Obstacles of ruin

Entry 010:

It still amazes me the amount of paper in this place; I could conceivably write indefinitely with such a supply. And the pens; innumerable boxes of them (well, I’m sure I could count them – if I so cared…which I don’t). Either the property owner was a hoarder of paper, or a writer. Or maybe even some mix of the two. —Maybe the property owner was a writer who worked for Hammermill and therefore had a nearly unlimited reserve of paper reams – who knows? I sure don’t. And I don’t really care, either. But since it’s here, I’m going to keep utilizing it for this purely self-serving (non)-purpose…I guess…Got nothing better to do until the snow melts enough for me to make the trek to anywhere else but here – or until the winter swallows what remains of my measly life. Although, after last week’s brief respite, I am living quite like a king – relatively so, that is; like a penniless king who fought and foraged for the scraps that are a comparative feast to that of his previous meals…Okay, so that was exactly how I scored my current cache of food, minus the part about being a king.

Actually…now that I think about it…hmmm...one might consider me king of this realm since I have yet to encounter another living person. Granted, if this is to be so, then the only subjects of my rule are the zombisicles that still surround my current abode. Pah! Some subjects they are; completely useless to me, especially this time of year, being all frozen and such…

Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there – just more of my nonsensical babbling. More proof that I’m slowly losing what’s left of my mind…

So…where was I? Let me look back on my work here, real quick....

Yes, yes: I was riding out of Ashford on that oh-so-faithful bicycle of mine. (That thing got me through a lot; shocking it lasted me as long as it did.) By the time it crapped out, I hardly needed it any longer. After all, as we all know by now, the threat of zombie hordes has all but vanished – densely packed regions are still out there, but I’m guessing that these are moreso restricted to the cities…those that weren’t firebombed, that is. Although, some might argue that the scattered packs or individual zombies are more dangerous to a traveler’s health (thus the communities that have sprouted here and there, but I find those more dangerous than a random attack on the trail; people can be vicious, I’ve seen it with my own eyes far too many times…but we’ll return to that at a later date).

Again, I ramble on…I could spout theories and stratagems for days, but that would not suit the purpose of these memoirs – these scrawlings. Back to the story of my past:

All was well and good for a short while; slip a pair of ghouls reaching for me from behind a truck, dodge a crawler before it could snatch my wheel (don’t want to do that again). But with every pump of the pedal and turn of the wheel I found the highway to be more crowded. The sky was yet dark at that time; a light haze was painted over a sliver of darkness in the east, but not so much as to light my path – and most of this was behind the trees, anyhow.

Silent as I was, however, most of this growing horde was ignorant to my passage. The ones that groaned at me certainly attracted the attention of some, but by the time they laboriously turned toward this groaning alarm, I was gone. I did have one slight problem, though: my wheel – the back one, which was yanked so fiercely the night before – was beginning to squeak. Now, this on its own would not have been much of a problem at all; just keep on the move and there was no chance of being caught. Well, less of a chance…as it so happened…The fact of it all is: I would have been just fine if I had seen the curb and the car…but I hadn’t…

You know the phrase: That [insert inanimate object] jumped out of nowhere! —Yeah, we all know that phrase – whether it be a door, a table, a wall, a curb – and many of us have probably even uttered that nonsensical phrase (I know I have). Well, that’s kind of what it felt like right then: the damn curb jumped out of nowhere! I was careening through the growing thicket of zombies when all of a sudden: wham! My front wheel finds the only curb around. And the car? (I did mention a car). Yeah, I didn’t see that, either. But I sure did get a good look at the underside of the rear bumper, wheel-well, and tire (surprisingly clean undercarriage and wheel-well, and the tires were primo quality with fantastic tread…). I can’t quite recall the make or model – not that I cared, being slightly concussed at the time – but I remember that it was a nice one, new and expensive. I was too dazed and frenzied to steal much of a glance upon standing – especially since it took me a good while to get back on my feet. Though, I do recall the one blemish; a softball-sized dent from where I crowned the bumper. I briefly inspected this with a blurry eye and tingly hand, mostly to gauge the severity of my own wound.

I don’t know how long I was out, nor could I estimate how long I rolled about uncomprehendingly – I didn’t even know where I was when my vision cleared! Even still, once I managed to shake a bit of the delirium from my head, I popped straight up, staff in hand, ready for a brawl. But I was in the clear (relatively so, that is). A number of ghouls had heard, if not seen, the wreck, and a cascade of groans was rising on the light morning breeze. This cascade was loudest in the east, swelling with such a fever that I could not fathom the size of this horde. My best guess at that time would have been hundreds, and even that was a far cry from their actual number. (My guess now, after having killed a great number of them myself, would be closer to two thousand, give or take a few hundred…but don’t concern yourself just yet as to how I came to killing so many of them, for my tale shall explain this all – in time.)

Since they weren’t upon me yet, I could not have been out for more than a few seconds, and dazed for maybe twice that time, but no more. Just thirty seconds total would have cost me my life, so I was surely out of commission for less than twenty seconds. Before recovering my bike, I brained three of the ghouls in my immediate proximity; two were closing in on me by foot and were within a couple yards of my position; the third was considerably closer, but was crawling, and therefore literally inching its way toward me. After braining the first two with my staff, I kicked the crawler in the head – I don’t think the blow killed it, but it posed little enough threat that I did not concern myself with total annihilation. After a brief assessment of the front wheel, I hopped onto my bicycle and was away at once.

Remember the squeaky axle I mentioned earlier? It was nothing in comparison to the squall that was now produced by my front wheel. The wreck had apparently damaged it in some way. None too bad, though – superficially, anyhow. The squall was loud enough to call far too much attention to myself. Hungry, ferocious groans and snarls and howls erupted near and far. I could feel them closing in all around me. Dirty, mangled hands groped from the nearer ones – some of them brushed my arm, and a couple damn near caught hold of my sleeve (none found purchase – thank the Heavens and Universe!).

By this point in my morning ride (brief as it was, as of yet), the street was not only becoming more clogged with curiously pedestrian ghouls, but also with vehicles which ran the gambit; from motorcycles and mopeds all the way up the scale to RVs and semis (just the cabs in all but one case; ironically, the only semi with an attached trailer belonged to a moving and storage company which just so happened to be based out of Olympia…go figure). Interestingly enough, there were far more everyday diesels trailing fifth-wheels and boats than semis hauling goods.

First of all: though I had never been over this pass before, I was certain that, given all the roads leading up to it, this particular pass was not designed for semi-trailers (not that I, being inexperienced on the matter, would know this for certain). And secondly (a point which is still baffling to this day): what’s with the boats? The ocean’s the other direction, ya ding-dongs…What were they hoping to accomplish? Were they so attached to their possessions that they had to haul away the entire house when facing a possible pandemic (note the moving and storage semi-trailer…)? Or had they loaded it up with supplies and/or other survivors – other refugees? Both are plausible, but unverifiable.

Before long, the road was impassible due to the density of derelict vehicles. I swung up and around this wall of vehicles, narrowly avoiding innumerable pairs of hands as I maneuvered the bicycle off the pavement and onto soft earth (I stood on my ride to avoid the bumps). I circled around a shop of some sort and dismounted before entering the vast forest that stood behind it. Huffing and puffing, I raced through the thicket with my bicycle up on one shoulder; one hand gripped the frame while the other stabilized the front wheel and kept overall balance. I kept a swift pace and a keen eye, and I ran until I felt no pursuit. And then, my pace only slowed a mite. Some minutes later, certain that I’d lost them, I leaned the bike against a tree and retched on a shrub of some sort. I retched until I was empty and dry-heaving. Once I was finally finished with all this, I staggered backward to rest on a tree of my own.

A little more light painted the eastern sky – not much, but a little. I’m not sure if it was this meager helping of light, or just instinct and subconscious cues, but I sensed a vast clearing a short distance ahead. When I finally caught my breath, I heaved the bike back on my shoulder and trudged through the last of the thicket.

I found my way blocked – I almost stumbled into razor wire!

The place I found – the property that was the clearing I'd sensed – was some sort of abandoned military installation. I weighed my options as I circumnavigated the perimeter; chance my fate in the labyrinth of of tents beyond the impressive perimeter (which consisted of the tallest chainlinks I'd ever seen, stout jersey barriers, and razor wire); or press on, up the mountain. Though the eastern end of the installation was clear of any threats (I heard not a groan or moan either near or far – quite the contrast from the trek just outside of Ashford), which apparently marked safety up the mountainside, if only for a while, I decided to test the waters inside the walls of the abandoned military installation.

Save for the numerous dead bodies spread wildly about the grounds, I found myself alone. I made my way through the labyrinth of tents until I found one filled with cots. I made myself at home and fell asleep nearly at once.

I shall leave you with that tidbit, for now, as I have, in my current state, also grown sleepy. Good night, and fare thee well, for I shall scrawl more of this prose in naught but a day or two. –Adieu.

Preamble of Ashford

Entry 009:

Wow. I seriously feel rested today. And warm. My belly is screaming for more food, but that’s just because it got a taste of some and has since been insatiable. But I know better – and I know I can survive with water for breakfast. So that’s just what I do; I sip until my stomach ceases its grumbling. Before long, I feel as though I’ve eaten – quite the trick to play on one’s own digestive system!

I really can’t remember the last time I awoke with this much zeal. It feels like eons, but I’m sure I felt this way only a few years ago. The best I can pinpoint this sensation is the season: strangely enough, the last time I felt this alive was wintertime. I know it was after the pandemic spread, because I was worried about zombies instead of homework. I want to say it was during that first winter, since I have a vague feeling that I was still eating and sleeping regularly, but I could very well be wrong – on every count of the blurry recollection. This supposed sensation – or recollection, or whathaveyou – also has the distinct flavor of wishful thinking; perhaps I’ve never felt this way in my entire life, and in my current delusional state I want so badly to believe that I have previously awoken as such so that maybe I can hold onto some slim memory of a life that, in all actuality, never was…

Or maybe I’m just going crazy, and pointlessly – if not obsessively – ranting with this ill-begot pen of mine about half-truths of a life of which the memories are slowly distorting or altogether fizzling. It's so hard to discern reality from fantasy – both past and present...all that keeps me grounded anymore are the words previously written. Surely, I couldn't have been so crazy at the onset of all this. So the tale of my past, as written thusfar, must be real...I hope...so maybe the ancillary memories I (supposedly) recall are real as well...

