Zombies

by Don Roff

  Downtown, such as it is. The town’s dead, literally. I passed by a toy store window and found myself looking in. There was a slot-car track display set up, a new model updated from the kind I used to play with as a kid. Other toys, a princess costume, some stuffed bears, some toy guns—boy toys and girl toys.

  There were children in the bleachers at the stadium.

  Spending the night inside Gus’s Guns & Ammo. I’ve got new clothes, a few more layers of shirts and a down jacket from a back room inside the store. I’ve also got a pistol I found loaded in the office, where I also found what I assume was Gus. He looks like another suicide, a shot to the head, nothing much left of his head. His hand is in rigor mortis in a trigger position, but no sign of the gun. The store has been pretty thoroughly looted, so not everybody in town gave up? I shut the office door and am sleeping behind the counter. Barricaded the doors and windows as best I could. Tomorrow I’ll try the cars in the stadium lot. I have to get the hell out of here.

  February 24, 2012

  Almost killed the first human I’ve seen in more than a week. I was sound asleep when I could hear scraping metal and the front door barricade pushing in. I saw a head shape against the moonlight outside and fired, a bad shot into the wall, thank god. “Hey! Human! We don’t mean any harm! Hello?!”

  That turned out to be Joe, part of a band that’s been living out of their van for the past few months. Logically, they thought Gus’s might have weapons. There’s four of them: Joe (guitar), Phillip (guitar), Ian (bass), and Stu (drums), all in their 20s from Olympia. And they have food! Finally getting out of town, heading north with them in the van.

  February 25, 2012

  The guys take turns driving, one at the wheel, one “shotgun” to make sure the driver stays awake, two (now three) of us in the back. A different but I have to say better bad smell of a bunch of guys living in a van. A human smell. Also in the back are some cans of gas, sacks of food, various containers of water, sleeping bags. They ditched their amps and the drum kit but kept the guitars and bass, and noodle around on them sometimes. We're headed for the Farm now and spirits are pretty high.

  February 26, 2012

  I’m recording Joe’s account of what happened to them here.

  * * *

  “We were playing up and around Vancouver when people started getting sick. We’re pretty used to cruising around and crashing with friends or having someone put us up for the night, the local punk house or like student co-ops. We usually cook for them and we always leave the house cleaner than when we got there, so we have this network. Things got bad in Vancouver, people just attacking each other, everyone with the weird fever, and so we started calling around when the phones still worked and made it to some friends who were kind of isolated, they inherited this house. When we got there . . . they were dead. We just kept moving after that. We’ve got plenty of food—when everybody looted everything they went for the packaged food, like in the supermarkets and stuff. Nobody’s thinking sacks of beans and rice, like bulk, soup kitchen style, but we’re vegans on a budget, and that’s food. Been siphoning gas, been doing that for years when funds run low on tour.”

  * * *

  February 28, 2012

  Finally making some real time. As we move north, seeing fewer bodies or broken down cars. Whenever we see stopped cars we’ll usually check them out to see if they have any gas in the tank. It’s almost more upsetting when the cars are completely, inexplicably empty, but more often there are bodies. We’ll also occasionally pull off to do some cooking or just stand around a fire.

  Loopy tired, we had a couple zombies come up on us while we were stopped. The band had been sitting around playing and Ian managed to crack the closest one in the head with his bass. We set them afire with the gasoline and kept them away with branches until they fell and burned out like cinders.

  We always sleep in the van.

  March 1, 2012

  We’ve made it to the Farm. 500 miles it took us to get here. It’s a small, semi-fortified, bucolic inn, located off a series of wooded country roads about 15 miles from the nearest town. We’ve been allowed through a checkpoint but instructed to sleep in a smaller cottage building for the night, I guess to check and see if they want to let us in. I was expecting an actual farm, though this is close enough, one of the people at the checkpoint was wielding a pitchfork. Nice long handle on that, good for keeping the dead at a distance. Some rifles slung over shoulders, but also gasoline or kerosene and rags at the ready. A few charred heaps dot the yard and there’s a long low pit full of burnt human or zombie remains.

  March 2, 2012

  This morning a woman came in and took our temperature, shined a light in our eyes, asked a lot of questions about where we’d been and what we’d seen. Left and told us to wait. We passed whatever quarantine they wanted us to pass and we’ve been admitted to the big house.

  The guy in charge is named Dale Fowler. I’m recording his story here.

  * * *

  “My wife and I came up here for our honeymoon one year. She’s dead now. When the plague hit, and we knew how bad it was in the cities, I remembered this place. Off-season when I got here, so there weren’t many people around. The few that were, I had to destroy—they had turned. Pretty soon, some other like-minded folks showed up. We just decided to hole up here a while until things got better. Obviously, that didn’t happen. We fortified all the doors and windows, hunt the area for game, and for people who’ve turned, keep watch in shifts. Run the radio, hoping other people like you will show up. We need numbers, more eyes, more hands, for protection and to turn the place into a real farm by spring.”

