Safety (One Eighteen: Migration Book 1)

by Christopher Wiig

  One Eighteen: Migration

  Book 1: Safety

  By Wiig, Sailors, and Ross

  Copyright 2012 by Christopher Wiig, Aaron Sailors and Will Ross

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the writer, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for purposes of a review.

  Cover design/images by Aaron Sailors

  Interior Design by The Mad Formatter

  www.TheMadFormatter.com

  First printing: February 2012

  Kindle Edition

  Table of Contents

  Forward: Why Zombies?

  Chapter 1: Welcome to Greenly

  Chapter 2: Dreams and Dreamers

  Chapter 3: The Honey Trap

  Chapter 4: Louisville Sucker Punch

  Chapter 5: Pills and Paranoia

  Chapter 6: The Drugs We Need, The Drugs We Want

  Chapter 7: Dispatches from the Bathroom Floor

  Chapter 8: The Long Crawl

  Chapter 9: Welcome Back Sucker

  Chapter 10: Cutting the String

  Forward

  “Why Zombies”

  By Mikey Taylor

  I love zombies.

  Have for as long as I can remember. I never really thought about why, but they were always my favorite.

  Recently I've been spending a lot more of my time studying the ghouls that I've had a growing obsession with since I was young, and I've been asking myself a few questions about them.

  Why are these rotten flesh eaters so beloved? Why have they held their spot in popular culture for so long? On the surface the answer is obvious, zombies are cool.

  Plain and simple?

  Maybe. If the saying "art imitates life" is true, then we know that zombies are not plain and simple monsters. There are many lessons to be learned from simple tales of these walking corpses.

  Often our attention is drawn to the shambling dead, but the lessons in these stories come from the actions of those that are still living, not the monsters they're faced with. Any zombie story that's worth it's salt will have a strong cast of characters that are just trying to survive. The zombies are simply a backdrop. (A necessary and cool one, but still just a backdrop.)

  The challenge to anyone who dares follow in the footsteps of the greats like George Romero,Lucio Fulci, Tom Savini, Max Brooks, (and so many more,) is to make your story stand out amongst the horde of undead work.

  The creators of One Eighteen: Migration have done just that.

  They have created characters that you would love to know, or love to hate. They have provided new and interesting takes on the classic zombie plague. They have created a world filled with danger, excitement, torture, turmoil, love, hate, and loss.

  Bottom line is they have done their homework and created one damn fine zombie story.

  In the 1978 classic "Dawn of the Dead" Ken Foree's character said "When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth."

  On June 13, 2007, Hell came to South Dakota.

  Welcome to Greenly... hope you survive your stay.

  Mikey Taylor

  Global Chapter Leader

  Zombie Research Society

  “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of Hell and of death."

  - Revelations 1:18

  “How do you manage your rage?”

  Dr. Hannibal Lecter

  Chapter 1:

  Welcome to Greenly

  “All our times have come.

  Here, but now they're gone.”

  Blue Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper

  Document ID PosI-G118:

  "The Journal of Jonas Waight"

  WARNING:

  The following document, designated PosI-G118, should be consulted only under class 2 quarantine conditions and with the direct supervision of a separate, insulated security detail (see attached [documents/transcripts.])

  This notebook (spiral bound, 600 pages, red) was found on the body of an Altered Organism destroyed while approaching Checkpoint Delta on the Causeway Bridge, in Fort Galveston, Texas.

  [File note: Captain H.K. Sheppard, and two other men at the checkpoint (Sgt Brian Fisher and SGT Richard Hodges) maintain the AO was in fact “delivering” the document. Though this cannot be verified, it is troubling, (if true.)

  The AO was destroyed, and the coroners reports indicate certain crude biological adjustments had been made to it. [See attached report and photographs.]]

  Should consultation of this document be required, it must be done only in short sessions (no longer than 30 minutes) and only by those personnel with no history of mental instability.

  Consider this document a bio-hazard.

  Any hallucinations, visual or auditory, (no matter how innocuous,) must be reported immediately to the nearest medical unit, and anyone consulting this document must consent to psychiatric evaluation when ordered.

  Consult with care.

  February 14th, 2008

  (Valentine's Day)

  Hi.

  I spent a lot of time thinking about how to start this journal. I considered the poetic "My name is Jonas Waight , and I am alive," or something semi-scholarly like "A Dissertation on the Rebuilding of Society in the Presence of the Animated Dead."

  I pondered Ramboesque rallying cries to inspire future generations to fight on, or a quote from a Shelley poem to set a proper tone of dread for the situation we as a species find ourselves in.

  There's something so relevant about:

  "'Look on my works, ye mighty... and despair.'"

  In my most shameful hour I even considered starting with a Webster's Dictionary definition. I'm sure my students would have found that hypocritical (if any of them are still alive.) I really used to hate that.