Real or fantasy, the next piece of my tale (as I recall it right now) is as follows:

The town of Elbe was a trip. First, I noticed the bizarre absence of people, vehicles, and ghouls alike. Second, I found the local Kirche (an old landmark of the town) was burnt to the ground. The steeple had collapsed inward and the cross stood out from the rubble at an awkward angle; it was charred impiously, unapologetically. And then, as I passed a house near the edge of town, I felt a disturbing presence and cold eyes that augered down to the depths of my soul.

Pedaling as fast as my weary feet could pedal, I sped away from this eerie town.

A little further down the road, a large-caliber machinegun startled me off the road. From the sounds of it, someone was blasting the crap out of the countryside from a moving vehicle. While lunching in the forest – scared to this position by the approaching machinegun-fire – I saw the vehicle; it was a green pickup truck with a .50-caliber mounted in the bed. The bullets ripped through a nearby tree, but I managed to avoid a smashed-in face by ducking behind a fallen tree. And after the fear of these maniacs subsided, I climbed a large oak and settled in for a quick bit of shut-eye.

—I remember quite vividly my surprise at having awoken to full-dark. I had apparently been exhausted enough to sleep for hours and the day had hence been washed away. I laughed at myself and climbed back down to my bicycle.

Still quite groggy, despite energizing my blood with every pump of the pedals, I failed to weave through a throng a little ways down the highway. One of them caught a hold of my wheel and sent me sprawling. But my reflexes, however groggy I may have been, were still quite keen and I brained the lot of them in a matter of moments. Though, I’m quite sure that anybody watching would have been witness to a rather entertaining bout indeed. They approached from every angle and I swung and spun and pirouetted through them with the grace of a ballet dancer. (Or maybe that’s my ego speaking; I probably swung wildly and stumbled over myself, landing lucky shots on my way to this great escape…)

In any case, I was away in a flurry, sheathing my staff on my first pump of the pedal. A fresh gale of groans followed my escape – a good plenty of them, from the sound. But I pedaled on, my eyes sharp in the dim starlight, worrying more over the road ahead – and rightly so!

What this road eventually brought to me was intriguing, if not enlightening, as well. The people I encountered in Ashford gave me my first glimpse of the desperation of man. They were convinced of a concerted military effort that would eventually rescue them. Well, the pair I dealt with the most had this view, at least. The other pair – as this band consisted of a mere four individuals – I met only in passing. (I would later come to know one quite well, but that is a story for another day; as of this particular day, I only met her in passing.)

They were holed-up in a mountaineer’s shop. More specifically, they had made camp in the back rooms of this shop; the storefront itself was darkened to conceal their presence. To their credit, this band was quite aware of security; keeping to the back rooms was just one precaution. They kept watch, day and night, and had modified the slanted roof with makeshift scaffolding on which the watchman could settle or strafe comfortably. I never saw this modification myself, but they told me it was quite the marvel. I had – and have – no reason to doubt this.

The pair I dealt with was mountaineers; the other two were tourists (according to the first pair, anyhow). Greg and Bucky…interesting fellows indeed. One was young (Greg) – perhaps my age, give or take; the other (Bucky) was middle-aged and soft-spoken. They spoke mostly of their impending rescue and asked on the outside world. I told them what little I knew of the circumstances (which, as you well know, wasn’t really all that much). They were in disbelief that I didn’t know more and tried to press me on the matter until it was apparent that I had no information to give. I told them an abridged version of my tale, asked of theirs. We shared in hot cocoa and discussed the worldly ramifications of the scourge, wondering how far it had spread and whatnot.

They were desperate. All four of them were. Though they seemed to separate themselves from the mountaineers, the tourists (Rhea and Jothan – with a soft J – I believe were their names) were also desperate. Desperate to understand, desperate to recover what they had lost – desperate to live. They wore this desperation clearly on their faces, and carried its hefty girth upon their shoulders. It bled so freely from each of these four that even I began to step in it. I wanted to get away before I began to soak in it. But I couldn’t leave until morning light.

At least, that’s what I told myself…

I tried to rest after a spell – after the conversations and cocoa ran dry. But this attempted rest was distracted and fitful – my fear of their desperation ate at the free space in my head, as if it were a condition that was catching. It was illogical, I know. But I felt a vortex about the place and knew that if I remained I’d be sucked into the drama and desperation.

After a few hours of failed sleep and an internal dialogue about excuses for my departure, I decided to just sneak out. And so I did. Dawn was nearly upon the world, so I was near to my goal of waiting until daylight. This logic, plus the irrational fear of wading in the emotions of others, sufficed in cementing my resolution.

Nobody witnessed my departure – and for this I was thankful.

When the headlights shined across my backpath, two thoughts shot through my head: first, that the crazed machinegun truck had returned to wreak havoc on the town of Ashford; second, that the military was indeed beginning their rescue operations. My intuition tended toward the former rather than the latter, and fueled my fear, which pumped the adrenaline I used to pedal into the darkness. I felt alight and exposed in the headlights’ beams and was thankful when I outrode their reach. I was even more thankful when I realized these headlights were no longer following the highway. My best guess is that they, too, stopped at the shop (this was a subject to which I’d never be privy).

That morning I slept a few hours atop a roof on the outskirts of town. After waking, I would make my way to a place that, in time, would hold a great deal of personal growth and social understanding (as well as a greater understanding of the scourge and its victims).

But that is a story for another day…for now I must rest my cramping hand and find some sleep. Rest yourself, as well, weary traveler, and fear not the disease; just know it exists – and so do you. Adieu…

Close encounters...

Entry 008:

 All my hopes and dreams came true today: after God-only-knows how many days I went without food, the blizzard finally let up enough for me to venture outside. Okay, so maybe not all of my hopes and dreams came true; I wasn’t miraculously rescued and brought to a veritable utopia full of food, drink, women, and warmth – and I’m fairly certain the scourge is still ravaging the world…But through my foraging, I am still maintaining this meager existence I call my life.

(I often wonder why I don’t put myself out of this misery…I guess I’m just that type of masochist…)

How good it feels to eat! I have a newfound zeal for life after today!

(Wow…okay, I’m definitely losing it.)

Anyhow…let me resume my tale…

I last left you with a picture of my befuddled figure standing over a desecrated bag of trail mix. I had awoken in a tree somewhere in the middle of the forest – somewhere near Fossil Rock, if my memory of the area serves me correctly. It would seem as though I had fallen asleep while munching on the trail mix and had dropped the bag in my sleep. I can only assume that the contents of which were scavenged and socked away by some squirrel – or another such rodent. No great loss, considering I was still stocked with an assortment of food. But still not the way one wants to rise in the morning when food has become something of a precious commodity.

What I hadn’t told you before is that I had stowed my bicycle behind a cluster of bushes. I wasn’t too concerned with it being stolen out there, but the last thing I wanted was for such an unlikely occurrence to actually occur. That, and I wasn’t too keen on advertising my presence to anybody who might happen by the remote locale – not after my run-in with Roger Lawless, or the nonsensical, bloody scene of blasted militants back on the highway. Humans were obviously not to be trusted when shit hits the fan…not that I really trusted them beforehand.

With one last glance at the desecrated bag of trail mix, I retrieved my bicycle from behind the bushes and started off down the rocky road. The ride was uneventful for some time. I came across deep tracks of a large dually that had sat for some time in the rain – perhaps all night. But I paid this little mind as I rode down a steep grade to a quaint dam. The gates were wide open, the chopped lock lying to one side – a discarded husk of supposed security. I rode on without stopping to soak in the view, following the road around the other side of the river.

I found a gruesome scene a little ways down. A utility vehicle had apparently careened down the hillside and crashed into a tree, thus ejecting one of the occupants. From the looks of him, the man was infected prior to said ejection. I was fortunate that his brains were splattered across the tree, or else I might have to throw down. And I was most certainly not ready to throw down that morning.
The truck looked as though it had been pushed by something large (my guess is whichever dually camped out in the forest the night before). I proceeded up the road, following the backpath of the utility vehicle. Marks of its journey scarred a number of the trees and littered the road; a mirror there, some plastic shards there. Looking back on it, I should have seen the signs…ah, but what sort of lesson would it have been?

I nearly plowed into the ghoul at the top of the hill. Instead, I clipped it and lost control of the handling for a moment. And just when I thought I had it all under control, my front wheel went off the pavement and threw me from my seat. I went sprawling across loose gravel and gathered a couple lacerations in the process. The bike took a tumble, too, but it fared much better than I did.

After only a moment’s disorientation, I hopped to my feet, staff in hand. The damn thing was nearly upon me already! I swung low, catching it in the belly, then brought my staff up high and smashed the ghoul with a decisive blow to the skull. It crumpled at once. With no other immediate threat, I sheathed my staff and pulled my bicycle back onto the road. I took off like a flash, skirted a blocking semi and trailer by the soft earth to one side. About half a mile down, another ghoul was staggering eastward along the highway. I gave this one a wide berth and avoided it without incident.

And then I found myself – without warning – in what some people would consider a town. This little bend in the highway consisted of a wrecking yard and general store; supposedly separate entities, seeing as they were on opposite sides of the highway. Though, it’s anyone’s guess at this point…
The wrecking yard’s front windows and façade were all painted over with red crosses. The large bay windows at the front were solid red. It had to be paint; no amount of humans – that I could then fathom – could produce that much blood in such a small town. Black smoke billowed from the chimney and I wondered briefly over the occupants of this establishment. Certainly they had been healthy recently enough to kindle a fire under the hearth. One thought that never crossed my mind was actively seeking out their aid or succor. Anybody who paints that many large, red crosses over a building’s façade is too fargone for me.

The general store was located in a quaint, unsuspecting looking abode – an easy-to-miss establishment, if you’re not looking for it. But I was. After the rains of last night, I realized one colossal mistake I’d made: I forgot to pack a poncho. And it wouldn’t hurt to replenish my water supply – why not, when it’s all-you-can-drink these days? Well, it was until the water went stagnant.

But that’s a tale for another day.

