Dead Woman's Journal

by Ann Christy

  That night, I held my breath as monsters crept along the streets, but several passed without noticing my lure. Finally, I went to sleep. I was tempted to stay awake, but I’d need all my wits when I left. I sure didn’t want to stay there an extra day. The house was empty of food or water and I really don’t think breathing all that mold was healthy.

  When I woke the next morning, it was exactly as dawn broke. Outside the window, I didn’t see one monster at my lure. I saw two. Both monsters had hands clamped onto the component, both pulling it into their mouths. It looked like some bizarre version of two people in love, sharing an ice cream. Even from the window, I could see the streaks of red down their fronts. Despite the damage the components were doing to their mouths, they kept right on trying to eat it.

  Why?

  I don’t know why, but I wonder if it has to do with their nanites. I don’t have factory nanites…thank goodness…but the others in my neighborhood did. I know Linda took a supplement because the nanites drained some sort of micro-nutrient, but I don’t know which. Maybe it was iron. It could be something more unique or rare. I simply never asked. What if these monsters, who are now completely overflowing with nanites, need metals?

  Gold, platinum, silver. It could be anything like that. Perhaps they crave it too much to ignore its presence. Is that what those people were doing? Luring the monsters away with their now useless cell phones and game consoles, so they could safely leave? And the truck, was it to lure monsters away from something important so that they could be killed? Perhaps keep them tame and not screaming?

  Honestly, I felt like I’d just drunk a pot of coffee, one cup after another, once that thought gelled in my mind. Electronics as a lure. Electronics as a pacifier, as an anchor.

  So, now you see why I went after the electronics in our neighborhood. I have an idea, but I’m not sure it’s safe or wise. I might get myself killed in the process, but if it works, then not only will I have a bit of peace, you might have some as well.

  Let’s see if it works. I plan on doing it first thing in the morning.

  Day 44 - Midday

  Well, that sucked. It’s done though, and that’s what matters. Now, I’ll just need to see if it works. What did I do? Look out any window overlooking the back of the house.

  See it?

  That’s right. I made one of the trees near the edge of the field into a bizarre Christmas tree using electronic components and some serious fishing line. Now that I’m looking at it from a distance, it’s actually kind of pretty. The way the light catches the electronics as they move is nice.

  Anyway, not that I’m patting myself on the back or anything. I’m just glad it’s done. I had to kill the monster left in the field to give myself room to do the decorating, but more will show up eventually. They always do.

  I really do think they come because of the light. Something I saw when I was gone seemed to confirm it. I don’t want to sound weird, but I think some of them might be afraid of the dark. If not afraid, then maybe unsettled by it.

  Of course, maybe I’m anthropomorphizing, like assigning human thoughts to a dog or horse, but it seemed that way to me. Perhaps it’s nothing more than they can’t see well in the dark and that makes it hard to hunt, so they avoid it. Who knows?

  Anyway, after I left the suburbs where I holed up that second night, I decided against going any further in that direction. I knew I’d more than likely find more of the same. Houses like those were terrible for surviving the end of our world. New houses with all the amenities, I mean.

  Instead, I decided to check something less new, less modern.

  Downtown was out of the question by that point. If this was what it was like out here, then it would be a nightmare in a city with narrow, one-way streets crowded with densely populated buildings. No, I knew that direction was hopeless.

  But this city is old, very old. Jamestown is only a short ride north of here, so this area is one of the oldest in our land. Yes, I know it doesn’t compare with Europe in terms of age, but it’s as old as we get here in the good old United States. Anyway, the cities didn’t just plop down in a nice orderly fashion. Everything is checkered with layers of development, destruction, re-development, and sprawl. There are houses nearly four hundred years old sitting merrily between businesses, or in the middle of modern housing tracts.

  It’s a pain during normal times, because streets can only get so wide when a city is built like this, but now it might offer the opportunity for survival for a lucky few. And I know of one such spot. I know it very well, indeed.

  East-southeast of this neighborhood, by no more than a few miles, small farms dot the interior of our peninsula. Some of them are old too. While modern houses are creeping into the edges of that area, there are still old houses there, ones built before air conditioning existed, and designed to work with this climate. The sweeping vistas offer them good views of what might be coming, and fences once meant to keep in animals might work to keep them safe.

  I’m not sure why it was so important for me to find people, but at that point, I think I was circling the idea with such dedication that I didn’t really think about what it meant. I just wanted to know people were somewhere, that life was going on in a new normal. In retrospect, I think I simply had to know that I wasn’t alone in the world.

  Before you get too excited, thinking I found working farms or something else awesome, let me set the record straight. I never made it there and I saw no people. Well, I saw no people up close, but at least one person saw me. I’ll get to that. It’s what I saw during that trip that I’m talking about now.

  There’s a monster coming out of the woods. I’m going to stop writing for a while and see if it heads for my tree. I’ll write more later.

  Day 44 - Evening

  I think the tree works! It took quite a while, but I could tell the moment the monster saw the tree. It went for it like a tree full of candy bars would draw me. It was one of those non-screaming ones, the kind with that strangely pale skin and dark fingers. Those kind are slower, not so aggressive, and if anything, I think they crave the metal more than the screaming kind. That’s just a guess though.