  But the majority of my students couldn't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, so if they're still walking around, it's unlikely they're spending much time ferreting out hypocrisy. It's ironic that in death (unlike college) they now prefer brains over looks.

  My apologies for the digression, and for the terrible joke. Both will happen a lot. Still, to come through all of this with some sense of humor intact is a victory in and of it's self.

  (Isn't it?)

  I settled on "Hi,” because it's simple, and it's human. To me, that one common greeting says more about what it is to be a living, breathing person than a thousand well-chosen quotes from the best poetry or prose. To say hello to a person means a possibility of cooperation.

  Humanity.

  The dead don't need greetings. They have no use for pleasantries or politeness. They don't need recognition or even individualism. They don't need ideas or tools, because they do not and will not ever seek to build.

  They are our polar opposite. They aren't undead.

  They're 'anti-humans'.

  Anti-life.

  Dead Things are strictly destructive creatures; like locusts, or bacteria. They are selfish, angry flesh, driven by instincts and nothing more; and with no end other than to destroy things that are not like them.

  To be crude, they break shit.

  To be human is to create, to wonder, and to collaborate. And cooperation, not intelligence, is why some of us are still alive. That and a fair amount of luck.

  If you're reading this, I'm sorry. Not that I'm probably dead, though I'm not thrilled about that, but that I had to be your historian throughout however many pages I get through before my luck runs out. I ho
pe something in these pages helps you, and I'm sorry I have to be your storyteller.

  The sad truth is this. I am a hack. I'm a Religious Studies major and my minor was History. I got a B in English Comp, but I'm no poet.

  Nothing I write will be sufficient to address just how grave the situation is that we as a species find ourselves in, but I do promise to be honest, and to try.

  So what's the purpose of this journal?

  To be honest, I'm not sure.

  Frankly, I just felt like I had to write. There's not a lot to do in town after nightfall, and writing passes the time. Whether anyone will ever read this is irrelevant to me. The writing helps me organize my thoughts and ideas.

  I expect it to be roughly half a log of events, and half my personal thoughts and experiences, presented in as organized a manner as possible. They'll be my recollections, but I'll try to make them accurate and reliable.

  I may edit future versions if this ever goes to print, (will books ever be printed again in an organized fashion? Something to think about) if only to spare the feelings of some of the people I plan to write about.

  I guess its worth spending a few pages getting some background down on paper. I have to say it feels a little silly. Here goes.

  My name is Jonas Waight, and I'm 31 years old. I was living in the town of Greenly, South Dakota - population 400 when the change happened.

  There are 130 of us still alive.

  I was a college professor in Iowa City in my pre-change life, but was spending the summer running Waight Hardware, a mom-and-pop hardware store on 4th and Spring street in Greenly, South Dakota. Literally mom and pop, my parents owned it.

  This was not fun for me. I normally spend my summers on archeological digs in Israel; Bethsaida for two years, Sepphoris for three before that, helping to expand academic understanding of pre-Christian religious symbology in Roman Galilee.

  (If that doesn't sound like a wasted life now, I don't know what does. All the education that scholarships could buy didn't stop me from being in the right place at the wrong time.)

  What started as a few week long diversion in early summer became my temporary career when my parents were killed in a car accident at the end of May.

  They'd been driving back from vacation when it happened, coming back from Kansas City on I-29 in a rain-storm that the newspaper article about their death would describe as “a doozey.”

  On the opposite side of the highway a truck towing a boat rear-ended another car. The boat trailer detached in the impact and went barreling across the highway. It hit my parents RV head on.

  The police said Dad probably never saw it. There was so much rain coming down he and Mom were probably gone before they knew anything was amiss. It seems callous, but I'm glad it happened that way; when it did.

  They checked out early.

  The funeral mourners were somber, and I played somber while feeling guilty for not being somber. I certainly wasn't happy. I wasn't annoyed. I wasn't confused. I just wasn't... anything.

  I felt awful, but in the way one might feel if their two favorite authors died in the same day. It was tragic, when it should have been sad. I'm not sure why.

  I shook hands and collected Tupperwares of casserole (middle-class Xanax) and did my best to look the way I was supposed to. But I felt distant.

  I guess never really connected with my parents in meaningful way and that makes me sad. It wasn't that I didn't love them, I did. And they loved me. The love-bond was there, and we all got along. We just didn't like each other the way I always felt we should.

  I think they felt cheated. They'd expected a quarterback, and ended up with a bookworm. They were country and I never was. My father tried fishing, tried little league, tried football. I could do them all, but I was never drawn to any of them. Eventually he stopped trying.

  Finally they settled into a level of comfort in the person I was. They was proud of me the way a man might be proud of an accidentally beneficial pool shot, baffled as to how they got me, but proud of me anyway.

