i'm currently at am impasse in my novel.

basic backstory: man (jackson) survives nuclear holocaust after being unconscious for 5 days in a basement during the initial panic, gets to hospital, meets up with doctor, his daughter nora, and three other people (theresa, dusty, theo). after about a day they decide to travel to a radio station to contact other survivors. they travel to the doctor's house on the way where they find his wife has died of radiation poisoning, then they go to jackson's house and find his parents survived and left for a city about an hour away to travel by private jet north.

then almost to the radio station, they crash their vehicle and have to walk about half a mile through the town and over a collapsing bridge. they get there and send out a signal for an hour until the backup generator gives out, then they wait. in the morning they are greeted by enemy helicopters which kill the doctor and split jackson and nora up from the other three. they travel through the woods, all the while jackson dealing with nora's recent loss of both of her parents, looking for the rest of the group.

my dilemma: where do they go after they all meet up? here's some ideas i have:

1. they exit the forest and wind up on a road that takes them to where there are a few army people in hazmat suits combing the area. they would then be taken to the base. but what happens after that? i'm afraid if i did that the story would wind to a close right about there, and currently it's only about a third of the way done.

2. they stumble upon the aforementioned military base which has been abandoned. they sleep there for a few nights, stock up on supplies, and then a strike on the base from the enemy kills one of the group members and they barely escape with their lives. (then what? same dilemma once that has been written.)

3. they hear a rumor from a passing man that DC wasn't bombed but is in a state of war between the remaining US troops and enemy troops. they go there to help fight or find out what's really going on? (illogical)

4. i just thought of this one while writing this. they decide to go to the river and go north, since it flows north. they travel up through virginia and into west virginia, then into the ohio river which then dumps into the mississippi river, which would make for an interesting travel.

tell me which of my ideas sound the best or give me some of your own! i need better ideas than this, guys! when i'm thinking of ideas i generally ask myself these questions:

1. how will they survive? what would i (or you) do in the situation?
2. should they try and fight the invaders or just try and survive?
3. would would make the story of survival interesting and not cliche?

Jackson braced himself against the jagged edge of the gash in the building, put his uninjured right leg into the darkness, put all his weight on that foot, and swung his left leg over the lip. He pressed his back violently into the side of the hole as the bottom of his ankle caught a sharp piece of sheet metal sticking up. He hopped around, trying not to scream as his ankle and, now, his bleeding back caused him terrible amounts of pain. He put his back to a wall inside the dark garage and rested, trying to overcome the pain and trudge on. He used this chance to get his bearings.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw three delivery trucks. The one nearest him had been totaled by the car that came through the wall. The other two looked to be intact, so he pressed off the wall and walked towards the trucks. The first one looked heavily damaged; the car had impacted the cab of the truck. The front of the car had made it into the cab, breaking all the windows and tearing up the inside of the truck. It leaned downwards heavily, and Jackson noticed that the back of the truck had been separated from the cab. He stopped to look inside the car for a moment; a cross necklace dangled from the bent rearview mirror. The back was full of junk; trash, magazines, a flashlight… a flashlight could be useful. He took the flashlight and stuffed it into the bag slung off his right shoulder.

Jackson continued forward towards the other trucks when something caught his eye. Something glinted in a moment of light underneath the vehicles on the ground along the wall opposite the gaping hole and on the other side of the trucks. He passed in front of the three trucks that were lined up in a row side by side, also passing the huge garage door towards which the trucks were facing. Paper and bits of metal and plastic covered the ground; it was everything Jackson could do to keep from falling and injuring himself further.

                As he neared what he saw on the ground, he realized what it was- a pool of blood. It had run underneath the parallel trucks in a little crimson stream from its source and Jackson fought the urge to vomit inside his mask. He looked down, clutched his knees, and breathed heavily. When the urge was gone, he focused only on trying to find the source. He squinted in the low light… there. It was a man, laying flat on his back, his legs severed from his body. The blood was pooled up around the stubs where his legs used to be. Jackson walked closer and saw it was a boy, probably 18. He assumed the boy was probably dead.

