We're Alive

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Michael: Nothing scared me back then. I didn't fear death or what might be on the other side if today was my day. That was then, and this is now.

When a tiny riot in Los Angeles turns out to be not so tiny after all, US Army reserve Lieutenant Angel Tunudo is told to call his subordinates to arms, but only two of them - Sergeant Michael Cross and Specialist Saul Tink - show up to greet him at the reserve base. After working out that the riot is actually the start of a Zombie Apocalypse, the three men decide they have to take matters into their own hands. They rescue a handful of other people and set up camp in the apartment building where Angel's girlfriend used to live, but even with things going well at first it isn't long before the situation takes a realistic turn for the worse.

And that's not even the half of it.

A Web Original audio drama created by KC Wayland and available here. Each chapter is released for download over the Internet in 3 parts every 4 weeks. (The only exceptions so far are "The War", which was 4 parts long, and "The Harder They Fall", which was released as a single, hour-long episode.) Aside from the official site, there is a forum, a Facebook page and a wiki.

  • The first season began on May 4th, 2009 and finished on April 19th, 2010 after twelve full chapters, and is now available in CD format.
  • The second season began on August 23rd, 2010 and ended on July 30th, 2011.
  • The third season began on January 2nd, 2012 and is currently in progress.

Chapters so far:

Season One (May 4, 2009 - April 19, 2010)

  • #01. "It Begins" (May 4 - May 18, 2009)
  • #02. "The Two Things" (June 7 - July 22, 2009)
  • #03. "The New Arrivals" (July 6 - June 20, 2009)
  • #04. "Rules And Regulations" (August 2 - August 16, 2009)
  • #05. "Lady And The Tink" (August 30 - September 14, 2009)
  • #06. "The Remains Of Eastern Bay" (September 27 - October 12, 2009)
  • #07. "Blood, Sweat And Fears" (October 26 - November 9, 2009)
  • #08. "Where Do You Go When You Sleep?" (November 23 - December 15, 2009)
  • #09. "The Road To Living Death" (December 29, 2009 - January 18, 2010)
  • #10. "Purgatory" (February 1 - February 15, 2010)
  • #11. "R&R" (March 1 - March 15, 2010)
  • #12. "The War" (March 29 - April 19, 2010)


Season Two (August 23, 2010 - July 30, 2011)

  • #13. "Separate Dying Embers" (August 23 - September 6, 2010)
  • #14. "Out Of The Ashes" (September 20 - October 4, 2010)
  • #15. "Desperate Times" (October 18 - November 1, 2010)
  • #16. "Over The Air-Waves" (November 15 - December 6, 2010)
  • #17. "There Might Be Others" (December 20, 2010 - January 10, 2011)
  • #18. "No Place Like Home" (January 24 - February 7, 2011)
  • #19. "The Catalyst" (February 21 - March 7, 2011)
  • #20. "About Last Night" (March 21 - April 4, 2011)
  • #21. "Mark of the Beast" (April 25 - May 9, 2011)
  • #22. "Our Doubts are Traitors" (May 23 - June 6, 2011)
  • #23. "The Devil's Workshop" (June 20, - July 11, 2011)
  • #24. "The Harder They Fall" (July 30, 2011)


