Alone No More

by Philbrook, Chris

  Ouch.

  Sitting here typing this entry is just causing me emotional pain and distress. I need a new frigging hobby. One that involves me not wishing I were dead. This sucks.

  It isn’t her. It can’t be her. She would’ve come here first if she was in town. Even if she was furious at me, she’d come up here at the very least to beat the shit out of me and let me know she was furious at me. She’d kick both of my balls up high enough to pass for earrings. I know that much.

  That makes me feel a little better. Curious that the idea that getting my balls kicked up to my neck is a comforting thing nowadays. What a world Mr. Journal, what a world.

  Cassie, if you’re still out there, I love you. Always will.

  I am feeling a little under the weather tonight. I think something I ate for dinner isn’t agreeing with me. I got that... Squishy feeling downstairs like I’m going to be spending some time on the shitter in a bit. Getting a little warm, and there’s a light film of sweat on my brow. All signs point to diarrhea. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. More likely, I’ll shit all over that bridge when I get there.

  Having discussed my digestive issues, I’ll recap you up on what happened earlier today. I cleared three more houses on Jones Road today. Took me forever, which usually means good things. As I said before I’ve already cleared three houses on Jones, and today I did three more, which leaves three left, one of which is that huge ass farmhouse which I’ve got a great feeling about. Old houses are usually great places to find useful stuff from an older era. We’ll see what it brings in a day or so I guess.

  The three homes I cleared today were all relatively small by this neighborhood’s standards. Maybe 2,000 square feet. Still out of my price range, but much more reasonable homes. There were several great finds in these houses too, which is pretty awesome. None of the homes had any zombies in them, which was great. Found another dead pet though, a cat, which sucks. Makes me think of Otis.

  One house had two items of note worth mentioning. Beer. Lots and lots of beer. Now after my single experience turning myself into an emotional wreck since the end of the world, I am not going to drink any of the beer. I’ll save it for barter should I ever find other living people. Not sure how long it'll keep for though. The other item that house had in it was a shotgun. Another Mossberg pump action 12 gauge. It’s a hunting model, only holds 6 shells, but it is in very good condition. They also had 8 birdshot shells, and 18 buckshot, which is a nice shot in the arm for my dwindling shotgun ammo supply. (How many times can I fit the word “shot” in a sentence you think Mr. Journal?) Hopefully one of these houses will have some 9mm ammo, because that’s starting to get into the red zone. The same house also had some extra gun cleaning supplies, which is always useful. There’s got to be more houses up here with weapons in them. Got to be. The new shotgun is going on the shelf for now. My current shotgun holds 8 shells, which is sort of a big difference if the shit hits the fan, plus it has a little shell holder on the stock which allows for less fumbling for ammo if I’m in a hurry. Devil’s in the details as they say.

  One house had a single awesome item, but it was a pretty awesome item. They had a small gas powered electric generator. Well, it’s not that small. It’s a 16HP generator, which is enough to power one of the small dorms. It looks more or less brand new too, which is another big bonus. They had it set up in their garage likely in the event of a power outage in the winter. It would just need to be plugged in to the electrical system at the school and bam, juice to a new building. Add this generator to the wood stove that I want to get up there and we are seriously looking like a success story in the making.

  The third house had the dead cat. The third house also had a few bags of cat food. Guess that’s how that works right? Otis lives another day at the expense of another kitty’s life. Sorry bub. Same house also looked like the home of a hoarder. Useless bullshit piled ceiling high in every corner. It was clean thankfully, but amazingly cluttered. They had a lot of really great books that I took. I always took the internet for granted. The last few months it has occurred to me that “Googling” how to do something isn’t a fucking option anymore. If I don’t know how to do something, then I fucking don’t know how. There are no more easy solutions Mr. Journal. These people had an old school encyclopedia, which will be useful.

  Great haul earlier. Really pleased. The generator and the shotgun make it a total victory. Add to that I got a bunch of good consumables as well and we’re looking like champions. Really happy.

