Freeze Dried Chronicles
The Resurrection Virus
The Survivor's Diary
By Keith Carpenter
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Updated frequently
May 15, 2015
I've decided to start writing things down every time I get the chance. It’s not easy to stop moving and take a breath without getting your head ripped off. I can barely gather my thoughts with the constant banging coming from downstairs. Those fucking things just won’t stop! I’ve managed to barricade myself in the upstairs apartment of some convenience store. I’m trying to get out of the city but it’s tough with all those things out there roaming around. This place is safe, at least for the night as I’ve been able to tightly secure it by blocking the only door in. As luck would have it, there is a window with a fire escape that leads to a fenced in alley that is clear. Hopefully I can get out that way in the morning, but there’s no going out the way I came in, because THEY know I’m here.
If you had told me three weeks ago that I would be here right now in this place shitting my pants because flesh eating cannibals were trying to smash in the door, I would have told you to go see a shrink. I guess this is what I get for being such a selfish ass. I should have paid more attention weeks ago when they were talking about the SICKNESS. Some virus that originated in a medical facility in upper state New York that was let out when some infected patients escaped. I never would have believed it could spread so fast... it's fucking crazy!
Like the prick that I am, I had been so focused on ME, not giving a shit about what was going on in the world outside my condo, then it finally came back and literally bit me on the ass. My name is Vance Singleton. Three weeks ago I was a successful business man living in my Manhattan penthouse condo looking down my nose at the rest of the world, but today I’m hunted prey running for my fucking life. I will NEVER…. EVER…. Forget the date May 10th 2015. Rather I live another day or 50 more years... that day is a day I won’t be able to forget. It’s the day my life changed forever…. wait!
I've decided to start writing things down every time I get the chance. It’s not easy to stop moving and take a breath without getting your head ripped off. I can barely gather my thoughts with the constant banging coming from downstairs. Those fucking things just won’t stop! I’ve managed to barricade myself in the upstairs apartment of some convenience store. I’m trying to get out of the city but it’s tough with all those things out there roaming around. This place is safe, at least for the night as I’ve been able to tightly secure it by blocking the only door in. As luck would have it, there is a window with a fire escape that leads to a fenced in alley that is clear. Hopefully I can get out that way in the morning, but there’s no going out the way I came in, because THEY know I’m here.
If you had told me three weeks ago that I would be here right now in this place shitting my pants because flesh eating cannibals were trying to smash in the door, I would have told you to go see a shrink. I guess this is what I get for being such a selfish ass. I should have paid more attention weeks ago when they were talking about the SICKNESS. Some virus that originated in a medical facility in upper state New York that was let out when some infected patients escaped. I never would have believed it could spread so fast... it's fucking crazy!
Like the prick that I am, I had been so focused on ME, not giving a shit about what was going on in the world outside my condo, then it finally came back and literally bit me on the ass. My name is Vance Singleton. Three weeks ago I was a successful business man living in my Manhattan penthouse condo looking down my nose at the rest of the world, but today I’m hunted prey running for my fucking life. I will NEVER…. EVER…. Forget the date May 10th 2015. Rather I live another day or 50 more years... that day is a day I won’t be able to forget. It’s the day my life changed forever…. wait!
May 16th 2015
I stopped writing last night because something happened and I didn’t have it in me to continue, so I’ll pick up where I left off in a minute. But first, as I wrote last night, I heard something on the fire escape. You know the one that was supposed to be my safe exit. It was one of those pus bags. I guess it was my lamp-light. I keep forgetting those fuckers are smarter than I give them credit for. Anyway seems the bastard pulled himself up the ladder and made his way to my window. The only weapons I have with me at the moment are a baseball bat, a large butcher knife and my 22 caliber pistol. I wasn’t about to fire that thing and let every shit bag in on the block know where I am, so I dispatched that fucker with a well placed blade through the center of it's god damned skull. It’s unsettling how simple it’s become to kill. It's become a hell of a lot easier in the last few days, but I’m not sure I’d even call what I'm doing, killing! How do you kill something that’s already dead? That's one thing I've had a hell of a time getting my head around. Those fuckers are actually dead and reanimated back to life. I didn't believe it at first but the scientists on the television have been very clear about that fact. How in the fuck that could happen I'll never know, but the one thing I do know is it's not enough that THEY are dead.... but they want ME dead too!
I haven’t been able to do much scavenging yet, but I hope to find some better weapons once I’m out of the down town area. Anyway I wanted to finish what I was saying about May 10th. It was about 5:30pm on a Monday. I had been listening to the news on the television for days, you know in one ear and out the other. They had been talking about some virus that had been spreading through the state. Something about a cryogenics lab up north that had been using some bogus chemical in their freezing process that caused adverse affects in their patients, causing them to become hostile and dangerous…. Well they got out somehow and now it was spreading like wild fire. It sounded like some science fiction bullshit to me, but now I was sorry I hadn’t given it more credence, but I guess that’s just me. I still shit my pants when I think about what I was forced to do, but I guess you never know what you have in you until the time comes. It was approaching dusk and I was on my balcony of all places, doing some writing on my computer and smoking a cigar. I remember so vividly how I sat there, trying to decide rather I wanted to make a cup of coffee or not (sometimes I’m just too dam lazy to use that fucking cappuccino machine) but when I finally decided to do it, I suddenly heard a loud thump on my front door.
I looked out of the peep hole in the door but didn’t see anything but shadows. I could only hear moans and then a scream come from down the hall. I hooked the chain lock and made sure the door was bolted and believe it or not, I started back to the kitchen. Looking back now I realize I was in some state of denial. I knew deep down inside that the world was falling apart outside those doors, but I was determined to go on with business as usual. You know…. Ignore it until it went away. I spent my life doing that sort of thing when I was faced with something I didn’t want to deal with. That’s when it happened. I turned to go back to the balcony, walking through my overpriced condo full of overpriced furniture when suddenly there was an ear-splitting crash and the door burst open.
I quickly spun round to face the door and there to my horror stood Mr. Garza the doorman. He looked horrible with his blood soaked uniform and his gaping hollow abdomen. He looked like a fish that had just been gutted. Behind him was a group of six or seven building residents. Most of them I either had known or had seen in the elevator, but they were all bloody and mangled and were nothing like they had been the last time I saw them. Mrs. Bennet had one of her eyeballs dangling on what was left of her bloody cheek and Mr. Jenkins my neighbor’s lower jaw looked as though it had been ripped from his face completely, leaving his tongue twisting and writhing like an over-sized purple slug. It was a horrible sight and all I could think to do was run back to the balcony.
As I made my way through the den, I almost stumbled over my roll top desk and that‘s when I remembered my pistol. I hurriedly opened the secret drawer in the bottom of the desk and grabbed my 22 pistol and the small box of shells. I didn’t dare look back but I could hear Mr. Garza and the others lumbering through the living room behind me and stumbling over the furniture. I ran the last ten feet to the balcony and started to slide the French doors shut, but Mr. Garza and Mr. Jenkins were too fast for me. They were right behind me and made it onto the balcony, squeezing through the door just as I pushed it shut.
Mr. Jenkins tripped on the metal track the door slid back and forth on, and fell on the tile balcony floor, but Mr. Garza was quickly up in my face. I took my gun and placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. CLICK! It wasn’t loaded! SHIT… I knew I had to think fast, so I dropped the gun and grabbed him by the throat and pushed him over the balcony railing, sending him to what I hoped was another death 21 floors below. Now I had to deal with Mr. Jenkins, who was fumbling to his feet just at that moment. As I grabbed the top of his head, I noticed that a crowd of those horrid things had already gathered in my den and were already banging on the French doors to the balcony. I shoved my fist into the gaping hole that was Mr. Jenkin’s mouth and used his head like a boxing glove, (avoiding the teeth) smashing it against the outer brick walls of the balcony. It was actually that fake “brickette” shit they installed for aesthetics but it was hard and it did the trick. The pummeling of Mr. Jenkins head didn’t kill him, but it left a huge blood stain on the fake bricks and dazed him enough that I was able to pull him over to the rail and send him over the side as well. Two down… ten to go…. OH SHIT… make that twenty.
The crowd of zombies in my den was growing by the second. It was as if every dead pus bag in the building knew there was fresh meat on the balcony in 21-05. I was thanking my lucky stars that when the contractor was doing the renovations to my condo a year before, I had him install those fancy French doors with extra thick safety glass. I had lived in another condo years before where there had been some break-ins where the intruders had gained access through the resident’s balcony’s so I was thinking about the crime rate in New York when I had them installed. Little did I know it would be blood thirsty zombies that would eventually make them pay for themselves. When the contractor installed them originally, I had found it odd that they came with two locks, one on the inside and one on the outside, so you could lock intruders out no matter which side of the glass you were on. Odd? HELL NO! now I was singing their praises.
I sat there in shock for an hour, shaking like a whipped puppy, watching my dead neighbors smear blood, pus and fecal matter all over my French doors, but the glass was holding and they couldn’t get though. As I stood there looking 21 stories down at the slow but certain demise of the city I had called home for over 20 years, I knew I was trapped and it would take a miracle to find a way off of this prison balcony. A gun, an empty coffee cup, and my laptop were the only things I had on the balcony with me. Well that and some large potted plants, but they were pretty much useless. I had left my cell phone on the table next to the couch so I had no way of trying to call for help. I had no way of knowing how far this virus (as they were calling it on the news) had spread. Was there even anyone out there to help? The wireless internet was still working, so I used my laptop to try and message someone… anyone. I tried Skype and Oovoo and every other messaging program I had, to try to contact someone, but there wasn’t anyone out there. I even logged onto facebook and tried to contact one of my two friends on my list but nobody was online. Go Figure! It was just me; my balcony and a 21 story drop straight down. I knew I was in for one hell of a night.
It seemed like it took for fucking ever but the morning finally came May 16th 5am and the sun was peeking over the horizon. Between my dead neighbors pounding on my balcony doors and the distant screams and explosions through the city, I had gotten a grand total of maybe 20 minutes of sleep. I would have given my left arm and both testicles for a rope, but that just wasn’t going to happen, so I had to start being creative and come up with a way to get off that balcony without falling 21 floors to my death. I could see Mr. Garza and Mr. Jenkins down below. They were both writhing on the parking lot asphalt below. Every bone in their bodies was probably broken but they were both still alive. They looked like little ants with broken legs wiggling around on the ground.
I did some investigating and noticed that the barrier between units on the balcony had ornate rod iron fixtures that ran down the length of the outer wall of the building, making it possible to climb down to the units below. Now all I had to do was conjure up the guts to climb out over my balcony rail and make my way down. Suddenly I heard a loud thud, followed by a faint CRACKING sound. I looked at the rabid corpses in my den (now there had to be at least 50 of them) and one of them, a man I didn’t recognize from my building, had thoughtlessly grabbed a tiffany lamp my ex wife had gotten me for one of our anniversaries. I know these shit bags don't think, but they do seem to have a curiosity about them and I'm guessing he found the lamp interesting and soon realised that the lamp + glass = SMASH! He looked like he was a rather fresh kill, so maybe somehow his brain still worked a bit. Regardless why he grabbed it, he was using it to try to smash through the safety glass…. and it seemed to be working. I don’t know how many pounds of pressure the glass was designed to take before it gave way, but I am guessing 50 zombies and a tiffany lamp was pushing the limits, so I started taking some deep breaths because I knew within a few minutes I would have to grow a pair and take the proverbial “plunge”.
I had just leaned out and grabbed a hold of the rot iron fixture when I heard the sound of shattering glass behind me. I jumped over the railing just as the balcony filled with putrid corpses that were rambling like crazy to get at me. They were fighting each other to get as close as possible, even pushing each other over the rail like wild animals in a feeding frenzy. I was able to get a foot hold on the balcony rail under me and hold on for dear life as they reached out with their mangled tattered claws trying to grab me, but I was just out of their reach. It must have been adrenaline that kept me going as I climbed down from one fixture to the next but I didn’t dare look down because I knew I would freeze in terror.
To be on the safe side, I climbed down three floors to a unit under mine, which I knew to be empty. I just happened to know the people who owned it and knew that they had been away on a holiday to Europe for at least a month. I climbed onto their balcony and busted into the empty condo. That’s where I got the baseball bat and the butcher knife from their kitchen. Too bad the liberal bastards were anti firearms, because it would have been just too perfect to happen across another good weapon, but no dice. Anyway, that was then and this is now….
I stopped writing last night because something happened and I didn’t have it in me to continue, so I’ll pick up where I left off in a minute. But first, as I wrote last night, I heard something on the fire escape. You know the one that was supposed to be my safe exit. It was one of those pus bags. I guess it was my lamp-light. I keep forgetting those fuckers are smarter than I give them credit for. Anyway seems the bastard pulled himself up the ladder and made his way to my window. The only weapons I have with me at the moment are a baseball bat, a large butcher knife and my 22 caliber pistol. I wasn’t about to fire that thing and let every shit bag in on the block know where I am, so I dispatched that fucker with a well placed blade through the center of it's god damned skull. It’s unsettling how simple it’s become to kill. It's become a hell of a lot easier in the last few days, but I’m not sure I’d even call what I'm doing, killing! How do you kill something that’s already dead? That's one thing I've had a hell of a time getting my head around. Those fuckers are actually dead and reanimated back to life. I didn't believe it at first but the scientists on the television have been very clear about that fact. How in the fuck that could happen I'll never know, but the one thing I do know is it's not enough that THEY are dead.... but they want ME dead too!
I haven’t been able to do much scavenging yet, but I hope to find some better weapons once I’m out of the down town area. Anyway I wanted to finish what I was saying about May 10th. It was about 5:30pm on a Monday. I had been listening to the news on the television for days, you know in one ear and out the other. They had been talking about some virus that had been spreading through the state. Something about a cryogenics lab up north that had been using some bogus chemical in their freezing process that caused adverse affects in their patients, causing them to become hostile and dangerous…. Well they got out somehow and now it was spreading like wild fire. It sounded like some science fiction bullshit to me, but now I was sorry I hadn’t given it more credence, but I guess that’s just me. I still shit my pants when I think about what I was forced to do, but I guess you never know what you have in you until the time comes. It was approaching dusk and I was on my balcony of all places, doing some writing on my computer and smoking a cigar. I remember so vividly how I sat there, trying to decide rather I wanted to make a cup of coffee or not (sometimes I’m just too dam lazy to use that fucking cappuccino machine) but when I finally decided to do it, I suddenly heard a loud thump on my front door.
I looked out of the peep hole in the door but didn’t see anything but shadows. I could only hear moans and then a scream come from down the hall. I hooked the chain lock and made sure the door was bolted and believe it or not, I started back to the kitchen. Looking back now I realize I was in some state of denial. I knew deep down inside that the world was falling apart outside those doors, but I was determined to go on with business as usual. You know…. Ignore it until it went away. I spent my life doing that sort of thing when I was faced with something I didn’t want to deal with. That’s when it happened. I turned to go back to the balcony, walking through my overpriced condo full of overpriced furniture when suddenly there was an ear-splitting crash and the door burst open.
I quickly spun round to face the door and there to my horror stood Mr. Garza the doorman. He looked horrible with his blood soaked uniform and his gaping hollow abdomen. He looked like a fish that had just been gutted. Behind him was a group of six or seven building residents. Most of them I either had known or had seen in the elevator, but they were all bloody and mangled and were nothing like they had been the last time I saw them. Mrs. Bennet had one of her eyeballs dangling on what was left of her bloody cheek and Mr. Jenkins my neighbor’s lower jaw looked as though it had been ripped from his face completely, leaving his tongue twisting and writhing like an over-sized purple slug. It was a horrible sight and all I could think to do was run back to the balcony.
As I made my way through the den, I almost stumbled over my roll top desk and that‘s when I remembered my pistol. I hurriedly opened the secret drawer in the bottom of the desk and grabbed my 22 pistol and the small box of shells. I didn’t dare look back but I could hear Mr. Garza and the others lumbering through the living room behind me and stumbling over the furniture. I ran the last ten feet to the balcony and started to slide the French doors shut, but Mr. Garza and Mr. Jenkins were too fast for me. They were right behind me and made it onto the balcony, squeezing through the door just as I pushed it shut.
Mr. Jenkins tripped on the metal track the door slid back and forth on, and fell on the tile balcony floor, but Mr. Garza was quickly up in my face. I took my gun and placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger. CLICK! It wasn’t loaded! SHIT… I knew I had to think fast, so I dropped the gun and grabbed him by the throat and pushed him over the balcony railing, sending him to what I hoped was another death 21 floors below. Now I had to deal with Mr. Jenkins, who was fumbling to his feet just at that moment. As I grabbed the top of his head, I noticed that a crowd of those horrid things had already gathered in my den and were already banging on the French doors to the balcony. I shoved my fist into the gaping hole that was Mr. Jenkin’s mouth and used his head like a boxing glove, (avoiding the teeth) smashing it against the outer brick walls of the balcony. It was actually that fake “brickette” shit they installed for aesthetics but it was hard and it did the trick. The pummeling of Mr. Jenkins head didn’t kill him, but it left a huge blood stain on the fake bricks and dazed him enough that I was able to pull him over to the rail and send him over the side as well. Two down… ten to go…. OH SHIT… make that twenty.
The crowd of zombies in my den was growing by the second. It was as if every dead pus bag in the building knew there was fresh meat on the balcony in 21-05. I was thanking my lucky stars that when the contractor was doing the renovations to my condo a year before, I had him install those fancy French doors with extra thick safety glass. I had lived in another condo years before where there had been some break-ins where the intruders had gained access through the resident’s balcony’s so I was thinking about the crime rate in New York when I had them installed. Little did I know it would be blood thirsty zombies that would eventually make them pay for themselves. When the contractor installed them originally, I had found it odd that they came with two locks, one on the inside and one on the outside, so you could lock intruders out no matter which side of the glass you were on. Odd? HELL NO! now I was singing their praises.
I sat there in shock for an hour, shaking like a whipped puppy, watching my dead neighbors smear blood, pus and fecal matter all over my French doors, but the glass was holding and they couldn’t get though. As I stood there looking 21 stories down at the slow but certain demise of the city I had called home for over 20 years, I knew I was trapped and it would take a miracle to find a way off of this prison balcony. A gun, an empty coffee cup, and my laptop were the only things I had on the balcony with me. Well that and some large potted plants, but they were pretty much useless. I had left my cell phone on the table next to the couch so I had no way of trying to call for help. I had no way of knowing how far this virus (as they were calling it on the news) had spread. Was there even anyone out there to help? The wireless internet was still working, so I used my laptop to try and message someone… anyone. I tried Skype and Oovoo and every other messaging program I had, to try to contact someone, but there wasn’t anyone out there. I even logged onto facebook and tried to contact one of my two friends on my list but nobody was online. Go Figure! It was just me; my balcony and a 21 story drop straight down. I knew I was in for one hell of a night.
It seemed like it took for fucking ever but the morning finally came May 16th 5am and the sun was peeking over the horizon. Between my dead neighbors pounding on my balcony doors and the distant screams and explosions through the city, I had gotten a grand total of maybe 20 minutes of sleep. I would have given my left arm and both testicles for a rope, but that just wasn’t going to happen, so I had to start being creative and come up with a way to get off that balcony without falling 21 floors to my death. I could see Mr. Garza and Mr. Jenkins down below. They were both writhing on the parking lot asphalt below. Every bone in their bodies was probably broken but they were both still alive. They looked like little ants with broken legs wiggling around on the ground.
I did some investigating and noticed that the barrier between units on the balcony had ornate rod iron fixtures that ran down the length of the outer wall of the building, making it possible to climb down to the units below. Now all I had to do was conjure up the guts to climb out over my balcony rail and make my way down. Suddenly I heard a loud thud, followed by a faint CRACKING sound. I looked at the rabid corpses in my den (now there had to be at least 50 of them) and one of them, a man I didn’t recognize from my building, had thoughtlessly grabbed a tiffany lamp my ex wife had gotten me for one of our anniversaries. I know these shit bags don't think, but they do seem to have a curiosity about them and I'm guessing he found the lamp interesting and soon realised that the lamp + glass = SMASH! He looked like he was a rather fresh kill, so maybe somehow his brain still worked a bit. Regardless why he grabbed it, he was using it to try to smash through the safety glass…. and it seemed to be working. I don’t know how many pounds of pressure the glass was designed to take before it gave way, but I am guessing 50 zombies and a tiffany lamp was pushing the limits, so I started taking some deep breaths because I knew within a few minutes I would have to grow a pair and take the proverbial “plunge”.
I had just leaned out and grabbed a hold of the rot iron fixture when I heard the sound of shattering glass behind me. I jumped over the railing just as the balcony filled with putrid corpses that were rambling like crazy to get at me. They were fighting each other to get as close as possible, even pushing each other over the rail like wild animals in a feeding frenzy. I was able to get a foot hold on the balcony rail under me and hold on for dear life as they reached out with their mangled tattered claws trying to grab me, but I was just out of their reach. It must have been adrenaline that kept me going as I climbed down from one fixture to the next but I didn’t dare look down because I knew I would freeze in terror.
To be on the safe side, I climbed down three floors to a unit under mine, which I knew to be empty. I just happened to know the people who owned it and knew that they had been away on a holiday to Europe for at least a month. I climbed onto their balcony and busted into the empty condo. That’s where I got the baseball bat and the butcher knife from their kitchen. Too bad the liberal bastards were anti firearms, because it would have been just too perfect to happen across another good weapon, but no dice. Anyway, that was then and this is now….
May 17th 2015
7:45 am: I actually slept in a drainage pipe last night. It ran under the highway and seemed safe, but I didn’t get much sleep. I could hear the moans and shuffling feet of those bastards all night. A couple of them got way too close for comfort but the upside of it all was that when the sun came up I could see that there was a small strip mall nearby that happened to have a pawn shop next to a 7-11. Woopty fucking do! The things that excite you in times like this.
8:00 am: The Pawn shop was a washout. The place was locked up as tight as a drum and the glass windows were bared, so getting in would have meant a shit-load of noise and I just can’t afford it. Most pawn shops have tons of guns but I can’t take the chance to find out. As I was sneaking up to the 7-11 I noticed a small group of corpses lumbering a ways up the street. They had no idea I was there but they made me nervous as hell. I traded out the duffle bag I’ve been toting around with me, for a backpack. The 7-11 had a nice display of them on the back wall. Everything from the kind designed to carry your laptop, to the small school-girl version with Hello Kitty on them. I opted for a large manly one that would carry a ton of shit.
I was forced to pick the lock to the front door (a skill I had learned in my college days) so I knew that place most likely hadn’t been looted much if at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find it hadn’t been and there was an abundance of food. Some of the bread products were still edible but and the power was still on, so the refrigerated items were still ok for the most part. I stuffed as many canned goods as I could in my pack along with a couple of packages of hot dogs that I knew I would eat before they spoiled. I knew it was only a matter of time before the power grids were off and civilization would dissolve into oblivion eventually so I was going to take full advantage of that I could scrounge at the moment. I had never seen a 7-11 quite as large as this one and it sort of looked like it had been converted from something else as it didn’t have the same layout as most 7-11’s I had been in. Anyway I am going to hang here a while and open a can of spam. I love that stuff.
8:45am: I was right. This particular 7-11 had a huge walk in freezer in the back just next to a exit that leads to the alley (which was unlocked so my lock picking was a waste of time). I noticed there were signs of a struggle back here and evidence that this place had been overrun by the dead at some point and then I made the most gruesome discovery I have ever seen in my life. When I opened the freezer I found what I can only guess had been a family of four, trying to barricade themselves from a group of living dead. They are dead and I mean really dead, not the ‘die and then start twitching around eventually coming back to life sort of dead’. They have been here a long time as they are frozen solid and caked over with frost like some morbid family of snowmen. I’m not making a sick joke; I’m just trying to describe it. It’s ashamed because from what I can see none of them were bitten, they just went into the freezer to wait it out, not taking into account that those fuckers take their sweet time when it comes to leaving. I learned a long time ago you don’t’ try to “wait them out” because it’s not going to happen. They only leave when they think there isn’t any food left. I stuffed a few pizza pockets and frozen burritos into my pack and left.
Who cares what time it is….. I don’t know why I am writing this shit down. I guess it’s a way of keeping me sane. I don’t know and I doubt anyone will ever read it, but fuck it. It makes me focus on something besides surviving. It’s been exactly a week since I did a Bruce Willis off the balcony of my condo and I’ve probably traveled a grand total of 20 miles. I am on the outskirts of the city but things are not much better. I’m still ducking and weaving from car to car in parking lots and scurrying through alleys like a sewer rat. This just isn’t any kind of life. But I guess it beats the hell out of the alternative.
3:20pm: I have managed to get out of the city by way of the highway. It’s littered with abandon cars, some of which still have the owners decaying inside. I saw a few that had turned after being attacked and bitten but were trapped inside their vehicles. It’s creepy and a bit sad that they are trapped there for eternity, but I’ll be dammed if I’m gonna be the one to teach them how to use the fucking door handle. At the moment I’m sitting in the cab of a semi truck abandon on the highway. It’s one of those sleeper cabs and I’m very tempted to stay here tonight, but it’s just too early. If I knew how to drive one and it wasn’t such a diesel hog I would try using it to go North…. Go where, I don’t know, but I think north is a good bet. It’s going to get cold, but that just might be a big plus. Up the road a couple of miles I can see what looks like a farm house. Earlier back down the highway a bit I found a gun shop. I abandon my trusty 22 that’s I’ve been afraid to even use, for a 44mag. I just figure it’s better to blow their head off than just make a hole in it. I loaded my pack down the rest of the way with ammo and grabbed some binoculars. I would have done a bit more window shopping but that particular strip mall was teaming with those things.
5:00pm: It took me what seemed like forever to get to the farm house. Upon approaching the house the first thing I noticed was the classic 1967 VW bug in a garage off the barn. I had one like it back in college and given the great gas mileage and mobility it would be a great way to make my way up north. The moment I walked up on the porch I knew I wasn’t alone. I pulled the 44 mag out of my belt and squeezed it tightly in my fist. The front door was ajar and the immediate area was empty. The place smelled or rot and there was a sound, like someone moving around down the hall that I could faintly make out. I whispered loudly to see if anyone “living” was there, but the minute my voice echoed down the hall the banging started…
7:35pm: The banging has been going on, almost nonstop for two hours. I decided to stay the night here in the farmhouse but I am going to have to deal with the fucker in the back room. Earlier I went out and checked on the VW. It seems in good shape. I found the keys on the dresser in the bedroom and was able to start the engine; however it was only for a few seconds. Can’t make any loud noises or you end up with an instant fan club. I traded my kitchen butcher knife for a machete I found while rummaging around in the barn. I found a pitch fork as well and figured it would be the perfect weapon to use against whomever or whatever is in that back bedroom. I got down on my knees in the hall and looked under the door and as far as I can tell there is only one of those things in the room. I only saw one shadow and one set of feet from under the door…. I’m going to go deal with it…. be back later…..
8:30pm: OH MY GOD…. OH MY GOD…. OH MY F&%#ING GOD!!!! I can barely write… my hands are still shaking. I can’t believe what I found in the back bedroom of this FUCKING house. What kind of sick fucks lived here? I still have the taste of my own vomit in my throat from where I lost it back in the bedroom. When I pushed the door opened, the smell almost knocked me over. If I have pieced what happened together correctly I would have to gather that the people who lived here had two twin boys around the age of 7 or 8. I can only guess that one of them turned and then bit the other one, because what I found when I entered that room were two twin boys handcuffed to opposite ends of a large wooden bed frame. One of them was significantly more decomposed than the other and they had obviously been feeding on each other. Both boys were turned and both undead and they had probably been locked in the room and left there for a week or two. The room was wall to wall blood and pus and god only knows what other bodily fluids those boys had smeared around, but how could parents leave two boys behind like that. If they turned into blood thirsty zombies while their parents were around they should have put them out of their misery. God… I am so sick to my stomach and having to lop off those boys’ heads didn’t help…. I’m going to try and I stress TRY… to get some sleep.
7:45 am: I actually slept in a drainage pipe last night. It ran under the highway and seemed safe, but I didn’t get much sleep. I could hear the moans and shuffling feet of those bastards all night. A couple of them got way too close for comfort but the upside of it all was that when the sun came up I could see that there was a small strip mall nearby that happened to have a pawn shop next to a 7-11. Woopty fucking do! The things that excite you in times like this.
8:00 am: The Pawn shop was a washout. The place was locked up as tight as a drum and the glass windows were bared, so getting in would have meant a shit-load of noise and I just can’t afford it. Most pawn shops have tons of guns but I can’t take the chance to find out. As I was sneaking up to the 7-11 I noticed a small group of corpses lumbering a ways up the street. They had no idea I was there but they made me nervous as hell. I traded out the duffle bag I’ve been toting around with me, for a backpack. The 7-11 had a nice display of them on the back wall. Everything from the kind designed to carry your laptop, to the small school-girl version with Hello Kitty on them. I opted for a large manly one that would carry a ton of shit.
I was forced to pick the lock to the front door (a skill I had learned in my college days) so I knew that place most likely hadn’t been looted much if at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find it hadn’t been and there was an abundance of food. Some of the bread products were still edible but and the power was still on, so the refrigerated items were still ok for the most part. I stuffed as many canned goods as I could in my pack along with a couple of packages of hot dogs that I knew I would eat before they spoiled. I knew it was only a matter of time before the power grids were off and civilization would dissolve into oblivion eventually so I was going to take full advantage of that I could scrounge at the moment. I had never seen a 7-11 quite as large as this one and it sort of looked like it had been converted from something else as it didn’t have the same layout as most 7-11’s I had been in. Anyway I am going to hang here a while and open a can of spam. I love that stuff.
8:45am: I was right. This particular 7-11 had a huge walk in freezer in the back just next to a exit that leads to the alley (which was unlocked so my lock picking was a waste of time). I noticed there were signs of a struggle back here and evidence that this place had been overrun by the dead at some point and then I made the most gruesome discovery I have ever seen in my life. When I opened the freezer I found what I can only guess had been a family of four, trying to barricade themselves from a group of living dead. They are dead and I mean really dead, not the ‘die and then start twitching around eventually coming back to life sort of dead’. They have been here a long time as they are frozen solid and caked over with frost like some morbid family of snowmen. I’m not making a sick joke; I’m just trying to describe it. It’s ashamed because from what I can see none of them were bitten, they just went into the freezer to wait it out, not taking into account that those fuckers take their sweet time when it comes to leaving. I learned a long time ago you don’t’ try to “wait them out” because it’s not going to happen. They only leave when they think there isn’t any food left. I stuffed a few pizza pockets and frozen burritos into my pack and left.
Who cares what time it is….. I don’t know why I am writing this shit down. I guess it’s a way of keeping me sane. I don’t know and I doubt anyone will ever read it, but fuck it. It makes me focus on something besides surviving. It’s been exactly a week since I did a Bruce Willis off the balcony of my condo and I’ve probably traveled a grand total of 20 miles. I am on the outskirts of the city but things are not much better. I’m still ducking and weaving from car to car in parking lots and scurrying through alleys like a sewer rat. This just isn’t any kind of life. But I guess it beats the hell out of the alternative.
3:20pm: I have managed to get out of the city by way of the highway. It’s littered with abandon cars, some of which still have the owners decaying inside. I saw a few that had turned after being attacked and bitten but were trapped inside their vehicles. It’s creepy and a bit sad that they are trapped there for eternity, but I’ll be dammed if I’m gonna be the one to teach them how to use the fucking door handle. At the moment I’m sitting in the cab of a semi truck abandon on the highway. It’s one of those sleeper cabs and I’m very tempted to stay here tonight, but it’s just too early. If I knew how to drive one and it wasn’t such a diesel hog I would try using it to go North…. Go where, I don’t know, but I think north is a good bet. It’s going to get cold, but that just might be a big plus. Up the road a couple of miles I can see what looks like a farm house. Earlier back down the highway a bit I found a gun shop. I abandon my trusty 22 that’s I’ve been afraid to even use, for a 44mag. I just figure it’s better to blow their head off than just make a hole in it. I loaded my pack down the rest of the way with ammo and grabbed some binoculars. I would have done a bit more window shopping but that particular strip mall was teaming with those things.
5:00pm: It took me what seemed like forever to get to the farm house. Upon approaching the house the first thing I noticed was the classic 1967 VW bug in a garage off the barn. I had one like it back in college and given the great gas mileage and mobility it would be a great way to make my way up north. The moment I walked up on the porch I knew I wasn’t alone. I pulled the 44 mag out of my belt and squeezed it tightly in my fist. The front door was ajar and the immediate area was empty. The place smelled or rot and there was a sound, like someone moving around down the hall that I could faintly make out. I whispered loudly to see if anyone “living” was there, but the minute my voice echoed down the hall the banging started…
7:35pm: The banging has been going on, almost nonstop for two hours. I decided to stay the night here in the farmhouse but I am going to have to deal with the fucker in the back room. Earlier I went out and checked on the VW. It seems in good shape. I found the keys on the dresser in the bedroom and was able to start the engine; however it was only for a few seconds. Can’t make any loud noises or you end up with an instant fan club. I traded my kitchen butcher knife for a machete I found while rummaging around in the barn. I found a pitch fork as well and figured it would be the perfect weapon to use against whomever or whatever is in that back bedroom. I got down on my knees in the hall and looked under the door and as far as I can tell there is only one of those things in the room. I only saw one shadow and one set of feet from under the door…. I’m going to go deal with it…. be back later…..
8:30pm: OH MY GOD…. OH MY GOD…. OH MY F&%#ING GOD!!!! I can barely write… my hands are still shaking. I can’t believe what I found in the back bedroom of this FUCKING house. What kind of sick fucks lived here? I still have the taste of my own vomit in my throat from where I lost it back in the bedroom. When I pushed the door opened, the smell almost knocked me over. If I have pieced what happened together correctly I would have to gather that the people who lived here had two twin boys around the age of 7 or 8. I can only guess that one of them turned and then bit the other one, because what I found when I entered that room were two twin boys handcuffed to opposite ends of a large wooden bed frame. One of them was significantly more decomposed than the other and they had obviously been feeding on each other. Both boys were turned and both undead and they had probably been locked in the room and left there for a week or two. The room was wall to wall blood and pus and god only knows what other bodily fluids those boys had smeared around, but how could parents leave two boys behind like that. If they turned into blood thirsty zombies while their parents were around they should have put them out of their misery. God… I am so sick to my stomach and having to lop off those boys’ heads didn’t help…. I’m going to try and I stress TRY… to get some sleep.
May 18th 2015
12:50pm: The VW ran like a charm, getting me to highway 87 and all the way to Kingston. The highway was littered with hundreds of vehicles but the bug was able to maneuver in and out of the abandon traffic. It probably took twice the time it would have on a normal non-zombie apocalypse day, but hey I’m here. As I write this, I am sitting at a road side park three miles outside of Kingston. I found a map in the glove box of the bug and having looked it over; I have come up with a plan. I plan to make my way North East up to Ticonderoga and find some sort of lakeside boathouse on Lake Champlain so I can make my way up to Canada in a boat, which should be much less problematic. I am sure I can probably find lakeside fueling facilities up and down the shores of the lake and who knows…. I may even end up with the dream-boat I’ve always wanted…. Hang on… I hear something moving over by the bathrooms. I’m going to check it out!
1:20pm: The Bitch almost bit me. Shit I need to be more careful. I should really stop going an investigating every fucking sound I hear. I guess I just have this burning desire to actually find a survivor somewhere. I heard a can banging around in the woman’s restroom so I went inside. The woman inside the restroom had once been someone’s dear old granny. Sweet old cookie baking demeanor aside, she was now a withered old hag with about a month’s worth of ROT that made her look more like a wild-eyed ghoul. Those things can hear pretty dam well because the moment I entered the restroom, the bitch came flying out of a stall and tried to rip out my throat. The machete I picked up back at the farm came in really handy. I’m 0 for three on the head count. Ok time to take a piss and move on.
5:55pm: I got into Ticonderoga about 30 minutes ago. The bug’s engine was acting up so I pulled into a Motel 6 parking lot. I’m sitting here in the Motel office where it seems safe for now. Maybe I can stay the night here and get an early start. Power is still on and the place is empty. It’s got one of those manager apartments that opens into the office area. I just checked around a bit and there is even frozen food in the fridge. I better take advantage of these sorts of little finds while they exist. The Power grid won’t stay on forever…. But that makes me wonder if it’s still on because someone is maintaining it or if it simply hasn’t broken down yet.
8:30pm: I woke to the sound of a loud THUD. I guess I had dozed off for a few hours on the couch, but now things are getting bad. THEY are out there. In the last couple of hours they have swarmed the place. I don’t’ think they particularly know I’m here, but something has drawn them here. DAM! I just heard a gunshot. As I’m sitting here writing this, I heard a gunshot and it’s very nearby... sounded like it may have come from one of the rooms here in the motel. I can’t help but guess that’s what’s brought them here. SHIT! There went another gun shot. I better go investigate. I’ll write more later….
12:45am: I woke to the sound of another gun shot. My earlier investigation went nowhere since I was unable to leave the office safely so I decided to draw the blinds on the office windows and get some sleep. Whoever is shooting has drawn a big crowd, but they seem to all be focused on direction of the gun shots and don’t seem to know I’m here. Which is certainly good news for me. This motel is the type that has two floors with outside walkways running in front of the rooms and a central outside staircase, so there is no way to get to the survivor without going out into that crowd of pus bags and since they all seem to be congregating at the other end of the motel, I can only guess they are in one of the farthest rooms. I picked up the phone at the desk and it seemed to still be working but since I didn’t know what room the survivor was in I couldn’t call them from the office. I sure did want to give them a piece of my mind and tell them to stop shooting their fucking gun! With their Goddam gun going off, things were only going to get worse…. Wait… it’s the phone…. It’s ringing and it’s flashing the room number 207. I’m going to answer it and see who this idiot is.
2:00am: Her name is Andria. It seems she hiding in this Motel 6 for three days. The gunshot started when one of the zombies that has been stalking her for days, made its way to the door of her room. The problem is that 1 zombie + 1 gunshot = 100 more zombies. She said she dispatched her original pursuer, but now she has a steady flow of corpses showing up at her motel room door, not to mention the fucking parking lot. I told her barricade the door and try to get some sleep and that I would come up with a plan and get her and I out of here safely. I’m supposed to call her back at 6am….time to make a plan!
12:50pm: The VW ran like a charm, getting me to highway 87 and all the way to Kingston. The highway was littered with hundreds of vehicles but the bug was able to maneuver in and out of the abandon traffic. It probably took twice the time it would have on a normal non-zombie apocalypse day, but hey I’m here. As I write this, I am sitting at a road side park three miles outside of Kingston. I found a map in the glove box of the bug and having looked it over; I have come up with a plan. I plan to make my way North East up to Ticonderoga and find some sort of lakeside boathouse on Lake Champlain so I can make my way up to Canada in a boat, which should be much less problematic. I am sure I can probably find lakeside fueling facilities up and down the shores of the lake and who knows…. I may even end up with the dream-boat I’ve always wanted…. Hang on… I hear something moving over by the bathrooms. I’m going to check it out!
1:20pm: The Bitch almost bit me. Shit I need to be more careful. I should really stop going an investigating every fucking sound I hear. I guess I just have this burning desire to actually find a survivor somewhere. I heard a can banging around in the woman’s restroom so I went inside. The woman inside the restroom had once been someone’s dear old granny. Sweet old cookie baking demeanor aside, she was now a withered old hag with about a month’s worth of ROT that made her look more like a wild-eyed ghoul. Those things can hear pretty dam well because the moment I entered the restroom, the bitch came flying out of a stall and tried to rip out my throat. The machete I picked up back at the farm came in really handy. I’m 0 for three on the head count. Ok time to take a piss and move on.
5:55pm: I got into Ticonderoga about 30 minutes ago. The bug’s engine was acting up so I pulled into a Motel 6 parking lot. I’m sitting here in the Motel office where it seems safe for now. Maybe I can stay the night here and get an early start. Power is still on and the place is empty. It’s got one of those manager apartments that opens into the office area. I just checked around a bit and there is even frozen food in the fridge. I better take advantage of these sorts of little finds while they exist. The Power grid won’t stay on forever…. But that makes me wonder if it’s still on because someone is maintaining it or if it simply hasn’t broken down yet.
8:30pm: I woke to the sound of a loud THUD. I guess I had dozed off for a few hours on the couch, but now things are getting bad. THEY are out there. In the last couple of hours they have swarmed the place. I don’t’ think they particularly know I’m here, but something has drawn them here. DAM! I just heard a gunshot. As I’m sitting here writing this, I heard a gunshot and it’s very nearby... sounded like it may have come from one of the rooms here in the motel. I can’t help but guess that’s what’s brought them here. SHIT! There went another gun shot. I better go investigate. I’ll write more later….
12:45am: I woke to the sound of another gun shot. My earlier investigation went nowhere since I was unable to leave the office safely so I decided to draw the blinds on the office windows and get some sleep. Whoever is shooting has drawn a big crowd, but they seem to all be focused on direction of the gun shots and don’t seem to know I’m here. Which is certainly good news for me. This motel is the type that has two floors with outside walkways running in front of the rooms and a central outside staircase, so there is no way to get to the survivor without going out into that crowd of pus bags and since they all seem to be congregating at the other end of the motel, I can only guess they are in one of the farthest rooms. I picked up the phone at the desk and it seemed to still be working but since I didn’t know what room the survivor was in I couldn’t call them from the office. I sure did want to give them a piece of my mind and tell them to stop shooting their fucking gun! With their Goddam gun going off, things were only going to get worse…. Wait… it’s the phone…. It’s ringing and it’s flashing the room number 207. I’m going to answer it and see who this idiot is.
2:00am: Her name is Andria. It seems she hiding in this Motel 6 for three days. The gunshot started when one of the zombies that has been stalking her for days, made its way to the door of her room. The problem is that 1 zombie + 1 gunshot = 100 more zombies. She said she dispatched her original pursuer, but now she has a steady flow of corpses showing up at her motel room door, not to mention the fucking parking lot. I told her barricade the door and try to get some sleep and that I would come up with a plan and get her and I out of here safely. I’m supposed to call her back at 6am….time to make a plan!
May 19th 2015
6:45am: I’m sitting here looking at the leather binding of my diary thinking to myself that there will possibly never be another book bound anywhere on the planet. Never another story written, or another play produced, never another movie made, or another can of Coca Cola canned. The world is falling apart and there’s not a dam thing I can do about it. Andria is DEAD… or sort of dead…. however that works. A scream woke me up at 5am. I tried to call her room to see if she was ok and there was no answer. Through the window I could see the corpses swarming into her room, through the busted in door. I never even got to meet her. She was just a scared voice on the other end of a motel telephone… but still a real live living person. Would I ever meet another one?
8:00am: According to my map, the shore of Lake Champlain is about a mile from the highway. My bug is worthless but I think I can hoof it since it’s mostly forest between here and there. The corpses had filled the parking log. Even more of them showed up after they got into Andria’s room. It’s amazing how a fresh kill brings them out of the woodwork. I noticed how they reacted to the sound of the phone ringing in her room so I came up with a plan to leave the office without them seeing me. I looked at the motel layout and found the number to the room at the farthest end of the building, room 215 and dialed the room….I let it ring off the hook. The zombies could hear the phone from outside and eventually they made their way up the stairs and congregated at the door of that room. If there was anyone hiding in there, they are shit out of luck. But I had to do what I had to do. Hell, I got away without a scratch… I just hope it wasn’t at someone else’s expense.
10:30am: I never thought I would be saying “thank god for drug dealers” but today was my lucky day. Between the motel and the woods were a couple of streets I had to go through that looked like the “shady” part of town. You know the kind of place I wouldn’t be caught dead in on a normal day. The street I went down had a few sleazy night clubs located on it and they must have been the kind of places that attracted the low-life’s and dirt bags in town because I found a black sedan crashed into the front of a strip club. In the sedan was a bag or what I can only guess is crystal meth (plastic bags of some sort of crystallized shit but I wouldn’t know for sure cause I’ve never touched the shit) and a 9mm pistol with a silencer. I couldn’t have come across a genie and wished for a better weapon than this. The only down side is that there is only one extra clip of ammo besides the one in the pistol. I’m guessing 30 rounds all together. I’m not normally a gun-guy so I’m just guessing here.
I got to try out the silencer on my way through the woods when I had to go through the campground from hell. I could see the lake from the campground but between it and me was a small army of walking corpses. From where I was hiding, It looked like a cub scout leader and three of his scouts. I wonder if there is a merit badge for killing walking dead pus bags? Anyway the three young teenage zombies and their leader looked like they had been turned early on, probably when all this started. They were pretty ripe and I didn’t want to get any closer than I had to. I used my silenced 9mm and shot them all in the head from 30 feet away. God I love this gun. I need to find more ammo for it.
11:15am: Walking down a narrow portion of the lake, where the current was pretty strong, I saw a heavy set naked man without a head, floating down river. I can only guess he had been one of those things and someone dispatched him by separating him from his head. It was disgusting but by far not the most gruesome site I’ve seen thus far. There is a boathouse gas station and restaurant just up ahead. I am hoping I can find a boat there, that I can use to continue up river.
6:45am: I’m sitting here looking at the leather binding of my diary thinking to myself that there will possibly never be another book bound anywhere on the planet. Never another story written, or another play produced, never another movie made, or another can of Coca Cola canned. The world is falling apart and there’s not a dam thing I can do about it. Andria is DEAD… or sort of dead…. however that works. A scream woke me up at 5am. I tried to call her room to see if she was ok and there was no answer. Through the window I could see the corpses swarming into her room, through the busted in door. I never even got to meet her. She was just a scared voice on the other end of a motel telephone… but still a real live living person. Would I ever meet another one?
8:00am: According to my map, the shore of Lake Champlain is about a mile from the highway. My bug is worthless but I think I can hoof it since it’s mostly forest between here and there. The corpses had filled the parking log. Even more of them showed up after they got into Andria’s room. It’s amazing how a fresh kill brings them out of the woodwork. I noticed how they reacted to the sound of the phone ringing in her room so I came up with a plan to leave the office without them seeing me. I looked at the motel layout and found the number to the room at the farthest end of the building, room 215 and dialed the room….I let it ring off the hook. The zombies could hear the phone from outside and eventually they made their way up the stairs and congregated at the door of that room. If there was anyone hiding in there, they are shit out of luck. But I had to do what I had to do. Hell, I got away without a scratch… I just hope it wasn’t at someone else’s expense.
10:30am: I never thought I would be saying “thank god for drug dealers” but today was my lucky day. Between the motel and the woods were a couple of streets I had to go through that looked like the “shady” part of town. You know the kind of place I wouldn’t be caught dead in on a normal day. The street I went down had a few sleazy night clubs located on it and they must have been the kind of places that attracted the low-life’s and dirt bags in town because I found a black sedan crashed into the front of a strip club. In the sedan was a bag or what I can only guess is crystal meth (plastic bags of some sort of crystallized shit but I wouldn’t know for sure cause I’ve never touched the shit) and a 9mm pistol with a silencer. I couldn’t have come across a genie and wished for a better weapon than this. The only down side is that there is only one extra clip of ammo besides the one in the pistol. I’m guessing 30 rounds all together. I’m not normally a gun-guy so I’m just guessing here.
I got to try out the silencer on my way through the woods when I had to go through the campground from hell. I could see the lake from the campground but between it and me was a small army of walking corpses. From where I was hiding, It looked like a cub scout leader and three of his scouts. I wonder if there is a merit badge for killing walking dead pus bags? Anyway the three young teenage zombies and their leader looked like they had been turned early on, probably when all this started. They were pretty ripe and I didn’t want to get any closer than I had to. I used my silenced 9mm and shot them all in the head from 30 feet away. God I love this gun. I need to find more ammo for it.
11:15am: Walking down a narrow portion of the lake, where the current was pretty strong, I saw a heavy set naked man without a head, floating down river. I can only guess he had been one of those things and someone dispatched him by separating him from his head. It was disgusting but by far not the most gruesome site I’ve seen thus far. There is a boathouse gas station and restaurant just up ahead. I am hoping I can find a boat there, that I can use to continue up river.
May 21st, 2015
When will I learn not to underestimate those pus bags. The last two days have been hell. I haven’t updated this diary because I was overwhelmed by a group of those bastards and I dropped my backpack and wasn’t able to get to it for two days. When I was making my way up the river bank, I ended up finding what looked like the perfect boathouse complete with a few motor boats and some larger ones. I actually saw what looked like a boathouse, which is perfect but the minute I started toward the marina an army of those fuckers came at me. They saw me before I saw them. It turned out that the fat man floating in the river wasn’t dead…. Or completely dead…. Oh fuck you know what I mean. His head must have been under water making it look like he was headless and at some point, I don’t know when, he got out of the water and started following me. I saw him first. I was squatting in the bushes checking out the marina when I heard a snapping twig behind me. I turned and it was him. I recognized that bloated naked body immediately… shiny rubbery skin blown up like some morbid balloon animal. Slashed purple lacerations all over his torso and legs and now that I could see his face I almost wanted to puke at the sight of his puffed up lips and swollen eyelids. I have no idea how he could see me as his eyes were swollen so tightly shut. I wasn’t going to fuck around with him so I dispatched him quickly with my machete….in case you are wondering… now…. he really is headless!
Seeing the fat man urged me to make a run for the marina and that’s when the army of darkness decided I was their new meal. There was an alley between an old fish and tackle shop and the Marina and that is where the horde (at least 20 of them) came from. When I first saw them, they were literally about ten feet away from me, so priority one was to get across the parking lot alive, so when I stumbled and dropped my backpack, there was no stopping to pick it up. I didn’t make it to the marina but I was able to zig zag my way across the street to the garage of a gas station and that’s where I was for two days.
There was junk food in a vending machine and bottled water in the refrigerators that were still working THANK GOD. So not having my backpack wasn’t that big of an issue at the moment, but I knew I needed to get it back. The garage was connected to a small convenience store area but there was a separate office in the back that I was locked out of, but I was completely fine with that since I could hear something moving around behind the door. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, because I couldn’t help but think there was a small chance that the sound was coming from some poor fool who was hiding and still very much alive. I knew the chances of that were small but I guess I was always looking for a reason to hope.
I waited a few minutes quietly to see if there was any rhythm to the sound behind the door. You know, a phone receiver dangling from the cord or an oscillating fan left on…. That sort of thing, but the noise was clearly someone or something moving around in the office and my gut was telling me to leave it be. My curiosity got the best of me and I pressed my ear against the door to try to hear tell tale sounds some undead pus bag lumbering around in the office. Sure enough when I stopped and listened closely I could hear a wheezing gurgling sound accompanied by an occasional moan. I decided to leave it alone.
The marina was pretty close but it could have been a hundred miles away for the good it did me. I laid there listening to the groaning coming from the office and thinking about how the hell to distract those pus bags outside long enough to get my pack and high tail it to the marina. Then I got what I still think was a brilliant idea. I had been in that fucking gas station garage for 48 hours and why I didn’t think of if it before…. I could have kicked myself. The front door to the convenient store portion of the gas station had one of those cheesy motion sensor noise makers that went off when a customer came in the door. You know, sort of the modern version of those old timey tinkle bells that were hit by the door when it opened and closed, alerting the shop owner of a new customer. Well the modern motion sensor door bells came in a variety of noises. There was everything from croaking frogs to birds chirping to cats meowing and even barking dogs…. Oh and I think you could ever get a cow mooing. Anyway I hadn’t checked to see if this one worked as I was not about to make any more noise than I had to, but I carefully ripped the thing off the wall and thank god it had its own battery pack.
I took the sensor and duck taped it between two tennis balls (the convenience store happened to have a sporting goods shelf, thank god) to give it a bit of cushion when it landed in the field on the other side of the store. My plan was to throw the sensor out there and hope one of those fuckers shambled near enough to make it chirp. When one of them hears the chirp, and more are drawn over, the more there are the more it will chirp and the more it chirps the more will be drawn over. I went to the side of the garage that was opposite my pack and the marina and opened a window. There in a grassy filed were about three of those fuckers meandering around. It was perfect. I threw the “noise bomb” over to where the three pus bags were. The thing hit one of them in the face and landed at another ones foot. It let out a loud chirp the moment it hit the ground. The sound could not have been more perfect. It was a barking dog, but it had that “little yappy dog” sound to it and it was earsplitting. It must have annoyed the shop assistant to death before the end of the world happened.
The three zombies were instantly agitated. They looked around to find the souse of the noise but in the semi-tall grass they could not find it, but every time they moved it yapped. It worked like a charm. The more they moved the more it yapped and the more it yapped the more of them came to investigate. It would go on like this until the battery ran out. Within 15 minutes every pus bag that had been mulling around in the parking lot, between me and my back pack had gone to the back of the building for some “file of yapping dog”. Only to find disappointment I might add.
After loading up a sack with some fresh supplies, when the coast was clear, I opened the door to the stop, ran out across the parking lot, grabbed my pack and got my ass to the marina as fast as my legs would take me. That’s where I am now and I’m feeling the love! *NOTE TO READER… when you’re putting together your zombie survival kit add a few of those annoying yappy door ringers. They come in REAL FUCKING handy!
When will I learn not to underestimate those pus bags. The last two days have been hell. I haven’t updated this diary because I was overwhelmed by a group of those bastards and I dropped my backpack and wasn’t able to get to it for two days. When I was making my way up the river bank, I ended up finding what looked like the perfect boathouse complete with a few motor boats and some larger ones. I actually saw what looked like a boathouse, which is perfect but the minute I started toward the marina an army of those fuckers came at me. They saw me before I saw them. It turned out that the fat man floating in the river wasn’t dead…. Or completely dead…. Oh fuck you know what I mean. His head must have been under water making it look like he was headless and at some point, I don’t know when, he got out of the water and started following me. I saw him first. I was squatting in the bushes checking out the marina when I heard a snapping twig behind me. I turned and it was him. I recognized that bloated naked body immediately… shiny rubbery skin blown up like some morbid balloon animal. Slashed purple lacerations all over his torso and legs and now that I could see his face I almost wanted to puke at the sight of his puffed up lips and swollen eyelids. I have no idea how he could see me as his eyes were swollen so tightly shut. I wasn’t going to fuck around with him so I dispatched him quickly with my machete….in case you are wondering… now…. he really is headless!
Seeing the fat man urged me to make a run for the marina and that’s when the army of darkness decided I was their new meal. There was an alley between an old fish and tackle shop and the Marina and that is where the horde (at least 20 of them) came from. When I first saw them, they were literally about ten feet away from me, so priority one was to get across the parking lot alive, so when I stumbled and dropped my backpack, there was no stopping to pick it up. I didn’t make it to the marina but I was able to zig zag my way across the street to the garage of a gas station and that’s where I was for two days.
There was junk food in a vending machine and bottled water in the refrigerators that were still working THANK GOD. So not having my backpack wasn’t that big of an issue at the moment, but I knew I needed to get it back. The garage was connected to a small convenience store area but there was a separate office in the back that I was locked out of, but I was completely fine with that since I could hear something moving around behind the door. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, because I couldn’t help but think there was a small chance that the sound was coming from some poor fool who was hiding and still very much alive. I knew the chances of that were small but I guess I was always looking for a reason to hope.
I waited a few minutes quietly to see if there was any rhythm to the sound behind the door. You know, a phone receiver dangling from the cord or an oscillating fan left on…. That sort of thing, but the noise was clearly someone or something moving around in the office and my gut was telling me to leave it be. My curiosity got the best of me and I pressed my ear against the door to try to hear tell tale sounds some undead pus bag lumbering around in the office. Sure enough when I stopped and listened closely I could hear a wheezing gurgling sound accompanied by an occasional moan. I decided to leave it alone.
The marina was pretty close but it could have been a hundred miles away for the good it did me. I laid there listening to the groaning coming from the office and thinking about how the hell to distract those pus bags outside long enough to get my pack and high tail it to the marina. Then I got what I still think was a brilliant idea. I had been in that fucking gas station garage for 48 hours and why I didn’t think of if it before…. I could have kicked myself. The front door to the convenient store portion of the gas station had one of those cheesy motion sensor noise makers that went off when a customer came in the door. You know, sort of the modern version of those old timey tinkle bells that were hit by the door when it opened and closed, alerting the shop owner of a new customer. Well the modern motion sensor door bells came in a variety of noises. There was everything from croaking frogs to birds chirping to cats meowing and even barking dogs…. Oh and I think you could ever get a cow mooing. Anyway I hadn’t checked to see if this one worked as I was not about to make any more noise than I had to, but I carefully ripped the thing off the wall and thank god it had its own battery pack.
I took the sensor and duck taped it between two tennis balls (the convenience store happened to have a sporting goods shelf, thank god) to give it a bit of cushion when it landed in the field on the other side of the store. My plan was to throw the sensor out there and hope one of those fuckers shambled near enough to make it chirp. When one of them hears the chirp, and more are drawn over, the more there are the more it will chirp and the more it chirps the more will be drawn over. I went to the side of the garage that was opposite my pack and the marina and opened a window. There in a grassy filed were about three of those fuckers meandering around. It was perfect. I threw the “noise bomb” over to where the three pus bags were. The thing hit one of them in the face and landed at another ones foot. It let out a loud chirp the moment it hit the ground. The sound could not have been more perfect. It was a barking dog, but it had that “little yappy dog” sound to it and it was earsplitting. It must have annoyed the shop assistant to death before the end of the world happened.
The three zombies were instantly agitated. They looked around to find the souse of the noise but in the semi-tall grass they could not find it, but every time they moved it yapped. It worked like a charm. The more they moved the more it yapped and the more it yapped the more of them came to investigate. It would go on like this until the battery ran out. Within 15 minutes every pus bag that had been mulling around in the parking lot, between me and my back pack had gone to the back of the building for some “file of yapping dog”. Only to find disappointment I might add.
After loading up a sack with some fresh supplies, when the coast was clear, I opened the door to the stop, ran out across the parking lot, grabbed my pack and got my ass to the marina as fast as my legs would take me. That’s where I am now and I’m feeling the love! *NOTE TO READER… when you’re putting together your zombie survival kit add a few of those annoying yappy door ringers. They come in REAL FUCKING handy!
May 24th 2015
There was nothing but death and decay in the marina, but I’m happy to report that none of them were up walking around. They were just poor bastards that had become various and sundry meals for the pus bags. I am guessing someone had dispatched them all because they all had various head traumas that kept them from “coming back” I’m guessing. I dragged the carcasses into a broom closet and sealed them up in there and spent the night in the marina. There was plenty of petrol cans and fuel to fill them with so I loaded up. I had been right when I thought I had seen a houseboat from down the river. When I got to the marina there it was in all its glory. I am in it now. It’s a 2001 Fantasy 17x82 and it is loaded. It’s got to be brand new. It probably belonged to some gazilionaire who had way to much fucking money to know what to do with….. Anyway I don’t think he’ll mind my using it. My plan now is to get some much needed rest… the real kind that allows you to get a good night sleep without having to worry about having your brains ripped out in your sleep. It’s been nine days now since my escape from the balcony and I’ve been surviving, but that’s all, just SURVIVING! Its dam lonely and I would love to actually find some other survivors, so that’s what I plan to do. I am going to use the petrol I’ve stocked up and go up the river keeping my eye out for survivors. The houseboat has a radio in it, but so far nothing.
May 25th 2015
I had anchored the boat out in the middle of the river. I can only guess I was near a sandbar or something because I awakened to a sound. Thank god I didn’t move much and only cracked an eyelid, because when I did, that’s when I saw it… or her… or whatever! I laid there motionless. My mind brought me back to a podcast I had listened to online. This zombie movie enthusiast and his pal had an online show where they would talk about and review zombie movies. I had always been a fan, well, until now that is. It’s a bit different when it’s real. Anyway in their podcast they always had listener questions they would talk about and one guy had written in and asked the question “Will zombies attack you if you’re sleeping and not making noise?” I was thinking what a good question that was, back when I heard it and the show host and his pal were talking about how noise attracts them usually so it might be possible to survive if you are asleep. Well I was and there it was and it hadn’t even noticed me yet.
I was lying on the couch, asleep; under a blanket because it had been cold the night before. Somehow this teen girl zombie had found her way into my houseboat. She was wet so I can only guess she had come up from under the water and pulled herself onto the deck at the stern section of the boat. At first all I could do was thank my lucky stars I hadn’t been snoring. I had slept with my machete so I was prepared for anything, but still it freaked the hell out of me that one of those fuckers could find me on the safety of a boat in the middle of the fucking river, talking about a false sense of security. I learned a huge lesson there. *NOTE TO SELF… be sure to lock the fucking door to the aft deck from now on!
I am guessing the girl was about 15 years old. She was very messed up, with all the flesh ripped away from her left arm and a huge portion of her face gone. Her clothes were ripped to shreds and her ribcage was exposed on her right side. She had probably been a beautiful girl when she was alive, but now… she wasn’t a pretty site at all. She was just roaming around galley, almost as if she were looking for something. I can only guess she could sense my living, breathing flesh, but didn’t know how to pin-point it with no sounds for reference.
I slowly pulled the cover off of me and I think she must have heard it, because at that very moment she turned to face me and instantly her blank slack expression turned to distain. She had found her prey and she was going to go after it with everything she had. As she lunged at me, I flew up from the couch and planted the machete into her neck. Her arms flailed around in a vain attempt to grab me, but I used the blade to push her back through the sliding glass doors to the deck and pushed her against the rail. With the machete blade through her neck, I angled the sharp side up and with an upward thrust, took off her head, sending her backward into the water where she had come from. Will the drama never end? I guess there is no rest for a zombie holocaust survivor.
I’ve read in zombie fiction novels and seen in some movies where they speculate about how zombies can survive under water. Given the fact that they are not able to, nor have any need to breathe, they are able to simply meander around on the bottom of any body of water, only at the mercy of the creatures down there that eventually nibble away at their rotting flesh. I would imagine they could stay animated down there for a long time, especially if the water at the bottom is particularly cold. Since I don’t think they swim per-say, I can only guess my visitor had walked up on a sand bar and it was shallow enough for her to pull herself up. The boat is equipped with a depth finder and boy am I ever going to start using the dam thing!
May 26th 2015
After dispatching the zombie teen things were pretty quiet yesterday. The Houseboat was a real find and it certainly gave me a sense of security. I’ve been making good time up the river and there should be a small town coming up, at least as far as the map indicates. Wait, I’ll be right back….
I was right, I heard some gun shots and there is a town coming up portside. There are some survivors or at least I think there may be. Just off shore is a small shopping complex with some tall buildings that form what looks like a “town square”. Just above the bank and trust there is a big sign hanging out of a window on what looks like the 4th floor. It says help. Since zombies don’t shoot guns and the shots seemed to come from that direction I can only guess someone is alive… I mean REALLY alive. I want to get to them quickly. I don’t want another situation like the one back at the motel. Plus I really could use some company. It’s just too fucking lonely and I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind….
11:33pm: Well I’m still alive and I feel like it’s just barely. I got shot in the arm… it just grazed the flesh but still WHAT THE FUCK! After anchoring my boat (I named her Maxine after my mother) I went ashore and made a beeline for a small motorcycle shop next to a Sears and Roebucks on the town square. It was closer to my position than the bank was. The cycle shop had a small generator shed just off of one side so I darted in there for cover. I had a good view of the bank which was just on the other side of the square. I could see a woman at the window and she had what looked like a small caliber rifle in her hands. I tried to wave her down and get her attention and that’s when I heard the shot. A bullet whizzed by me, stinging my right arm as it took a chunk of flesh with it. She saw me alright and she thought I was one of them. Since when do zombies wave at you and try to get your attention? “Stupid bitch”
After tending my flesh wound, I grabbed my binoculars and scoped out the building adjacent to the bank. It seemed to be some sort of apartment building with one of those security doors with a list of tenants and their call buttons. It was securely shut, but there was a small band of pus bags banging on the door. I knew the only way I would get the small band of dead-heads away from the door was with a noisy distraction, just like the one I had come up with back at the garage. I looked through my pack to see what I had that would make some noise. Nothing! Only some food and my gun and a small glass of coke I had found in the boathouse fridge. When I found it, I remember stuffing it in my bag, thinking since it was one of the old fashioned glass bottles I might be able to break it and use it to smack one of those fuckers up-side of the head if I found myself in a pinch for a weapon at some point. That’s when I got the idea. I took off my watch, guzzled the coke (I couldn’t bare to waste it) then I set the alarm on my watch to go off in one minute. I always hated that fucking watch because when I used the alarm it was always so loud it got the attention of anyone within ear shot. It went off one time when I was in a church at a funeral. Everyone in the place turned and looked at me with disdain. How embarrassing was that? It’s ironic how what once embarrassed the hell out of me was now going to probably save my life. I fastened the watch band around the empty bottle and threw it in the direction of a large parking area on the far side of the square.
I waited for it… then there it was! SMASH! The bottle shattered in the parking lot, getting the attention of most of the pus bags gathered at the apartment complex door. First only about five of the twenty or so zombies started to meander toward the sound of the breaking glass. The others just seemed to ignore it, but then the annoying chirping sound of the alarm went off. Suddenly the remaining twenty or so zombie heads turned toward the sound and within seconds they were all wandering over toward the broken bottle. The moment their backs were to me, I made my move. I darted across the grass and ducked behind a statue of some old geezer with a sword in his hand… probably the founding father or something. Lucky for me the woman in the window was watching the entire thing, so she knew I was coming.
When I got to the door of the apartment complex, I ran my finger down all the buttons and there was a faint voice on the intercom. “I’m in apartment 4-A” the woman’s voice spoke and the door buzzed open. I was thinking that I had gotten pretty good at fooling those pus bags, but when I pulled the door opened, I glanced over at the reI had treating crowd of zombies and about three of them had looked back at my direction and seen me entering the building. I guess they heard the voice over the com. DAM!
The door locked behind me and I was in the building safe and sound, but I had four floors to climb and I didn’t know what to expect between me and the woman’s apartment. Holding my machete tightly in my hand, I made my way to the second floor. Three more of those fuckers were wandering around in the hallway. Jesus I almost puked. One was a woman and she was stumbling along the hallway holding onto the arm of a small dangling body. Let’s just way it was the size of a baby doll… but it wasn’t a doll. She/it was coming towards me and hadn’t seen me yet, so I stayed in the stairwell until she came close enough then I lunged out at her and with one powerful swoop, I sent her to the great beyond to be with her baby. I found if I told myself things like this, I could live with all the violence and dismemberment much easier. “Keeping the sanity… keeping the sanity”… that was the mantra I kept repeating in my head as I chopped my way though the other two creepers and made my way to the fourth floor.
Her name was Clair and she was a 30 year old housewife who had been keeping herself and her 10 year old son Charlie alive for days in some random apartment they had barricaded themselves in. Neither of them was hurt or bitten and the food I had tucked away in my pack (which I shared with them) made them act like it was Christmas morning.
My watch alarm was one of those digital ones that didn’t stop unless you turned it off or the battery ran out, so it was still in full force when we got down stairs. The three zombies that had seen me enter the building were waiting at the door for us, but the other 22 or so were still trying to figure out what that annoying chirping sound in the parking lot was. It would only be a matter of time before they figured out it wasn’t dinner, so I told Clair and Charlie to stick close to me while we made a run for the houseboat.
I smashed out the small glass window in the apartment complex door and dispatched the three pus bags with my silencer , which was a bit stupid now that I think about it in retrospect, because my smashing the glass out alerted most of the zombies in the parking lot, but we had a big enough head start that it really didn’t matter. Having a safe-house that moved around was in our favor too, because we didn’t have to worry too much about them following us back there. Charlie twisted his ankle just as we got to the statue, so I grabbed him up “piggy back” style and we high tailed it to the boat. Pretty uneventful I might add, which was a welcome plus in our favor. They are asleep now and I’m sitting here writing by lamp light and we’re safely anchored… in deep water I might add.
There was nothing but death and decay in the marina, but I’m happy to report that none of them were up walking around. They were just poor bastards that had become various and sundry meals for the pus bags. I am guessing someone had dispatched them all because they all had various head traumas that kept them from “coming back” I’m guessing. I dragged the carcasses into a broom closet and sealed them up in there and spent the night in the marina. There was plenty of petrol cans and fuel to fill them with so I loaded up. I had been right when I thought I had seen a houseboat from down the river. When I got to the marina there it was in all its glory. I am in it now. It’s a 2001 Fantasy 17x82 and it is loaded. It’s got to be brand new. It probably belonged to some gazilionaire who had way to much fucking money to know what to do with….. Anyway I don’t think he’ll mind my using it. My plan now is to get some much needed rest… the real kind that allows you to get a good night sleep without having to worry about having your brains ripped out in your sleep. It’s been nine days now since my escape from the balcony and I’ve been surviving, but that’s all, just SURVIVING! Its dam lonely and I would love to actually find some other survivors, so that’s what I plan to do. I am going to use the petrol I’ve stocked up and go up the river keeping my eye out for survivors. The houseboat has a radio in it, but so far nothing.
May 25th 2015
I had anchored the boat out in the middle of the river. I can only guess I was near a sandbar or something because I awakened to a sound. Thank god I didn’t move much and only cracked an eyelid, because when I did, that’s when I saw it… or her… or whatever! I laid there motionless. My mind brought me back to a podcast I had listened to online. This zombie movie enthusiast and his pal had an online show where they would talk about and review zombie movies. I had always been a fan, well, until now that is. It’s a bit different when it’s real. Anyway in their podcast they always had listener questions they would talk about and one guy had written in and asked the question “Will zombies attack you if you’re sleeping and not making noise?” I was thinking what a good question that was, back when I heard it and the show host and his pal were talking about how noise attracts them usually so it might be possible to survive if you are asleep. Well I was and there it was and it hadn’t even noticed me yet.
I was lying on the couch, asleep; under a blanket because it had been cold the night before. Somehow this teen girl zombie had found her way into my houseboat. She was wet so I can only guess she had come up from under the water and pulled herself onto the deck at the stern section of the boat. At first all I could do was thank my lucky stars I hadn’t been snoring. I had slept with my machete so I was prepared for anything, but still it freaked the hell out of me that one of those fuckers could find me on the safety of a boat in the middle of the fucking river, talking about a false sense of security. I learned a huge lesson there. *NOTE TO SELF… be sure to lock the fucking door to the aft deck from now on!
I am guessing the girl was about 15 years old. She was very messed up, with all the flesh ripped away from her left arm and a huge portion of her face gone. Her clothes were ripped to shreds and her ribcage was exposed on her right side. She had probably been a beautiful girl when she was alive, but now… she wasn’t a pretty site at all. She was just roaming around galley, almost as if she were looking for something. I can only guess she could sense my living, breathing flesh, but didn’t know how to pin-point it with no sounds for reference.
I slowly pulled the cover off of me and I think she must have heard it, because at that very moment she turned to face me and instantly her blank slack expression turned to distain. She had found her prey and she was going to go after it with everything she had. As she lunged at me, I flew up from the couch and planted the machete into her neck. Her arms flailed around in a vain attempt to grab me, but I used the blade to push her back through the sliding glass doors to the deck and pushed her against the rail. With the machete blade through her neck, I angled the sharp side up and with an upward thrust, took off her head, sending her backward into the water where she had come from. Will the drama never end? I guess there is no rest for a zombie holocaust survivor.
I’ve read in zombie fiction novels and seen in some movies where they speculate about how zombies can survive under water. Given the fact that they are not able to, nor have any need to breathe, they are able to simply meander around on the bottom of any body of water, only at the mercy of the creatures down there that eventually nibble away at their rotting flesh. I would imagine they could stay animated down there for a long time, especially if the water at the bottom is particularly cold. Since I don’t think they swim per-say, I can only guess my visitor had walked up on a sand bar and it was shallow enough for her to pull herself up. The boat is equipped with a depth finder and boy am I ever going to start using the dam thing!
May 26th 2015
After dispatching the zombie teen things were pretty quiet yesterday. The Houseboat was a real find and it certainly gave me a sense of security. I’ve been making good time up the river and there should be a small town coming up, at least as far as the map indicates. Wait, I’ll be right back….
I was right, I heard some gun shots and there is a town coming up portside. There are some survivors or at least I think there may be. Just off shore is a small shopping complex with some tall buildings that form what looks like a “town square”. Just above the bank and trust there is a big sign hanging out of a window on what looks like the 4th floor. It says help. Since zombies don’t shoot guns and the shots seemed to come from that direction I can only guess someone is alive… I mean REALLY alive. I want to get to them quickly. I don’t want another situation like the one back at the motel. Plus I really could use some company. It’s just too fucking lonely and I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind….
11:33pm: Well I’m still alive and I feel like it’s just barely. I got shot in the arm… it just grazed the flesh but still WHAT THE FUCK! After anchoring my boat (I named her Maxine after my mother) I went ashore and made a beeline for a small motorcycle shop next to a Sears and Roebucks on the town square. It was closer to my position than the bank was. The cycle shop had a small generator shed just off of one side so I darted in there for cover. I had a good view of the bank which was just on the other side of the square. I could see a woman at the window and she had what looked like a small caliber rifle in her hands. I tried to wave her down and get her attention and that’s when I heard the shot. A bullet whizzed by me, stinging my right arm as it took a chunk of flesh with it. She saw me alright and she thought I was one of them. Since when do zombies wave at you and try to get your attention? “Stupid bitch”
After tending my flesh wound, I grabbed my binoculars and scoped out the building adjacent to the bank. It seemed to be some sort of apartment building with one of those security doors with a list of tenants and their call buttons. It was securely shut, but there was a small band of pus bags banging on the door. I knew the only way I would get the small band of dead-heads away from the door was with a noisy distraction, just like the one I had come up with back at the garage. I looked through my pack to see what I had that would make some noise. Nothing! Only some food and my gun and a small glass of coke I had found in the boathouse fridge. When I found it, I remember stuffing it in my bag, thinking since it was one of the old fashioned glass bottles I might be able to break it and use it to smack one of those fuckers up-side of the head if I found myself in a pinch for a weapon at some point. That’s when I got the idea. I took off my watch, guzzled the coke (I couldn’t bare to waste it) then I set the alarm on my watch to go off in one minute. I always hated that fucking watch because when I used the alarm it was always so loud it got the attention of anyone within ear shot. It went off one time when I was in a church at a funeral. Everyone in the place turned and looked at me with disdain. How embarrassing was that? It’s ironic how what once embarrassed the hell out of me was now going to probably save my life. I fastened the watch band around the empty bottle and threw it in the direction of a large parking area on the far side of the square.
I waited for it… then there it was! SMASH! The bottle shattered in the parking lot, getting the attention of most of the pus bags gathered at the apartment complex door. First only about five of the twenty or so zombies started to meander toward the sound of the breaking glass. The others just seemed to ignore it, but then the annoying chirping sound of the alarm went off. Suddenly the remaining twenty or so zombie heads turned toward the sound and within seconds they were all wandering over toward the broken bottle. The moment their backs were to me, I made my move. I darted across the grass and ducked behind a statue of some old geezer with a sword in his hand… probably the founding father or something. Lucky for me the woman in the window was watching the entire thing, so she knew I was coming.
When I got to the door of the apartment complex, I ran my finger down all the buttons and there was a faint voice on the intercom. “I’m in apartment 4-A” the woman’s voice spoke and the door buzzed open. I was thinking that I had gotten pretty good at fooling those pus bags, but when I pulled the door opened, I glanced over at the reI had treating crowd of zombies and about three of them had looked back at my direction and seen me entering the building. I guess they heard the voice over the com. DAM!
The door locked behind me and I was in the building safe and sound, but I had four floors to climb and I didn’t know what to expect between me and the woman’s apartment. Holding my machete tightly in my hand, I made my way to the second floor. Three more of those fuckers were wandering around in the hallway. Jesus I almost puked. One was a woman and she was stumbling along the hallway holding onto the arm of a small dangling body. Let’s just way it was the size of a baby doll… but it wasn’t a doll. She/it was coming towards me and hadn’t seen me yet, so I stayed in the stairwell until she came close enough then I lunged out at her and with one powerful swoop, I sent her to the great beyond to be with her baby. I found if I told myself things like this, I could live with all the violence and dismemberment much easier. “Keeping the sanity… keeping the sanity”… that was the mantra I kept repeating in my head as I chopped my way though the other two creepers and made my way to the fourth floor.
Her name was Clair and she was a 30 year old housewife who had been keeping herself and her 10 year old son Charlie alive for days in some random apartment they had barricaded themselves in. Neither of them was hurt or bitten and the food I had tucked away in my pack (which I shared with them) made them act like it was Christmas morning.
My watch alarm was one of those digital ones that didn’t stop unless you turned it off or the battery ran out, so it was still in full force when we got down stairs. The three zombies that had seen me enter the building were waiting at the door for us, but the other 22 or so were still trying to figure out what that annoying chirping sound in the parking lot was. It would only be a matter of time before they figured out it wasn’t dinner, so I told Clair and Charlie to stick close to me while we made a run for the houseboat.
I smashed out the small glass window in the apartment complex door and dispatched the three pus bags with my silencer , which was a bit stupid now that I think about it in retrospect, because my smashing the glass out alerted most of the zombies in the parking lot, but we had a big enough head start that it really didn’t matter. Having a safe-house that moved around was in our favor too, because we didn’t have to worry too much about them following us back there. Charlie twisted his ankle just as we got to the statue, so I grabbed him up “piggy back” style and we high tailed it to the boat. Pretty uneventful I might add, which was a welcome plus in our favor. They are asleep now and I’m sitting here writing by lamp light and we’re safely anchored… in deep water I might add.
May 29th 2015
8:47am: I haven’t written in a few days but that’s because there hasn’t been much to write about. We’ve just been slowly making our way up river. I’ve seen a few vessels floating in the river, most of them stuck on sand bars or run ashore. One of them had a living dead crew. It was a yacht with about six bodies that I could count but none of them actually alive, that I could tell. The thought of scavenging on the yacht crossed my mind…. but only for a moment. I quickly decided it just wasn’t worth the risk.
My boat is equip with three separate cabins, so I have my own space and Clair and Charley share theirs. Things have been pretty quiet, well up until this morning. I awoke to the sound of Clair banging on my door. It seems she had been playing with the radio and found a distress call amongst the static. The message seemed to be coming from Plattsburgh, which according to my map is only about 10 miles upriver. We are have been making pretty good time and we’re nearing the Canadian border just beyond Plattsburgh. I’m thinking if I am able to contact the folks on the other end, I should try to help them if at all possible.
1:11pm: I sat on that dam radio for three hours this morning but nothing. Clair took it upon herself to do a bit of an inventory and found that we are running lower on food and ammo than I thought we were. I have a tendency to procrastinate and put things off. I guess somewhere deep down in my mind I think the ammo fairy is going to magically replenish the supplies. It’s really because subconsciously I don’t want to venture out into the “forbidden zone” as I think of it, which has become anywhere outside the safety of this houseboat…. I know you can’t live forever…. But hell, you can sure as fuck try!
8:42pm: Jezuz freakin H. Christ! I knew we shouldn’t have fucking done it…. but Clair was insistent that we go and that she go with me. It had “bad idea” written all over it, but we went and we left Charlie in the boat.
About three miles out of Plattsburgh, on highway 87, there was one of those big super Wal-Mart stores. You could see it from the river, on the opposite side of the highway, just across a huge cemetery that ran from the shoreline to the highway. There wasn’t a pus bag to be seen from where we were, so I thought we could get there and back quickly enough for Charlie to really be in any danger. I really couldn’t believe my eyes….we got across the cemetery with no problem. Nobody was popping out of any graves like those old Return of the Living dead movies, but the minute we stepped foot on the Wal-Mart parking lot, about 12 of those fuckers started climbing out of some of the cars that had been abandon in the lot. We thought leaving Charlie in the boat, with the door locked would be ok for that short of time, but that proved to be wishful thinking.
We got through the parking lot, but it took the last of my silencer rounds to do it. In the store it was chaos. There were about 15 of those fuckers but they seemed to all be going about their own business, almost like they were shopping. I had seen movies where the living dead, or zombies if you will, had a tendency to go back to what was familiar to them in life and these pus bags in the store were doing just that. Clair and I had to sneak around but we were able to get past most of them without being spotted as long as we kept down the noise. We grabbed two of those “green bags” you know the ones you use over and over again instead of plastic… well they hold a lot when they have to. Anyway we loaded them down with canned goods and ammo and I even found a nice pistol for Clair and a shotgun in the firearms section along with enough ammo to choke an elephant.
Things were going fine until we started back out. I guess the little bit of racket we were making didn’t go completely unnoticed, because as we started down the large center aisle of the store, we had a crowd following us, which forced us to go to a different door than the one we had come through and guess what…. THE FUCKER WAS LOCKED! The 15 or so pus bags were all coming up the aisle toward us, but getting to the other side where our unlocked escape route was, wasn’t going to be possible, so I quietly motioned for Claire to jump behind the one hour photo counter we were could hide while I came up with a plan.
The fuckers were not in much of a hurry, which proved to be in our favor. I looked around and found a plastic bottle of that solution they use in the print machines and my heart jumped with joy when I read the words “extremely flammable” on the side. I quickly ripped a strand of cloth from my shirt, shoved the end of it in the open end of the bottle and loosely fastened the cap, leaving a bit of the chemical-soaked cloth sticking out. It was a gallon jug and made the perfect Molotov cocktail from HELL! Thank god the zombies were all in a group, making their way up the aisle and they were still far enough away that we could light them up and make a run for it.
I was a bit apprehensive when I lit the end of the cloth since I didn’t know if it was the liquid that was flammable or the fumes…. Or both! Anyway I lit the cloth and with all my might hurled the jug of liquid death at the group of approaching corpses. It was like slow motion as the jug flew through the air and caught the store manager (or his walking corpse, rather) square in the stomach. It almost looked as though he made an attempt to catch it but the moment it hit him, he disappeared in a red ball of fire about 10 feet in diameter. Clair and I bolted for the unlocked door with our bags and left the writhing mass of putrid, sick-sweet smelling, barbequed death behind us. I was feeling the love and dam proud of myself until we got about half way across the cemetery. That’s when we both heard Charley’s ear-shattering scream. If only we hadn’t had to stop and BBQ those muther fuckers.
Charlie is bitten! While we were gone one of those scuba-diving bastards slithered its way out of the water and up on the deck at the back of the boat and broke into the cabin. Charlie (bless his heart) managed to fight the thing off and kick its head in, during the attack, but not without getting a nice big bloody chunk taken out of his left leg. The ironic thing is that it was the corpse of some dead boy scout, probably close to Charlie’s age, that got him. I had to wonder if the little fucker followed me all the way from that “boy scout jamboree” I had back at Ticonderoga, just before I found the houseboat. I know these bastards can be relentless, but that’s a bit crazy if you ask me. Anyway it really doesn’t matter. The kid’s living on borrowed time and I know what needs to be done, but I’m not going to be the one to do it…. at least not yet.
8:47am: I haven’t written in a few days but that’s because there hasn’t been much to write about. We’ve just been slowly making our way up river. I’ve seen a few vessels floating in the river, most of them stuck on sand bars or run ashore. One of them had a living dead crew. It was a yacht with about six bodies that I could count but none of them actually alive, that I could tell. The thought of scavenging on the yacht crossed my mind…. but only for a moment. I quickly decided it just wasn’t worth the risk.
My boat is equip with three separate cabins, so I have my own space and Clair and Charley share theirs. Things have been pretty quiet, well up until this morning. I awoke to the sound of Clair banging on my door. It seems she had been playing with the radio and found a distress call amongst the static. The message seemed to be coming from Plattsburgh, which according to my map is only about 10 miles upriver. We are have been making pretty good time and we’re nearing the Canadian border just beyond Plattsburgh. I’m thinking if I am able to contact the folks on the other end, I should try to help them if at all possible.
1:11pm: I sat on that dam radio for three hours this morning but nothing. Clair took it upon herself to do a bit of an inventory and found that we are running lower on food and ammo than I thought we were. I have a tendency to procrastinate and put things off. I guess somewhere deep down in my mind I think the ammo fairy is going to magically replenish the supplies. It’s really because subconsciously I don’t want to venture out into the “forbidden zone” as I think of it, which has become anywhere outside the safety of this houseboat…. I know you can’t live forever…. But hell, you can sure as fuck try!
8:42pm: Jezuz freakin H. Christ! I knew we shouldn’t have fucking done it…. but Clair was insistent that we go and that she go with me. It had “bad idea” written all over it, but we went and we left Charlie in the boat.
About three miles out of Plattsburgh, on highway 87, there was one of those big super Wal-Mart stores. You could see it from the river, on the opposite side of the highway, just across a huge cemetery that ran from the shoreline to the highway. There wasn’t a pus bag to be seen from where we were, so I thought we could get there and back quickly enough for Charlie to really be in any danger. I really couldn’t believe my eyes….we got across the cemetery with no problem. Nobody was popping out of any graves like those old Return of the Living dead movies, but the minute we stepped foot on the Wal-Mart parking lot, about 12 of those fuckers started climbing out of some of the cars that had been abandon in the lot. We thought leaving Charlie in the boat, with the door locked would be ok for that short of time, but that proved to be wishful thinking.
We got through the parking lot, but it took the last of my silencer rounds to do it. In the store it was chaos. There were about 15 of those fuckers but they seemed to all be going about their own business, almost like they were shopping. I had seen movies where the living dead, or zombies if you will, had a tendency to go back to what was familiar to them in life and these pus bags in the store were doing just that. Clair and I had to sneak around but we were able to get past most of them without being spotted as long as we kept down the noise. We grabbed two of those “green bags” you know the ones you use over and over again instead of plastic… well they hold a lot when they have to. Anyway we loaded them down with canned goods and ammo and I even found a nice pistol for Clair and a shotgun in the firearms section along with enough ammo to choke an elephant.
Things were going fine until we started back out. I guess the little bit of racket we were making didn’t go completely unnoticed, because as we started down the large center aisle of the store, we had a crowd following us, which forced us to go to a different door than the one we had come through and guess what…. THE FUCKER WAS LOCKED! The 15 or so pus bags were all coming up the aisle toward us, but getting to the other side where our unlocked escape route was, wasn’t going to be possible, so I quietly motioned for Claire to jump behind the one hour photo counter we were could hide while I came up with a plan.
The fuckers were not in much of a hurry, which proved to be in our favor. I looked around and found a plastic bottle of that solution they use in the print machines and my heart jumped with joy when I read the words “extremely flammable” on the side. I quickly ripped a strand of cloth from my shirt, shoved the end of it in the open end of the bottle and loosely fastened the cap, leaving a bit of the chemical-soaked cloth sticking out. It was a gallon jug and made the perfect Molotov cocktail from HELL! Thank god the zombies were all in a group, making their way up the aisle and they were still far enough away that we could light them up and make a run for it.
I was a bit apprehensive when I lit the end of the cloth since I didn’t know if it was the liquid that was flammable or the fumes…. Or both! Anyway I lit the cloth and with all my might hurled the jug of liquid death at the group of approaching corpses. It was like slow motion as the jug flew through the air and caught the store manager (or his walking corpse, rather) square in the stomach. It almost looked as though he made an attempt to catch it but the moment it hit him, he disappeared in a red ball of fire about 10 feet in diameter. Clair and I bolted for the unlocked door with our bags and left the writhing mass of putrid, sick-sweet smelling, barbequed death behind us. I was feeling the love and dam proud of myself until we got about half way across the cemetery. That’s when we both heard Charley’s ear-shattering scream. If only we hadn’t had to stop and BBQ those muther fuckers.
Charlie is bitten! While we were gone one of those scuba-diving bastards slithered its way out of the water and up on the deck at the back of the boat and broke into the cabin. Charlie (bless his heart) managed to fight the thing off and kick its head in, during the attack, but not without getting a nice big bloody chunk taken out of his left leg. The ironic thing is that it was the corpse of some dead boy scout, probably close to Charlie’s age, that got him. I had to wonder if the little fucker followed me all the way from that “boy scout jamboree” I had back at Ticonderoga, just before I found the houseboat. I know these bastards can be relentless, but that’s a bit crazy if you ask me. Anyway it really doesn’t matter. The kid’s living on borrowed time and I know what needs to be done, but I’m not going to be the one to do it…. at least not yet.
May 31st 2015
9:30am: The last couple of days have been crazy sick. Dealing with Charlie has not been easy for Clair and I’ve been trying to be there for her, but it’s tough. This is the first time I’ve actually seen the process up close and personal. The first couple of hours after he was bitten, Charlie seemed fine. I actually thought maybe by some miracle he was immune, but after about 12 hours the signs were more than evident. The fever is the first real sign. It just burns you up. It almost hurt to touch the boy’s skin once the fever had a hold of him.
It’s hard to watch but once the fever takes hold it literally boils the brain and the victim is pretty much gone. Still technically alive, but gone none the less. Once the fever hit Charlie, it took another six or so, hours for the life to drain out of him. You can tell when that happens because he slowly cools down and eventually becomes cold as ice and his last breath slips away like an escaping dove. I won’t go into gory details as it’s pretty much straight forward. Clair held little Charlie in her arms until the life finally left him, then I told her to go into the other room and I held his head in my lap and waited. I didn’t want her around when he “awakened”.
I learned a valuable lesson from the experience, because I held Charlie in my arms until I could feel his body twitch. It took about two hours from the time the life left him. Once he began to twitch and his milky lifeless eyes opened, I hugged him tight and quietly snapped his little neck, severing the spinal cord for sure. His body went limp. It was over… I laid him on the floor and was preparing to find something to cover him with, when suddenly he began to writhe again. his body twitched as if it had no sort of organized motor function at all. It was obvious that he was trying to get up, but his body didn’t seem to respond to what his reanimated brain was trying to tell it… that’s when it hit me. There is a reason you have to destroy the brain. You can’t just destroy its connection to the body. The dead boy was alive with no way to move. He was a zombie quadriplegic for lack of a better term.
The sight of the boy writhing on the floor made me throw up. Clair was pounding on the door begging to come in, but I wasn’t about to let her see him like this. I quickly grabbed a large beach towel from the wardrobe and wrapped the kid up in it. Then with a deep breath, an uncontrollable flow of tears running down my face and one heavy STOMP, I put an end to his agony. Then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, there came a gunshot from the other room. I guess she couldn’t take it, knowing her boy was gone and she was now all alone in a world gone to hell. Clair had found peace from a single bullet under the chin. As quickly as they had come into my life, they left it. Will I ever get used to this fucked up world I was now a part of? At this point I’m not sure surviving is enough.
3:45pm: when I ended my last update earlier this morning, I promised myself I was not going to write this shit down anymore. But since then, I’ve come to realize that it’s actually therapeutic. It’s like somehow writing it down distances it from my own personal reality. Almost like I’m ready a story someone else experienced. I know, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt”! But hey, if it helps, it helps!
As luck would have it, there was a tiny island in the middle of the river. It was about the size of the foundation of a large house and was the perfect place to put Charlie and Clair to rest. It would have been easy to just toss them over, what with all the other dead bodies floating around, but I had to give them the dignity of an honorable burial. It was kind of nice, instead of having their own personal grave plots; they have their own personal island to rest at peace on. The make-shift funeral was safe enough to do there, but I still didn’t waste any time lingering around. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but I hope it’s something a bit more encouraging than the last few days. I’m signing out for now.
June 1st 2015
10:10pm: I never actually believed in God. I always looked at him as a convenient fairy tale for impoverished lower income types, or people with an undeveloped grasp on common sense, but now I have to wonder. I’ll start by saying It seems I have a new friend. I woke up from a cat-nap this evening to the sound of a squeaky high-pitched voice saying what I could only make out to be “Help me, Pop eye, Help me!” At first I thought I was dreaming about Olive Oil that skinny ditzy broad in the cartoons, but sure enough when I got up to investigate, I heard it again.
I literally searched for the source of the illusive voice for half an hour when I finally pin-pointed where it had to be coming from…. It was above me. As I climbed the ladder leading to the roof of the boathouse, I heard the voice again, even clearer and it said the oddest thing. “Something evil this way comes”. The light of dusk made it hard to see anything on the roof of the boat, but as I ascended to the top, I heard a nearby flutter of wings. I had mounted a small flashlight to my silencer and swung over in the direction of the sound. My jaw literally fell open in absolute disbelief. There perched on the two foot railing that ran along the top edge of the roof was the most beautiful McCaw I had ever seen in my life. Obviously someone’s pet that had escaped the surrounding nightmare and made it to the safety of my little boat. He was a welcome and very colorful sight.
Surprisingly the bird came to me and perched himself on my shoulder…. Well… with the help of a small fish cracker I dug out of a box in my stash. As welcome of a sight as the little fucker was, I started to get worried after an hour or so because he just wouldn’t shut up. The last thing a guy needs in a post-apocalyptic zombie landscape is a chatty little side kick that’s attracting attention everywhere we go.
I remembered seeing a falconer documentary on the Discovery channel back when. The Falconers always had those cool little hoods that they would slide over the bird’s head to keep him calm and quiet… so I gave it a try. I took one of those small purple velvet sacks you get with a bottle of Crown Royale and I cute a small hole for his beak and slipped it over his head. Instant peace and quiet! Now if he’s quiet through the night…. This will be a match made in heaven, if not, I’ll be eating the closest thing to chicken that I’ve eaten in weeks for lunch tomorrow.
9:30am: The last couple of days have been crazy sick. Dealing with Charlie has not been easy for Clair and I’ve been trying to be there for her, but it’s tough. This is the first time I’ve actually seen the process up close and personal. The first couple of hours after he was bitten, Charlie seemed fine. I actually thought maybe by some miracle he was immune, but after about 12 hours the signs were more than evident. The fever is the first real sign. It just burns you up. It almost hurt to touch the boy’s skin once the fever had a hold of him.
It’s hard to watch but once the fever takes hold it literally boils the brain and the victim is pretty much gone. Still technically alive, but gone none the less. Once the fever hit Charlie, it took another six or so, hours for the life to drain out of him. You can tell when that happens because he slowly cools down and eventually becomes cold as ice and his last breath slips away like an escaping dove. I won’t go into gory details as it’s pretty much straight forward. Clair held little Charlie in her arms until the life finally left him, then I told her to go into the other room and I held his head in my lap and waited. I didn’t want her around when he “awakened”.
I learned a valuable lesson from the experience, because I held Charlie in my arms until I could feel his body twitch. It took about two hours from the time the life left him. Once he began to twitch and his milky lifeless eyes opened, I hugged him tight and quietly snapped his little neck, severing the spinal cord for sure. His body went limp. It was over… I laid him on the floor and was preparing to find something to cover him with, when suddenly he began to writhe again. his body twitched as if it had no sort of organized motor function at all. It was obvious that he was trying to get up, but his body didn’t seem to respond to what his reanimated brain was trying to tell it… that’s when it hit me. There is a reason you have to destroy the brain. You can’t just destroy its connection to the body. The dead boy was alive with no way to move. He was a zombie quadriplegic for lack of a better term.
The sight of the boy writhing on the floor made me throw up. Clair was pounding on the door begging to come in, but I wasn’t about to let her see him like this. I quickly grabbed a large beach towel from the wardrobe and wrapped the kid up in it. Then with a deep breath, an uncontrollable flow of tears running down my face and one heavy STOMP, I put an end to his agony. Then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, there came a gunshot from the other room. I guess she couldn’t take it, knowing her boy was gone and she was now all alone in a world gone to hell. Clair had found peace from a single bullet under the chin. As quickly as they had come into my life, they left it. Will I ever get used to this fucked up world I was now a part of? At this point I’m not sure surviving is enough.
3:45pm: when I ended my last update earlier this morning, I promised myself I was not going to write this shit down anymore. But since then, I’ve come to realize that it’s actually therapeutic. It’s like somehow writing it down distances it from my own personal reality. Almost like I’m ready a story someone else experienced. I know, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt”! But hey, if it helps, it helps!
As luck would have it, there was a tiny island in the middle of the river. It was about the size of the foundation of a large house and was the perfect place to put Charlie and Clair to rest. It would have been easy to just toss them over, what with all the other dead bodies floating around, but I had to give them the dignity of an honorable burial. It was kind of nice, instead of having their own personal grave plots; they have their own personal island to rest at peace on. The make-shift funeral was safe enough to do there, but I still didn’t waste any time lingering around. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but I hope it’s something a bit more encouraging than the last few days. I’m signing out for now.
June 1st 2015
10:10pm: I never actually believed in God. I always looked at him as a convenient fairy tale for impoverished lower income types, or people with an undeveloped grasp on common sense, but now I have to wonder. I’ll start by saying It seems I have a new friend. I woke up from a cat-nap this evening to the sound of a squeaky high-pitched voice saying what I could only make out to be “Help me, Pop eye, Help me!” At first I thought I was dreaming about Olive Oil that skinny ditzy broad in the cartoons, but sure enough when I got up to investigate, I heard it again.
I literally searched for the source of the illusive voice for half an hour when I finally pin-pointed where it had to be coming from…. It was above me. As I climbed the ladder leading to the roof of the boathouse, I heard the voice again, even clearer and it said the oddest thing. “Something evil this way comes”. The light of dusk made it hard to see anything on the roof of the boat, but as I ascended to the top, I heard a nearby flutter of wings. I had mounted a small flashlight to my silencer and swung over in the direction of the sound. My jaw literally fell open in absolute disbelief. There perched on the two foot railing that ran along the top edge of the roof was the most beautiful McCaw I had ever seen in my life. Obviously someone’s pet that had escaped the surrounding nightmare and made it to the safety of my little boat. He was a welcome and very colorful sight.
Surprisingly the bird came to me and perched himself on my shoulder…. Well… with the help of a small fish cracker I dug out of a box in my stash. As welcome of a sight as the little fucker was, I started to get worried after an hour or so because he just wouldn’t shut up. The last thing a guy needs in a post-apocalyptic zombie landscape is a chatty little side kick that’s attracting attention everywhere we go.
I remembered seeing a falconer documentary on the Discovery channel back when. The Falconers always had those cool little hoods that they would slide over the bird’s head to keep him calm and quiet… so I gave it a try. I took one of those small purple velvet sacks you get with a bottle of Crown Royale and I cute a small hole for his beak and slipped it over his head. Instant peace and quiet! Now if he’s quiet through the night…. This will be a match made in heaven, if not, I’ll be eating the closest thing to chicken that I’ve eaten in weeks for lunch tomorrow.
June 2nd 2015
Sam and I have been getting along wonderfully. I named him Sam after “Toucan Sam, who used to delight me with his fruit loops cereal every morning as a child. I know Sam is a McCaw and not a Toucan, but who the hell cares, right? Anyway he is almost as good as a watch dog when it comes to the creepers.
I dropped anchor yesterday near one of those river-side strip malls to get some much needed supplies. It’s got a convenient dock that runs quite a length of the river. Sam’s been nice and quiet the entire day except twice when he did his little “Something wicked this way comes” routine. When I looked out at the docks, sure enough there were two creepers shambling up the dock a bit too close to the boat for comfort.
Sam’s intuition is either a really cool coincidence or he’s one really intelligent bird. Anyway they are out there and I’m in here and I’m too tired to give a dam at the moment and since they don’t know I’m here, I’ll take care of them in the morning when I leave for the strip mall. I plan to get an early start tomorrow and see what’s worth taking. I’m not anticipating anything crazy but who knows what can happen.
June 3rd 2015
Its 11pm, I’m safe and sound but I have no idea where Sam is. This really hasn’t been my day. Let me explain. This morning, I quickly dispatched the pus bags on the dock and made my way into the river-side shopping center. I know I keep calling it a shopping center and a strip mall, but it’s one of those places that’s like a line of shops facing the river. Not an enclosed building, which is a plus in my book. The place had been badly ransacked and there wasn’t much left. It made me think for a minute about how things are only going to get worse. I’m less than a month into this situation and supplies are random at best, but soon whatever is left will either have been picked over to extinction or inedible from rot and decay. I better start learning how to hunt rats and squirrels.
Now that there is another mouth to feed, I’ve been trying to think about him as well. I was lucky to find a pet store in the complex that was next to untouched. There was every type of bird treat you could imagine, so I loaded my pack down with a couple of bags. Got some new trainers to make sure I can outrun any of those fuckers out there. The fresher they are the faster they are but still they are walking dead and I have not met one yet that I couldn’t outrun, but better safe than sorry.
There was one of those shops that sells pseudo military outfitting, so I found some black cargo pants, some long sleeve black pull-over’s and a couple of those fishing vests with all the pockets. If I’m going to be a survivor, I’m going to dress the part. I have been doing a lot of thinking about weapons and their effectiveness. This little strip mall by the river was heaven for melee weapons. The more I have been in the position to choose between a gun and a silent melee weapon, I have always chosen the latter, so I figured I better load down on stuff that will come in handy and will be easy to tote around with me.
In the strip mall was one of those fantasy shops where all the geeks play War hammer and shit…. Well you could not have paid me to go in a place like that except on this particular trip something caught my eye. Mounted on the wall behind the cashier was what looked like a replica of Conan’s broad sword? When I read the plaque it actually said on there that is was a scaled down, authentic copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sword from the 1984 movie Conan the Barbarian.
The fucker was about three feet long, sharp as a razor, and would do a hell of a lot of damage if stuck in the middle of a mob of those pus bags. Needless to say, I tucked it in my belt like a medieval knight. I was glancing in the cash register when I heard the unmistakable sound of a gun clicking. You know the sound it makes when it’s out of ammo but someone is pulling the trigger. As I spun around, I was thinking how I had scanned the shop and in my mind deemed it clear of pus bags, but I guess I was wrong.
I turned and looked at the door to the back room and there in the doorway, with a revolver in her hand, what I presume had once been the young girl who ran the shop. Now, I’ve been on the run every bit of 22 days and this girl has been dead every bit of that if not more. Her skull was covered with dried blood and what was left of the flesh on her skull and face was dried up and pulled tight like an ill-fitting mask. Her eyes, one bulbous and dripping pus, were glazed over with a thick film of white cataracts and where her nose had been, was nothing more than a gaping hole, caked with dried blood.
I only knew she had once been a teenage girl because of the clothes she had on and the finger of her right hand was pulling the trigger of a revolver, over and over again. It must have been some post death response to something she had been forced to do in her last moments of life. She let out a soft moan, thank god! It could have just as easily been one of those blood curdling ones that alerts every dead fuck in a hundred yard vicinity. Her slim legged Levis were rolled up and soaked with blood and her sketchers had seen better days. She wore a tight brown T shirt with a cartoon monkey on the front that covered what had once been a perky set of tits. She was probably 17years old and this had probably been her summer job. All I could think was ‘Poor fucking kid’.
She shambled slowly toward me and appeared to be having a struggle just standing upright. I guessed she was one of the early converts to the zombie nation and probably recruited soon after the entire plague began to spread. She was no match for me and when I pulled the sword from my belt and pointed it at her face; her trigger finger began to click faster. She was agitated and wanted me dead like her. It’s weird the shit your brain says to you when you don’t’ expect it. As her hinge-like jaw wagged up and down, I imagined her saying “Come, join the zombie nation.” And with that disturbing bit of commentary running through my brain, I swung the sword up in the air and came down hard, planting it in hers. Conan would have been proud. Rest in Peace lil sister!
With my new toy wiped down and tucked in my belt, I was wondering what Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing at that precise moment. Had he joined the ranks of the living dead or was he the leader of some anti-zombie survival group in California somewhere? God I’d love to join that group! I know, sounds stupid, but I actually think ridiculous random thoughts like that help keep me human. Anyway I moved along making my way down the strip mall. The occasional creeper would pop up and I’d pop down out of sight until the coast was clear. I was keeping my eye out for anything. The population of creepers was surprisingly small, but I didn’t want to get too careless.
I found one of the circle K convenience stores and ducked inside for food. The electric was still working and the place had quite a few items left that were salvageable. I loaded my provisions back pack down with red bull, water, coke and my favorite frozen burritos. The last batch I had gotten was long gone and I knew I wouldn’t be running into many more of these gems, so I took them all. Canned tuna, canned meat, and boxed stuff like mac and cheese I knew would last forever, so I made them second priority, but I loaded the sack down till I could barely carry it.
It was getting late and I knew I needed to head back to the boat, but I wanted to try to find one more melee weapon, something lighter than the sword but every bit as effective. I quietly snuck out of the shop and was making my way across a small alley, when I saw them. There across the way was an Ace Hardware store right next to a sporting goods shop. That’s when the idea came to me.
I had been thinking of my sister and her kid, who lived in Colorado. She was the only real family I had left and last Christmas I had gone to visit them for the holidays. I remembered this zombie game her boy Brandon was playing and he had tried to get me to play it too. Not really my thing, but It was an interesting game. I can’t remember the name, but it was about this guy who was trapped in a mall full of zombies and in the game he could build all sorts of weapons. Some were ridiculous like exploding wheel chairs and such, but one of the weapons his character build was something that would come in very handy in real life and there in front of me were the two stores where I would find just the elements I would need to make one.
I snuck into the Ace hardware and grabbed a box of nails and a hammer. There were a few corpses littering the place, but none of them were up walking around. So making good time, I rushed into the sports shop and grabbed two heavy duty wooden bats. That’s when my inner ‘cave man’ took over and I ended up walking out of the store with two “nail-head” bats, one in each hand. I have to admit I was feeling pretty bad ass as if I could take on the world, but little did I know the shit was about to hit the fan.
“Help me Pop-eye, Help me!” I heard Sam’s squawky voice coming from above me. I ducked down as I looked up. My first reaction was that his loud obnoxious parrot voice was going to attract every creeper in the vicinity. Then I had a horrible thought. Why the fuck was he so far from the boat? Why would he have followed me to the strip mall? Something had to be wrong. I was loaded down pretty heavily with all the loot I had pillaged. Two backpacks full to the brim and a nail-head bat in each hand. But I ran as fast as I could back to the marina, where the boat was tied up.
I took out about five pus bags on the way, taking off their heads with my new melee weapons. The sword was awesome, but I didn’t have time to admire its handiwork completely. Sam flew above me, eventually perching himself on a tall signboard just at the entrance to the docks. That’s when I stopped and saw why he had come to find me…. Smart bird! The boat was swarming with those maggot filled mother fuckers. They were everywhere. I had only been gone a little over two hours, but they had somehow found their way on and now there had to be 75 to 100 of them. Now fucking way was I going to get my boat back.
They started to notice me and turn to my direction. I could tell by the bloody smudges that some of them had gained access by way of the dock, but I could also tell that many of them had actually come from the water itself. I reached into my weapons pack to get a cocktail I had thought to stick in there a few days back, but two of those mother fuckers were on me in seconds. They had managed to get in front of the mob that was now tripping over itself trying to get off the boat and over to me. I stuck one of them in the face with ‘Conan’ and took the other one’s jaw off with my nail-head. Once they were down, I had just enough time to light the cocktail and throw it though the Glass doors of the houseboat. It was like a box full of Barbequed zombies. The smell made me wretch, but they were done and they weren’t going to get me.
So back to square one; I lost the boat and what few supplies I had left on it, but I had my life and my feathery little pal if I can find him again. He was spooked by the flaming houseboat, but I’m sure he’ll turn up sooner or later. I’m sure not going to cry over a burned houseboat. As a matter of fact I was getting a bit sea-sick. Maybe it’s time to find a zombie-stomping 4 wheel drive and take to the roads for a while, besides the border of Canada isn’t all that far away.
Sam and I have been getting along wonderfully. I named him Sam after “Toucan Sam, who used to delight me with his fruit loops cereal every morning as a child. I know Sam is a McCaw and not a Toucan, but who the hell cares, right? Anyway he is almost as good as a watch dog when it comes to the creepers.
I dropped anchor yesterday near one of those river-side strip malls to get some much needed supplies. It’s got a convenient dock that runs quite a length of the river. Sam’s been nice and quiet the entire day except twice when he did his little “Something wicked this way comes” routine. When I looked out at the docks, sure enough there were two creepers shambling up the dock a bit too close to the boat for comfort.
Sam’s intuition is either a really cool coincidence or he’s one really intelligent bird. Anyway they are out there and I’m in here and I’m too tired to give a dam at the moment and since they don’t know I’m here, I’ll take care of them in the morning when I leave for the strip mall. I plan to get an early start tomorrow and see what’s worth taking. I’m not anticipating anything crazy but who knows what can happen.
June 3rd 2015
Its 11pm, I’m safe and sound but I have no idea where Sam is. This really hasn’t been my day. Let me explain. This morning, I quickly dispatched the pus bags on the dock and made my way into the river-side shopping center. I know I keep calling it a shopping center and a strip mall, but it’s one of those places that’s like a line of shops facing the river. Not an enclosed building, which is a plus in my book. The place had been badly ransacked and there wasn’t much left. It made me think for a minute about how things are only going to get worse. I’m less than a month into this situation and supplies are random at best, but soon whatever is left will either have been picked over to extinction or inedible from rot and decay. I better start learning how to hunt rats and squirrels.
Now that there is another mouth to feed, I’ve been trying to think about him as well. I was lucky to find a pet store in the complex that was next to untouched. There was every type of bird treat you could imagine, so I loaded my pack down with a couple of bags. Got some new trainers to make sure I can outrun any of those fuckers out there. The fresher they are the faster they are but still they are walking dead and I have not met one yet that I couldn’t outrun, but better safe than sorry.
There was one of those shops that sells pseudo military outfitting, so I found some black cargo pants, some long sleeve black pull-over’s and a couple of those fishing vests with all the pockets. If I’m going to be a survivor, I’m going to dress the part. I have been doing a lot of thinking about weapons and their effectiveness. This little strip mall by the river was heaven for melee weapons. The more I have been in the position to choose between a gun and a silent melee weapon, I have always chosen the latter, so I figured I better load down on stuff that will come in handy and will be easy to tote around with me.
In the strip mall was one of those fantasy shops where all the geeks play War hammer and shit…. Well you could not have paid me to go in a place like that except on this particular trip something caught my eye. Mounted on the wall behind the cashier was what looked like a replica of Conan’s broad sword? When I read the plaque it actually said on there that is was a scaled down, authentic copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sword from the 1984 movie Conan the Barbarian.
The fucker was about three feet long, sharp as a razor, and would do a hell of a lot of damage if stuck in the middle of a mob of those pus bags. Needless to say, I tucked it in my belt like a medieval knight. I was glancing in the cash register when I heard the unmistakable sound of a gun clicking. You know the sound it makes when it’s out of ammo but someone is pulling the trigger. As I spun around, I was thinking how I had scanned the shop and in my mind deemed it clear of pus bags, but I guess I was wrong.
I turned and looked at the door to the back room and there in the doorway, with a revolver in her hand, what I presume had once been the young girl who ran the shop. Now, I’ve been on the run every bit of 22 days and this girl has been dead every bit of that if not more. Her skull was covered with dried blood and what was left of the flesh on her skull and face was dried up and pulled tight like an ill-fitting mask. Her eyes, one bulbous and dripping pus, were glazed over with a thick film of white cataracts and where her nose had been, was nothing more than a gaping hole, caked with dried blood.
I only knew she had once been a teenage girl because of the clothes she had on and the finger of her right hand was pulling the trigger of a revolver, over and over again. It must have been some post death response to something she had been forced to do in her last moments of life. She let out a soft moan, thank god! It could have just as easily been one of those blood curdling ones that alerts every dead fuck in a hundred yard vicinity. Her slim legged Levis were rolled up and soaked with blood and her sketchers had seen better days. She wore a tight brown T shirt with a cartoon monkey on the front that covered what had once been a perky set of tits. She was probably 17years old and this had probably been her summer job. All I could think was ‘Poor fucking kid’.
She shambled slowly toward me and appeared to be having a struggle just standing upright. I guessed she was one of the early converts to the zombie nation and probably recruited soon after the entire plague began to spread. She was no match for me and when I pulled the sword from my belt and pointed it at her face; her trigger finger began to click faster. She was agitated and wanted me dead like her. It’s weird the shit your brain says to you when you don’t’ expect it. As her hinge-like jaw wagged up and down, I imagined her saying “Come, join the zombie nation.” And with that disturbing bit of commentary running through my brain, I swung the sword up in the air and came down hard, planting it in hers. Conan would have been proud. Rest in Peace lil sister!
With my new toy wiped down and tucked in my belt, I was wondering what Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing at that precise moment. Had he joined the ranks of the living dead or was he the leader of some anti-zombie survival group in California somewhere? God I’d love to join that group! I know, sounds stupid, but I actually think ridiculous random thoughts like that help keep me human. Anyway I moved along making my way down the strip mall. The occasional creeper would pop up and I’d pop down out of sight until the coast was clear. I was keeping my eye out for anything. The population of creepers was surprisingly small, but I didn’t want to get too careless.
I found one of the circle K convenience stores and ducked inside for food. The electric was still working and the place had quite a few items left that were salvageable. I loaded my provisions back pack down with red bull, water, coke and my favorite frozen burritos. The last batch I had gotten was long gone and I knew I wouldn’t be running into many more of these gems, so I took them all. Canned tuna, canned meat, and boxed stuff like mac and cheese I knew would last forever, so I made them second priority, but I loaded the sack down till I could barely carry it.
It was getting late and I knew I needed to head back to the boat, but I wanted to try to find one more melee weapon, something lighter than the sword but every bit as effective. I quietly snuck out of the shop and was making my way across a small alley, when I saw them. There across the way was an Ace Hardware store right next to a sporting goods shop. That’s when the idea came to me.
I had been thinking of my sister and her kid, who lived in Colorado. She was the only real family I had left and last Christmas I had gone to visit them for the holidays. I remembered this zombie game her boy Brandon was playing and he had tried to get me to play it too. Not really my thing, but It was an interesting game. I can’t remember the name, but it was about this guy who was trapped in a mall full of zombies and in the game he could build all sorts of weapons. Some were ridiculous like exploding wheel chairs and such, but one of the weapons his character build was something that would come in very handy in real life and there in front of me were the two stores where I would find just the elements I would need to make one.
I snuck into the Ace hardware and grabbed a box of nails and a hammer. There were a few corpses littering the place, but none of them were up walking around. So making good time, I rushed into the sports shop and grabbed two heavy duty wooden bats. That’s when my inner ‘cave man’ took over and I ended up walking out of the store with two “nail-head” bats, one in each hand. I have to admit I was feeling pretty bad ass as if I could take on the world, but little did I know the shit was about to hit the fan.
“Help me Pop-eye, Help me!” I heard Sam’s squawky voice coming from above me. I ducked down as I looked up. My first reaction was that his loud obnoxious parrot voice was going to attract every creeper in the vicinity. Then I had a horrible thought. Why the fuck was he so far from the boat? Why would he have followed me to the strip mall? Something had to be wrong. I was loaded down pretty heavily with all the loot I had pillaged. Two backpacks full to the brim and a nail-head bat in each hand. But I ran as fast as I could back to the marina, where the boat was tied up.
I took out about five pus bags on the way, taking off their heads with my new melee weapons. The sword was awesome, but I didn’t have time to admire its handiwork completely. Sam flew above me, eventually perching himself on a tall signboard just at the entrance to the docks. That’s when I stopped and saw why he had come to find me…. Smart bird! The boat was swarming with those maggot filled mother fuckers. They were everywhere. I had only been gone a little over two hours, but they had somehow found their way on and now there had to be 75 to 100 of them. Now fucking way was I going to get my boat back.
They started to notice me and turn to my direction. I could tell by the bloody smudges that some of them had gained access by way of the dock, but I could also tell that many of them had actually come from the water itself. I reached into my weapons pack to get a cocktail I had thought to stick in there a few days back, but two of those mother fuckers were on me in seconds. They had managed to get in front of the mob that was now tripping over itself trying to get off the boat and over to me. I stuck one of them in the face with ‘Conan’ and took the other one’s jaw off with my nail-head. Once they were down, I had just enough time to light the cocktail and throw it though the Glass doors of the houseboat. It was like a box full of Barbequed zombies. The smell made me wretch, but they were done and they weren’t going to get me.
So back to square one; I lost the boat and what few supplies I had left on it, but I had my life and my feathery little pal if I can find him again. He was spooked by the flaming houseboat, but I’m sure he’ll turn up sooner or later. I’m sure not going to cry over a burned houseboat. As a matter of fact I was getting a bit sea-sick. Maybe it’s time to find a zombie-stomping 4 wheel drive and take to the roads for a while, besides the border of Canada isn’t all that far away.
June 7th 2015
The world just keeps getting sicker and sicker. But wait, before I get ahead of myself, let me fill in some blanks. After my boat “Bit the Big One”, I hoofed it out of town as “stealthily” as I could. I kept catching glimpses of Sam flying up ahead. Not only had we reconnected, but It was almost like the crazy bird was leading me to something. Well, he did! About a mile out of town, I ran into an abandon army road block and that is where I commandeered the perfect vehicle. It’s a hard top army jeep, and someone was nice enough to leave some MRE’s in the back seat. They are a nice addition to my food stash; anyway, things were pretty quiet as I made my way up highway 87 toward the Canadian border until I met THEM. Just when things seem to be going your way and you start thinking maybe there is a God, you meet someone who proves that reality is most likely the opposite. Out of all the survivors on the planet I could have run into, I had to run into Zachariah Stutsman, ordained Amish pastor and his family, or what was left of them.
I had made a comfy little perch for Sam, in the back of the jeep and was making my way north, when I saw what looked like a small farm about 100 meters off the main highway. With smoke coming out of the chimney of a small smokehouse next to the main farmhouse with lights on in the windows, I figured it must be occupied by actual “breathers”, so I stopped to check it out. It was after nightfall and I’ll admit that the idea of finding actual survivors and maybe having a warm bed to sleep in was a comforting thought. Zachariah (I’ll call him Zach for short) was a slim wiry man dressed in shabby black Amish garb, complete with cracker hat and he had a daughter by the name of Emma. She was a haggard 15 year old that looked like she might as well be 40. They welcomed me into their house but from the moment my foot passed the threshold I knew something wasn’t right.
Things started off very friendly with Emma fetching me a glass of ice tea and some cookies at her father’s command, and I do mean COMMAND. He wasn’t a very pleasant man barking orders at his already haggard exhausted daughter. It almost made me feel guilty to drink the tea, but it was the way she carefully slid the door to the dining room open and squeezed through the crack as she came and went. It was almost as if there was something in there she didn’t want me to see. After fetching the tea for me, her father patted his lap and insisted the girl sit on it while we chatted. The fact that the world had gone to hell seemed to be a non issue to the man as he began to spout all his religious rhetoric as he fished to find out if I was a holy man or not. You know, a “believer” or a “heathen”. I am heathen through and through by his standards, I’m sure, but I kept my beliefs (or lack thereof) to myself and dodged most of his pointed questions.
The look on his daughters face was something between terror and extreme sadness, as she sat on her daddies lap and I couldn’t help but notice how he slid his hand up and down the girl’s thigh while he talked, and how uncomfortable it made her. Now my moral compass is nowhere near always pointing “North” but I can spot an unholy “holy man” when I see one and Zach was making me as uncomfortable as he was making the girl. The preacher talked on and on about his former family and how they had gone to be with God, as he caressed the girl’s thigh. Then I noticed that his other hand, that started off on the girls waist, was now moving up and his fingers were rubbing the girl’s dress just at the bottom of what was her blossoming breast. At that point I was sorry I had stopped but something in the girl’s eyes were pleading with me not to leave and I had a good idea why. It was very obvious that this “daddy’s girl” was way in over her head and she was helpless. Zach asked me why I hadn’t touched my tea yet and I replied that the cookies were so good I wanted to eat them first and wash them down with the tea, but as I reached for the last cookie on the platter, I noticed a small slip of paper tucked under it.
I palmed the slip of paper as I ate the last cookie and when Zach wasn’t looking, I glanced at it and read what it said. “Tea is drugged, pretend to sleep”. It was then that I knew old Zach was up to something, so I placed my hand over my concealed 9mm silencer that was under my vest and I acted like I was getting sleepy. As Zach talked about anything and everything, I pretended to get sleepier and sleepier and finally I laid my head back and acted like I was losing consciousness. The moment my eyes closed, Zach went ballistic, ranting about how he had seen the girl “eyeballing me” and how he was going to teach her a lesson. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into the bedroom, all the while thinking I was out cold.
The moment the door slammed behind them, I jumped up, pulled out my 9mm and went to the door to hear what was going on inside. That is when I heard that all too familiar sound coming from the same dining room Emma had tried to keep me from getting a glimpse of. As I walked toward the dining room I caught a whiff of the stench of death. I slowly slid open the dining room doors and almost gagged when the full blown smell hit me like a brick in the face. All I can guess is that it was the rest of Zachariah’s family. There was a woman, two young boys and a male teen all tied to the chairs and writhing to get out. They all had what looked like three inch sections of wooden broom handle, held in place with heavy twine and lodged in their mouth’s to keep them from biting. From what I could guess, they had to have been dead for more than a month.
I remember thinking to myself how things couldn’t possibly get sicker than this, when suddenly they did… and how. Suddenly I was startled out of the funk I was in by a blood curdling scream. It was Emma and it was coming from the bedroom. With my 9mm in hand, I ran to the room and broke down the door and to add to the horror that I had already been introduced to, there was Zachariah on top of his daughter trying to rape her. This is where everything sort of gets blurry. I don’t know what came over me. I can only guess that killing has become so easy that I didn’t even flinch, when I put my 9mm to the preacher’s head and pulled the trigger. The sick Amish preacher fuck was DEAD and I had no idea how his daughter was going to react, but to my surprise she thanked me with a hug as she cried into my chest.
I took the sobbing girl to my jeep, put here safely inside and went back into the house to take care of some final business. After putting a slug in the collective heads of Zachariah Stutsman’s dead rotting family, I started back to the jeep, but was stopped dead in my tracks by an aroma that I had not smelled in longer than I could remember. It was the smell of meat smoking in a smoke house and for a moment every other thought in my head disappeared. The thought of cured smoked meat made my mouth water. I glanced over to see that the girl was ok and seeing she was, I slowly crept up to the smokehouse which was a good 50 yards away. I know what you’re thinking…. After going through what I had just been through, how could I be thinking about smoked hams and pork loins, but after eating canned food and non-perishable packaged shit for a month, the thought of loading down on cured meat was very inviting. I took a quick look around to make sure no walkers were sneaking up on me and I went for the smoke house door.
The smell was fragrant and strong but it had a strange sweetness to it that I had not smelled before. With the thought of hams, sausages and other smoky delights, I literally licked my lips as I spun the wooden lock from horizontal to vertical and slowly pulled open the door. The thought of the yummy delights in the smoke house belonging to crazy Zachariah put me off a bit, but I also wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth when it came to food, he was a farmer for god’s sake and when it came to the Amish they had a rep for being experts of living off the land. In the world I’m now living in, things around you are constantly what you can call “sick” but sometimes they can go from sick to sicker and that’s exactly what happened the moment I opened the door to the smoke house. I have made my own stomach churn enough just rehashing the last three days events so I will not go into great detail about what I saw in the smoke house, but let’s just say it wasn’t pork that the good preacher Zachariah had been smoking in that wooden shack for the last few weeks. It seems he and his family had been living off of the flesh of other humans…. Not unlike their rotting zombie neighbors…. More later!
The world just keeps getting sicker and sicker. But wait, before I get ahead of myself, let me fill in some blanks. After my boat “Bit the Big One”, I hoofed it out of town as “stealthily” as I could. I kept catching glimpses of Sam flying up ahead. Not only had we reconnected, but It was almost like the crazy bird was leading me to something. Well, he did! About a mile out of town, I ran into an abandon army road block and that is where I commandeered the perfect vehicle. It’s a hard top army jeep, and someone was nice enough to leave some MRE’s in the back seat. They are a nice addition to my food stash; anyway, things were pretty quiet as I made my way up highway 87 toward the Canadian border until I met THEM. Just when things seem to be going your way and you start thinking maybe there is a God, you meet someone who proves that reality is most likely the opposite. Out of all the survivors on the planet I could have run into, I had to run into Zachariah Stutsman, ordained Amish pastor and his family, or what was left of them.
I had made a comfy little perch for Sam, in the back of the jeep and was making my way north, when I saw what looked like a small farm about 100 meters off the main highway. With smoke coming out of the chimney of a small smokehouse next to the main farmhouse with lights on in the windows, I figured it must be occupied by actual “breathers”, so I stopped to check it out. It was after nightfall and I’ll admit that the idea of finding actual survivors and maybe having a warm bed to sleep in was a comforting thought. Zachariah (I’ll call him Zach for short) was a slim wiry man dressed in shabby black Amish garb, complete with cracker hat and he had a daughter by the name of Emma. She was a haggard 15 year old that looked like she might as well be 40. They welcomed me into their house but from the moment my foot passed the threshold I knew something wasn’t right.
Things started off very friendly with Emma fetching me a glass of ice tea and some cookies at her father’s command, and I do mean COMMAND. He wasn’t a very pleasant man barking orders at his already haggard exhausted daughter. It almost made me feel guilty to drink the tea, but it was the way she carefully slid the door to the dining room open and squeezed through the crack as she came and went. It was almost as if there was something in there she didn’t want me to see. After fetching the tea for me, her father patted his lap and insisted the girl sit on it while we chatted. The fact that the world had gone to hell seemed to be a non issue to the man as he began to spout all his religious rhetoric as he fished to find out if I was a holy man or not. You know, a “believer” or a “heathen”. I am heathen through and through by his standards, I’m sure, but I kept my beliefs (or lack thereof) to myself and dodged most of his pointed questions.
The look on his daughters face was something between terror and extreme sadness, as she sat on her daddies lap and I couldn’t help but notice how he slid his hand up and down the girl’s thigh while he talked, and how uncomfortable it made her. Now my moral compass is nowhere near always pointing “North” but I can spot an unholy “holy man” when I see one and Zach was making me as uncomfortable as he was making the girl. The preacher talked on and on about his former family and how they had gone to be with God, as he caressed the girl’s thigh. Then I noticed that his other hand, that started off on the girls waist, was now moving up and his fingers were rubbing the girl’s dress just at the bottom of what was her blossoming breast. At that point I was sorry I had stopped but something in the girl’s eyes were pleading with me not to leave and I had a good idea why. It was very obvious that this “daddy’s girl” was way in over her head and she was helpless. Zach asked me why I hadn’t touched my tea yet and I replied that the cookies were so good I wanted to eat them first and wash them down with the tea, but as I reached for the last cookie on the platter, I noticed a small slip of paper tucked under it.
I palmed the slip of paper as I ate the last cookie and when Zach wasn’t looking, I glanced at it and read what it said. “Tea is drugged, pretend to sleep”. It was then that I knew old Zach was up to something, so I placed my hand over my concealed 9mm silencer that was under my vest and I acted like I was getting sleepy. As Zach talked about anything and everything, I pretended to get sleepier and sleepier and finally I laid my head back and acted like I was losing consciousness. The moment my eyes closed, Zach went ballistic, ranting about how he had seen the girl “eyeballing me” and how he was going to teach her a lesson. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into the bedroom, all the while thinking I was out cold.
The moment the door slammed behind them, I jumped up, pulled out my 9mm and went to the door to hear what was going on inside. That is when I heard that all too familiar sound coming from the same dining room Emma had tried to keep me from getting a glimpse of. As I walked toward the dining room I caught a whiff of the stench of death. I slowly slid open the dining room doors and almost gagged when the full blown smell hit me like a brick in the face. All I can guess is that it was the rest of Zachariah’s family. There was a woman, two young boys and a male teen all tied to the chairs and writhing to get out. They all had what looked like three inch sections of wooden broom handle, held in place with heavy twine and lodged in their mouth’s to keep them from biting. From what I could guess, they had to have been dead for more than a month.
I remember thinking to myself how things couldn’t possibly get sicker than this, when suddenly they did… and how. Suddenly I was startled out of the funk I was in by a blood curdling scream. It was Emma and it was coming from the bedroom. With my 9mm in hand, I ran to the room and broke down the door and to add to the horror that I had already been introduced to, there was Zachariah on top of his daughter trying to rape her. This is where everything sort of gets blurry. I don’t know what came over me. I can only guess that killing has become so easy that I didn’t even flinch, when I put my 9mm to the preacher’s head and pulled the trigger. The sick Amish preacher fuck was DEAD and I had no idea how his daughter was going to react, but to my surprise she thanked me with a hug as she cried into my chest.
I took the sobbing girl to my jeep, put here safely inside and went back into the house to take care of some final business. After putting a slug in the collective heads of Zachariah Stutsman’s dead rotting family, I started back to the jeep, but was stopped dead in my tracks by an aroma that I had not smelled in longer than I could remember. It was the smell of meat smoking in a smoke house and for a moment every other thought in my head disappeared. The thought of cured smoked meat made my mouth water. I glanced over to see that the girl was ok and seeing she was, I slowly crept up to the smokehouse which was a good 50 yards away. I know what you’re thinking…. After going through what I had just been through, how could I be thinking about smoked hams and pork loins, but after eating canned food and non-perishable packaged shit for a month, the thought of loading down on cured meat was very inviting. I took a quick look around to make sure no walkers were sneaking up on me and I went for the smoke house door.
The smell was fragrant and strong but it had a strange sweetness to it that I had not smelled before. With the thought of hams, sausages and other smoky delights, I literally licked my lips as I spun the wooden lock from horizontal to vertical and slowly pulled open the door. The thought of the yummy delights in the smoke house belonging to crazy Zachariah put me off a bit, but I also wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth when it came to food, he was a farmer for god’s sake and when it came to the Amish they had a rep for being experts of living off the land. In the world I’m now living in, things around you are constantly what you can call “sick” but sometimes they can go from sick to sicker and that’s exactly what happened the moment I opened the door to the smoke house. I have made my own stomach churn enough just rehashing the last three days events so I will not go into great detail about what I saw in the smoke house, but let’s just say it wasn’t pork that the good preacher Zachariah had been smoking in that wooden shack for the last few weeks. It seems he and his family had been living off of the flesh of other humans…. Not unlike their rotting zombie neighbors…. More later!
June 17th 2015
7:45 am: It’s been ten days since my last update. The first five days of that, Emma was in a catatonic state, almost completely unable to communicate. I really think Sam my little feathery friend has had a lot to do with helping the girl come out of her shell. Yesterday she came out of her shell for the first time and started telling me a bit about what happened to her family. It seems her father had gotten a correspondence from his older elderly aunt (most likely not by phone, being Amish) shortly after the zombie shit had hit the fan. Apparently she and her elderly husband lived somewhere south, near Albany or Troy. She seems to think that it wasn’t far from the medical facility where all this started. Her story, if I understood her correctly, is that her mother and father had gotten the message that something horrible had happened to her uncle. He had been attacked in his yard by some crazed lunatics and killed. Then it seems the lunatics were trying to get into the old lady’s house. Emma’s father was trying to make his way down there with his wife, in nothing more than a horse drawn buggy, when they too were attacked. Emma’s mother had been bitten in the attack, but they were able to turn and make it home without any further injury.
Ah, the seed of destruction. That single bite was the undoing of the Stutsman family. The way Emma’s story goes, the mother got deathly sick and ‘turned’ and ended up biting the older brother, who in turn ended up joining the ranks of the undead and biting both of his brothers, before good old Zachariah could subdue them all. According to her, the family members in the living room had been there for well over a month and a half, keeping in mind that this part of the state had been overrun well before New York was affected. Emma said a couple of weeks into the horror, her father started acting weird…. “crazy like” in her words. It was then that he and his daughter had run out of food and he started to lure the odd straggling survivor that came upon his far, into the house and they inadvertently ended up in the smoke house. She admitted to me that she had resorted to cannibalism out of sheer terror of what her father would do to her if she didn’t obey him. It was about that time that the poor girl was forced to take over her mother’s “wifely” duties, if you know what I mean. She said that by the time I had stumbled upon the farm, her father had been out of his mind for weeks. Well I can’t say it makes me feel better for blowing his brains out, but in this sick new world… shit happens and then you move on!
I’d like to meet the fuckers in that medical facility that started all this shit. I’d love to put a slug in their brain pans… but I’m sure they’re long since stumbling around slobbering and eating each other’s brains. I have tried to get something on the jeep’s radio, but with no luck at all. At the moment we’re camped out in a small church about a mile from the Canadian border. It’s several stories tall and we’re right up at the top, barricaded in so we can get a decent night’s sleep. Sam has been very quiet lately, which I’m taking as a good sign. