by GJ Zukow
When I came to the abandoned and partially collapsed house, there were still a dozen or so of the zeds wandering around. Most were inside the house, obviously unable to figure out a path through the rubble. I was able to inexpertly kill two of the wretches with the composite bow before I was spotted. Once one of them caught sight of me, all of the other horrors knew of my presence. It was a good thing they came at me all spread apart as they did. I'm finding there's a learning curve with the sword as well, it feels awkward in my hands. The only time I thought about resorting to using my pistol was once I got inside the house. It was almost a close thing, the gladius is great for close in melee but in a confined space with multiple opponents it has some real drawbacks. The sword served me well, in any case, slicing deep through flesh and bone, remaining in good sturdy shape. The wounds I received drew blood but they are nothing more than scratches and bruises from their wicked grasping hands.
All of my stuff was still there, so was Allan's. The only thing Allan had taken with him when he fled was his backpack. I'm sure, if he's still alive, that he'll eventually come back for what he had to leave behind, as I have. It took me two trips to carry all of the stuff back to the church. I left a message, spray painted in the closet I escaped from, letting Allan know I will try to come back and meet up with him again every Friday between noon and one. I'm hoping I don't have to wait too long to see him again. The only thing I didn't find, that I really wanted, was my old journal.
Sunday, I made my way past the old house, searching carefully for any sign of Allan. I didn't find anything conclusive. I did locate the sound of the explosions I heard during the day last Friday. There was almost a full block of burned out buildings about a mile past the old house. The only building still standing (and it won't last long) has had one of its walls blown down with the whole remaining structure teetering on complete collapse. I found a couple of ripped open and destroyed remains of what appears to be propane or natural gas tanks. It's quite possible that someone purposely set them off, the charred corpses of quite a few of the previously famished undead lie all around the now destroyed tool and die shop. Only if someone were inside would they be in such numbers around any single building like they were. Maybe Allan hid here and found himself surrounded again. If so then he split for somewhere else. No telling where he went if it was him. Anyways, that was the only interesting thing I found in my investigation as to where Allan could be. He hadn't come back for his stuff he left behind in his hasty departure from the fallen safehouse. I debated briefly with myself, deciding on whether I should take his stuff with me to keep it safe or leave it there. In the end I carried two more heavy loads back to the church. Along with my spray painted note to Allan in the closet I hope he recognizes both of our stuff has been removed as a clue that I was here and still kickin' (at least that I was, anyways). Nothing more I can do on that front until Friday, I guess.
Last night, around three o'clock in the morning I witnessed something I never wanted to set eyes upon, as if seeing the undead wandering around isn't bad enough. I had been checking the neighborhood around the church out, looking for any sign of other survivors when I noticed something highly unusual. A half mile down the street four figures were slowly walking towards the street the church resides upon. At first I thought them merely another handful of the undead as no other of the cannibalistic monsters reacted to their presence in any way. It was only after I spotted them in my following sweep, once they had gotten closer, that I noticed they were all carrying weapons. The dead carry nothing. The night vision goggles I recovered from the old safehouse paid for my sweat lugging them back here with their first use, if I had been relying on my own vision I might not have seen them for what they were until it was far too late. These were more of those 'Reds' that were driven as mad as hatters by the parasite. When they came close I stayed low to the roof, I swear I heard one of them run through the grounds hunting for someone or something. When I popped back up from my hiding I saw them disappearing down the street. I certainly hope that this is an isolated, random thing for the Reds to be wandering my neighborhood. This is just another reason I'm going to find something better than this church to wait out the apocalypse in. If the Reds are based just down the street and they often come this way than I can't safely stay here for any length of time.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
With the overwhelming plethora of walking dead and the lack of any small game that used to form the base of the food chain now nearly extinct (if not completely wiped-out), some of the animals are starting to view the animated corpses as a food source. The whole natural order has been dealt a severe blow and I'm positive that the famished critters are resorting to eating the foul flesh of the undead out of starvation and not choice. The zeds haven't started recognizing the animals as potential threats yet, only responding once they find themselves under attack. Big, black crows and ravens have taken to gathering in huge murders and landing directly onto any large gathering of the undead. They land on the animated corpses head and shoulders and take quick, vicious pecks of corpse flesh and then fly off again when the horrible monstrosity finally reacts by wildly flailing its arms and moving around to escape the sharp beaks. It's almost comical to watch the undead things bite and snap at the birds only to take a bite out of the air. After a few minutes the zombies seem to forget all about the flying menace and go back to their staggering, wandering, aimless walking. Then the hungry birds return, getting in a few choice pecks before the undead reacts all over again. I haven't actually seen a zed returned to the grave because of the birds, bone is still bone and the birds can't peck their way into where it matters the most, the brain. Some of the undead the birds have been feasting on are nothing more than eyeless, ivory skulls attached to a half eaten neck and well pecked shoulders. Dogs, on the other hand, are actually entertaining to watch. I viewed a pack of large, gaunt canines stalking a handful of the living dead yesterday. The mangy, now feral, curs almost playfully surround their chosen victims first, running around excitedly among the undead that are completely unaware of what the dogs are about to do. Once the pack is in position, there seems to be a silent signal that heralds the sudden attack upon the unsuspecting parasite controlled cadavers. In a split-second the biggest of the dogs picks out a zed and jumps on it, knocking it down, usually from behind. Once the abomination is prone the other animals of the pack close in, jaws snapping, quickly ripping and tugging the unholy thing into a limbless, squirming torso. The dogs seem to pay very careful attention to the jaws of the undead. I'm sure in their previous hunting they've witnessed, first hand, the incredible strength with which the undead bite. None of the other undead in the vicinity seems to care that they lost one of their number just a few feet away. The pack repeats this behavior until their bellies are full. I watched this one particular pack hunt and devour three of the undead before they disappeared back into the ruins of the city.