With at least one zombie closing in on this little bend in the road, I kept my stop brief. I was in and out in two minutes, with a fresh bottle of water, an impossibly small box that contained a large poncho, and two Cliff Bars. I chowed down on one of these while riding out of town. I reached the next gruesome scene of the day just as I was finishing this midday snack of mine.

A pair of bloody, dented utility vehicles – one was on its side and half crushed by the other – were blocking the southeast lane. Scattered about the trucks was a mess of dead ghouls and utility supplies – there had been a showdown here. Marching away from this scene was a gory, two-lane trail of smudged and dragged footprints. The horde had made it maybe a half mile down the road – give or take – and I could see their bobbing form from where I stood astride my trusty bicycle.

A lightbulb flickered uncertainly over my head, and I heaved my bike over the barbwire fence to the north. And then I climbed over one of the posts and started across the open field, keeping to my generally southeast heading. The farmland was broad enough that I easily bypassed the staggering horde. I smiled at my ingenuity as I watched them clamor after me; they mindlessly gouged themselves on the barbs of the fenceline without a hint of discomfort. Soon enough, they became a piece of my past as I sailed on into the afternoon sunlight.

That, my faithful readers, is all I can produce for tonight. Mayhap, now that I’m restocked on my supplies, I will feel up to the task of writing tomorrow. But only time will tell right now. What I can assure you, however, is that I will return to this task in due time. I am a new man, now! Nothing can stop me! –Adieu.

Cabin Fever

  Entry 007:

Reading back on some of my previous scrawlings, I find that I am quite the fatalist. Sure, I’m probably going to die out here in this blizzard-beaten cabin. And I really do think that every night is my last. My thoughts are plagued with thoughts of what it will feel like to freeze to death. If it happens in my sleep, I’m sure I’ll hardly notice (though I might have some really messed-up dreams in direct correlation to the deep chills my body will feel). But if it happens while I’m awake – the onset of hypothermia – I wonder what it might be like. They say that drowning feels like you’re falling asleep. But they don’t tell you what freezing to death might feel like. I doubt it’s like falling asleep, but I do wonder if there comes a time when you cease to feel the freeze. Maybe it won’t be so bad in the end.

In conjunction with this, I find that I refer (perhaps too often) to my “audience” as imaginary or most likely non-existent. I have no doubts that I will be lacking an audience for these scrawlings of mine, seeing as the likelihood of anybody finding them is astronomical. I don’t even know where I’m at exactly, and it’s likely that this cabin may never have another visitor or tenant; our future is still quite precarious. Heck, even if humanity rebuilds some semblance of its former self, this cabin might just be rubble under twenty feet of snow. It sure seems as though it’ll be swallowed up in this current blizzard. (How the sky can hold so much frozen precipitation in one place – and for such an extended period of time – is mind-boggling.)

Yet I still write…without a prospective audience, I still write…

Whether this place kills me or not, it will certainly rob me of my sanity before I die. It’s already stolen a portion of it. My scrawlings are proof of this. Paradoxically, though, they also help me retain bits of myself, extending the process of going completely bonkers. Or so I think…

But I have digressed…back to my earlier point: fatalism. Well, to be more precise: my overuse of fatalist statements. As when I called myself out for being my own peanut gallery, I shall now call myself out on my fatalism. From here on out, I’ll try to avoid such statements as “perhaps I will freeze tonight” or “hopefully I’ll survive the night.” Henceforth, these possibilities will simply be implied. And then, if my story is incomplete, my fan-base (har-har) will understand that I died here. Maybe there will also be a detailed footnote about the state in which my body was found – I could be an archaeological specimen! And then, if I were to reanimate after death, my body would be of more value in death than it has been in life. Just think about it: frozen, uninfected man reanimates as zombie after thawing – the implications!

(Writing longhand, one can easily forget that you can’t just edit out wild tangents by selecting and deleting, as one would do on a computer. Thus my tangents, like the one above, is now and forever apart of these memoirs – these scrawlings. My apologies.)

But really: the implications of such a thing…

Damn, how this predicament has altered me so…

Through all the years of this “apocalypse” – through all the hard-fought fables and follies of this scourge – I have always managed to avoid such a predicament. How I allowed such a fate to befall myself is still a mystery to me. I know the circumstances – I even had the opportunity to influence these circumstances to my benefit, however slim this chance may have been – and still I can’t believe it all. If only I had seen through the smokescreen sooner…I’ll never be able to forgive myself for all my inactions. From the deaths of all my closest friends all the way up until this late point in my life, my inactions have caused far too many untimely demises.

Heck, as I see it now, my imminent death is atonement for all the lives lost by the inaction of my idle hands. Which is okay in my book; this just means that the big wheel of Karma is working its way back to me. (It’s probably taken so long due to the overwhelming population of ingrates and assholes that this scourge has created or enabled – which, by my estimation, is most every remaining survivor…but that’s just my opinion on the matter.) Freezing to death must be the most suitable tenfold end for someone who’s frozen up in so many crucial situations. Which means that such a death probably won’t be so pleasant, after all.

Then again, maybe it will feel ten times as uneventful as every moment of failed courage. If this is the case, I guess the sensation will be more akin to the deepest, most hopeless sorrow; an empty, soulless sensation chillier than Neptune’s most remote tundra.

And so, with such epic fatalism staining these tattered pages, I must move on and leave these thoughts at the back of your head. For they are discouraging thoughts, and do nothing to further my tale – or whatever life it is I have carved out of this horrifyingly surreal life.

The blizzard is still berating me. I think it’s died down some. Perhaps I’ll even manage an excursion outside in the next day or so. If I don’t, then it may be malnutrition that takes me down before anything else. And when the weather does die down, I’m just hoping I’ll still have the energy to make my way out, and the poise to forage for whatever fruits this frozen wasteland has to offer. Being so late in the day already, I won’t be able to venture out today. But if it lets up by the morning, I’m sure I’ll have the wherewithal to forage tomorrow.

I’m still managing the disciplined rationing of firewood (somehow). I’m also doing well with my water supply; I now store bags of water under my armpits to keep them from freezing. This helps me ration both water and wood. My excrement remains problematic, despite my lack of solid waste. I have since been unwilling to recycle my urine, and pray that I’m dead or gone before resorting to such extremes. Though, I still face this quandary daily.

At least I haven’t put any serious thought into autocannibalism…

My waking periods have gotten shorter. I think I’m falling asleep as many as four times a day. But I can’t tell how long I sleep – sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve been asleep until I wake up – so I could be sleeping entire days away without knowing it. Everything is beginning to feel like a dream, and I think I’m even beginning to hallucinate (though I can’t be entirely certain of this with my grip on reality slipping away). Even now, as I grasp for my sanity with these scrawlings, shadows jump at me while the walls wheeze and whisper. More than once, I could swear I’d been tapped on the shoulder. I must admit: I did whip around to confront whoever it may have been. I kept expecting to find the stony stare of Death and his cold touch, but only ever found an empty cabin full of dancing shadows and the living, breathing walls that would surely gobble me up – in due time, of course. These walls are apparently content with torturing me for the time being.

There I go again, babbling the day away with my problems while ignoring the memoirs altogether. I apologize for this and will try to get some real work done at my next session. Maybe then I’ll have eaten something. As for now, I’m off to sleep with my painfully empty belly. Good night. May it not be the last.

The open road (continued)...

Entry 006:

It seems I survived the night. Despite my love for these scrawlings, as I so eloquently deemed them, I’m still not sure if my survival is good or bad – as it stands right now, my survival is merely unpleasant.

The blizzard is slowly burying me alive. Even if it lets up, I’ll have one helluva time digging my way out for sustenance – of which, I have one remaining sliver of meat. My stomach is a constant rumble. I haven’t defecated in two days. And my body has trouble retaining any heat, whether ambient or induced. I try to exercise, but find I have very little stamina for any form of exertion. Even pacing has become a chore. And God forbid I have to salvage more wood from the furniture. The only thing holding me back from tossing the entire side of the couch into the fire earlier was self-discipline. (I had to set it aside, pace around, and breathe rhythmically to calm myself before returning to the task of breaking it down further.)

But enough of my current struggles, however intriguing they may be to you, my imaginary reader. Let me return to the tale of my past. Though, I bet you’re wondering by now whether I’m going to continue with the constant play-by-play of my entire life. I assure you that I will not. There will undoubtedly be portions of these memoirs which I’ll glaze over. The beginning just seems – to me, at least – important. I don’t want to leave anything out, if that makes sense. They were traumatic, life-changing days, and every moment feels important. Anybody living today should be able to relate to this feeling. Just as anybody who passed on since the outbreak could probably, before having passed, relate to my current predicament. Alas, none of them are alive to confirm or deny this statement…

Anyhow…back to the day I lost Daisy Jane and fell asleep in a tree after wrecking her damnable car. I remember having some sort of weirdly ominous – and lucid – dream about a world on fire and demons battling. I saw the fated journey of a favorable quartet; a journey wrought with hardships and chaos and turmoil and death. And though I knew my destiny lay not with this quartet, I was aware of the deep sorrow I felt at their hardships and losses. This was undoubtedly in response to the vague sensation that my own fate was entangled – however obscurely – with the fate of these four.

I know how crazy that sounds. And, to this date, I have yet to feel the déjà vu of this long-gone sensation of entangled fates. This, in my estimation, means that my dream that day was a giant turd of malevolent egotism. Which – I guess – means that it really is as crazy as it sounds…

Crazy dreams aside, I awoke with a start to the sounds of an old, big-block engine. I dropped to the ground without so much as a cursory glance; I landed, ready for an attack (I had heard the zombies as they milled about during my slumber). But apparently, they had also started after the rumbling engine.

Racing through the brush, I encountered both of these trundling zombies; I tripped the first one and brained the next. And then I burst through the foliage and onto the road. But the rumbling vehicle that had awoken me was already trundling down the road. I chased after it, but the occupants hardly took note of me. I think one of the men in the back saw me, but I can’t be sure. Even if he did, he probably thought I was another damn zombie.

I leaned on my staff for a time thereafter, catching my breath. I wondered what I should do then. Where I should go; I pondered over an actual destination, whether transitory or final. After a short time, I decided to at least head east – in the direction of the military vehicle. Maybe more would follow. Moreover: maybe one would rescue me. At the time, I still had faith in the military. It was only a few days later that all such hopes were irreparably damaged.