Season Three (January 2, 2012 - Ongoing

  • #25. "Inadequate Strength" (January 2 - January 16, 2012)
  • #26. "Who Overcomes..." (January 30 - February 13, 2012)
  • #27. "The Thirty-First" (March 6 - March 19, 2012)
  • #28. "Last Dying Breath" (April 2 - April 16, 2012)
  • #29. "Beyond Our Walls" (April 30 - May 14, 2012)
  • #30. "Short Term Memory" (May 28, 2012 - Present)
Tropes used in We're Alive include:
  • Action Bomb: During the Second Battle of the Tower, Kalani saves the Tower from the tanker truck bomb being sent in by the Mallers. By flying his helicopter directly into said tanker.
  • Agent Mulder: Saul is the first to guess that he and his friends are actually dealing with zombies.
    • Agent Scully: Angel refuses to believe Saul's theory at first. Instead, he thinks it might just be a bunch of mental patients escaping from a nearby insane asylum.
      • Saul himself becomes Agent Scully temporarily in "Lady And The Tink" when Lizzy tries to explain how the zombies could set up a trap.
  • Anyone Can Die: Established in the first chapter when the Commander and Cindy both fall victim to the attack. Very firmly ingrained during the Second Battle of the Tower.
  • Apocalypse How: Species Endangerment on either a Continental or Planetary scope.
  • Badass Grandpa: Burt. Justified because he's a Retired Badass Gunnery Sergeant from the USMC.
  • Bedsheet Ladder: Used by Angel, Burt, Kalani, and Riley in Chapter 23. It broke while Kalani was climbing down, leaving Angel and Burt stranded
  • Bleed'Em and Weep: Pegs, when she kills Latch.
  • Blue Oni Red Oni: Latch and Scratch, respectively.
  • Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: Both the Season 1 finale: "The War" and the Season 2 Finale: "The Harder They Fall".
  • Boom! Headshot!: The easiest known way to actually kill a zombie.
  • Butt Monkey: Angel has some elements of this.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Remember what Kalani said about the zombies somehow crossing all the islands of Hawaii without boats or anything? Yep. They can swim.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: The zombie that attacks Saul, Lizzy and Burt in the first part of "Lady and the Tink" turns out to be one of the smarter zombies that the survivors are especially scared of. It successfully breaks into the Tower at the beginning of "R&R", killing 1 person and threatening the lives of several others.
    • Then in "Mark Of The Beast", it attacks the Mallers the same way it attacked Saul and company.
  • Chekhov's Hobby: Riley mentions in "It Begins" that she is extremely skilled with a bow and arrows. However, she can't put this to use until she finds a hunting bow in a sports shop at the end of "Where Do You Go When You Sleep?".
  • Chekhov's Skill: Tower-dwellers successfully attract a group of zombies to a particular spot in "Blood, Sweat And Fears" by dropping bottles of human sweat from the top of a nearby building. This knowledge and the remaining bottles prove essential in attracting a Zerg Rush of zombies to decimate the Mallers at the end of the first season.
  • The Chick: Pegs.
  • The Coconut Effect: The silenced pistol has the standard Hollywood Silencer sound that listeners have come to expect rather than sounding like an actual silenced pistol.
  • Conflict Ball: Kelly owns this throughout Season 1, occasionally letting Burt borrow it, but eventually dropkicks it into low orbit.
  • Cult Colony: Seems to be the case with the appropriately named Colony, though not everyone's buying into it.
  • Dead Boyfriend:
    • Todd's death at the hands of the zombies is Lizzy's main reason for wanting to kill every zombie she sees.
    • Angel also had to kill his own girlfriend after he found out that she had been infected. It Got Worse when her corpse was pulled out of the ground and dragged away by the zombies at some point before the middle of "Where Do You Go When You Sleep?", but Angel isn't too bothered by that point (or at least he doesn't want anyone else thinking that he is).
  • Deadpan Snarker: Samantha
  • Description Cut: From Chapter 3:

Saul: Whatever, Michael would have done the same thing
Angel: Well he's not here now. He's probably back at the Tower surrounded by ladies.
(Cut to Michael and the other Tower residents besieged by zombies)
Michael: Shoot that bitch in the face!

  • Doesn't Like Guns: Pegs, though only at first -- she slowly grows to tolerate them, and will even use them ever since [she saved Michael's life during the First Battle of the Tower (nevermind that killing Latch was a Bleed'Em and Weep moment for her).
  • Due to the Dead: "Out Of The Ashes" ends with a funeral for all Tower-dwellers and allies thereof who have died because of the First Battle of the Tower, complete with Angel listing off every single name:

Angel: Bill Norris; Ryan Brown; Tommy Pick. And to those that we've already lost, you're not forgotten: Paul Bailey; Todd Fisher; Cindy Benson. Anyone else?
Datu: Samantha.

  • Determinator: Angel.
  • Elite Zombie: "runners," "jumpers," "smart ones," "behemoths," and "little ones" on top of the regular "biters."
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: After the Second Battle of the Tower, those on the helicopter, ( Michael, Pegs, Riley, Kelly, Datu, Tanya, and Hope) thought they were the only ones left alive after the Tower collapsed.

Kelly: Who else was in there?
Michael: Everyone!

