One other thing I just now thought of: What did the title of the chapter have to do with anything that took place in said chapter?

Don't know if anyone else noticed this or not, but what happened to the "Mayor" after he escaped from the trunk of his car?

A few comments:

1. I agree with a few of the others that the ending was too abrupt.
2. I wanted to see Pete as a good guy SOOO bad; maybe because it would at least give Robert and Maribel a slight advantage with an extra on the team, but you made him a pretty convincing bad guy who got what he deserved.
3. With only one child surviving, I would have thought there would have been some sort of special significance in choosing that child to be Jake; however, in the epilogue all we see him doing is catching a fish.

I wanted to win something sooo bad in this competition, but with Christmas and all, I just got a little lazy and didn't want to attempt tying all the knots together in the last chapter. I'll definitely continue to compete and hope for the best.

I appreciate all comments everyone has given me as well. Looking forward to the next contest. May the best writers ... write their best!

1. On the 20% figure, we're never told how many people are in these towns, so I've thought of it as all relative, and Maribel herself talks about being assigned to "small" towns:

Chapter 1:
"Why I had been chosen for this task was beyond me. It seemed that my gift of discernment and ability to adapt had caught the attention of someone in authority. And I suppose I had agreed to it as a way of punishing myself for surviving the attack on my own small town so many years ago, while my husband and daughter had not."

Chapter 3:
"A precursory look informed me the seat adjustment was motorized, which removed any hope of me slamming back into his lap. One of the reasons I enjoyed small town assignments was my technological savvy was always more advanced than the locals. The mayor’s new car negated that advantage."

I tried to start out with a low number of infected townsfolk at first so I thought 40% (actually I said over 40%) would be reasonable, and then reduced that number to 20% to represent the Agents. Out of that 20%, some were killed and some where injured, but survived; this is an even smaller number of fatalities.

2. Think of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, both of those two were kept totally secret from the other and it seemed pretty effective on-screen.

3. Maribel doesn't recognize Pete at first because when he speaks, he is in the shadows. She only hears his voice and immediately thinks of Phil because of the stress of the situation. That's why I tried to reveal him slowly ("His legs. His waist. Then his face") and build up to the big reveal. Then after he is fully in the moonlight, she realizes who it is at the same time he tells her; a simultaneous revelation!

4. I wanted to leave some things "unknown" for the last chapter and didn't want to reveal everything, plus, at that point, there had been a lot of explanation and I felt like a lot of time had passed. So I figured I'd better get on with the story and not bore the readers.

5. Time frame: I've actually tried hard to keep up with this element of the story. We're told in Chapter 1:

"It seemed too risky to pull an identity from a place I’d lived. Granted, even I had a hard time keeping track of all my residences – sixteen abodes in a dozen years does that to a person..."

"All my residences" told me that she was saying she'd been an Agent for twelve years total. Okay, then in Chapter 3:

"A hand helped me from the sedan as the mayor let himself out. I looked into eyes I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. 'Robert?'"

The key words I saw were "more than a decade", hence the constant reference to 10+ years. But now that you mention it, I didn't even notice the discrepancy in the previous winning chapter of "more than a decade" and 1997. If the story is set in 2007 instead of 2008, that would be 11 years past (more than a decade), but that would mean Maribel would have been an agent for only one year at this time.

Side note: At first, I couldn't figure out if Ms. B. was an Agent at the time the 1997 scene took place, but then I realized she was when I read the line:

"Phil the mailman delivered a telegram that required my signature. Departmental stuff."

The Departmental reference clearly shows she was and Agent at this time.

I hope this explains my thought processes. Out of curiosity, how did this chapter compare with my last one in the series? It took me two days to write, proofread, and constantly rewrite and revise for story continuity (mine within the chapter and that within the story thus far). I hope my effort shows. If nothing else, that will have been worth it.

Thanks for the comments. Keep 'em coming and I'll try not to give such long answers next time, lol.

P.S. I knew there was something wrong with my 40% and 20%... I wrote the % sign in the chapter before the numbers (%20 & %40)! Funny how you know something's wrong; it's on the tip of your brain, but you can't quite get it! Go figure!

I somehow accidentally placed my chapter: The Unknown - Chapter 4: Familiar Faces in the Chapter 2 tree of stories. How do I move it down to the Chapter 4 tree where it belongs? Or can the staff do this for me?

Also, can you fix the comments so that each paragraph can be broken with line spaces like when you post a story/chapter instead of it all being bunched up?

End of Ch. 2: "Oh, that's awful nice of them. But I'm afraid I can't just let you leave town like that." He reached out and put a hand on my arm. The gesture had all the appearance of friendliness, but his fingers bit into my arm like a vice. "Not just yet."

My chapter begins with an inner monologue and her knowing something is up based upon the sly voice of Hiram Lockley, who had just spoken at the end of chapter 2 (above).

Even though I had tried hard to research every last detail of the previous 2 chapters, I still missed the fact that Ms. B. walked to the grocery mart, so I put her in a car; my mistake, sorry; but I did proofread.

With Pete, I tried to build up the suspense but didn't know if it would be too long before the reveal or not. I like Pete as a good guy, too, so I tried to portrayed him as the big brother type.

See the previous reply for the reason for the short chapter. I also didn't think it would be bad to have a short chapter based on other chapter lengths I had seen in the previous two contests.

Thanks for the compliments as well as the criticisms. I'll do better next time.

Could you have a way to edit comments by the poster once they have been posted? I sometimes get in a rush and therefore misspell a word or two and can't go back and edit/fix it.
Also, could you have a way for the writers to edit there chapters after they are posted, so in case one or more discrepancies in story/misspellings can be fixed?

Oops, yes it should have been "could", guess the spell checker didn't catch that one. I proofed it as well, but I must have been reading to fast -- to eager to post my story.

In regards to this chapter being too short, I tried not to add too much so as not to carry the story in too many directions, thus making it harder for the next person to write a continuing chapter should I win. Plus this was all I could come up with at the time. I wanted to focus more on making the characters more realistic while adding elements of forward movement here an there; but mostly making the characters come alive.

Stephen King said in his book "On Writing" that a really good story is one which gives the reader a sense of eavesdropping on the story and forgetting that the reader is actually reading a story but instead participating. I hoped to accomplish this with this chapter. Again, thanks for all your comments. They are really helpful to a newcomer like me.

Thanks mostly to StoryMash, I love the reviews, comments, etc. and the sense of community here. I haven't been able to find that at any other website. I use Helium.com, but it's based solely on rating with no community involvement via comments or advice, and StoryMash really excels in this area.

Thanks for all the comments guys. These are extremely helpful. If I choose to write the next chapter (if I don't win, that is), I'll definitely take my time going over all the rough edges with a fine-toothed comb. Didn't realize there were so many discrepancies.

Just that the story of the bus stop seemed to be continuing and then all of a sudden things changed course with a courtroom drama.