  Whatever the truth is, it’s still there, standing at the tree and reaching up for the components. It can’t reach any, but it’s been standing there for hours and hasn’t looked away even once that I’ve noticed. I can more easily shoot them from the shooter’s nest if I need to now. Or, I can just leave them be.

  I’ve had a busy day since putting down this journal, but it was a good busy. I’ll keep checking on the houses, and today seemed like a good day to do it. There weren’t any monsters in the street, and only one stuck in the mud by the river. Maybe my absence has made the neighborhood less appealing to the monsters. I saw some signs of them having been here; a shoe, a few tracks in mud from recent rains, a clump of hair stuck to the bark of a tree, so I know they’ve been here.

  The houses are getting gross. Let’s get that out of the way right now. Black mold, just like in the McMansions, has started to spread in the powerless houses. I even found it creeping in Grant’s house. In a few of the other houses that have no solar it’s made serious inroads since I last checked.

  Any house that has overhangs sufficient to keep out rain got a few windows opened, or at least cracked. I’m hoping the breeze off the river will help some, but it might make it worse. Humidity. Using the idea that what works for bathrooms against mildew might work in the houses, I mixed up some bleach and water, then sprayed down every surface that was showing signs of mold. I completely ruined the wall paint, carpets, and wallpaper. Will that stop the mold? I really don’t know.

  At some point, I may need to try and empty those houses of usable material. If I move it all to the houses with solar and air conditioning, will I move over the mold spores? I don’t know that either, so I’m holding off.

  I did go get all the leftover surgical masks from Marcy’s house though. She has a big supply box of them, minus two of the smaller boxes
inside. They used them when they cleaned up her mom or changed her tube or whatever. That’s six hundred or so masks, so there should be plenty. I’ve got one of the smaller boxes here, but the rest are stashed in Gerald and Susan’s house.

  While I have no idea if they’re sufficient for the task, the very idea of breathing mold spores sort of freaks me out.

  Anyway, no intrusions were noted at all. I suppose that’s good. I did find a raccoon though! It was bedded down in the shed behind Grant’s house. I’m not sure how it got in, but it did. I let it be after we came face to face, both of us shocked to see the other. I think it was afraid I was a monster. I also think it was happy to see another non-monster face.

  That could be me anthropomorphizing again. But, take note, there’s a raccoon out there. It seems healthy and it needs a home. Can I ask that you leave it be? Live and let live and all that.

  So, onto the reason I think the monsters might be responding to the light at the edges of our forest. Like I wrote before, I decided to go and see what I could in the rural area, but I couldn’t just hop in the car and scoot over. I had to plan my route carefully, because between me and there was still our sprawling civilized world. Or what was once a civilized world.

  Between car dealerships and giant discount stores, there were innumerable restaurants, businesses, and roads branching off to other developments. I’m so glad that Grant believed in paper maps, because I was able to map out a route I thought had the best shot of getting me there. Looking back, it was so stupid to do this, I know. This idea that I had to find people had taken hold of me and I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t even see that it was a bad idea.

  I won’t make that mistake again.

  My car is electric…or it was…and I brought a little charging generator with me. I pulled my car into the first garage, since I had left it outside the development’s gate the night before. It took forever to top it off, but I didn’t want to leave without a full charge. That drew monsters, of course, so then I had to wait until they wandered off again. All of that meant I didn’t get out of that development till just after noon. I should have stayed another night, but I was anxious.

  The first part of the trip went surprisingly well. Something had gone through a few of the larger streets and pushed all the cars away, opening a jagged lane. Maybe a bulldozer or semi. I didn’t see what had done the work, only the bent and twisted cars bordering the open lane.

  Someone had done a number at one of the car dealerships too. The whole place was a wreck, with burned cars and all sorts of mayhem. Businesses and restaurants had clearly been looted, and most of them hadn’t been touched since. Very few things were boarded up. It was all broken glass and empty buildings.

  Like that strip mall, I saw several cars with monsters inside, still buckled into their seatbelts. Some wandered about, but none of them were congregated together, which they always do when they sight prey. All the ones I saw were alone.

  What was weird were the number of the non-screaming type. I got good looks at several of them, and they were all obviously injured in drastic ways. Missing limbs, shot up torsos. One even had a hatchet sticking out of his head like a hat. It seems clear that the more seriously injured a monster gets, the more quickly it becomes one of the non-screaming kind.

  The place I saw the most of those in one spot was that burned car dealership. They were laying all over the place, faces stuck to the undersides of the cars. I think they were going after the metal there. It was a bizarre sight.

  I kept my car slow, moving ahead only in spurts of motion, and then only from shelter to shelter. Whether moving from the visual shielding of a larger car or a building, I moved only when I could safely do so. That didn’t work all the time. More than once I heard the scream, so I zoomed off and rounded corners until I found an empty spot to stop and get my bearings.