No matter how many scenes of horror or misery I've seen, I often run across something more horrible than I would have imagined possible. Every week at least, I come across something that sticks in my mind and defiles my dreams forever. Today, while exploring a modest, middle class home I found something that sends a chill running through me still. While I knew immediately there were undead in the house, I wasn't prepared for it. In an infants' gaily decorated and painted bedroom was something that should never have been. The crib held a squirming aberration, highlighted by the thick shaft of sunlight streaming in from a window. The baby couldn't have been more than a few months old when it died and was evilly resurrected. It didn't cry or make any sound at all but when it saw me it still opened and closed its toothless jaws, wanting nothing else than for me to feed its cold black maw with my flesh. As the things small arms and grasping fingers reached towards me in a mimicry of life (once those same motions were attempts to be held in its mother's arms), I felt nothing but fear. I don't know why I felt such fear, it was tougher killing that one thing than all the other undead I've killed before.
There was a toddler with well rotted diapers, the last pieces of which were hanging off his tiny hips in the next room. I had to take care of him also. Stomping the infant’s sibling to death didn't bother me so much. The Gods must have been truly pissed off at mankind for this kind of hell to manifest itself on Earth.
These past few days I've been concentrating on trying to find other survivors. I'm sure a lot of those still alive were caught short when the electricity and the water went out. Unless the survivors had the foresight to stock up on water, lots of it, they would eventually have to find more. I reasoned that the easiest place to get drinkable water, for now, was to loot the last of the stocks in the stores. So this morning I spotted a good building overlooking the majority of a rather large shopping center. Eventually somebody is bound to come around to scavenge for supplies. Turns out I wasn't the only one with this idea. It's almost instinctual now, finding a vantage point and scanning any area before I proceed. Any time I find the chance, I like to pre-plan my route. I hate running blindly into a herd of the gruesome undead.
The biggest share of the wandering undead have ended up in what I like to call herds. Drawn together by sight, movement, or unnatural sounds they end up, over time, grouped together. In bunches of a dozen or so, up to huge uncountable masses, they seem always to be slowly moving around. Just because there was a herd of slowly shuffling and crawling abominations in one spot yesterday doesn't mean they're there today. The only time I see them staying in one area is when there's a reason, that reason usually being the nearby presence of food. The rest of the undead straggle around, spread out and mindlessly wandering or standing around. A lot of the stragglers seem to have gotten lost or trapped in a backyard or building, lacking the necessary intelligence to find a way out. The stragglers are easy to kill or avoid but attracting the notice of one of those herds is a bad thing. So many times I have simply wanted to cross the street but ended up having to go a half a mile further down the road to sprint across, hoping I didn't get spotted. Always I have to take a circuitous route, just to lose the unwanted attention of any living dead who caught sight of me as I try to keep a healthy distance from one herd or another. I've lost track of the number of undead I've returned to the grave. I kill an easy dozen or so every day when I'm scouting and scavenging. I had thought of keeping a running tally of the undead I put back into the grave but by now the body count would be well into the thousands.
As I got closer to the nameless office building that I wanted to use as my lookout post for the next couple days or week, I noticed that a couple of stragglers were converging below one of the shattered windows of the second floor. The room they were starting to gather under was the exact same room I had wanted to checkout as my first choice for my surveillance of the mall. I ended up having to come around, making a round-about way to the building from the rear. It seemed that more than one of the undead stragglers that I passed were also dragging their rotting bodies over to the ruined office. That made me curious as to what they were being drawn to. They certainly weren't acting as if they knew of the presence of prey, they were much too calm in their plodding movements.
