not being used to the non-stop traveling and other factors such as the kids other than Bryce not being the best at cooking.
Because of this, the group has to split up briefly. Donovan, Buster, Knox, and Vic stay behind to help Melinoë take care of the three sicker little kids while Bryce and Erica go loot the library for any medical, cooking, and internet tech books they can find in the hopes of being able to help with the situation.
Unfortunately for them while they’re searching they get jumped by the zombified Librarian they had thought abandoned the place—to be more specific, Bryce got tackled by the zombie. Which caused his gun to go flying. Erica, who doesn’t know how to use an actual gun, tries her best to use it—but she doesn’t know what a safety is or how to turn it off. Her pencil gun is in her backpack so she can’t use that and Bryce is struggling to hold the zombie off.
All she has is her wooden sword.
She broke it over the zombie’s head, causing the zombie to forget about a stunned Bryce and go after her. Instead.
In that moment, Erica sees her short life flash before her eyes that she doesn’t remember squeezing shut—remembering every scolding from her parents, every argument she’s ever had, every broken promises and wishes that she could have been better. She silently apologizes to her siblings and cousins, hoping that they’ll forgive her for leaving them—sure she’s a goner.
And that’s where Brie ‘Koala’ Schmidt comes in.
The eleven year old jumps down from the rafters where she was hiding and lands on the Zombraian’s shoulders and starts punching her in the end.
Her intervention allows for Bryce to get a hold on his bearings and his hockey stick, which he promptly knocks the Zombraian to the ground with. Together the three of them are able to kill the zombie and find the books they came looking for, and together they leave.
The others don’t question the extra member.
They continue on after a day or two.
They stumble on a reserve or maybe a home (I haven’t decided yet) where they find an eleven year old Dakota Bravebird locked in a closet. Someone from the group who had adopted/taken him in a couple of years before had locked him in there because the zombies had gotten in and the rest of the group who hadn’t stayed behind to fend off the zombies didn’t know the boy had survived. He doesn’t remember anything about his life before they adopted him, just that it wasn’t good and that the people who had adopted him had taken good care of him. He was devastated that they were gone.
The group of eleven decided unanimously that the boy was to come with them so they could help find his family, if they were able.
They found Logan in his new home not long after and then set up camp at a wooden playground they’d all played at before. They grab tents from a nearby store and some playhouses once Knox figures out how to drive.
And towards the end of the book, they wake up to Ivy ‘Stinkbug’ Haywood stealing some food from their stash.
They get into a scuffle.
Things are heated.
Then Melinoë oh so helpfully reminds the group that you need food to live and the rest of the group feel bad so they let Ivy stay, even if she isn’t very sorry.
And that’s how Forsaken Falls is formed.
It only continues to grow as the series goes on.
(All of this is subjective to change. Thanks for the ask).