  • Flash Back: The entire story is being read from the journals of people who lived out the pandemic in the Tower. Whether or not these people have survived the whole pandemic has yet to be determined, if it ever will be at all.
    • Chapter 27 tells Kalani's story from his journals going back to his arrival in L.A. from Hawaii.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Many, many examples. It would be easier to list the combinations of people who haven't become this.
  • Gun Porn
  • Handicapped Badass:
    • Michael becomes a minor example of this after he breaks his arm fighting one of the behemoths.
    • Burt starts to suffer from trembling in his hands in season 2. He later reveals that he started suffering from these shakes when his wife died, but they went away when the outbreak started.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
    • Some people will recognise Datu from Untold Stories Of The ER.
    • Bob Bergen does the voice for Skittles. You might also recognize him as the voice of Porky Pig.
  • Heel Face Turn: Kelly, gradually.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Kalani -- see Action Bomb above.
  • Hollywood Silencer: See The Coconut Effect above.
  • I Call It Vera: Burt names his favorite pistol Shirley, after his deceased wife.

Burt: Well, that way she's always with me.

  • Lethal Chef: Pegs.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters
  • Melee a Trois: By the end of the first season, it's the Tower versus the zombies versus the Mallers.
    • There's also the high possibility of the Colony becoming yet another enemy to all the other factions...
  • Missing Floor: The Tower has no thirteenth floor, instead going directly from 12 to 14.
  • The Mole: It turns out that a certain Tower-dweller ( Kalani) used the CB radio behind everyone's back, telling the Mallers about the Tower and its weaknesses. This same Mole then later killed Pippin, who was also a Maller spy.
  • My Friends and Zoidberg: Michael chastises a bunch of rebellious Tower dwellers by saying "I just sent two of my friends out there to help you people, and I'll not have you throw it back in their faces!" Angel brings it up a bit later:

Angel: Didn't we send three people out there?
Michael: I said two friends. The other one was just Burt.

Burt: Just walk away. We'll spare your lives; just walk away.
Lizzy: You and your fucking movies...

    • In 21-3, "Mark of the Beast" Burt does it again, this time quoting Airplane!.
  • Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Samantha
  • Smug Snake: Marcus, as much as we got to see of him.
  • The Starscream: Possibly Scratch. At the very least she's a Dragon with an Agenda, but Chapter 24 reveals she may actually be planning to overthrow Durai.
    • Gatekeeper was this for Marcus. He staged a coup to take control of The Colony in Chapter 19.
  • The Stinger: After the credits for the Season 2 finale, there is a final part which reveals that Angel and Burt may still be alive but now in the hands of the Mallers.
  • Stuffed Into the Fridge: It's hard to imagine a more gruesome death than Samantha's. Thankfully we don't hear the actual death.
  • Survivor Guilt: Datu finds it really hard to forgive himself for letting Samantha get taken.
  • Team Pets: Mr. Whiskers and Lady.
  • Thanks for the Mammary: Burt cops an accidental feel on Riley while trying to put a shoulder holster on her in chapter 24.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Subverted -- Latch and Scratch are nicknames for the twin Mallers. We find out just after Pegs shoots him fatally that Latch's real name is John, but Scratch has yet to reveal her real name to anyone.
  • Title Drop: Early in season 1, Pegs makes a sign to announce that there are survivors in the Tower which says...you guessed it: "We're Alive"
  • Took a Level in Badass: Once she got behind the controls of the helicopter Pegs became much more confident, even telling both Datu and Michael to shut up at different points.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Mostly averted so far, but the story is being told from the journals of the characters which makes the story susceptible to this.
  • Villain Ball: Marcus again. You know, if you value someone's capacity for loyalty so much, you probably shouldn't tell them they can't go help the person they're loyal to.
  • We Have to Get the Bullet Out: Done on Saul in chapter 14 despite the lack of adequate tools, antiseptics or morphine. Plus the only one with the medical knowledge to perform the operation is Saul himself.
  • The Wiki Rule: Here ya go!
  • You Killed My Brother: Scratch, after Pegs kills Latch.
  • Zombie Apocalypse
  • Zombie Gait: Inverted, generally. Most, if not all, of the zombies are significantly faster and stronger than the average human, and some of them are smart enough to play tricks on us. Loud noises seem to be the primary method of attracting them, so at least you can avoid them to an extent by keeping quiet.
  • Zombie Infectee:
    • Averted for most people as those infected usually turn rapidly.
    • Tanya mentions that some people turn slowly but we haven't seen it happen yet.
    • Tommy at the end of The War.
    • Subverted with Saul who was chained up for much of season 2 out of fear of this but then got better.
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