It wasn't hard to get inside the building, most of the windows were shattered long ago. Slowly, cautiously, as silently as I could, I made careful, deliberate steps through the debris and detritus that covered most of the room’s floor. Once inside the hallway, no longer did leaves and trash cover the carpet. Instead, a thick blanket of dust covered the once bright weave. In the dust it was plain to see another set of footsteps. There was just one set of footprints, they led to the non-working elevator and continued past it, to the stairwell. It seemed to take me ten minutes to make my way up the stairs to the second floor. I was determined to find out what was going on here, although I was nervous as hell after finding a recently killed zed on the landing between the sets of stairs. The monstrosity had its noodle bashed in with something big and heavy, although there was no evidence as to who or what did it. My ears were straining for any sound at all and it wasn't until I had followed the prints down the hall that I heard anything. I first thought I was listening to someone mumbling to themselves, but as I listened at the closed door I could make out the small sound of an iPod or something blaring at what must have been full blast (so that I could hear it from ten feet away through a closed door). I had been hoping to find another survivor like me when I slowly opened the door. Instead I was greeted with the sight of an almost completely scarlet covered man's hairy back. He was paying no notice to me at all, intent as he was on some nudie mag. There were only small, isolated, patches of white skin left on him and I gave a start as he suddenly rolled his head and neck around, snorting when he was finished. In one ear were iPod buds and in the other ear was a Bluetooth. Even though the day was overcast and rather cool he was covered in sweat. Dirty socks, steel-toed work boots, and filthy khaki shorts were all he was wearing as he manned his post overlooking the deserted shopping plaza. I actually stood back and watched him for awhile, trying to learn as much about him before I ended his miserable existence. I slowly moved up behind him, all the time ready to kill him at a moment’s notice. Occasionally he would pick up his rifle and quickly scan the shops through the scope before returning his attention to the magazine. After a couple of minutes he did that oddly compulsive thing with his head again, making that same snorting sound when he had finished.
The third time he did that he spotted me, eyes rolling insanely as he twisted and rolled his neck and head. His black eyes barely had time to go wide as I brought the gladius down.
While I was going through his stuff (of which I found nothing I wanted, even the iPod was covered in dirt and gunk), the Bluetooth lit up. I picked it up and answered the nasty thing, keeping the filthy thing as far from touching my ear as possible, saying nothing and letting the caller speak.
"Report.", was the only word, spoken by an angry sounding male voice.
Although that was the only word said and I refused to respond, the connection stayed open for a few minutes before disconnecting without warning.
As I write, I'm now in an old house with a halfway decent view of the dilapidated building so I can see if any other of the Reds comes to retrieve or relieve their brethren. I can see the entrance to the grocery store from here but my vantage point isn't nearly as good as it would have been from the second floor of the offices.
Food is becoming more difficult to gather. Every once in awhile I find an unlooted pantry and score enough for days but usually I hardly find enough to get my fill. I’m always a bit hungry. Getting something to drink is still pretty easy for me. Every building or house has at least one toilet in it. The tanks hold about two gallons each so unless I really get wasteful with it while I'm exploring my new neighborhood I'll have no problem. I would have thought that today I would have found more to eat than what I have. Anything perishable has done so, perishing and turning into foul smelling, nauseating piles of gunk and with the electricity out the stuff in the freezers have begun to rot also. Tonight's meal is currently my choice of three different colors of canned frosting with toilet water to wash it down. Still though, it's better than the dog food I've had to eat.
Tomorrow, as it'll be Friday again, I'll make my way back to the fallen safehouse to see if Allan shows up. If he doesn't show I'll come back here and wait a few more days looking for other living, breathing, uninfected, human beings.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
I used to have my body trained so that I fell asleep around the same time every night, waking up automatically every morning just before the alarm clock went off. Since the world turned into the nightmare it has become, with the living dead scouring the earth, I can only sleep for a couple of hours at a time. My sleep is so light that any sound rouses me, I often end up falling back to sleep clutching my weapon, silently listening for danger. While the stress that causes my sleeping problem tends to make me a little tired during the day, I find it more than a little useful at times. Like on last Thursday night. I awoke ar
ound four thirty in the morning, what actually caused my eyes to open I don't know. After rubbing my eyes I looked around with the night vision goggles and viewed an electric car parked in front of the office building. It was painted a sweet gloss black with heavily tinted windows, I immediately wanted it. It would be perfect for night time driving, being dark it would be harder to see and being electric it was as silent as a whisper. The only problem is there is no electricity to charge it with. I'm not going to risk running a generator to charge it up either, the dangers are too great. This means the organized group of the infected that have taken up residence in this area must have some kind of generator running. Probably also means that their faction is the strongest in the county, being able to have the run of the streets and a secure enough camp that they can openly operate noisy combustion engines.
After a few minutes someone came out and got something from of the trunk of the car, then ran back into the building. One of the things about the night vision goggles is the fact that it's easy to spot the blackened eyes of the Reds. Their eyes reflect a lot of the ambient light around them, causing their sclera (the whites of their eyes) to shine like they're lit from the inside of their infested skulls. It would have been folly to try and shoot them in the darkness, it's a bit far of a shot for my rifle from here. Not to mention that the rifle doesn't have a night scope on it (I haven't run across one that will fit right on it yet). So I watched the building. I watched as a small flickering glow spread out in the room where my sword split the Reds face and skull in two. Moments after, two men exited the building, throwing some of the dead man's equipment into the back seat before silently driving off. In no time the building became engulfed in flames, sending dark clouds of smoke into the night air.