Help With Writing A "Zombie Plague" Story

I have this story series I'm thinking about writing.

It's about a small town being infected with a mysterious pathogen that turns the people into monstrous creatures that operate as a hive mind. The pathogen then spreads to the entire country as civilization slowly crumbles and the human race dwindles down to a few isolated survivors.

The main things I'm concerned about are the possible origin of the pathogen, what the pathogen is (virus, fungus,etc.), and how effective it is at spreading.

The creatures are intelligent. Instead of mindless,animalistic zombies. The creatures created by the pathogen fully retain the intelligence they had when they were human, they can plan ahead,operate machinery,build things, speak, and use firearms.

They have a hivemind mentality, they can operate on their own but they are driven by a strong need to spread the infection.

The infection doesn't just affect humans, it can adapt itself to infect any animal, be it bird, dog,or rat.

The pathogen can spread through transfer of bodily fluids or breathing in the pathogen.

The symptoms can take as little as a week or as long as months to manifest, sometimes the victim has no symptoms at all past the first stage and functions as a carrier.

The first stage of the infection has mild symptoms, slight dizziness, coughing, irritation of the nose and sinuses.

The second stage has the following symptoms: Insomnia, slight changes in behavior,coughing fits, headaches.

The third stage has more severe symptoms: The victim starts coughing up a dark colored fluid with the consistency of phlegm. The victim starts displaying aggressive or reckless behavior, dementia, the headaches worsen and the sinuses are inflamed.

The fourth stage is even worse: The victim's personality begins to change, the skin becomes discolored, strange discolorations appear in the brain and other organs, the victim starts vomiting up large quantities of the dark colored phlegm, the victim becomes even more aggressive and they develop an aversion to bright light.

The fifth stage is the last stage of the infection: The victim's personality is gone completely, the skin is an ashen gray color, the victim has no desires other than spreading the infection.

And here are some of the possible origins of the pathogen.

• It's an alien organism that arrived on Earth.
• It's a Cosmic Horror that laid dormant for centuries until something spurned it into action.
• It's a bioweapon Gone Horribly Right
• Or what do you guys think?

First of all, do you want it to be plausible? If no, rock yourself out. If yes, give up.

I didn't intend for it to be exactly plausible, just good enough to be scary and tell a good story. If it's really that bad. Then I'll just scrap the whole thing. I can already tell this was a bad idea.

No, no, don't take my words seriously and if you want to write it, go for it. I'm just another old bitter zombie hater who is another victim of this article, which killed the zombie genre permanently for me.

Oh and remember, zombie apocalypse happening in itself requires you to apply Humans Are Morons, not Humans Are Flawed, to your work. If you don't like that trope, you might want to scrap that idea. I'm not saying that you can't apply that trope, but just giving you a reminder.

edited 12th Jul '11 3:20:52 AM by dRoy