Aways down the road, I found a blood-speckled bicycle lying on its side in a driveway. There wasn’t so much as a body nearby, but there were some bloody footprints that led up the drive. I assume the bicyclist went on up there in search of a live meal. It sure wasn’t around to cause me any trouble.

I rode for hours. I heard things: gunshots and explosions; twisted metal and screeching tires; panicked cries and bloodthirsty groans. The world smelled scorched, as well; burning fields and shrubs and homes. Around the wrecks, everything was encased in a heavy coat of burnt rubber and oil and flesh – along with the sickly smell of rot and decay.

Eventually, the sun began to set. My body was beat, my mind was mush. The bike was strong and sturdy, but I felt like a three-ring act gone wrong. And so I rode out a long driveway to a deserted property and took refuge upon the roof. I dared not enter the home for fear of finding comfort or death. At the time, I was wary of anything that might lead to a false sense of security – rightfully so.

No rain came that night, and neither did the zombies.

After bedding down for the night, my dreams were once again filled with prophetic visions of a disturbing nature. But these were not filled with an unknown foursome. In these loosely interconnected dreams was a religious cleric of some sort. The actual religion of this cleric is still a mystery to me, though I have a hunch this that the cleric in these dreams manifested himself as an eccentric priest whom I would meet only days later. But I’ll get to him in due time. Besides, this supposed manifestation was clearly a psychological trick; my subconscious undoubtedly connected the priest to these dreams after so recently having conjured up similar images of a prophetic cleric. (And the priest I would meet was definitely the self-proclaimed prophetic type.)

The next day was a bear. I awoke, cold and troubled, a good while after sunrise and in the very position in which I had fallen asleep. The sky threatened rain, though none would fall until darkness crept over the landscape. But the temperature rose a fair degree and most of my travels were probably made easier for this.

I began the day by weaving my way from road to road, blindly traveling in a generally eastward direction. And save for the occasional wreck, which I always skirted so easily with the mountain bike, my travels that morning were mostly uninterrupted. I say “mostly” because I did have a couple near run-ins with zombies, but none too dire. They were slow and I was swift and silent. It was this very morning that I declared my love for bicycles. The pedaling would become difficult after extended rides, but it’s near silence allowed me to slip through infested areas with hardly a glance from would-be aggressors. Naturally, though, if I rode too near a horde, one or two would take note of my presence and thereafter alert the rest with howls and groans. Instances like this were the only occasions for my near run-ins.

Well, there was one other incident which almost became bad for my health. But this was not on the open road; out on the open road, all I had to do was pedal away. Inside the confines of a minimart, escape is not so easy to come by. And I would not have had to resort to entering such an establishment if it hadn’t been for my poor rations that day. After all, I hadn’t exactly been prepared to leave the Lawless property on such short notice. And you can bet your ass I expended every future effort to keep from being so desperately short on rations again. (Though, on isolated occasion over the years, I still found myself underprepared at times – like now, without food, in a cabin on a blizzard-beaten mountainside. Though, there are some extremely extenuating circumstances that landed me in this predicament.)

My proximity to a fairly sizeable population upped the chances of this undesirable minimart encounter. After weighing my options, as I understood them at the time, I decided to roll the dice. Desperation aided in my decision. I made my way to the rear of the building without being spotted. And then, after nearly an hour of uneventful surveillance, I slunk around front and entered through the unlocked double doors there. I was making out like a bandit; my backpack bulged with breakfast bars and cans of protein-packed soups and bottles of water and canned coffee drinks. I also snagged some lighters and maps and a notebook that I’d use for fire starters in the coming weeks. And then, as an afterthought, I fetched a can of lubricant (for the bicycle chain) and some bandages (for any possible wounds I might incur). The store did not carry a pump, so I just prayed that I wouldn’t pop a tire any time soon.

And I didn’t (thank the Universe! – or whatever god you pray to).

The incident occurred when, feeling brazen, I went into the back office. I’m not even sure what I was looking for. But I know what I found, and it was most definitely not what I was looking for. A freshly turned zombie in a gas station attendant’s garb was munching on the lifeless corpse of a fellow fallen employee. The muncher was a young male, Korean from the looks; the munchee was a slightly overweight, older blonde lady. I nearly stumbled over them when I circled around the desk.

Instead, I tripped over my own feet and crashed into a merchandise rack. I barely caught hold of a shelf and steadied myself. (I probably wouldn’t be here writing these memoirs today if I hadn’t caught myself in time…) As it were, the zombie was already at my ankle, tugging hungrily at my pant-leg. Heart racing, I kicked free of its tight grip and pulled my staff from its home on my back. It was still speckled with the blood of a multitude of zombies – and maybe a bit of the Lawlesses, as well. And in three swift swings, it was absolutely drenched in blood.

The remainder of this day was a bear due solely to the miles. Shortly after leaving the minimart in the dust, I ran across a gruesome scene. A ringed barricade of vehicles had been breached and all the militants were lying dead and full of bullets. Their bodies littered the interior and exterior of the barricade. Riding a bicycle as I was, the scene was all too real – or surreal – and far too close for comfort. I guess, then, that it would be safe to say that this exacerbated the bear of a day. So maybe it wasn’t solely due to the miles…

I left the gruesome scene without stopping for a closer inspection. I’d already seen more than I wished. I was winding my way down gravel roads of the forest only minutes later. Fresh tracks – duel treads of a large vehicle – and the faint scent of exhaust told me that someone had been through this area not long before me. I never found this phantom vehicle or its crew.

When the sky drained of its color, I found a clearing and climbed a tree. I fell asleep a short time later while eating a bag of trail mix. I later found that this bag of trail mix had fallen in my sleep and scattered about the clearing below. I’m sure it was scavenged by a squirrel or bird – though, I have no way of knowing this for sure.

So I must say goodnight, now…my fingers no longer want to cooperate. So it must be time for sleep. Hopefully I’ll survive the night. Guess we won’t know unless you find more writings…if you found them at all…

Adieu…again…

The open road...

  Entry 005:

 

I have no idea how long I’ve been here any longer. Ever since the blizzard resumed its assault of my cabin, I’ve lost all feel for time. Sometimes I sleep, sometimes I eat, and sometimes I pace in a feeble attempt at staying warm. I don’t dare go outside, so my excrement has started to mold and fester in and around the overflowing toilet. I’m afraid to go back into the closet of a bathroom for any reason. I think my bladder might explode and poison my bloodstream. I wonder if I’ll come back as one of them if I should die in such a fashion? Hmmm…probably not.

Also, I’m down to my last slivers of food. Quite literally: I have two slivers of meat, roughly four inches long apiece, and neither of which is wider than my slender pinky. If the blizzard doesn’t let up soon, I may be forced to die of starvation – or resort to autocannibalism. Neither prospect sounds very pleasant.

I’ve resorted to dismantling more of the scant furniture for firewood. I don’t even sit on the couch anymore; I sit on the cushions while the frame is awaiting further annihilation. But the flame hardly warms the place, it’s so small anymore. So I’ve taken to curling into a ball by the fireplace and angling the raggedy blanket like a parachute to catch as much heat as possible. It doesn’t work so well. But at least I have a source of heat to melt the snow. It works quite well for that. Though, the water refreezes rather quickly when taken away from the flame. It’s a wonder I haven’t frozen yet.

I’ve never remained indoors for such an extended period of time. Everything drags. The daylight, though short by the season, drags on forever. The darkness at night, though, lasts an eternity beyond that. The nights seem endless, and I expect to expire with each night that passes. But somehow I don’t. I’m not sure if this is a miracle or a hellish purgatory as I await judgment by the Universe (or by whatever god that runs this Universe). Maybe I have expired, and all that I now experience is just a perceived eternity that’s riding the coattails of my brain’s final electrical firings. This seems quite unlikely, though, as all my senses are still in fine working order. At the moment, this is quite unfortunate, since most of my sensory input has become quite unpleasant as of late.

And because I do believe I’m still alive and “well” in this pitiful cabin, I guess I shall continue the story of how I came to be where I am…

I had just left the home of Mister and Missus Roger Lawless, the perfect on paper couple that had decidedly imploded over time. And now, the residence of the Lawlesses was overrun by flaming ghouls that were burning the place down by simply walking indoors. Roger had killed his lovely wife, a woman with whom I had been intimate. And he had tried to kill me as well, but I bested him at his own game, and subsequently beset his home with these flaming ghouls. I was gazing back at the house when Daisy Jane’s damnable luxury car decided to take control once again.

The brakes locked up, the tires squealed. I tried to goose it and spin the wheel, which only sent me into a spin that I was not able to handle with my lacking skills. The rear bumper clipped a ghoul before slamming into a stalled sports car. The impact sent me skidding across both lanes and backwards into the roadside culvert. Zombies were all around me. I tried the gas, but the wheels just spun on the damp earth.

One of the ghouls crashed into the passenger door. Another neared the driver’s side. When it was a couple steps away, I flung open my door, knocking it back onto its ass. I grabbed my things and raced around its groping arms, circling up onto the road.

I hadn’t even made it a quarter mile from the damn property entrance before I wrecked! What a doof! Technology be-damned! And in this quarter mile (or less) there were probably a hundred scattered zombies. I’m still impressed with my skills at evading and attacking during my escape. The entire passage is a haze of dips and dives and lunges – my whirling staff, the spilt brains, the reaching, bloody hands were all just a blur in my vision as I raced through their ranks. I must have killed an army of them in my escape.

Eventually, their numbers thinned and I was no longer braining one after another. When I was free of any immediate pursuit, I leaned against a tree, panting. My staff was bloody and chipped, but held its general shape quite well. (Props to bamboo.) I wiped the chunks of graymatter onto a nearby fern. The remaining stains would have to wait for a greater respite; a number of ghouls were still on my trail. My rest only lasted a few minutes.

When I could breathe with some normality again, I resumed my journey down this oddly deserted, yet gruesomely packed, stretch of rural road. I kept to the middle as much as possible, scuttling quickly around any obstacles. (I’m also sure that my knuckles were stark white from gripping the staff so tightly, though, at the time, I was not conscious of this.) Alternating between a slow jog and brisk walk, I lost my pursuers in less than a mile. I kept this alternating pace for another mile or so after losing them, mindful all the while of remaining silent (i.e. not allowing my long feet to audibly slap the still-damp pavement).