  So yeah, just had the shits. Of course you can’t understand the passage of time because in your world Mr. Journal this is just the next sentence. No time has passed for you! But for me I just nearly soiled myself. Jesus that was terrible. Smelled like someone set a corpse on fire after they took a shit on it. Fucking terrible. It was like evil cement sausages.

  Colorful, aren’t I?

  My guts are killing me. I hope I’m not getting sick. That really worries me. I think I’m going to get some water and lay down Mr. Journal. See if I can’t lazy this thing out of my guts.

  -Adrian

  December 5th

  Mr. Journal.

  I am hurt badly.

  I don’t know what to do.

  -Adrian

  December 6th

  I finally out of pain enough to make some sense. I tried to write yesterday, but it was all a goddamn jumble. Right-click delete. As it stands, the Percocet I’m on right now has me a little loopy, and it’s taking me forever to write this out. I’m at that happy period of time with Percocet where I’m not feeling much pain, but I’m largely still coherent. Really stoked the old couple above the gas station had some in a pill bottle. Hooray for the little things.

  I am hurt. I was hurt yesterday afternoon during my house clearing on Jones Road. I’ll get to that in a few minutes. First, I’ll explain how I got to my injury. Hopefully I can finish before the pills knock me the fuck out.

  As you might recall, the night of the 4th I came down with a case of the Turkish trots. Mr. Journal if you are unfamiliar with that expression, it means powerful diarrhea, typically in a vibrant green color. I think it was food poisoning. I was up late that night off and on the toilet, so sleep was basically nonexistent. However, by dawn I had shit myself empty, and after rehydrating myself I was much better.

  I should’ve stayed in the dorm yesterday.

  I left early this morning with a full belly of food and high hopes for a quiet day. I feel like I’m falling behind on my stated goal of having these houses cleared by the 14th. The sooner I get these houses cleared, the sooner I can start trying to find people. I am definitely not going to make my Dec. 14th date now. Not happening.

  There were three houses remaining on Jones Road. Two pretty normal houses, both good sized, and the final huge ass farmhouse at the end of the road. I’ve been itching to get into that farmhouse for days now to see what could be inside it. Frigging place was huge and I just knew there’d be a lot of good stuff inside. I was right about that at least. Of course that wasn’t the only thing I found at the farmhouse.

  The first two houses I did were great hauls. Nothing equipment wise that’s new, but there was a really good amount of food and stuff, which I was more than happy to remove. I finished clearing those places by about 1 in the afternoon, and both houses were totally empty of anything sketchy or dangerous. I guess that’s the calm before the storm. I loaded the truck up with the food, and ran it back here before I tackled the farmhouse. Turns out that was a really fortunate choice on my part. I got it all inside here to sort out last night, but it’s still sitting there untouched. I’m having a hard time getting around right now, and it’s not going anywhere anyway.

  God I feel so vulnerable.

  The farmhouse is on a slight raise at the edge of a field. There’s a typical farm style post fence running around the majority of the property. Maybe 4 or 5 acres of clear land I think. They had 3 or 4 cows, and it looks like 2 horses. I can’t be sure because the anima
ls were pretty much devoured. Their smelly ass carcasses were in the far edge of the field away from the house. I only saw them when I went into the barn when I started to clear the area.

  For some reason I forgot to honk my horn. I’ve only skipped honking the horn once, and that was when I was clearing the cape the other day that I was pretty sure was empty, or filled with zombies. I can’t be sure either way, but I’m thinking if I honk my horn earlier today, I’m walking around fine tonight. Fuck me. This is what cutting corners gets you I guess.

  So I parked the truck next to the house where the previous owner’s cars would’ve been parked. There was a gravel driveway right there, plus it was next to the gate for the fence. I was so goddamn giddy to check the place out I didn’t clear it quite as thoroughly as I should have. I gave the outside of the house a quick walk around, then headed straight to the barn to see what was out there. I saw the animal bodies on the grass and double checked them to make sure they weren’t sheltering any zombies. All clear.

  The barn was pretty good for stuff. Biggest thing was a small tractor. I left it there because right now I have no use for it. Come spring though it will be awesome when I start to plant crops. Assuming I make it to spring. Assuming I make it to Christmas. There was also a bigger gas powered chainsaw in the barn, which I did grab.

