by TW Brown
This place used to be some sort of small Christian school back in the day. All of the children here—and I only use the term technically as they all seem quite grown up—were at a “lock in” at the church to support a drug-free life or something. They were all praying or whatever people did at those sorts of things. However, one of the “bad” kids had managed to sneak in a radio. He heard the first big news report and told the others. Of course they didn’t believe him. When morning came and the bus driver didn’t show up to take the kids home, they started trying to reach their parents. The youth group leader was the first to reach somebody. That person said the same thing that any of the children who actually manged to get through to somebody heard: STAY PUT! We’ll come for you as soon as we can.
Nobody ever came.
Well, at least not anybody still living. They saw their first zombie that day. Fear was their biggest ally. Several of the children witnessed the youth group leader ripped apart…then, moments later, get back up. It’s an old story by now, isn’t it? Some of the parents tried to get to them, but that didn’t go well either. They spent the next several days hiding in one of the bathrooms after they’d barricaded the doors with everything they could find.
Somehow, they’ve managed. I guess they normally kill adults on sight these days. (They had a very bad experience that none of them will go into detail on. I can only guess.) It seems that me being a female, plus the cute puppy factor that Sam rocks so effortlessly, they decided to take a chance. Chalk one up for the big goofy dog.
These kids have their stuff together. We ate steaming hot venison stew and some very coarse bread. But I am so impressed. They have wood stoves and an underground room for cold storage. There is a hand-pumped well (they boil all their water just to be safe) and even a well-stocked safe room. To their credit, they wouldn’t let us see it after one of the little ones blurted out its existence. Who can blame them?
They have an array of long spears up on the roof just in case the building gets surrounded. They have hundreds of arrows for the dozens of bows just sitting around everywhere. Also, there is a field out back. A structure sits right in the middle. It looks like a giant sawhorse, only the crossbeam is about ten feet off the ground. It’s at least twenty feet long. Currently there are five corpses hanging from it. Each has a sign around the neck. Three say “pedophile” one says “murderer” and the last says “thief”.
Like I said, these kids don’t play around. They certainly don’t need anything from us. My guess is that they will be fine long after Eric and I (along with Sam-the-Wonder-dog) have gone on our way. Some of the girls are very timid, even around me, but many reminded me of what I remember reading about Amazon warriors. Nobody stays still here very long either. I’ve noticed a constant state of energy that is kinda tiring to be around. Also, it has made it impossible to get a real head count of how many are here. I think the number is close to thirty.
We made it clear that we will be moving on come morning. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice being here for this brief stay. It made me miss Jenifer just a bit. I hope she is doing okay.
Thursday, February 11
Didn’t go far today. We are in a giant U-Pull-It yard. The metal fence has collapsed in a bunch of spots, but Eric insisted that we stop here. He says that this place is a “goldmine” of potential supplies. The good news is that the zombies don’t seem all that interested in wandering around in here. If this were the movies, they’d be lurking in every shadow. However, without any snacky-snacks holed up in here trying to survive, they’ve got no reason.
***
Eric has me hiding in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. Now I know what he was all excited about. The kids apparently don’t know much about how to test for a viable alternator. He found, tested, and removed a dozen. Then, he jogged off into the darkness after telling me to stay put and that he would be back by sunset. Sam is snoozing in the back of the cab while I sit here waiting.
I can’t really bitch…I mean he’s doing a very selfless thing. I just wish he would’ve clued me in instead of wandering around this place for an hour with all its blind spots. I don’t care if he did have Sam beside him as an alarm…I hated not knowing what the hell was up.
Oh well.
Part of me wants to do a little exploring of my own, but I’m not that foolish. It feels weird just sitting around doing nothing. I have no idea why I couldn’t tag along. I mean, Eric doesn’t strike me as a glory hound. I don’t believe that he did this for some sort of special recognition…I just…
Crap! I just started my period.
Friday, February 12
Catching a break in the weather today. It is sunny and, while I wouldn’t call it warm, it is tolerable. That is one of the beauties of the Pacific Northwest. If you don’t like the weather…wait five minutes.
Eric got back last night just after sunset. So, of course, I gave him a little old fashioned Meredith ass chewing. (Yay hormones!) Then we ate dinner and turned in. On the plus, he tried to make things up to me by whipping up some of his yummy venison stew.
We had a long stretch of open road to travel. However, the signs are giving us ominous messages like: Sandy 12mi.
Around midafternoon, we stumbled upon the Sandy School for the Blind. I saw the campus through the trees. Initially I thought it was a small college. Since it was getting late and the last sign warned that we would reach Sandy in three miles, the school seemed like a good place to camp for the night.
It was a nightmare!
I can’t imagine the horror that the students here must’ve felt. Oh…and blindness does have a cure: zombieism. There was no difference in how the walking dead from that school pursued us versus any other zombie I’ve encountered since this ordeal began.