I may have been fit at the time, but two miles was still a good jaunt, even at relatively low speeds. So I stopped for a breather, leaning against another tree. But I was quickly driven off by yet another zombie. Damn things were everywhere! How’d it spread so fucking fast? (That, I still don’t know for sure…) Being as it was just one ghoul, I started off at a brisk walk. It tripped after me, falling into a culvert. I shook my head, saddened by the diminished, if not non-existent, observational skills of the infected. (One must remember that, at the time, I was still learning the true scope of the disease’s effects on its victims.)

Eventually, I found the end of the road; it came to a T-intersection. I was far too exhausted to make up my mind right then and there. And the grove across the street looked awfully tempting. So, for whatever imaginable reason, I decided to tromp through the foliage and climb an expansive Aspen. The limbs were plentiful, and I easily found a suitable cradle in which I could rest my travel-weary body. And it was there that I slept for a short time.

 

The night has come, and I cannot feel my fingers any longer. Perhaps I will freeze tonight…If so, then my tale will go verily untold. I hope this is not the case, for these scribblings of mine are all that keep me sane. Although, I probably won’t care about my sanity if I freeze to death tonight…

Anyhow, farewell for now – and hopefully not forever.

Nurse's Aide

  Entry 004:

 

To this day, that was the last time I smoked weed. In a massive bathtub after having sex with a woman I barely knew (and whose husband had been missing for less than twelve hours). The experience (of being high, not the sex) left a sour taste in my mouth. Despite having more pre-rolled joints and a couple extra grams of buds, I couldn’t bring myself to spark up again. I wasn’t immune to a nip of whiskey every nowandagain, but the thought of being high with the constant threat of being eaten alive by the “walking dead” was not such a glamorous one.

But it sure wasn’t the last time I had sex with Daisy Jane Lawless. All the rubdowns of my achy muscles eventually led back to that most primal of acts. And in the three days I spent with her, I received many rubdowns…Though, that wasn’t all that happened. We also conversed and shared stories of our lives before the outbreak. (And, of course, how we came to be where we were upon meeting – but I think I already covered that subject.) Thus how I learned of her background.

She also fed me plentifully. Almost nonstop. At times, I thought my gut might bust. She quantified this by telling me I could use a little more meat on my bones, what with the coming winter and all. (She was right about that…though, I wasn’t with her long enough to build up such a reserve of fat off which I could survive the coming winter. But I managed just fine without it.)

There were guns and bows with copious reserves of ammunition and arrows. I tested my hand at a compound bow. I wasn’t bad. But I still felt wrong about it, as though it would slow me down. I wasn’t practiced with it enough to utilize it properly if (and when) the time should come to put it to use. And it was too bulky to be carried or used in combination with my staff, with which I was already quite comfortable. And I passed on the guns with unwavering stubbornness. I had been trained on rifles when I was a child – and I was quite the natural with them – but I hadn’t ever been able to bring myself to shoot anything with it. (I had a feeling that this would remain so even when my life was on the line.)

Not only this, but her expansive estate had recently become quite the attraction for ghouls. Since our arrival, they had been creeping in from every direction. None made it past the formidable fenceline that wholly encircled the ranch. Only one possessing the proper fob or keycode could gain entry to the property from one of its three access points: the main gate roadside; the side access road that led straight to the stables; or the rear entrance that led directly into the forest. So, had I tested my hand at any of her rifles, not only would the growing horde have been incensed, but it also would have grown ten-fold over the next twenty-four hours. (Even in those early stages of the outbreak, I had already surmised their overwhelming attraction to sound.)

And it was for such reasons that I didn’t accept any of her weapons. She insisted repeatedly that they would come in handy should things get sticky, but still I refused. I assured her (repeatedly) that I was more than capable with the staff, no matter how sticky the situation. It’s true that I wasn’t quite as adept with it as Jacob had been, but I was no slouch, either. I had practiced against multiple assailants and typically came out on top. And with the lumbering agility and speed of drunken sloths, the ghouls posed considerably less of a threat…theoretically.

Despite the relative safety of her expansive property, we were uneasy and always on edge. Every creak of the house, every gust that rattled the windows, every groan of a swaying tree – and more – made Daisy squirm and quake. And every time she squirmed or quaked, I felt just a little more uneasy. (I’m sure she sensed this in me, despite my every effort to keep my composure, which probably fed into her fear.)

I remember waking up one day with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. Perhaps I say this with more conviction now, looking back on it with such clarity. After all, hindsight allows a person to view situations – traumatic ones, especially – far more objectively. (Though, it also heightens one’s subjective rationale and future biases toward particular events or situations – for better or worse.) And in this instance, I’d like to think that I became far more in tune with my instincts after waking up with such crushing foreboding. From that day forward, I listened to my gut…

Farm-fresh eggs and bacon with homemade, thick-sliced toast. I’ll never forget that breakfast. Daisy was bouncing around the kitchen, her hair was a mess and she had a wild look in her eyes. She wasn’t eating a thing, just cooking off all the stored goods that would surely go bad if she didn’t do something with them right then. Her behavior that morning only added to my unease. And I was hardly eating all the crap she was shoving in front of me. Mostly, I just pushed it around my plate. Until, that is, her erratic behavior started driving me mad. I stood and caught her midstride in the middle of the kitchen. I remember the frightened look in her eye, and how she cowered as though I’d raised a hand to her.

“Don’t, baby!” she whimpered.

I looked curiously down at her, and she turned away, shrinking further into herself. I remember involuntarily cocking my head and drawing back, and thinking to myself that I must look like a confused puppy. “Something doesn’t feel right,” I said to her, shaking my head. “I think we oughtta get outta here, make a run for it.” For what, I’m not sure I even knew. I just felt the weight of all our inaction; the property, as safe and secure – and expansive – as it was, had become cramped. Though I had no idea how or what we should be doing, staying there just felt wrong to me.

Even with the clarity of hindsight, I still don’t know what I should have done – or what I could have done. Just running didn’t seem right – still, it feels kind of wrong – but there was something almost romantic about running; just being a man and a woman on the open road, with the entire country out there, waiting to be discovered by us.

So much for all that nonsense…I can tell you, now, that this ideal is quite the opposite of romantic. Especially when the open road, and the entire country along this open road – which is supposedly just waiting to be discovered – is actually ripe with a rather brutal infection. And the only thing it’s waiting to do is devour us all. Though, I am also living proof (for the time being, anyhow) that the open road can be tamed, if not manipulated.

I can’t remember if I finished that last sentence or not, or if the last part of it was drowned out by the explosion and subsequent commotion. But I do remember the frozen tension that filled the kitchen. Our heads immediately whipped toward the sound, as though we could see through walls and locate the source of this sudden ruckus.

Daisy remained rigidly shrunken in the kitchen as I darted toward the nearest window that might grant me a view of the road – and I threw open the curtains. Thick, black smoke billowed from under a truck that was blackened and burning in the middle of the road. The flames licked up the side and poured out the windows. From the way it looked, I can only assume that the interior had been doused in some sort of accelerant and the gas tank had been intentionally exploded. At the time, I was baffled. It was an apparent diversion of some sort, but why here? Why now?

The answer came moments later.

The explosion had indeed created a distraction; the voluminous boom and subsequent fire (accelerant) drew the ghouls away from the property line. It was a fantastic distraction, in a pinch, but I knew that this would only draw more to the scene; any stragglers within a few miles – or more! – would be staggering their way to this place. Worse than this, I noticed that the zombies were catching flame. And this flame was spreading exponentially amongst their ranks. And none of them were fazed by it!

Being my first encounter with flaming ghouls, I was horrified. I had no idea how long one of them could survive before succumbing to the fire, but I knew that before they did, they would be walking torches. Yet another element to fear in what I was sure would become an all-out assault on our sanctuary.

I still don’t know how I missed the gate opening, but I sure didn’t miss it closing. My eyes were wide with fear, and I can vaguely recall having to consciously close my gaping jaw. One of the ghouls tried slipping in at the last moment and its arm was severed when the gate closed on it. Not that it noticed or cared; it went right back to reaching through the vertical, anti-scaling bars (which were tipped with unforgiving spikes for anybody who slipped while attempting to scale this fence) with its one remaining arm.

I only caught a glimpse of someone racing around the house. Even with all the evidence setting in the open before me, it never dawned on me that this person probably lived here. Or that this person, who somehow gained access to the property, was probably Roger Lawless – of the lovely couple Roger and Daisy Lawless. It never occurred to me because, at the time, I still thought Roger Lawless was deceased. So when Roger let himself into the back door, my first instinct was to blindside him.

Bad move.

Daisy saw at once that it was Roger – she probably knew it once the key squeaked in the lock. She shrieked and threw herself at me, knocking my staff away. And still, I couldn’t figure it out.

I yanked hard and shoved her away. She fell on her ass just as Roger stepped inside. I tried to swing, but he was ready – shit, he was probably ready before he even stepped inside. He caught the staff with one hand and socked me with the other. I stumbled back, lost my grip, and fell right beside Missus Roger Lawless.

He caught me once in the gut with a powerful downward blow – the mark from which remained for nearly two weeks. But before he could land another shot, Daisy Jane threw herself over me, screaming “Don’t hurt him!” over and over.

And somehow, it still hadn’t dawned on me who this man was. It even took me a few stunned moments after he spoke to actually put the pieces together. (Hindsight’s clarity makes me want to kick my younger self right in the arse and accost him with diminutive remarks on commonsense, or lack thereof.)

“Who the fuck is this?” he yelled. “What’s he doin’ in my house?”

I can’t remember how she responded, as my mind was still trying to figure out the simplest of explanations to who this man was. Why did I waste so much precious time wondering over this, anyhow? Not even I can answer that question…

I definitely remember the sound that the staff made – my staff – when it connected with the back of Daisy Jane’s skull: clonk! She went instantly limp, with me pinned underneath. I was trying to wriggle free when he connected again. I’m not sure if it was this one or the next that killed her…

Looking back on it, I’m reminded of the classic Bond-villain monologues, when the bad guy in the 007 movies (and many others of the same sort) would pause to explain their grand schemes and motives to the helpless hero, which always gave the hero just enough time to work his way out of the jam. After killing his wife, Roger Lawless decided to monologue, figuring I was helplessly trapped.