  All those businesses seemed to end all at once. There was a gas station and then the first of the farm stands. I never shopped at this one because it tended to have higher prices and was more commercial. When I came to this area, I always went much further in, patronizing the smaller stands where the term ‘local produce’ really meant local. Quite frankly, this area has some of the tastiest produce I’ve ever eaten. The hot summers, rich soil, and generous rain make for a pretty tasty ear of corn and a very juicy tomato.

  Again, I’m going to start drooling if I don’t stop thinking of that. A salad…oh, what I might give for a salad right now.

  Anyway, back to my story. The forest returned where the rural parts really took over. In strips or plots at first, but further in, the forest thickened behind the farms. That led to a river—a creek really—that widened until it was really a river, then joined another river, then led to the bay. This whole area is covered in such things, the land often spongy and unsuitable for proper development.

  I knew this place well. The tip of that river, where it truly was a creek, complete with bubbling brooks and rocky beds, is a natural area administered by the state and county for public use. The trails are almost tunnels through the trees and it seems a fairy land compared to the world in general. I used to run and hike that trail two or three times a month after I got my new legs. I loved it.

  But yeah, forest.

  I passed that, then hit the main agricultural-tourist area. Yes, tourism, complete with gift shops and a strawberry festival every year. It was there that I relaxed, which I shouldn’t have done. The first shot didn’t even sound like a shot really. I thought a rock hit my car, perhaps one that flew up as I drove over it. The second shot hit the target…my tire.

  When it blew, I realized what was happening super quick. Rather than pull over, which would have put me in line with the direction of the shot, I whipped the car into a long dirt driveway. It was just one of the many tiny farmettes in this area, a place with backyard chickens and a lawn big enough that no one in their right mind would want to mow it. Another shot hit my trunk, so I swerved a little to kick up some dust.

  I’ve never driven on a flat tire before, but I can now safely say that it is incredibly difficult. The steering wheel pulls terribly and the whole car wants to turn. Plus, I was scared.

  The house I was swerving toward wasn’t especially large, but it was neat and set well back from the road. A huge garden and the expected mesh fencing of a chicken run were visible as I skidded along the dirt driveway toward the house. I’m not sure how my brain figured it all out, but by the time I pulled the car behind the shelter of the house, I knew precisely what I was going to do. It simply popped into my head.

  There were no chickens anymore, and the garden was entirely dead. The place looked abandoned. There was a monster, but I think it must have been there for a long while. It was twisted in the chicken wire fencing, entirely stuck. It looked disgusting.

  I’m not sure what made me think of it, but when I jumped out of the car, I took the key fob with me. If it was my car they wanted, then they were going to be out of luck. Screw them.

  Now, you may have already thought about this, and yes, I did have on mismatching legs. Oh yes, I did. One sport model, one regular one for driving. I grabbed my pack, my gun, and my other two legs, then ran like the devil was after me for the woods. I did take the few seconds it required to put on my pack and jam the gun into my pants. I also had two legs bouncing over my shoulders.

  It probably looked supremely bizarre to anyone who might have seen me. My sport model gave me more spring, which my regular leg couldn’t match. I swear that every step felt like I was going to take a header and fall flat on my face.

  No more shots came, so I think whoever was doing the shooting was too far away to get a good view or get to me quickly. I kicked up a lot of obscuring dust when I went down the driveway too. What I did hear was the roar of an engine, which meant someone was coming my way. Given how loud the engine sounds were, they also weren’t worried about what those noises would draw, which meant there were enough of them with firepower to handle monsters, more than likely. It co
uld be one supremely confident person with a fast car, but it might be a car full of people with military guns.

  And I was mistaken about this being a farmette. Behind the house and main garden was a field filled with dead tomato vines, many of them almost as tall as I am. They were thin and brown, crackly almost, but they hurt as they whipped across my skin. They also did nothing to hide me with their skinny stems and withered leaves. The plants were almost skeletons of themselves, still standing for the most part, but breaking at a mere touch when I passed them.

  The wrinkled sacs that were once growing tomatoes almost made me sad. I love tomatoes.

  Even with the mismatched legs, I found that I could run at least as fast as any other human, probably faster. It was difficult though, requiring every bit of my focus to stay on my feet and not trip. Every single glance I spared for my surroundings to check for monsters meant I slowed and messed up my stride. It was like a catch-22. I could either run fast and hope to reach the shelter of the trees before the shooter caught up with me, or I could make sure I didn’t run right into the arms of a people-eater.

  What a choice!

  The zooming noise of a hard acceleration made me glance back and I did trip that time. A big truck, the lifted kind with big tires, belched black smoke from two exhaust pipes that ran up the cab instead of under the truck. The zooming noise was it sliding from the dirt driveway to the grass and bouncing over the depression to the field.

  I’m not at all ashamed to admit that as I scrambled up, grabbing my legs from where they’d fallen, I shouted out some truly choice curse words. They were bad enough that I won’t even write them down.

  So, halfway to the trees, I’m running on two different legs with two more fake legs bouncing around next to my head and a giant truck entering the field behind me, billowing black smoke into the air. Seriously, what a day.