We slipped through the trees, coming in to the…campus? ...from the rear. We didn’t even know it was a school for the blind at first. That discovery came when we circled the place to get a better look. The remnants of the sign out front revealed this place’s identity. Perhaps that is why we thought we could slip in and see if there was anything worth taking. An institutional cafeteria is always worth a peek.
We didn’t have to break in. The main doors in front are gone. Perhaps that should’ve been the first warning. The halls were littered with garbage, the walls smeared with what had to be blood. There were even some places where the ceiling was splattered.
The echo of the moans and groans of the undead quickly had Sam’s hackles up and our weapons drawn. I went with my scimitars, Eric chose a long-handled hatchet. Finding the school’s cafeteria wasn’t a problem. It was what we discovered inside that changed everything.
Neither of us thought much about how many guide dogs there might be. Nor did we know that this place had its own guide dog training facility. My conservative guess puts the dog population here at about a hundred. They were in clusters, just sprawled on each other. All of them were horribly torn and mangled. Some missing a leg…or two…or more.
I can’t get that image out of my head. It looked like several of the students had come here; many with their dogs, but there were so many that there has to be more to the story. It looks like the dogs were infected first. There weren’t any students in the cafeteria…zombie or otherwise. The floor was littered with parts. Oh! There were a few heads. That will give you the willies I’m tellin’ ya. Some were on their sides, a few had a neck stub to rest on. Still, when those eyes roll your way… Eww! Amongst the body parts were lots of cleanly stripped bones.
Good thing for us that zombified dogs are no faster than their human counterparts. We sealed the door, closing it with an audible click that sounded like a gunshot to me.
Then, we ran. We continued along Highway 26, and it was late afternoon when we found a quaint little church beside the road. We had to dispatch a few of the inhabitants before we could close the place up and seal it for the night.
I just have the feeling that tomorrow is gonna be a bitch.
Saturday, February 13
&
nbsp; This brings back memories.
Eric, Sam, and I are hiding out in a multiplex. We are only a stone’s throw away from a hospital-turned-fortress. The people there have figured a way to get in and out without being seen by the zombies. They have erected an impressive barricade around the parking lot using school busses, city busses, fire engines, and RVs. Then there is the wall of cars parked bumper-to-bumper. After that—as if there was a need for more—there are coils of razor wire like the type you see atop the fences of prisons.
The folks at the hospital weren’t outwardly hostile, but they weren’t friendly either. When we spotted what I imagine were their sentries on the roof, I waved. They didn’t. At least they didn’t try to attack us or anything like that. However, they sure as hell didn’t roll out the welcome mat.
We kept moving and came to a part of the highway that was so congested we had no choice but to cut through a parking lot of a strip mall. We didn’t see the mob until they were right on top of us. I guess they had the shopping center surrounded. We had to cut through some trees to get off the highway. It was literally as simple as choosing the wrong side of the road. Had we gone to the other side, I think we slip by those bastards without them seeing us.
So…here’s where things went wrong.
We emerged through the trees and Sam immediately starts growling. The worst part about being in an area with so many of the undead is the pervasiveness of the stench. It is so overpowering that it loses its ability to be a warning of sorts because you are flooded with the smell. Walking past cars with zombies trapped inside…just…they were freaking everywhere. Oh, and about the cars; the windows were so coated with filth that you couldn’t see inside any of the sealed up ones unless you were directly in front of or behind the vehicle. Of course the cars with the windows down were a real treat. Evry single one we passed seemed to have one of thoses bastards strapped inside. It would get to moaning as we crept by…like a new aged car alarm.
Anyways, Sam growls and about a hundred heads turn. The problem now is that we are pulling our harnessed carts. While great for all sorts of terrain, they suck when you are trying to do something fast. Eric and I collided with each other…and I fell. It was straight out of a Three Stooges routine. To add to the slapstick humor of the moment, I fell in a big, squishy mud puddle.
By the time I got up, Eric was engaged with three of those things. I fumbled around and managed to scoop up one of my scimitars just as the first one reached me. Since it is impossible to backpedal in the harness, I hit the quick-release and tossed the harness into the cart. Eric was already disappearing back through the trees we’d just come through. We both know that in situations like this, it is every man or woman for themselves. No hard feelings.
By the time I emerged back and beside the highway, Eric was weaving through a gap in the vehicles. He disappeared behind a black pick-up truck. Sam was standing in that gap staring at me. When I almost reached him, he bolted away again. He stopped at every opening between cars and waited for me to almost catch up before taking off again. I don’t know if he was actually following Eric, or just leading me away from the oncoming horde of zombies.
We emerged about a half mile up the road. Some of the zombies managed to stay on my tail, which flustered the hell out of me. I was forced to push the cart by now, and my body was drenched with sweat.
I know that you might be wondering how I couldn’t elude the slow moving undead out in the open. First, there were all the cars. You try getting a cart to twist and turn in a space where I can barley fit it, much less turn it. I had to turn when there was room…that meant long bursts of staright ahaead.
When I got to the other side of the highway, I saw Eric climbing through a ticket window of a huge theater. He had already killed off a few zombies, unloaded his cart, broke his cart down, and shoved it through the box office window. Then, Eric went through the hole. He was nice enough to help me once I finally made it to him.
