Dead Snowfall - fanfiction on George A Romeros - Dead Trilogy

 

DEAD SNOWFALL

written by Kalifornia Jani - chatgpt

(An original story inspired by George A. Romero’s Dead Trilogy)

Tagline:

In the long Arctic night, the dead march east again.

 

Premise

Northern Finland, winter of 2028. A remote Lapland mining town goes dark after a storm. When a Finnish border patrol investigates, they discover a Soviet-era research bunker thawing beneath the permafrost — and with it, a regiment of dead Russian soldiers reanimating in the ice.

Romero’s tone survives: social satire, slow dread, messy humanity. The zombies are less fast monsters than relentless symbols — frozen ideologies refusing to die.

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Main Characters

KIRSI KALLIO — 35, Finnish border-guard sergeant, practical and exhausted. Disillusioned with both NATO bureaucracy and the nationalist fringe that’s risen since the war in Ukraine.

MILA RÖNKKÖ — 22, Sámi climate researcher, idealistic, documenting thawing permafrost.

JAAKKO “JACK” NIEMINEN — 40, ex-military miner turned smuggler, haunted by what he saw in Donbas.

COLONEL PETROV (undead) — Former Soviet commander, entombed since 1986 during a secret Arctic experiment. His regiment rises as a single decaying organism — uniforms frozen into flesh.

DR. EINO SALO — 60, retired biologist who once worked in the same research program. Knows too much, denies even more.

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ACT I – The Thaw

EXT. LAPLAND – NIGHT
Endless snowfields. A storm howls. A meteor-like flash lights the horizon — a buried bunker vent ruptures as methane ignites.

INT. BORDER STATION
Kirsi watches satellite feeds blink offline. A patrol team lost near the mine. Headquarters silent.

EXT. MINING CAMP
Mila’s field cameras pick up strange heat signatures — shapes moving under the ice. She thinks it’s trapped wildlife.

The storm cuts power. Kirsi’s team heads north in tracked vehicles. The radio carries ghost frequencies: snippets of Russian marches and old orders.

They find the mine gate half-melted open. Steam rises from tunnels below.

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ACT II – The Dead Regiments

INT. MINE SHAFTS – NIGHT
Inside, everything drips. Old signs in Cyrillic, fungus and rust. They find corpses frozen standing upright, rifles fused to hands.

A generator kicks — warmth returns. The bodies breathe once.

The first attack is slow, tragic: a corpse’s eyes roll open; it salutes Kirsi before biting her partner’s throat.

They seal the shaft, escape to the surface camp. Mila insists these aren’t just zombies — they’re reactivated hosts. Petrov’s regiment was infected with an experimental frost-resistance virus, dormant until thaw.

Kirsi demands evacuation. HQ ignores — “contain and confirm.”

INT. ABANDONED BUNKER – NIGHT
They find Dr. Salo hiding among his old instruments. He confesses: the Soviets tested a “cryogenic army” able to sleep decades. The experiment leaked across the border; Finland buried it and forgot.

Now the permafrost melt is undoing every burial.

EXT. VILLAGE – DAY
The undead march — ranks of frozen soldiers still in formation, carrying rifles of ice. Their radio loops one command: “Advance east.” They do not see the living except as obstacles.

Mila broadcasts live footage; the feed goes viral — but the global south mocks, governments deny. Civilization, elsewhere, looks away again. 

ACT III – Siege of the White Town

EXT. MINING TOWN – NIGHT
Kirsi leads a handful of survivors to a concrete church on a ridge. They barricade inside, arguing whether to run for Norway or destroy the tunnel mouths.

Romero-style social split:

• Jack wants to fight — profit from salvaging Soviet tech.

• Mila wants to preserve evidence for science.

• Kirsi just wants to save lives.

• Dr. Salo believes the horde is “a second chance” to study human endurance.

Outside, the regiment arranges itself in perfect square formation, silent in the snow. Then — a slow, rhythmic pounding: boots, frozen stiff, stomping in unison.

INT. CHURCH – NIGHT
Candles flicker as they argue morality vs. survival. Kirsi says the line that defines the film:

“They never stopped fighting. We just stopped learning.”

The soldiers attack — not sprinting, but pressing, endless, a glacier of flesh.

Jack sacrifices himself with dynamite at the tunnel; Mila and Kirsi flee on snowmobiles.

The explosion triggers a methane chain reaction: the valley ignites, an aurora of fire.

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ACT IV – The Long Night

EXT. ARCTIC WASTELAND – DAWN
Kirsi and Mila ride across a glassed tundra, dawn red on snow. Behind them, silhouettes still move through smoke — the soldiers are fire-black now but walking.

Mila weeps. Kirsi says, “Keep heading north. They don’t stop. Neither do we.”

WIDE SHOT: endless white, two tiny figures, distant marching echo.

FADE OUT.

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Themes & Notes

• Romero DNA: political decay, survival microcosm, moral ambiguity, ordinary people failing upward.

• Satire Thread: climate denial and militarism — humanity’s two oldest infections.

• Visual Tone: blue-white cold, slow compositions, analog tech (CRT monitors, flares, radios).

• Zombie Rule: slow, unstoppable; fire slows, cold preserves. They “advance east” endlessly.

• Ending Intention: open—implies Day of the Dead continuation northward under polar light.

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Sample Scene (script style)

INT. FROZEN CHURCH – NIGHT

The pews are barricades. Frost breathes on the windows.

KIRSI checks her rifle. Empty click.

MILA
They’re not after us. They’re marching home.

KIRSI
Then we’re in their way.

Outside, the low chant of boots — boom… boom… boom.

DR. SALO (whispering)
You hear it? Discipline. Even death obeys command.

Kirsi lights a flare. Red light paints saints in hellfire hues.

KIRSI
Then it’s time we disobey.

She kicks the door open. The horde waits in perfect ranks under the aurora.

KIRSI
(to the frozen general)
Go home.

She pulls the pin. White screen.