  * * *

  March 3, 2012

  I’ve drawn the setup here as best I can. There’s no perimeter fence to speak of, which worries me, though I’m not sure what they would make one out of, or how much good it would do. There are what amount to observation points that are a bit raised up and built out of odds and ends, which are staffed during the day, and always people watching from the top windows of the main building, day and night. They cleared the area around the Farm as best they can, but there are a lot of big old trees in the woods, so there’s a limit to what can be done. The pit is where they drag bodies of zombies that have gotten this close. It’s hard to tell, maybe 30 to 40 charred corpses in the pit?

  March 4, 2012

  There are 15 other survivors here, so the band and I make 20. Some of them are from far, a few hundred miles—there are three cars and a motorcycle outside—but most came from one of the nearby towns, which are a dozen or more miles away from here. Apparently earlier on folks would venture to the towns to see what could be salvaged. There are great stores here of water, gasoline, clothes, tools, some lumber, bedding, etc. Nobody really bothers searching towns any more. “There’s nothing there.”

  It feels good to be around people again.

  March 5, 2012

  Doing my part around “The Farm.” Cooking and cleaning. Laundry! Clothes hung on lines out of the windows during the day.

  Went on a patrol today around the near woods. On the way back we saw two zombies trying to break open a woodshed door. One of them just clawing at it, but one of them had a log and was hitting the door. This is the first sign I’ve seen of adaptation and problem solving, and it’s a bad sign. They were after a stray cat that had crawled under the door. Do they eat animals? Are they starving? We beheaded and burned them.

  March 6, 2012

  Killed two zombies who had come up to the house this afternoon. Deeper back in the woods we saw about two dozen zombies who just seemed to be watching? At any rate they only came toward us when we drew close. It took a big group of us but we managed to behead and burn the whole group of them before they could encroach the property.

  Tried the radio today to see what else we can pick up here. There are several other stations broadcasting, one from Regina, one from Churchill, Manitoba. Pockets of humanity are reestablishing themselves.

  March 7, 2
012

  Katherine showed up at the Farm today. You don’t really expect to see people again, but she’d been the one who had told me about this place. She’s driving a white delivery van with horrible smears and crumples all along the sides, front and back. She says that the towns she’s seen are either empty or “full,” meaning full of the undead. She stayed for dinner (potatoes, canned green beans). She’s been here before, and they seem to accept that she’ll be leaving again without discussion. When I ask her why she doesn’t stay, she says, “there are too many of you here.”

  March 8, 2012

  Todd Smith fell suddenly ill, symptoms identical to the early days of the infection. He hasn’t been bitten, and no more exposure to zombies than any of us on patrols, no direct contact. We moved him to the cottage and have posted watch.

  March 9, 2012

  Todd’s dead. Beheaded, burned. It happened fairly quickly. At first he seemed to know what was happening, then he seemed less aware, almost feral, simply reacting to whatever was happening in his system—the seizing up, the intense pain. People are still succumbing to the compound buildup in their systems. I asked Dale if this had happened here before and he said, simply, “Yeah.” We threw what was left of Todd in the pit.

  March 10, 2012

  No zombies sighted today on patrols or watch.

  I took a sample of Todd Smith’s blood before we incinerated the body. Not much I’m able to do with it in these conditions. I did manage to get a reaction. I pricked the end of my finger and collected a sample of my own blood. I bandaged, wrapped, and regloved my hand. Then combined the sample of my blood with Todd's, The combination fizzed like peroxide on a wound, then clumped into a curdled knot. Tried it again, same reaction. So at the state of Todd’s transformation the necrotic tissues have an intense and seemingly caustic reaction to other human tissue. Additional human blood (mine again) added to the combination infected and uninfected sample didn’t cause the same reaction, no fizzing, but it did curdle the new blood so that it resembles the other dark gore on the glass in front of me. So what do we know? That zombie tissue contact can have a corrupting influence on living human tissue, and that the reaction is active I want to say “aggressive,” even at the level I’m dealing with here, just a bit of blood. And when did we know that? We knew that about two months ago during the first wave of corruption of the living by the dead.

  March 12, 2012

  No sign of zombies on patrols or watch. That’s 3 days now. Disposed of the rest of Todd Smith’s sample, no real point to tinkering without proper equipment. Someone out there must be working on figuring out what’s happening. It’s nice here when not under siege. Been playing some backgammon. Tossing a tennis ball to Marty, the Farm’s German shepherd.

  My nerves are still raw. If you get hit with a stick every day, you come to expect the stick. Everyone, apparently, has nightmares (I do), and because of the watches we sleep in shifts, which means while asleep there’s always something to mishear and trigger the fight-or-flight reflex, or you can just be scared to death by the sounds of someone else waking up from a nightmare. My recurring dream has me being chased by my ex-girlfriend. Undead. I trip over something, fall, and find myself pinned to the ground. She's kneeling beside me with my hand raised to her mouth. Before I can tear it away, she’s chomped down, chewing . . .