  I let myself into the house via a back porch. They screens were all still open from the summer months, and it was really cold. The back door to the house was wide open as well, which told me no one was here. If there were people living here, they wouldn’t have left the back door open in 25 degree weather.

  I cleared the bottom floor of the giant ass farm, then for some reason decided to clear the basement. I can’t say why. Just decided to do that next. Easily the creepiest basement yet. 10 out of 10 for sure. The house had to be 200 years old and the damp, dark, cold cellar was straight out of a horror movie. There were no windows either, and once I got down stairs I switched to the Sig and my new Maglite instead of the shotgun. I couldn’t safely clear the cellar holding the shotgun and the flashlight. Despite giving myself a complete mind-fuck in the scary ass basement, it was empty. I perused down there for a few minutes and found a pretty decent supply of canned food. Gotta love farmers and their need to stockpile food. Salt of the Earth, those people.

  I came back to the first floor and made my way up the wide stairs to the second floor. It was bitterly cold going up the stairs. I realized there was a, um. A big window open in the stairwell letting the cold in. I shut it when I walked past it. The upstairs was a single long hallway with a handful of rooms off of it. All of the doors were shut, and the hallways smelled like death.

  This house had really nice hardwood floors. They were stained a dark cherry color, and for all I know, they might’ve actually been cherry. They were old, worn, and they’ve been scuffed up by years of dragging feet, but the color was still rich. Almost like a patina on silver.

  The hallway was covered in giant piles of dog shit. Huge piles of dried up brown nuggets. Big nuggets. Looked like fucking kielbasa. Everywhere. Wall to wall poop. I actually had to laugh that a dog had shit that much in the same place when the doors were wide open the whole time. Getting through the hallway was actually a pain in the ass. Only way to make it anywhere was to tip-toe in between the landmines of poop. I knocked on all the doors, one by one, and the only door that had a response was the one with the biggest piles of shit in front of it. The floor and door looked like someone had attacked it with a garden rake. Scratches on the door all the way up past the knob.

  When I gave the door a rap or two there was that insistent rattling again. The tell tale bumping of something trying to get through the door at me. I could hear a few quiet scrapes as nails were drawn down the wood of the door, attempting to scratch at me from the other side. That sound makes my bladder weak. I sighed, leveled the shotgun off at what I guessed was neck height, and blasted a hole in the door. I was actually hit in the face by a few shards of flying wood which stung like a bitch. I think I got a sliver in my cheek of all places.

  I leaned over and looked inside the room through my new fist sized peephole. Getting up off the floor was an elderly woman. She was clearly dead, though not in the permanent sense that would make me feel good about it. My shotgun blast had hit her in the chest and cleanly took her arm off. She was shakily pulling herself to her feet and I decided to get in the room and kill her with the sword. The door was locked, so I drew the sword and booted the fucking thing in.

  The old lady zombie had just steadied herself using the bed to make a lunge at me when I gave the sword a good swing and embedded it in her eyebrow. She went down in a heap. It took me a few seconds of see-sawing to get the blade out of the lady’s head. It stank in that room. There was a huge pile of crusty shit in the center of the bed, and right next to that was another dead body. This one was dead-dead though. The body was an old man’s. Very frail and thin. What was left of him looked at least 80 years old. He was holding a handgun, a small snub nosed .38. The old guy’s melon was busted out the top and he had a finger sized hole in his chin. It was surrounded by a grey halo from the gun powder. Pretty clear suicide. He had been bitten multiple times all over his arms and legs, but the bites were pretty superficial. Most of them had barely broken the skin.

  False teeth.

  I grabbed up the pistol, slipped it into the cargo pocket of my pants, and searched through the small bed stand drawers. I found a box of ammo for the pistol. It had 12 bullets in it. The pistol itself held 6, and had 5 left in it. I was pretty excited. That’s when I heard this weird clicking noise coming from the hall. Tick-tack-tick-tack-tick-tack. It was getting closer faster.

