Zombies

by Don Roff

  February 1, 2012

  I’m alone. I’m not sure why I’m even keeping this notebook. There doesn’t seem to be much point. Death is everywhere. Even the living are dead. I may be as good as dead. What I have, I have this notebook, and:

  The axe

  Food (a week’s worth?) and water

  The GPS

  A watch (why?)

  Ryan’s .22, ammo

  Clothes (important, it’s cold)

  A lighter

  A tent (terrified of using, can’t risk being trapped inside if I need to run, wrapping it around me like a sleeping bag)

  Flashlight, batteries

  What I also have is the woods. Never sure if the next cracking branch or brush of leaves is an animal—a fellow survivor of the natural world—or something worse.

  February 3, 2012

  Woke up today to a sword at my neck.

  “Breathe,” I heard. I opened my eyes and jumped.

  “Good.”

  Another survivor. Her name is Katherine.

  “My story. Okay, sure. Everything went to hell.”

  She doesn’t need any of my food. We compare notes on what works and what doesn’t.

  “Guns, yeah. Wait for them to jam.”

  Does she know what happened?

  “Primodene, nobody knows, but the last news I heard was blaming the food. Like it even matters why now. You think?”

  Primodine R&D isn’t far from here. Like 20 miles. She’s from near there, can point me. She’s heading north. There’s an encampment called the Farm in Canada broadcasting on 1031 AM. A radio—I’m realizing now I don't have one. This is good though—humans broadcasting. There’s hope. I weigh whether to investigate what’s happening now at Primodine or go north with her and she makes the decision for me.

  “I make better time alone.”

  February 6, 2012

  Headed for Primodine. Making slow progress, maybe 6-7 miles a day, when it’s light. Using roads for short periods and then back off them into the woods. I’ll make some distance, then wait, hide, listen, rest, and move along some more. Spent some of last night in a tree after hearing something moving nearby. Could have been anything, probably (hopefully) an animal. Along the roads so far, no cars, no zombies, no people.

  Heard woodpeckers, saw an eagle. Peaceful, except for the constant terror. I can see attacks coming when I close my eyes. It feels strange to be alone again after just a brief encounter.

  So many people dead, and still more dying. I’ve been incredibly lucky so far.

  I don’t feel lucky.

  It’s strange to have nothing but the natural world around. It feels especially empty with nothing coming down the road. The wind is terrifying, I keep freezing in place whenever it picks up to make sure everything else stops moving when it stops. I think I’m nearing Bellingham.

  February 8, 2012

  Zombies. I must be getting close to Primodine. Saw a few techie looking zombies wandering the road in various states of decay. Encouragingly, a few of them in pretty bad condition. Where are they going? And why? Separated from the pack. They’re using the road, too, same as I am. Sense memory? My progress is slower now. I’m not silent in my own movements, I’m too tired, but I haven’t been noticed. They don’t seem to be able to smell me–no sign so far that they have any sense of smell.

  I can smell them, though.

  February 10, 2012

  PRIMODINE. I’m in.

  The R&D facility is sort of in the middle of nowhere, I assume to discourage the curious. The complex itself is surrounded by a high wall. The main entrance gate is open, but there are zombies wandering in and out, employees—or “former” employees. A car had driven up over an embankment at what must have been flooring-it speed, now sitting with the front end buried in the guard’s kiosk. Some remains scattered. Crows. There are a number of zombies wandering along the exterior wall, occasionally walking into the wall, gnawing at the air. I’ve been moving along a culvert and was able to find another less infested entrance on the north side of the perimeter.

  had to kill two zombies that had noticed me as I moved along the inside of the wall. Using the axe. In a way the blunt end works better. My first swing with the blade split the head of a zombie in a lab coat down the middle but it wasn’t a killing blow it just kept coming. Dropped it with the blunt end and took off the head. Another one rounded the corner and I used the blade sideways to get the head off sooner. I hid after that to see what would happen next but the fight didn’t seem to draw any attention, and other zombies didn’t pay any notice to the “dead” zombies. I found a keycard still attached to the once-white lab jacket of a half-eaten doctor, but didn't actually need it. The door locks aren't activated and the power seems to be fully down.

  Inside, the smell is indescribable, literally stunning—zombies in an enclosed area and corpses of humans, some torn apart on or around their desks. I tied a t-shirt around my mouth and nose until I was able to find a filter mask. Still, my eyes sting. With the power out, it’s pitch-black in here at night, and the exterior-facing offices are really the only thing I’m willing to brave during the day. Don’t dare use the flashlight when moving around, but using it in moments when the coast is clear.

  Zombies milling about, wandering the halls, walking in and out of offices. I'm hiding in an office with a desk against the one door, using the flashlight inside a supply closet. So this is home for tonight. There’s paper everywhere, all around the building, just kind of strewn about amid the other debris. Sitting here reading sheaths of printed e-mails, reports, files. All just office tedium. Meetings. Financial reports. Some discussion about bonding polymers related to the pliability of rubber garbage can lids—stuff not worth caring about, if anyone was alive to care.

  duration remaining in the body after ingestion. No negative reactions in human trials or in widespread consumption thereafter. Toxicity reached on average of six months after first exposure or (unclear) upon accumulation of unknown levels of the compound. Cause of reaction unknown as yet. Testing reveals consistent results as indicated above across batches of the compound manufactured at domestic and international facilities. Some subjects showing no signs of reaction despite high exposure levels; theorizing genetic factor in some cases. We may need to expand our research base to achieve inquiry results on requested timetable due to staff illnesses. Main staff is on NTK basis. Discussion restricted. Please advise.

  — Tom

  Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

  February 11, 2012

  Found this e-mail in a stack of papers at one of the printers, went back but couldn’t find the first page. It doesn’t say what the compound is. C88 has been on the market pretty heavy since late summer. I eat pretty healthy but C88’s in everything and it’s hard to avoid, and I’ve been living on almost nothing but processed food for a month now. What’s the toxicity point? Have I hit it? Will I soon? The compound didn’t seem to be affecting subjects in the same way, and some maybe not at all. That’s something to hold on to. Weird to think that, what with that 90% initial infection rate in the early days, that might leave a billion? people around the world, fighting off 8 billion living dead, and that these are hopeful numbers. But what are the people who are left eating? If the trigger was in the food, all the food containing the compound would have to be destroyed. What’s left out there? Was anywhere unaffected? How infectious are the human dead, let alone the living dead? Do we need to just put a match to everything and start over, provided we get the chance?

  February 12, 2012

  It’s my birthday today. I’m 33. To celebrate I had a potentially zombifying nutritional bar from my pack (peanut butter chocolate chip) and a bottle of potentially zombifying nutritional water that promises calm focus, energy, and antioxidants (tropical breeze). I’ll try to stay away from this stuff given the chance, but I don’t have another option at this point, trying to limit my intake but feeling too shaky to not eat. Not finding anything else
in the papers in the office. I’m not willing to risk busting into file cabinets because of the sound. I’ve been undetected so far but I can’t stay here. There seem to be more zombies in the halls, more shapes. The doorknob to the outside hall rattled about an hour ago and my heart stopped. The desk against the door held it closed. I couldn’t tell if a zombie had bumped against the door or had actually tried the knob. I have to get out of here.

  February 13, 2012

  I’m out. There was commotion outside, whooping and shouting—human— and the halls mostly emptied of zombies. I got outside and a bunch of survivors, maybe a dozen of them, were shooting and torching their way through the dead. I came out waving my arms and yelling and just kept shouting and luckily they recognized me as human. One of them made me strip down to check me for bites and wounds and then sprayed me down with a can of household antibacterial spray, which hurt like hell. One member was going around spray painting skulls on the walls. The rest just killing zombies. They’re traveling in an improvised armored bus painted with skulls, like a combination street gang and paramilitary outfit, and they seem to be having a good time. No fear.

  Angel seems to be the leader.

  * * *

  “You’re lucky we came by, man. We’re not finding too may survivors, you know? Lots of these dead freaks though. We’re just killing as many of these things as we can, but they’re like everywhere. Keeping us busy.”

  He laughed at that. This is the first time I’ve heard anyone laugh in a long time, and it I don’t like it.

  “We find 'em and kill 'em and claim 'em, leave our mark. Nobody else is doing anything. Nothing else left to do. These here are the end of days, man. Things have turned and the low down have risen up. I was just a mechanic with some job just clocking time, work, home, work, home, but now it’s all happening. It’s here, and we’re doing the Good Work. They’re weak, and we’re strong. Crap on the radio about survivor this and that up north but this is all too far gone. Look around you. When’s the last time you seen an airplane? Think you’ll ever see one again? You’re the first person we seen alive in two weeks. It’s all already gone. All this has to keep moving toward the end and we’re just helping grease the wheels till we get to the next thing. There’ll be a final tally in the end and we’re working on our numbers.”

  * * *

  They’ve got a zombie chained to the back of the bus, who they call “Clyde.” He’s in a caked, crusty Armani suit and tie. Occasionally they’ll hand him something, like dead cell phone, and Clyde will hold it and sort of look at it? His movements are dopey, feeble. Dead maybe a couple weeks? They’ll also occasionally shoot him, but not in the head. He seems to be around for amusement value, they don’t seem to have any scientific interest in him. I don’t like giving the zombie a name. It’s been easy to forget that the zombies were people.

  I am tempted to draw a blood sample from “Clyde” for future study, but I am afraid that my efforts might get noticed. I’m already treated with borderline contempt. I think they see me as weak. With a zombie up close here I’m more disturbed than ever by the suggestion of anything human left in them. Awareness is terrifying for what it means in dealing with the zombies that are left. It’s also a sort of nightmare—do they know what they were, or what they’ve become?

  Clyde is pretty “ripe.” They’ve hung a bunch of air fresheners off his suit, but that’s infinitely worse. You catch the pine fresh smell, an old world smell, and then the rotten odor, what everything smells like now.

  February 14, 2012

  Valentine’s Day spent driving in the bus, with Angel and the rest. They’re all shooting stray zombies wandering along the roads. That it’s hard to get a “killshot” is a sort of sport for them. Sometimes they’ll shoot out a zombie’s legs and pull over to take off the head with a shovel, sometimes they’ll just not slow down and hit the zombie with the bus, knocking it off onto the side of the road. The fact that I’m keeping a journal has come front and center. “Hey college, you want to read me one of your poems?”

  February 15, 2012

  I left the camp last night to go “use the bathroom” at the edge of the trees, after stuffing the bus’s hand-crank radio in my jacket. What were they going to do with it? After a few minutes they noticed that I’d also taken my pack with me and there was yelling and some shooting into the woods in my direction, but no real pursuit. I kept moving. I need the radio to find this camp up north. Intermittent transmission, or at least I’ve only been able to get it intermittently, on 1031 AM, from “The Farm” located outside of Strawberry Ridge, Saskatchewan. They give GPS coordinates and other directions. They’re promising food and safety. I’m not ready to give up, more convinced of that than ever.

  February 18, 2012

  Been travelling. Using the GPS and a map. I am now in Canada and moving northwest. The Farm transmits a radio message every day. It says basically the same thing: Coordinates, band of survivors searching for the like, food and shelter from the plague of dead. There is optimism in the woman’s voice—it’s inviting. I eat what natural food I can find, berries, fish. I mostly go hungry.

  The miles heading north have been taxing. I think I’ve burned through all my body fat. I’m shivering and I need food.

  Tried to snare a rabbit using a shoelace. I saw the technique used on a TV show once.

  After I made the snare, a simple slipknot, I put it in the path of some rabbit tracks I found. I was baiting it with some corn chip crumbs. Nothing so far.

  I was checking my trap and a zombie came up on me, couldn’t have been very fast, and it was wearing range orange so I don’t know how I missed it—my senses are dulled. I bolted without thinking onto the edge of the frozen lake and the zombie followed, but went down on its back on the ice and like a turtle it struggled to right itself for quite a while. No signs of any other zombies following so I took time to sketch it. Perhaps this is a good omen for me heading north.

  February 19, 2012

  A night indoors. I found a small cabin in the woods that seemed unoccupied, until I opened the door. Zombie inside rose and came at me, an old man, moving relatively quickly. It got out past the doorway and even weak as I was, I managed to drop it with a piece of cordwood and bash its skull in with another. No one else inside. The cabin seems like an overnight, shack? I guess would be the way to describe it. The woodstove inside was still slightly warm, the old man must have been human not very long ago. Checking the corpse again outside, it had a wicked bite mark on its forearm that had been bandaged in a torn bit of shirt, pathetically, as if that would help. The old man didn’t have anything with him. Where had he come from? And what had bitten him? It occurred to me that I probably should have killed the zombie from yesterday, but I’m just so tired. Tonight, shelter from the wind, a warm fire, and a securely locked door.

  February 22, 2012

  Slept and slept and slept. No sense of how long or what day it was until consulting the watch. Spent two days in the cabin and feel rested but also weaker, less willing to go outside. Sure, I could stay at the cabin forever, just go to sleep forever. Hunger finally drove me out and onward to a small town near the border.

  Came across a truck stop convenience store/gas station. Inside, the smell of rotten food and decomposing corpses. The place had been looted, but in haste, so I’ve managed to find some cans of food here and there amid the debris, including a CAN OF BAKED BEANS, which I started eating immediately while still inside the store before noticing my surroundings, nearly threw it all back up. Some scattered, crushed bags of snacks clearly advertising “Flavor Burst” and other C88-derived benefits. Can’t I can’t. It’ll all be here if I can’t find anything else. No one else left to eat it.

  I was feeling better with some food in my stomach and cautiously roaming around—the town seems empty—when I noticed vultures circling above what turned out to be the high school’s outdoor stadium. The parking lot was full of cars. As I got closer I could see bodies in the stands, slumped over one another
at one end of the stadium. Row after row of corpses with empty cups at their feet. A mass suicide? Why would these people were they uninfected, or fearing infection to come? What had they heard or seen to lead them to do this?

  February 23, 2012

  Signs of infection as I wandered through the town today. Some human corpses, some zombie corpses? Dead anyway. Not moving. Hard to tell the difference.

  I came across a small car with its windows down. Cars. I could drive north. I walked up and looked inside—nothing in the back seat. In the driver’s seat, a body still seat-belted in. The keys were in the ignition. I decided it was worth the risk. I opened the car door and jabbed the corpse in the ribs with the tip of my axe. No movement. I went around to the passenger side door, opened it, and slid in so that I could unbuckle the belt. Its eyes opened as soon as I reached for the buckle. For a second I thought it might be a human dying rather than dead, but it wasn’t. It grabbed my jacket but I was able to wedge the blade to take off the hand and I jumped out of the car, the severed hand still clutching. I tore off my jacket and threw it on the ground, shut the creature back up in the car and ran. I should have killed it but I couldn’t make myself get close to it again even with it still belted in the seat. Nothing and no one took any notice of what had just happened. No signs of life. After about 30 seconds I stopped running.