by Jaime Munt
By the time we got back and in the car, Mr. Ages probably felt like he was out of danger. He must have sensed I just couldn’t punish him.
“Don’t ever leave me,” was all I could choke out.
After a couple miles he got antsy and he kept walking in circles in the seat—his bum-hole pursing like kissy-lips.
“You are a bad dog!” I snapped.
I wanted to make him wait a while longer, but if he made a mess then I’d be punished by punishing him.
Then I remembered that I really had to piss.
I braked hard and Mr. Ages poured into the floor space below the seat. I grabbed the accessible travel tissue pack and jumped out and “made due” behind the door after Mr. Ages shoved past me—nearly doing the splits as he went hard on the gravel shoulder.
I didn’t know dogs could get boners shitting. So fucking nasty!
We got back in the car.
I looked at the creature who shared total dependency with me.
“You need to stay with me,” I told him.
Oct 30 9:57am
Am at a state park. I can't help thinking how close I am to where Marie lives.
Henry Ellis said: “All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”
There’s something I can't know—not now. I can't bear to. My mind imagines enough—realizing any of it—no.
Mr. Ages killed a squirrel and a rabbit. He ate the squirrel. I think the rabbit is for me.
I'm going to start a fire and hope we don't get any attention. It's been quiet so far, here. I found some canned goods in the campgrounds and Mr. Ages barked when there were busy bodies. That high pitched bark/scream.
How miserable to be a dog - a good dog - and be afraid. It's engrained in them to face that danger, that intruder, for us.
I'm going to boil some water because I don't have any. At least there were several cooking pots and stuff in camps. I'll boil it and fill my bottles when it cools.
Mr. Ages drank when we reached the creek—so I got water upstream. No offense to him!
I'm taking the camping supplies I think I can use—most of it's pretty useful, actually.
I got a Black Diamond LED headlamp. That could have been the only thing I found and I’d be delighted. I feel improved… not just my situation.
If, when this is read (if it’s ever even found) things have improved, you might not know, understand or remember how much darker the world was when this was happening.
There are no far off glows of clustered buildings, streetlights, car lights, neon lights. There are no random lights on in the middle of the night where you wonder who is up and why would they be at this hour. There’s nothing in the night, but stars and moonlight.
The air is like ink and the animals in it are excited by the news that they own the world again.
Amongst the sounds it’s easy to lose track of what’s moving where.
Depth perception? Forget it.
Last night I pounced on the dark with my flashlight blazing because I heard “something.”
I found a gnarled tree… it was just a tree. Until I checked elsewhere and when I looked back and I realized
I’d actually seen the skeletally thin busy body had been embracing it before, gray and ragged as bark itself, now slinking toward me.
11:20am
Had salt and pepper from a camp—the rabbit was pretty good.
Mr. Ages got the guts. He’d probably eat the fur too—he was definitely interested, but I put it in someone's suitcase so he couldn't get at it.
I wonder what his life was like. Who was/were his master(s)?
Does he think about them?
It's not as obvious anymore, having been together this long, but it was obvious he missed something.
Separation from me is that much harder for him because of it, I think.
He was frantic when I came back with the car.
I wish I'd done at my house what I did at the second place I stayed at—I left the key in the door, in case someone else came by.
But I hadn't intended on never returning.
How many people is that true for?
Oct 31 8:41am - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
I got a treat—only one pack of graham crackers was missing from the box. It wasn't even open.
Something got into the marshmallows that had been in here—maybe even Mr. Ages.
I heard him grunt when he was trying to poop this morning.
Knock on wood.
No tricks yet.
I'd love an RV—there are a couple nice looking ones here—with gas!
Three problems:
No keys
Maneuvering them between vehicles—driving them at all!
The MPG
Don't even have to think about the other problems after the first.
Am going to do one more sweep for supplies and move out.
P.S. So far nothing weird—or do I have to wait until evening?
Is it stupid? I’m actually pretty nervous.
11:50am
I couldn't leave it alone. I came across a road I knew eventually went within a mile and a half of the country road to Marie’s home.
It was eerie pulling up to a familiar place.
I didn’t really want to look at it, lest I should see: vandalism, blood, bodies or zombies. Just seeing a yard that was cared for neglected was an unignorable headline that everything had changed. I turned my back on the house to use the hood of my car to write a note to this friend I’d known for decades.
I don’t' know if she was there. I don't want to know – only if I could know they were okay.
If she's wondering, then she'll know I am.
As I was writing, I was sure I heard a voice beckon me to turn around. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. The call was strong enough that I involuntarily turned my head about three inches – despite how readily I resisted it. I used a couple bandages to hang the note on the mailbox and edged toward the car, with my back to the house.
The something called to me more urgently. It said, in a voice I really heard, “You’ll never know, unless you know.”
I closed the car door and locked them. Then I allowed myself to look toward the source of the summons. The eight black eyes of the double garage door stared at me. And terrified me.
I lost a little time then—the next thing I remember, I was turning off the dirt road and heading back to the last point of my intended path. I would never go anywhere near there again.
“I can’t!” I remember crying out to no one and everything.
Mr. Ages stared at me.
My hands shook uncontrollably on the wheel. The trembling worked up my arms and I felt it in my throat.
My friends.
My friends.
My friends.
I couldn’t hold my head steady. My vision blurred, but I was going back the way I came – I felt confident in remembering what was on the road and of being alone in it—and, at that time, even in the whole world.
I couldn’t listen to it.
I wouldn’t look.
I couldn’t look.
What if her car wasn’t in the garage?
9:26pm
I missed the state line via little back roads. I think. I don't know where I am. Car said I was heading south. I stopped to let out Mr. Ages.
And someone shot at me.
I didn't know what to do. Yell? Say, "Hey, I'm alive - don't shoot!"
If you've seen the same movies I have you'd just haul ass, like I did.
If they are bad—I hope I'm not going toward them.
If they are good... I dunno.
If they are somewhere in between—most likely really...
Okay, but they shot at me.
How many zombies travel with dogs???
Nov 1 4:04pm
Okay—in Dawn of the Dead, after the douche, prick, coward Stephen is dead and if Roger hadn't been bit, I could ride this out with them. I think they're the best group I can thin
k of from a post-apocalyptic movie. I guess there are a couple others I wouldn't mind. The good guys in The Stand would be the best community to be with.
Do you ever ask yourself “if” questions?
Sometimes I think about those things to occupy my mind.
If I get tired of that I also entertain myself with: if I could eat anything right now, what would it be?
If I found the perfect place to make a go of it, in this situation, what would it have to have?
If I had to be stuck in a zombie apocalypse with one person living or dead would I rather it was this person or that person?
And I can do that two ways—to switch it up I can choose between two people I'd hate to be stuck with or two people that I think it might be okay—most often I go fictional.
- or -
I can change how many people are involved. Or have groups like: Would I rather be in a zombie apocalypse if I HAD to—with the Golden Girls or the Designing Women?
I'm sure you got it before the example.
There are worse things I could think about.
Worse things I could do with my time.
Most days I take out my photos and spend some time on the importance of remembering.
Nov 3 1:49am
I parked by a couple of broke down/abandoned vehicles. Car's almost out of gas. Making sounds like "Gug" "Gug" "Gug" and the fuel light's been on for a while. Didn't want to wander around in the dark. Have had the nagging feeling that I am not alone.
Will take care of it in the morning.
I wish I knew where I'm going to end up so I knew to head there.
Lewis Carroll wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
I guess that’s okay, as long as it’s southbound.
Nov 5 9:53pm
While the sun was setting I couldn’t see anything on the hillside, even though it was jet black against the hot yellow light.
When twilight cast that reality blurring bluish gray half night over the everlasting unfamiliar I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
But when night fell I was certain, below the faintest whisper of smoke was a distant campfire. A fire so small and far away it twinkled like a star.
How I wonder what you are.
Nov 6 4:26am
I found a busy body in a hatchback about 15 minutes ago. My flashlight caught the movement before I heard it thumping inside. Mr. Ages’ bark sounded like bad brakes, getting louder and fast as we approached.
The busy body inside was pacing like a tiger in a cage.
I didn’t want to think it then, but I am willing to write it now—based on the items I could see through the glass, sleeping bag and pack, flashlight, hiking stick, and a baseball bat, I think he was just like me.
There was a roll of duct tape amongst the possessions and some of the sheets he’d taped up on the windows were even still up—in the front, where he apparently never wandered.
I saw a bite on his arm, but he was half-dressed and I couldn’t see any others. All the other wounds were just from his flesh rotting.
He didn’t stop moving, but he did move faster. Somehow his dead eyes never left me, even as his path forced him to turn his back on me. I must have been seeing things.
Nov 7 8:20pm
Another early morning. Yuck.
But I was too nervous to stay asleep.
I watched the sun set from an overpass. Watched the three dimensional world transform into silhouette.
All too soon, with impossible speed, the night engulfed the day in perfect, tar thick darkness.
It was at this point when I saw the UFO. Its silvery pot pie shaped mass floated toward me over the trees, making sounds a child would make for a ghost, only higher. Its movements were as realistic as fake boobs.
…
…
…in other words—nothing happened today worth writing.
Nov 8 4:51pm
I caught myself feeling good today. We were just walking and that’s exactly what it felt like we were doing. Just walking. That at any driveway I should sense we were home and go there.
I realized I was singing to myself, Crossroads by Matisyahu, like in his Acoustic Sessions of Spark Seeker. And somehow—I found perfect harmony with the world—as is. His work can make a person feel that way.
Anyway, it was…….uplifting.
How can I describe how amazing it felt to feel, if only for a moment, that everything was normal?
Good Lord.
I took so much for granted.
Nov 14 9:34pm
The moonlight struck every hump of the rolling and rising country road before me. Only for that moonlight did I see the thriving nightmare pour over the greatest of the hills.
A slow moving wave ate up the black top still shiny from an earlier rain shower. I imagined it like a tsunami—a wall of death that was definitely moving faster than it looked.
I shrugged on the strap of my bag and held it on my shoulder with the hand that unconsciously took up the hammer.
Mr. Ages looked up at me anxiously and I pet him.
I felt the handle of the screwdriver tap my wrist when my hand settled at my side.
Rising from the bottom of the hill nearest to me came something like a man whose entire flesh was the off color of a bad bruise. More than blood, a pus-like fluid quivered like cold fat on the mouth of every wound. The flies were so dense I could see them in the dark. I could hear them where I couldn’t see them.
Half a dozen more were coming over the next hill. They were coming out of the woods. A head, neck, shoulder, and arm were all that was left of a woman coming up along the ditch. Her organs and entrails made crude tentacles behind her, like some kind of sea witch. This other one, maybe it was a man before, but it was only a creature of protruding and splintered bones and shredded flesh now.
None terrified me as this closest rotting thing. I felt like I was facing down the Horseman of Pestilence. I almost fainted and that scared me so bad I became alert like God had slapped me.
There was no way to win this.
Shit.
This one. This horrible One. Something told me I couldn’t—maybe nothing could stop him.
I wound my arm and hand into Mr. Ages’ leash so he’d have to break it off before I’d lose him. I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid they were already too aware of me. That one I know saw me. The damn thing looked right in my eyes.
Can the dead see?
I led Mr. Ages off the road and started running. The tall wet grass quickly soaked me. It was cold. I was shaking, but it had nothing to do with that. To my left I could hear them crunching through the woods. I heard the disgusting sounds they make. I smelled them everywhere.
Mr. Ages started making high pitched yips. Without thinking, scared shitless, I snapped at him to shut up—and not quietly.
My shoulder bounced off something soft. It made a guttural sound.
I heard hooved things running.
It was so fucking dark in the woods.
I felt like I was running forever.
The forest puked me out in a field. There was a farm and beyond it another road.
There were several buildings on the property, we ran to what was probably the old farmhouse, an abandoned building that sat amongst a heap of junk.
I had to break out a small window to get in. I hoisted Mr. Ages through it. Nothing but pigeons and spiders had been anywhere near this place in years.
There was a small loft with a ladder. I drug the poor yipping mutt up there and brought the ladder up behind us. I took the leash’s end and wrapped it around his mug and then crushed him with my body to keep him still.
It might not have been the first to reach the farm, but the first busy body I knew of eventually found the window. I saw its silhouette block out the moonlight. It stuck its head through and stuffed its head, on what looked like a too-long neck, through the space.
We lay in the thick smell of mildew and listened to the dead pass
ing us by. The one at the window didn’t move. It just made this “Awwwwww” sound all night on what could have been one breath, if they breathe.
I “killed” it this morning.
When we finally went out, all that was left was a somewhat trampled field.
We walked toward the next road.
On the fringe of the woods opposite us, beyond another small field, there was a zombie. Even from this distance and without my contacts in or glasses on, I knew which one it was.
I hate to even write it.
Like bringing him up will conjure him. It makes me sick to even thinking about him out there. Like a huge spider in your house that you’ve tried to kill, but it manages to drag itself into a vent or something and you don’t know if it’s hurt enough that you don’t have to worry about it coming back. Wondering where it is and what it’s doing and when or if you’ll see it again.
Never would be too soon.
Nov 28 7:09am
It's been hard to find a good place to sit and write a little. I'd run into some bad weather—as if I just turned down the wrong road.
Freezing rain put about 1/4 an inch of crystal clear Unmanageable on everything.
Okay, I had to look back; I forgot what I'd last wrote you. Wrote me?
So you already know my car wouldn't start—even when I got it some gas. Of course, I can't hotwire cars. So we've obviously been walking since then.
It hasn't been great because of the barking, but at least he doesn't seem to do it if they aren't close to us—like outside of 500 feet.
I wish I had better shoes. Well—there are a lot of things that I'd have if I could.
Right now my heart's with a baked potato with real butter and a sprinkle of pepper, a rare steak smothered in mushrooms, caramelized onions, and a bowl of vanilla ice-cream with pineapples on top and on the side. And a beer that's so chilled it has frost on it.
In some ways travelling on foot is great, but I yearn to go faster. I feel like I'm late to be somewhere or maybe I feel urgent to get somewhere and make it mine.
I've decided if I can make it halfway south I will have the best chance to make a go of it. I need to avoid "real" winters.
I think I stand a good chance of being able to squirrel away some seeds since all this started around the beginning of June.