  I got the shotgun ready and went to the hall. Just as I got to the doorway I froze. Not five feet away was the biggest motherfucking dog I have ever seen. I don’t know what breed it was, but it was a beast. I think it was part Dane, part Rottweiler, part pony, because it looked huge, and it looked mean. You know when a dog curls its lip when it growls? And you know that primal growl they can let loose when they’re feeling scared, or territorial? It was doing both.

  It was then I put two and two together. All this dog shit in the hallway. The open doors. The dead cattle and horses. The scratches going up the bedroom door.

  The dog had gone feral when its masters died. It lunged at me. I don’t know why but I didn’t try and shoot it. I half assed and missed a butt stroke with the shotgun which was completely useless of me. Fucking dog hit me like an all-pro linebacker and took me out at the hips. The inside of my left thigh exploded in pain as it sank its teeth into the meat just below my balls. The dog landed on top of me, fully engaged with the meat of my leg and started shaking on me. I can’t even begin to tell you the agony I was in.

  When I hit the floor I lost the shotgun. I was half twisted up when the dog hit me and I had to drop the gun to prevent my head from smashing into the floor. At least I did that right. Once I got some semblance of balance back I started punching the dog in the nose but all that did was cause him to bite me again, punching a whole new set of teeth marks into the meat of my leg. He had his front legs pinning my lower half to the floor and I could barely move.

  Big fucking dog Mr. Journal. I got my right leg free and kicked him in the gut. He let go for a second. That bought me enough time to draw the Sig from the holster, but it also caused him to bite the shit out of my right foot. When he latched on he turned sideways and I emptied the Sig into his side, right at the spot where I thought the heart was. It wasn’t until the pistol’s magazine was half dry that I felt his jaws loosen some, and he didn’t flop to the floor until the gun clicked empty with the slide locked back. He still had my foot his jaws when he went down, and my ankle twisted almost 90 degrees from his weight falling awkwardly. I remember screaming out and kicking my foot free.

  I reloaded and just sat there, breathing hard, pistol aimed at the empty hall. I had a feeling there would be a second dog, but none came. Once I cleared my head I cut my p
ants open with my hunting knife, the one my uncle made.

  My leg is messed up bad Mr. Journal. Bad. There are at least 8 puncture wounds half an inch deep or more. When the fucking dog shook me his canines tore the flesh of my inner thigh pretty good, and there are rips in the leg an inch long leading from the bite holes he was holding me at when he did it. The bleeding wasn’t too bad surprisingly. I mean it was bad, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t bleeding out. My CLS training kicked in and I realized I was about 3 inches at most from having my femoral artery severed.

  Three inches higher and the last thing the world hears from me is that I had diarrhea.

  The fucking indignity. I am now out my favorite pair of pants. Had to cut the leg all the way down to the cuff to get at the wound. Insult and injury. Having a rough go of things Mr. Journal.

  I had my small first aid kit in the hunting vest I wear, which a good decision. I had enough Bacitracin, bandages and tape to get a reasonably good field dressing on there. I couldn’t bend my right leg up to get a good look at my foot right then though. It hurt far too much to try and balance myself at the moment. In a terribly ironic moment I had to pull myself to my feet using only one leg whilst damn near face planting in the corpse of the old lady. Unreal. I am really starting to feel like the punch line to some cosmic fucking joke.

  I emptied the shotgun of shells and started using it as a makeshift crutch. Every time I had to move any muscles in my left leg it was like putting a blowtorch to it. Oh my God it hurt. My right foot was painful as well, but not that all that bad. Turns out there were a couple of really bitching bruises where the teeth had hit bone in my boot. No punctures though.

  I steadied myself against the wall every step or two. I think it took me almost 5 minutes to make it back to the stairs. I was all kinds of excited that I hadn’t fallen, so as you can probably see coming Mr. Journal, I ate shit going down the stairs. I think I had 3 or 4 steps left to get to the first floor when I had a sharp stabbing pain hit my left thigh and I stiffened up. My foot missed a step, and in complete slow motion, I teetered forward, arms swinging wildly to and fro like that coyote from the cartoons, and I smashed face first into those nice cherry stained floors. I blacked out for a few seconds from the pain. It wasn’t another concussion thankfully, just the swooning stars of having to choke down the throbbing from my foot and leg.