  “We were trying to make a jock and didn't, but whatever the hell this is got a scholarship to pay for it's own college so it must be special in it's own way.” They did their best, but I made myself scarce to avoid causing discomfort, and was sure to like the right things just enough to avoid embarrassing them.

  Books made that easy.

  Even as a child I found myself drawn to reading and other solitary pursuits. It wasn't just my parents I felt awkward around. Without an all-consuming interest in varsity sports and hunting, I never really fit in with the people of Greenly. As with my parents, it wasn't an issue of intellectual vs ignorant, I just didn't fit in.

  I left a week after graduating high school and didn't return for more than a decade.

  Then the funeral, then trying to work through the financial and literal mess that was all parts of 'Waight Hardware.' My father and I are night and day when it comes to organization.

  (Were night and day.)

  I was supposed to be in Iowa City preparing papers for publication and instead I was here, trying to negotiate a property sale. The buyer, Jebediah Greenly, also happens to be the town's mayor.

  Jeb's great-great-grandfather founded the town, a fact he's never shy about reminding people of. The Greenlys are local royalty, and between Jeb in the Mayor's Office and Horace in the Sheriff's Office, they might as well just do away with the town council and declare Jeb king.

  Jeb was willing to buy the business, but for less than the funeral and arrangements had cost. It wasn't worth a lot more than that, (we'd flown out some extended family, and that hadn't been cheap) but the amount he was offering was insulting. I was just about ready to put away my pride and settle.

  Just a day or two too late, unfortunately.

  (Fortunately?)

  We were down to the final details of the sale, handshake done, documents incoming, when the world broke down and money became irrelevant. After the initial chaos of the first seventy-two hours I found myself both alive, and in a surprisingly lucky position.

  Hardware stores in small town are fairly modest affairs, but when we were all forced into a barter economy, I suddenly became one of the wealthiest men in Greenly. Waight sells ammunition, and having a few extra rounds has become very important. And we have tools.

  The Barricade that keeps us safe was built almost entirely with tools loaned out from Waight Hardware. The same thing goes for the home defenses of most of the town (should The Barricade fail, occupied homes are prepared.)

  When you're rebuilding a society from scratch, it turns out that it's the hammer and bullet, not the hammer and sickle, that are most important. Apparently Stalin and Lenin were right. Marx was WAY off. I went from owning a problem, to owning the solution to everyone else's problems.

  I became a trader almost by accident, bartering just to keep people from taking “one of everything.”

  The cans of food started as a way to be sure I'd get my tool back and keep food in my stomach. Then the food started pouring in. It piled up and I started to feel guilty about having it, so I started circulating cans of food for things I needed.

  Then someone wouldn't have something I needed, but it was something someone else needed. I was in a position to help, so I did. Even if they didn't have anything I wanted, I could find someone who needed what they did have. With a little cleverness we found ways to make everyone happy.

  Suddenly I'd become a buisnessman.

  So, yeah... it took a complete societal break down, bad luck, and nails to make me wealthy for the first time in my life. Unfortunately, being wealthy post-apocalypse is a lot like being valedictorian of summer school. You're only marginally better off than all the other poor bastards.

  So, why are some of us still alive and sane?

  If I had to take luck out of the list of possible answers, my second choice would be The Barricade. It surrounds our town like a castle keep... or a prison fence, depending on a person's point of view. It's not pretty, but
it keeps the Dead Things out.

  (It's also not a barricade, really; it's a fence, or a wall. But that's splitting hairs.)

  The first two weeks of the change were the hardest, (especially the first seventy-two hours.) It was anarchy, and if you asked everyone in town what happened, you'd get a hundred different versions of the story.

  (Think Rashomon with less rape and more animated corpses.)

  (And fewer samurai.)

  After the initial chaos there was a period of semi-calm where we started to get organized. We moved between Barricaded houses. We poked our heads out. We managed to kill a lot of Dead Things.

  But weren't exactly safe.

  It was easy to talk amongst each other, visit, check on neighbors... but people were still dying, usually daily. Between the paranoia caused by the insane and the carnage caused by the corpses, movement (and civilization) were impossible.

  Dead Things would wander in, solitary or in groups. A desperate stranger would visit and try to grab something that didn't belong to them. One of the unhinged would make themselves known violently.

  Horace or a Deputy would sound the warning with three bursts of an air-horn. We'd all run home, hole up, and pray. Townspeople with guns would fire out windows, and the Deputies would walk the streets, hunting.

  We'd shoot what needed to be shot, then wait until Horace Greenly declared the town safe again. After a month of this, (and two accidental shootings) we'd had it. The cavalry wasn't coming, and it was up to us to fend for ourselves.

  So we designed and built The Barricade.