We didn’t have any way to block the wall of glass doors at the entrance—some of which were already broken—so we made a hasty retreat in to one of the pitch black theaters. We had to pull out one of our flashlights with the red lenses in order to see anything as we hurried down the aisle. We were gonna duck out back and keep running, but when we managed to force the exit door open, we found ourselves in a long—perhaps thirty feet or so—cooridor. We decided that it was as good of a buffer as we were likely to find. We wedged the entry door to this particular theater shut and have decided to wait things out a while in here.
We know that there are survivors in the area. That means that it is likely that any of the zombies that have been drawn by us will eventually be drawn away by other distratctions. Seriously, zombies have the memory of a goldfish…at best.
The hornet’s nest we have kicked around these parts will die down. In the few hours we have been here, the pounding and other noises that go along with a zombie horde have dwindled significantly. Twice I have gone out to that cooridor and listened at the doors at either end. It is silent. While I can’t be totally sure, I am fairly certain those doors lead outside. Probably open out to a side or rear parking lot.
Well…I’ve had enough of Eric’s dirty looks as I run down the batteries on one of our flashlights. I will stop writing for now.
Sunday, February 14
I thought we might be screwed, but we finally got out of Sandy. Well…the main part of it anyways. We are now shacked up in this really posh house outside of town. It sits at the edge of a gigantic farm. Hard to tell what used to grow here, the military took a position on this land complete with what look like holding pens and massive trench burial sites. There are lots of blackened bones scattered around fom the burning piles. (It takes a lot of heat to burn a body down to just ash. Bonfires wouldn’t be enough to do the trick.)
We are up on this hill that offers a perfect view of the highway. A forest flanks us on three sides. As nice as this place is, it has been absolutely gutted. It is worse than a Who house after the Grinch picked it clean on Christmas Eve night.
We are in the rear of the place with a nice fire going in the sunken tub of what used to be the master bedroom. Eric nailed a few fluffy, white bunnies for us to eat.
I can’t recall being so tired in a long time. We’ve been ducking and dodging for the past thirty or so hours. It is a blessing to be able to lay back and relex. Plus, I doubt we’ll be moving from this spot any time soon. It’s snowing again…hard.
It has been a while since I’ve seen so many of those things scattered around and lurking at every corner. Between the singles, roamers, and the always dangerous creepers under seemingly every vehicle…I’ve probably put down over two hundred of them in the past day and a half.
I kept hearing the voice of Doctor Who—the dreamy David Tennant version—saying, “Run!” We even had to ditch our carts for a while and go back for them. I was really glad mine didn’t get stolen by some passing survivor, and there seem to be a peculiarly high number around these parts. We just got so tangled up with fighting and evading, we had no choice.
At one point, we were hiding out in an overgrown cemetary. I’m not sure, but I believe that there are still people out there who think that the dead will claw their way from the grave. Those people have never read Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain. Mouths are sewn shut, organs are removed—including the brain—and the body is pumped full of chemicals. I get that zombies are not normal…Wait. Let me rephrase that. Zombies didn’t used to be normal.
Nowadays, we are the anomaly.
Early this morning or late last night—can’t tell which—we made it back to where we’d ditched our carts. We hitched up feeling pretty safe, but made sure to lead the ones we gathered just in that short time back to the movie house. We used the woods to get to this place once we spotted it to keep any zombies off our trail.
We were moving along the single-lane road that runs parallel to the highway when the first great big snowflakes began to fall. These didn’t drift gracefull
y. Nope, they plummeted to earth.
The best thing about this place as opposed to a lot of the houses in the area is that it has all its doors and windows intact. So, now, a million dollar home is nothing more than a flop house for a pair of vagrants and a dog.
Monday, February 15
Wow! There’s at least three feet of snow on the ground outside. We are so totally stuck. There is absolutely no way that we can leave. It snowed all night and has been coming down steady all day. We can hang here for a while, I guess. I know that we will have to deal with snow in the mountains, but we ain’t there yet. I won’t ever say this out loud in front of Eric, but perhaps we should’ve waited one more month before heading out.
I can’t help it; I wanted to get out of that confined, mundane, prison-like environment. I felt as if I were dying a slow death. I can’t explain it anymore beyond that. At least Eric hasn’t said anything. I don’t believe it matters to him one way or the other. I have to say it again; I couldn’t be making this trip with a better person.
Friday, February 20
The storm has passed and we’ve had a sunny day to enjoy…at least from inside. It is freezing out there. Still, there is this square of sunlight coming through a window that is blissful. Oh, and Eric bagged a deer. He called it a spike; I call it yummy. We have feasted the past two days.
From our position overlooking the highway, we haven’t seen much movement of any kind—zombie or otherwise. And have I mentioned the glare? It never once crossed my mind until Eric handed me these dark goggles. He thought it was amusing that I would even consider going up into the mountains with no eye protection. To my credit, I didn’t stick my tongue out at him until after his back was turned.