                Jackson, in confirmation of the boy’s death, knelt beside the body and slowly began reaching out to check for a pulse. The boy’s eye flung wide; they were puffy and bloodshot. As he looked at Jackson, his chest began rising and falling violently. The boy gasped and wheezed as the panic started to set in.

                “I’m Jackson, I’m going to help you,” he said to the dying boy.

                “No… no, no, no, no, no. No help. No hope. My legs…” he gasped sharply, his airway full of ash and dust, “gone. Dad… gone. I came… looking for him. Three days ago.” He gasped for breath, coughed, and went on. “I got here and the building was… gone. Dad… dad’s dead. I couldn’t find my… my mom before I left the-the house. I came here, found dad… he was c-crushed under a desk. The way… his face was all… c-c-contorted…” The boy took another breath. He shuddered violently and Jackson could see a tear glint in the low light, “He was… burned alive. I… came here to get a truck to leave. The roof… collapsed, cut… my legs. I see them. There.” He pointed to a shoed foot peeking out from underneath a large metal sheet.

                The boy coughed; blood dribbled down his chin. In that moment Jackson realized that the boy’s hair had fallen out all around him. His skin was peeling off and his face was covered in sores.

                “Your father was my boss… Franklin Killian? You’re Franklin Jr.?”

                “No. Yes. Where am I?”

                “Franklin, you’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re suffering from severe radiation poisoning. I’m going to take you to the hosp-”

                “NO! No, no, no. Can’t you see? HOPE IS GONE! HELL HAS COME!”

                “Franklin, we can… we can fix this. You’ll be okay. I’ll get you to the hospital and everything will be okay.”

                “I… will… not… live… in… hell!” he wailed, gasping between each word.

                The boy picked up a fragment of metal from the collapsed roof and attempted to end his life. Jackson stopped him; he grabbed the boy’s arm and pinned it to the ground with his knee. The boy let out a horrendous blood-curdling scream, a scream that shook Jackson to his very bones. The boy arched his back and his eyes opened wide. The terrified man let go of his arm, but Franklin didn’t notice. The boy’s entire body lurched as a great gushing of blood was vomited from his mouth. He collapsed back to his original laying position and his head fell to the side, eyes wide open at Jackson, a flow of thick crimson liquid dribbling out of his mouth.

                “Franklin?” Jackson said quietly after a moment’s pause. He waited what seemed like an eternity, but Franklin stayed unnervingly still. The boy lived no longer. A hot tear fell out of Jackson’s eye and onto the inside of his mask, the only grievance Franklin would ever get. He went to wipe it, but his hand hit the plexiglass facemask. He looked at his unused hand, unable to wipe his face, and then down to Franklin’s lifeless corpse. He used the gloved hand to close the boy’s bloodshot eyes- eyes that no longer saw.

Jackson thought of the philosophy of it all. With the knowledge that he did not die as the last human on earth, was he able to finally let go of his broken body? Maybe, but that thought didn’t stop Jackson from feeling sick in every fiber of his being. He said a silent prayer for Franklin and his family; his father’s body was probably nearby, and soon the collapsing buildings would make a single grave for them both.

i love writing and reading too. i read over some stories i wrote in 8th grade and they were so bad! haha. i thought i was the bomb diggity. i actually thought that there were hidden planets on the other side of the sun, hahahaha. and my poetry... oh lord.

but right now i'm reading the road. it's really sad and i had to take a break because it's just so deep. his writing is fantastic, though. he writes like he basically knows everything about anything (cormac mccarthy that is). he goes into such depth with every little detail. it's amazing. and his writing style makes it like it's not a as much of a story as it is a memory, or more like a gritty photograph of a memory. it's beautiful and so sad.

i also love to read because it inspires me. it helps me see how crappy of a writer i really am and to go back and fix stuff. which i really need to do! i've hit page 100 of my novel, though. i took a break from writing for a while but i've started back up and i've written over 10 pages since my break. i think it'd be about 130 some pages of book-sized pages, not Word-sized pages, which are larger.