“Stupid bitch left me for dead,” is how he began. He continued with many more colorful descriptors of her (he liked the word whore more than any other, it seemed). And he told me how he knew she’d fucked me, since she was always trying to fuck hipster druggies like me just to get under his skin. He prodded me with my own staff a few times, telling me he was going to cut off my balls and shove them down my throat and how he was going to bury me alive with her corpse for company – and maybe he’d throw a zombie in as well, so I would have someone to talk to, since Daisy was so damn lousy with conversation anyway.

There was a point in all this nonsense that he did what every Bond-villain eventually does; he turned his back. It was brief, but I was granted just enough time to heave her lifeless body off my midsection, thereby freeing both my hands. When he turned back, swinging my staff with all his might, I rolled down and out, finally and truly free of Daisy Jane’s dead weight (not like it was really all that much, anyhow, but dead weight really can hamper your movement more than one might think).

His heavy swing went errant and his body, which had been poised for impact, went twisting away from me.

Now, Roger was not the largest man by any means. Nor was I the smallest. But he was considerably larger than me and my wiry frame – I’m still not much more than a glorified beanstalk that can walk, talk, and even kill zombies. And – and! – he was wielding a formidable weapon.

With his body uncontrollably twisting away from the force of his swing, I kicked the back of his knee. He dropped, but used the staff to steady himself. I landed another shot to his kidney, followed by a solid hook to the side of his head (I’m pretty sure I got his ear). I landed one more kick to the kidney before he spun out and away. I lunged – like a crazy bastard, I tackled him. I was mad – straight livid. The infection had killed my friends, one-by-one, all in one day. I had been helpless to stop it from happening. Even those I thought I’d saved – including Tom, the poor sod – had died that day. I’d been helpless to stop any of it. And, at the time, I still believed their deaths were directly related to my frequent hesitations and inabilities to fight for my life – fight for their lives.

And now this? Some crazed motherfucker kills his wife without any hesitation, with my staff (don’t you worry, I didn’t let that little fact affect my mental stability), all because he suspected her of abandonment and infidelity? True, she did have sex with me, and she did leave him – though, according to her account, she didn’t purposefully ditch him – but he didn’t actually know this. No, he killed her before she could either confirm or deny his accusations – accusations he never even posed to her, as far as I can recall.

So I tackled him. The pressure of it all gave me the all-out, I’m-gonna-kill-you, fuck-it attitude that I needed in order to get out of there in one piece.

I assailed him with fists, smashing through his feeble defenses to pummel his face. At one point, I noticed he was unconscious. His arms were no longer blocking, his face was a bloodied, unrecognizable mess. I’m not sure how much time had elapsed, but it had to have been at least five minutes – or perhaps as many as twenty…I’m just not sure, not even now. All I know is that I redded out. This was a term I learned from my brother and his crazy friends back in high school. It meant that you were so mad that you were out for blood – you were red with anger, and you wouldn’t settle for teaching your “student” (or nemesis, if not simple opponent) a simple lesson by ass-whooping.

While checking Roger’s pulse, (which was – if only slightly – still beating) I took note of the condition of my hands. My fists were cracked, bloody, and swollen, and my aching knuckles were a pain to bend after having delivered such a brutal beating. And this beating, as it were, rendered my inadequate, exiguous fists into useless, rictus hooks. They were so stubborn to bend that just extending a pair to check his pulse had extolled a grunt and a sad whimper.

This weak – and fading – pulse reeled me back in from the red and resettled me in the black. With this change, I felt that the bloodlust I had sought was now beset by a First World indoctrination that didn’t condone murder. I just kept reminding myself that I was acting in self-defense. (This was a mantra a maintained for some time – long after accepting the fact that the nation was dead, even.)

Roger lived a few minutes longer. He coughed and sputtered, blood bubbling from his lips. His body lurched underneath me and he vomited to one side. The gory, curdled contents that spilled forth churned my stomach. I had no idea at the time, but what I witnessed right then was the final purging the body does before the infection takes over; before it kills you, they say, and somehow reanimates the corpse. Though, I did suspect that it had something to do with the infection, and decided to investigate.

Sure enough, after minimal inspection, I found a bloodless bite mark on Roger’s forearm, beneath the cover of his jacket. The veins surrounding this wound were blue, and the skin had already begun turning ashen.

I grabbed my staff off the floor and started out the back door. But before I could leave, I heard a choked and watery chuckle. Roger was holding his cell phone. He turned it so I could see the screen; he had remotely accessed the perimeter gates and opened them all. And before I could reach him, he smashed the phone on the tile. Still, I scrambled forth and snatched it up to see if I could make it work.

Go figure: the screen was a useless spiderweb of cracked glass.

I kicked him once and he gurgled another bloody chuckle. I think he tried to say “Go fuck yourself,” but it sounded more like “O flog José.” I kicked him once more, effectively ending his bloody laughter.

Violence was never my thing. Sure, I knew how to defend myself, but I’d never enjoyed doing it before that very moment. There was something about it that almost made me feel some sort of vindication. And it felt good. Truly, honestly, good. I know it sounds horrible, but it’s the truth. I’d always hated men like him, but winning that little bout made me feel alive. Breaking his face felt right.

But I knew to keep these emotions in check. Which is why I didn’t just kill him right then and there. I had to keep some sort of humanity about me. It was only right…

So instead, I decided to let the ghouls kill him. Or burn him alive while trying.

“I hope you like fire,” I said. I laugh at that now; it’s like some cheesy line from a suave action hero in some B-grade movie (or perhaps Bond himself). But that’s how it went. I cheesed up the house with my one-liner and boldly marched toward the front door. I remember detouring slightly to snatch an old battery-powered stereo that was by the kitchen sink. I threw open the front door, whistled like my mother used to, and turned the radio on full-blast, aiming at the approaching horde, most of which were flaming.

Marching back through the house, I glared menacingly over at the bloody heap of Roger Lawless. He hadn’t moved an inch. Well, maybe he’d tilted his head one way or the other, but he didn’t turn as I made my escape.

I didn’t leave out the back. That felt too dangerous now. Instead, I snatched a set of keys off a hook by the door to the garage. With one last gaze over my shoulder, I stepped into the darkness beyond. I fumbled for a minute before finding the light switch.

There was a shiny, white luxury sedan in the first stall. Nothing but crates and power tools in the second stall. And the shape of something that had to be an old Corvette underneath a form-fitting cover in the third stall. The large fob attached to the keys in my hand was clearly indicative of the luxury sedan in the first stall.

Technology, man…this thing was space-age, sci-fi shit compared to my beater back at campus. It didn’t even have a key, just a big, red START button. And the doors automatically unlocked when I walked near it. At the time, I didn’t even realize this kind of shit was actually on the market. (Shows how much attention I paid to cars….)

Anyhow, I gave it about ten minutes before simultaneously punching the START button and the remote for the garage door.

None of the flaming horde was impeding my immediate journey. I made it to the road before any of them got in my way. And, of course, it was on fire. I wanted to plow right over it, but the damn car locked up on me and came to a screeching halt about two feet from the damn thing. Didn’t it know I was in danger! Shit! Don’t stop now! But it did…

And then I forced it to behave. With the zombie climbing over the hood, charring, denting, and scratching the previously unblemished surface. Without its sensors going haywire, I was able to zip out onto the street. The ghoul on the hood went sprawling at the sharp corner. Leaving this tortured property, I turned to see if the ruse had worked. But I felt no gratitude or reward at spying the smoke that was now billowing out the front door.

 

That’s about it for today. My fingers are cramping from the cold (and probably malnutrition). I’ll tell you the rest of this day whenever I can write again – if such a possibility is still in my future. But for now, adieu…

Just the two of us...

Entry 003:

There were a few days in there that I really thought my last adieu would truly be forever…The blizzard has since ceased its assault, but flurries still ride the wind. And somehow, these flurries are more foreboding in their silence. The heavy snowpack is growing deeper by the minute and the lightening of the overcast sky wants to make me believe brighter days might soon come. But I know better than to fall for this optical trickery of Mother Nature! It’s been my experience that such lulls in a storm are really just the beginning of something far more intense than anything the previous wave had to offer.

This is precisely why I went hunting yesterday. Not only did I bag myself a couple rabbits and a squirrel (all of which are hanging over the sink right now, their blood draining into pots and pans), but I also managed to amass a great heap of twigs, sticks, and heavier logs of fallen limbs (I use the word “log” loosely; they’re logs only in relation to the rest of my bounty of firewood). But the grandest prize of all was eliminating a hefty number of the ghouls which have been ever-so-slowly advancing upon my cabin.

During this most satisfying phase of my expedition, I couldn’t help but think back to all my experiments in the early days. My winter experiments have always stuck with me the most as that was the first time I saw the effect that freezing temperatures had on ghouls. Whether freshly turned or old and rotten, anything below forty degrees Fahrenheit greatly hindered the movements of ghouls. And freezing temperatures stopped them dead in their tracks. Well, mostly anyhow; they moved nearly as slow as a glacier and posed as much of a threat as well. (It made perfect sense, but I hadn’t known – or thought to know – my enemy in such a way as to think about disabling them with cold…such a thought never crossed my mind before my first true observation of this effect.)

But again: that is another story for another day…

Let me first continue where I left off three days prior…or was it five? I can’t quite remember exactly right now; time’s funny out here…

Daisy Jane Lawless…that’s right…

Quite an exquisite specimen of the female persuasion, she was. Not really my type with her corporate career and matching mindset. Plus, she was obviously high-maintenance with her long, bleach-blonde hair (pulled back at the time, but no roots to speak of), expensive manicure, designer jeans and handbag, and all the glittering rocks and gold of unfathomable expense that adorned multiple fingers, a wrist, both ears, and her neck (the ridiculously large heart-shaped diamond pendant – which was ringed with emeralds and amethysts – hung on its dainty gold chain and sat perfectly between her voluptuous breasts)…not to mention the gas-guzzling truck with its ridiculous lift-kit and more bells and whistles than a clown car. (Seriously; climbing up into it was almost like stepping into an alien spaceship.) But – damn! – was she exquisite!

And though she came across as high-maintenance (and she was – trust me), there was something about her that screamed badass bitch. I say that not offensively in the least; quite the opposite, in fact. Badass bitch is truly one of the best compliments one can bestow upon such a woman – any woman, in my opinion. Her body language and demeanor spoke of valuable life experiences and a deep wisdom. Though young (she was in her early thirties, if I remember correctly), she had gained success through hardships and never giving in; always striving to be better than the moment before. I later came to find out, after some long and late conversations, that she had grown up dirt poor in a little town about sixty miles southwest of Little Rock, Arkansas. Her parents never encouraged or helped her and she paid her own way through college (computer sciences and business administration – masters in both) by working odd hours as a horse-groomer and stable girl. And that’s where she met and married her late husband; he was the rancher’s son. They found their way to Washington in the summer of 2005 when she got hired on by Microsoft. (They moved away from the hustle and bustle of Seattle so she could telecommute and her husband could have his own ranch.)

My first night with her, she explained how her husband, Roger Lawless, went MIA when they were swarmed at the farmer’s market…which was shortly before Yours Truly climbed into her truck (and began judging her – quite superficially, I might add). What struck me as peculiar was how she explained this to me. It was natural to discuss the circumstances of how we came to be where we were upon meeting; I think we both teared up when I told her of how all my close friends died that day and there was little I could have done to save them, hesitation or no. (She assured me repeatedly that their deaths weren’t my fault and that I shouldn’t shoulder the burden of that false shame and guilt.) But when she told me of losing her husband in the bloody throng at the market, I’d swear that her eyes didn’t even gleam with water, let alone loose a tear. Nor did her countenance waver; her account of the events was stringent and straightforward without the slightest hint of sorrow or longing.

Without having pressed her on the matter (I kept my own counsel for fear of upsetting such a gracious hostess), one might assume that their marriage had turned sour for one or more reasons. Perhaps unpleasant affairs were occurring behind closed doors (or maybe clandestine affairs – of a more pleasant, albeit adulterous, nature – were happening behind different closed doors). I didn’t take her as the submissive type who would allow physical or emotional abuse, but maybe he was an abuser – or a user – or a cheater – or all of the above. Or maybe it was her that was the user or abuser or cheater (or whathaveyou). Hell, maybe their marriage was a sham from the beginning. One can never really know; especially having known her so briefly. But, having never pressed the matter (as I’ve already stated), I can still only speculate on her absence of sorrow or longing at their sudden separation.

But, that’s enough speculation on the matter for one day…

For being a corporate lackey, she sure was handy with home remedies and nursing. She force-fed me fluids and soup as though I were sick. But she also worked my neck and bruised appendages with medicinal salves (by which I mean ointments with the curative powers of cannabis) and lotion (also medicinal). I remember the feel of her skin as she pampered my broken body; so soft, so gentle. Although, she was definitely rough when the time was right; the sensation was splendid, even when it hurt. She also instructed me to clean up, insisting that doing so would greatly aid in my recovery. “Doctor’s orders,” she had said with a wink and a smile. “It’s well water,” she explained in her sexy, southern drawl. “No need to worry about contamination.” (Some of the news stations were alleging that the water of cities all over the Puget Sound had been contaminated.)

So I followed her “orders” and used the luxuriously large master bath to wash. The shower itself was the size of my entire bathroom back at college, and was equipped with not only two heads, but also a spout in the ceiling that rained heavier globules straight down. It even had a damn bench in it! I’d never before showered in such an overly extravagant facility. (And never again since leaving her expansive estate.)

I was standing there, all fresh and clean, just letting the water wash over me when she popped open the door and flung herself at me. I had a brief moment of panic (and slight embarrassment), thinking that maybe she was attacking me. But her soft, luscious lips locked with mine and her firm, full breasts pressed against me – and I realized she wasn’t trying to eat me alive…After this epiphany, I acquiesced to her aggressively startling lust and just let it happen.

That is all I can say on the matter…

Once we were through with this bout in the shower, she told me to draw a bath and relax some while she cleaned herself up. I did as she said, but only after fetching a joint from my jacket. I thought, at the time, that it might ease the pain of my great losses that day, if only marginally. But being high only intensified my emotions and made me edgy (if not a little paranoid, as well, which is definitely no bueno when zombies are on the loose). Guilt and grief began to swell exponentially, and the bathtub began to feel too small. I felt restless and angry; angry with myself and with the world at having driven me to such failures as those that cost my friends their lives.

I leaned forward to drain the tub and douse the roach, but Daisy Jane snatched it from my fingers before I could. Her hair was wrapped in a yellow towel and she was stark naked. She sat down at the tub’s edge and said to me, “I don’t remember the last time I smoked weed.” Like a novice, she daintily held the roach to her scrunched-up lips (even her eyes were scrunched-up in anticipation), and she pulled weakly off the dying ember of the roach. The following scene was quite comical (and I briefly forgot about my troubles and paranoia): her eyes got wide, her cheeks puffed up, and she began emitting some sort of high-pitched inward squall or squeaky groan. And what made it all the more comical to me was this freeze-framed expression and the yellow towel; in that moment, she could have been a cartoonist’s caricature of herself, displaying shock and awe (or utter, boiling fear) with hair standing on end.

I didn’t laugh, though I may have smirked.

And then she spat out the weak plume of smoke in a fit of coughs and spurs. “Holy shit,” she said. “That’s good shit.” But she wasn’t done just yet; oh no, she smoked some more right away (thankfully, with dramatically less coughing and sputtering). I politely refused to partake in the remainder of the roach.

So that is all for now…I’m sure you’re wondering (if you’re reading) what else we did (and how many times). But I – just like the ghouls and the gators – must sometime eat. Though, unlike the ghouls, I must sleep, as well. And so I’ll return to this narcissistic memoir of mine in the next day or two. –Stay tuned!

again: past & present

Entry 002:

 

I think I almost died yesterday.

I attempted an excursion into the wild and nearly lost my way back to the cabin when the snow resumed its silent onslaught. And all I managed to acquire in my freezing four-hour journey was a measly bundle of sticks that were too wet to start a flame. After fending off the chills that I feared might kill me, I ate a cold can of chili and set about melting snow in a bucket. This was quite the undertaking, I might add; the cabin had little or no insulation and I had no way of heating it other than with my body. And, after staving off the deep freeze of my fruitless four-hour excursion, I had little desire to sacrifice any of my hard-earned warmth.

The bucket is still slushy…hardly melted at all overnight.

Needless to say, I wrote not a lick yesterday. But today, with the snow still swirling outside, I’ve elected to remain indoors, wrapped in my meager linens and clothes, pen and paper in hand. I’ll start a fire later (if the wood has dried enough, that is). But I’ll need to find more wood tomorrow or the next day. Otherwise, I’ll have to start dismantling the furniture.

(And, just in case you were wondering, the ghouls outside are little more than bloody popsicles; the blizzard has them frozen to the bone and they pose little threat to Yours Truly. But the blizzard is also what’s kept me in this shitty cabin; it’s nigh impossible to find my bearings and the nearest settlement is much too far to reach in this weather. If I survive long enough to attempt the trek, I’ll do just that. But, for now, I’ll remain indoors and suffer the howling cold and choked groans of the bloody zombisicles outside…)

Looking over my scrawlings from the other day, I am surprised to find that my writing hasn’t deteriorated all that terribly over the years. Though it’s a far cry from the prose of my college days, it’s still passable (and even legible! for fuck’s sake). Reliving the early days of the outbreak is not the easiest of tasks for me, but it feels important somehow. Maybe this is just what I am meant to do with my final days…maybe I’ll find peace before passing through the Gates and find myself in Paradise after all…if I’m not punished for my agnosticism, of course.

(I know, I know…it sounds like I’m recanting again. But it’s hard not to think or write – or talk to myself – of such things at this late stage in my life. It just feels natural to reference Paradise and Hell when facing death. After all, the existence of such places hasn’t been disproved yet…)

So let me now resume my tale (I’ll try to avoid becoming my own peanut gallery again…but I make no promises on the matter). I do feel as though, in my late-night delirium, I left out some important details. For instance: I failed to inform you that the parking lot was still full of cars, yet there were very few people – infected or otherwise – in the lot. Not that I saw, anyhow. One can only assume that most were staggered with infection at this point and hungrily roaming the campus.

I also failed to inform you that, as we blindly followed Jacob to his rickety, rusty van, we passed up my battered Subaru as well as Vivian’s old Volvo. My course through the outbreak could very well have been altered (for better or worse, we’ll never know) by simply splitting off. Or if Vivian had split off, maybe I would have followed her. Or maybe I still would have gone with Jacob and things would have been different in that way…But, as with everything in life, there were many alternate courses with a million different outcomes that I did not choose when I blindly – or instinctively – followed Vivian, who blindly followed Jacob, who went straight to his rickety, rusty van. Which, looking back on it now, begs the question: whose instincts were sharper at that point in time? I’d put my money on Jacob…

But if Vivian and I hadn’t blindly followed his sharpened instincts, he may very well have run straight over Tom when backing out of the parking spot. It’s quite a likely scenario since Vivian and I had to holler and shout before he hit the brakes, thereby sparing Tom’s life for at least a little while longer. Not like it would have made a difference to Tom whether he died then or later – but at least he wouldn’t have become a live, squirming lunch on a rural road near the forest. Maybe he would have just been a dead, flat breakfast for whichever ghoul happened upon him in the far back corner of F lot. But, since we were with Jacob at that moment, screaming in his ear for him to stop, he avoided squishing ol’ Tom right then and there. And so Tom climbed in through the sliding door and sat down right beside me.

Now I have no idea where or how Tom arrived when he did, all I know is that we damn near ran him over in the parking lot that day. Whether this meeting was fortuitous or not, one might try to inquire with Tom himself…but such would be impossible since he passed later that day. Who knows what would have happened to him had we not nearly run him over that day. Perhaps he would have survived the initial outbreak and forged some sort of life out of the aftermath. (Or maybe he would have died that same day anyhow – we’ll never know.) But the fact remains: he found his fate after nearly being crushed.

Anyhow…enough from the peanut gallery…

Tom was beside me on the short bench seat just behind the captain chairs of the driver and passenger (Jacob and Vivian). Other than that, all I can clearly remember is holding on for dear life and spitting obscenities here and there as we careened around corners and other cars. More than once, I was certain we would roll the top-heavy van with the way Jacob was skidding around some corners. But we didn’t. What finally ended our brief journey was a damn hatchback whose driver should have been paying more attention to cross-traffic. (Our speed may have played a factor in this as well…and maybe the blind corner…)

I still have some stiffness in my neck from the whiplash. It could have been worse, though; if I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I could have been ejected through the windshield just like Vivian. Although, since I had been sitting directly behind Jacob, I may have been saved by his seatback. (We’ll never know now, will we..?) Why she was in the front without a seatbelt at such breakneck speeds is – and was – beyond me. But hey, at least she died quickly and without the possibility of becoming infected. Her head was so thoroughly crushed upon impact that it looked as though she had been decapitated. That’s how fast we were travelling when the hatchback pulled out in front of us.

The aftermath of this wreck is a haze in my memory, as well. With such a vicious and sudden impact, my senses were overloaded with shock. My ears were ringing, my chest was constricted from the seatbelt (which also left a nasty mark across my midsection), and my arms and legs were throbbing after having smashed into everything in reach. My eyes felt as though they could have burst while my lungs were gasping desperately to recover from the seatbelt’s tight grip. And my neck…the impact rocked my head so hard that my chin struck my chest no less than three times. Add to that all the times it bounced off the headrest, I was a mess for quite a while. But, living through those first terrifying days, I had to muster all the strength I could so as not to let the injury hinder my survival.

And despite whacking my limbs on everything in reach, including the hard plastics of the door panel and center console, I had no other serious injuries. I was bruised in various places from the inertial jouncing, and my knee swelled up for a couple days, but none of that was serious. Not like the whiplash. Had this wreck occurred even one day prior, I would have been immediately hospitalized and the doctors would have advised me to see a chiropractor, a massage therapist, and begin physical therapy. And rest, of course. Take it easy, they’d say. Don’t lift anything over twenty pounds…and don’t twist or turn…or walk…and God forbid you try to sleep!

…maybe that last bit was a tad overboard. But you get the drift…

Since the wreck hadn’t occurred one day prior, I was forced to deal with the pain myself…and, if it had occurred one day prior, I’d probably be lunch meat by now. And we probably wouldn’t have been in such a position the previous day. In fact, we had been playing an unofficial “ghetto” round of Frisbee golf the day prior. (By which I mean that we roamed the campus while smoking spliffs and throwing our discs at whichever objects or landmarks we deemed to be the next “hole.” Each “hole” was chosen at random by the winner of the previous hole.) And after that, we all got so blazed that we couldn’t even fathom driving anywhere, let alone at breakneck speeds. (Such a term sends chills down my spine when I recall Vivian’s mangled, headless corpse…)

At first I wasn’t even aware she was missing. I was so dazed that I couldn’t figure out what had just happened. I’m not even sure I knew who was with me – or who I was, for that matter. And before any such information could return to me, the wreckage of our vehicles was surrounded by over a dozen ghouls; some were young, between the ages of eight and thirteen, I’d imagine; and some were adults, maybe early twenties at the youngest and up to the fifties, possibly, for a pair of them. I’m not certain where so many came from as we were on a rural road near the forest. The only conclusion to which I keep returning is a family gathering gone horribly wrong at the house from which the hatchback had been trying so desperately to flee.

As the shock began to wear off, I first noticed this alleged familial horde swarming all around us. Then I heard a muffled, distant shriek. This dampening of sound was magnified by shock and the persistent ringing in my ears and head. After a moment of recognition, I realized that the shriek and subsequent screams were that of a woman – and so I reached out for Vivian. My hand swiped at air, which drew my eyes into focus; after a long moment, I finally realized that she was not there. And then I spotted the blood-ringed hole in the spiderwebbed windshield. As far as holes in windshields go (in my estimation, that is), it was a rather large hole. Though, it would turn out that the hole was just the right size for a slender, young woman of Vivian’s exact dimensions to squeeze through at a rather unpleasant angle; head-first, kind of like Superman.

Alas, she did not have Superman’s super strength.

The shrieks I heard were not Vivian’s. Through the blood-ringed hole, I watched a number of the alleged familial horde rip a woman out of the hatchback by way of the smashed rear window. Another pair were pawing at her and the driver (deceased on impact, lucky bastard) through the other windows (which were also busted out). Another ghoul dropped out of sight somewhere between the vehicles. Later, I would discover that this one had bent to chomp on Vivian’s corpse.

The remaining ghouls were searching for entry into the van.

I’m not sure if Jacob was unconscious or just far too dazed and delirious (moreso than myself at the time, if such was the case) to react or mount a defense when the kid lunged at him through his own busted window. But when the kid – maybe twelve, give or take, and tall for his age – lunged through the driver side window, Jacob put up no resistance. He sure yelped, though, when the kid’s teeth sank into his neck.

For a while after, I tormented myself with the guilt of all my hesitations that day; hesitations that cost my friends and cohorts their lives. If I had reacted when I first saw the kid, I may have saved Jacob’s life – for at least a little while longer…maybe. But I hadn’t, and so Jacob became lunch meet for this infectious boy. After a morning of far too many instances of fatal hesitation on my behalf, the guilt would soon mount and render me nearly useless for days. The effects of this guilt still linger today; it’s why I rambled nomadically through all these years, never staying in one place long enough to repeat these fatal hesitations.

But there was once, early on in my travels, that I nearly allowed myself to form the relationships that could result in such hesitations. I stayed there for far too long – so long I even made friends. And of course, I left them, just as I did at every other way station along my nomadic route; quick and quiet like a sly mouse in the dead of night. But, my supposed readers (oh! my vanity; to think anybody will ever read this is quite laughable), that is another story for another day. If, of course, I survive long enough (and stay competent long enough!) to write such a story. With how longwinded I’ve become at a time when I should feel each tick of my clock that’s rapidly winding down, I may never get to that story. Or all the others that follow in all the years after.

I’m sure Tom was just as dazed as I was when he muttered, “Fuck this,” and threw open the passenger side slider. He was unarmed and uneasy on his feet – and I was sure the ghouls would flood the van after him. But they didn’t. He staggered out into the middle of the road, and before I could holler, he was tackled by four ghouls. The littlest of them went straight for the Achilles’ tendon; the eldest was ripping at his eyes and face. The other two (a man and woman who were possibly in their mid- to late-twenties), were on either arm. Another kid (this one was a girl with frazzled blonde locks and a blue fairy dress) dived straight for his stomach. Tom bellowed tremendously; he squirmed and writhed and continued to bellow until his throat was ripped out by the eldest and his lungs filled with blood.

I can even recall the terrible gurgling as Tom asphyxiated.

There was nothing I could have done to save him, short of yanking him back inside. But by then, the door would have already been open and the flood really would have come to take both our lives. Call me selfish, but I’d rather have his death adding a little weight to my guilt than to have been eaten like a sardine in a can.

Despite still having very little working knowledge of my enemy at this point, I had enough to know when to cut my losses. The battle here was lost, but I didn’t have to lose with it. I allowed my instincts to take over as I left Jacob behind to deal with his infectious attacker all on his own. (I had a feeling that he was already dead; I didn’t know for sure that the infection was transmitted by their bites, scratches, or fluids, but common sense told me it was…turns out that common sense was right.)

Most of the ghouls were feasting when I emerged from the van. The ones that were paid me no mind. All the others, which were just about half the total (the total was either seventeen or eighteen – I can’t remember exactly anymore), altered their course immediately. I took out the nearest aggressors with quick chops of my staff to the head.

Through my delirium, I’m surprised that I remember the following sequence so vividly: whirling from the first two strikes, I caught a third ghoul in the gut and spun around to level another that was apparently disinterested in feasting on Tom once all this ruckus began. I turned on a heel to run, but found two more in my path; I took the first out at the knees, kicked the other to the ground and brought my staff down hard on the first one’s head.

And now all of the ghouls became disinterested in their respective meals. I was alone and outnumbered in the middle of nowhere, all of my friends were dead, and I was armed with a bamboo staff. The van was totaled and I wasn’t about to boost a car with all the ravenous onlookers who wanted to eat my flesh, apparently. (Not to mention, I didn’t possess the necessary skills to boost a car…) What I did possess that they didn’t, was speed. And a lot of it; all the years of soccer and ultimate Frisbee were about to pay off.

Without running top speed, I lost them in less than ten minutes.

I slowed to a brisk walk with my staff clenched tight in both hands. My head was on a swivel, searching for danger in every quivering shadow and shivering bush. And just as I thought it weird that no vehicles were traveling down this road, the rumble of an engine reached my ear. I assumed it was a heavy duty truck…and I was right.

Standing safely to one side of the road, I watched it trundle around the corner. First thing I noticed was the bloodstained grille (upon closer inspection, I would notice bits of skull and brainmatter implanted in the chrome). And then I noticed that it was lifted – and blue – and a Dodge. Finally, just before it pulled to a stop beside me, I noticed a pretty blonde behind the wheel. She rolled down the window and looked me over.

I must have had a dumb expression on my face, because all she said was, “You’re gonna get killed just standin’ ‘round like that, kid.” She spoke with a gruff, yet sexy, southern accent. She rolled her eyes and leaned over to pop open the door. “Hop in,” she said. “I ain’t got all day, now. Bound to be more of ‘em on the way.”

So I climbed in with her – Daisy Jane Lawless, she said her name was; from Arkansas, she claimed. And I never found reason not to believe her. She was a gem. I’ll never forget her…for what that’s worth anymore…

 

Anyhow, I done wrote the day away, it would seem. Never did start that damn fire; just kept warm by using the linens as a tent to trap the heat. My hand is cramping, though, and I’m jittery from low blood-sugar levels. I’ll get back to you on the story of Daisy from Arkansas in a day or two – if I make it that long. But I must find food if I am to resume this exercise in narcissism.

 

Adieu…for now, and hopefully not forever.