  March 13, 2012

  Fourth day with no sighting of zombies on patrols or watch, a record.

  March 15, 2012

  6 days, no zombies. Talk of a party tonight. Why not? I guess. I think we’re stir crazy. Not really realizing how the constant threat of the zombies shapes everything, and no zombies for days! Some rum-fueled speculation as to what it might mean. Conservative view is it means nothing, we have to assume it’s the same as ever. Others feel certain we’ve turned some kind of corner. We didn’t really understand what happened before so why would we understand what's happened now? At any rate, a celebration, at least blow off a little steam. The guys are going to play tonight. Singing, dancing. Guards posted per usual, of course.

  March 16, 2012

  The Farm’s gone. Hundreds of them. We were completely overrun. Somebody dropped a gasoline cocktail—we’d been throwing them from the windows—caught the main house on fire and sent us out among them. Dale was bitten and went down, torn apart. Joe locked himself in one of the guard posts but they swarmed it and it collapsed. Amy, Ian, Carl. As far as I know, Marty and I are the only survivors. We’re sleeping in the band’s van about 2 hours north of the Farm, as far as I could drive before a massive adrenaline crash and I shook myself to sleep, or something like sleep. I killed— I just kept killing them but there were so many. How had they massed together out here in such numbers? I shot them, I set them on fire, I took off their heads. Still they kept coming.

  Another safe house burned to the ground. This time I managed to save the dog.

  March 19, 2012

  Drove for days before I remembered the van’s radio and found the AM signal for Churchill. I don’t know what the point is anymore except that, this is going to sound stupid, but I feel a responsibility for Marty. To Marty. There’s this deep, human-canine connection that's developed since we started domesticating them. I’m still human, and Marty’s affirming that for me.

  I’m also waaaay out here with my own thoughts, and ready to risk making for human civilization again. I’m not sure what else is left to do.

  March 25, 2012

  Churchill is a small town that’s been re-imagined for a siege. There’s something almost medieval about it. They’ve consolidated the townsfolk to a grouping of buildings facing Hudson Bay and surrounded these with an 8-foot-tall wall made from dismantled portions of the structures outside the perimeter. The rule is shoot or torch anything that moves, though I can’t imagine much does. Everything is, literally, frozen up here. Since it’s understood that zombies can’t drive vans, Marty and I were admitted, after a thorough inspection, and some interest in the dried foodstuffs and our gasoline. Despite the radio signal, I’m the first vehicle to have made it up here.

  Larry Wilder, who grew up in the town:

  * * *

  “We haven’t had any of the trouble everyone else has had down there yet, but we’re not taking any chances whatsoever. Nothing gets in here. We’re self-sufficient people and always have been.”

  * * *

  Nobody here has seen an actual zombie. It seems impossible—have I made it far enough north to have outrun, or to outlive this thing?

  March 26, 2012

  Marty and I have a room at a cottage on the bay that we’re sharing with 87-year-old Nora Riley, another local who has lived here her entire life. Basically, they moved us into her space, and she’s not thrilled about it. I have not really been forthcoming with any details of the life and death down south, and she’s been preemptive. “You’re from where there are all those ‘dead people.’ You seen any of em? Nothing happening up here. I just don’t believe it. Government lies to us all the time.” The fence around the town? “Larry Wilder’s a kook. Gets people to do things they don’t want to do. You’re here, aren’t you?” It’s a little edgy around Nora, Marty picks up on it, hasn’t really relaxed in fact since we got here. He does not like Larry. Anyway, we’ll need to get along here.

  March 27, 2012

  The nightmares keep coming.

  Went out to the lake to sketch but this is what I'm "seeing."

  March 28, 2012

  It’s early morning. Coffee and time for thinking. There is, weirdly, very little to report. Nora and I don’t talk about zombies, the topic is off the table. I’m just living in her house through some kind of lottery we’ve both accepted, and moving on, then. To be in such a bizarre (for me) setting, the ice, the snow, a strange house, and also to have the person I spend the most time with in this new setting refuse to accept my own reality of the last few months is . . . hard to reconcile. Marty is barking. It could be Larry Wilder—he checks on everyone in town almost daily. Marty sti
ll barks at him.

  Later, I will tr

  Publisher’s Note

  Dr. Twombly’s journal was discovered by Canadian rescue crews who arrived at the town of Churchill on July 18, 2013.

  They found no survivors.

  Copyright © 2009 by becker&mayer!

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

  reproduced in any form without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data on file.

  ISBN 978-0-8118-7745-9

  ZOMBIES is produced by becker&mayer!, Bellevue, WA.

  www.beckermayer.com

  Design: Paul Barrett

  Editorial: Amy Wideman