Journals of the Damned

by GJ Zukow

eaten, there at our doorstep, there would still be an unholy swarm waiting for us. The difference I told him, was that now they knew there was flesh to be eaten inside. They will not stop trying to find a way in now. He humbled me with asking since when did it become morally justifiable to watch another human being die. Still, he should have at least told me what he was going to do, instead of just doing it.

  The driver, a large (not fat) man of around thirty or so, went right to the bar and poured himself a couple of shots as soon as he saw the bottles. The blood was starting to dry and cake in his short blonde hair. He had to be over six foot tall by at least four inches and he was quite muscular. If the circumstances were different I might have found him handsome, if not for his age.

  After a few moments (and a few shots), he told us how he had ended up here.

  His name was David and he, his girlfriend and her son had been stuck in one of the Disney World resort hotels since just before the animal madness had hit. When the madness over-ran the animal kingdom almost all air traffic ceased. When air travel did resume there was a huge backlog of people desperate to get back to wherever it was they came from. Air fares went up drastically with the demand and he found it cheaper to stay at the hotel for another couple of weeks than to pay the grossly overinflated prices, content to wait until the prices dropped. Then the Scarlet came and changed everything. He had gotten tickets for him and his little family but when the day came to go to the airport it was way too dangerous to leave the hotel.

  The last day they had gone outside of their hotel room they had spent the day at Disney World. It was there that he knew what the Scarlet would do (except for the whole dead rising from the grave thing).

  While they were on the Haunted House ride, a ride that they had been on before, he saw something that wasn't part of the make believe. His girl and her son hadn't picked up on it, thinking that they had simply missed it the last time they had been through the attraction. While there certainly is a lot of sights crowded into the ride and it could have been something they had failed to see before, he knew it was too real. No amount of props or preparation could disguise what he saw. He was a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, he knew what the dead really looked like (and smelled like). Instead of correcting his lover and her child's mistake, he let them believe what they saw was fake. He didn't tell them that some of the heads on stakes were real. He didn't mention the blood and dismembered bodies in some of the exhibits were real. Instead he kept his mouth shut until they were back at the hotel room and the boy was asleep. Then he told his girlfriend the horrifying truth.

  By then both his girlfriend and her kid had started showing the red splotches that marked all of the infected.

  When they finally died, he and another uninfected person (a hotel employee) dragged the bodies outside and dumped them into a drained pool. The pool, once filled with sparkling clear water was now a charnel pit, filled with a bonfire of the dead.

  They could not find and dump the bodies into the flames fast enough. Soon the unthinkable had happened. Soon the dead got back up and hunted down those that had survived.

  He and the hotel employee had hidden until their food ran out. Then they fought their way through the hotel, searching for keys to a vehicle so they could escape.

  The hotel employee didn't make it, he got thronged getting into a van. He was pulled down screaming as the hungering dead ate him alive, bite by bite.

  David had tried to make it to the interstate with the intention of getting into the mountains up north but found huge wrecks and mobs of the undead all over the roads. He was forced off the interstate to go around a huge pile-up. By using the city streets he had hoped to drive far enough past the wreckage and then get back on at another on ramp. He got lost instead. Not far from here, he had to drive around another accident scene and when he did, he found himself smack dab in the middle of a horde of the parasite controlled zombies. They swarmed his car and he had to run some over to get past them. One of the filthy dead things had gotten in his way and he hit it, only for it to come crashing through his windshield. The things dead hands gripped the steering wheel as it tried vainly to pull its mangled body close enough to bite him. He didn't want to stop because the dead were all around. The door wouldn't open, one of the zeds he had hit had crumpled the front quarter panel into the door and jammed it. He would have had to take the time to crawl out the window, and that extra time he feared, would be enough time for the undead to reach him. The monsters hand held the steering wheel in a vice-like grip, setting the horn off. He thought his only option was to drive on, hoping to be able to finally beat the zombies decomposing skull to pulp with his meaty fists or throwing it clear of the car by wildly swerving. Before that happened, the vile thing wrapped both of its hands on the wheel and the car went out of control, ending up a twisted heap mere feet away from the entry door.

  The undead are pounding at the building and their numbers are growing. The doors are solid and sturdy, they look as if they will hold for a long time. I don't actually know if they will eventually give up or if someone else will come along and draw their unwanted attention away from us. I'm going to hope for the best but plan for the worst.

  What worries me more than the zeds is David. I barely know the man and I'm not looking forward to having to get used to another person. He seems to have the attitude where he believes he should be in charge based on his physical strength. Maybe I'm mistaken. I hope so. Time will tell.

  Wednesday, November 14, 2012

  It's been almost a month since I could write again. The reason I haven't been writing is David. David turned out to be a mean, brutish drunk. There were times I wanted, badly, to take the time to think and be alone with my thoughts, my writing in the journal provided this. There were a few times I could have done so in the past month but David kept me from it. He didn't physically stop me from writing but I know for a fact he was sneaking into my stuff and had been reading it. If I were to write in this journal, my feelings about the abusive alcoholic would surely be soon known and he would have eventually found out and made a big deal of it. He had already given away the fact that he had read the last entry when he accused me of being a "cold hearted bitch" who would have let him been eaten by the undead just outside the door. That and the fact that all my gear had been rooted through and shabbily replaced.

  I had taken the precaution of hiding the thirty-eight, with its remaining four rounds, the handcuffs and the hand grenades inside the couch. I had tipped the couch over and ripped open some of the covering fabric and stuffed the weapons into the springs and padding. It's a good thing I did, David had soon stolen the M16 and carried it around with him at all times. He also managed to grab the small amount of bullets I had for the M1, leaving me with a weapon that was of little use besides being a glorified club. That left me with the useless M1 carbine and the weapons I had hidden.

  I had confronted him with the theft and his arrogant reply was that he would let me have some ammo, "When, and if, the time came that they were needed. There was no way he was going to let a girl and an idiot cab driver have access to weapons."

  I tried to get my things back from him when he passed out. David, even when plastered from drinking all day, is one of those people that are very light sleepers. He would come awake at the slightest movement or close sound, always thwarting my attempts to steal my stuff back. One of the habits he picked up in the Army he said, sneering at me when I was caught.

  I briefly thought of secreting my journal with the hidden weapons but I knew he would notice its disappearance. I didn't want him to start searching for it and uncover the stash I had. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that he hadn't found out Allan had hidden his nine millimeter and I still had my backup revolver.

  The first week or so, David, although he had been constantly drinking, had remained mostly quiet and reserved. After he had gotten used to the situation, and Allan and I had been lulled into a false sense of normality with him, he got worse.

 
It was then he stole my guns and his true nature became apparent. He drank morning, noon and night, all the time talking about himself and how he was a big shot lawyer before the apocalypse. No matter how much Allan and I tried to keep our distance from him he would relentlessly hound us, bragging about how superior he was. He had done everything and knew everything, in his own mind at least. No matter what our response was to one of his inebriated questions, he always made up some bull to top whatever we said. He was loud and insulting, threatening Allan with violence whenever he felt the least bit insulted or threatened.

  However much we disliked him, neither Allan nor I had seriously considered murdering him. We still hoped the zombies, endlessly pounding at the doors, would soon collapse and we would be able to leave the club and David behind.

  That started to change after week two of being trapped with the foul mouthed lout.

  David had progressed to bullying Allan around, physically pushing and shoving him when he got mad. He treated Allan like he was his personal butler (or worse), ordering him to the point where he would dictate what Allan would have to cook for our meals. I could see the fire of hatred starting to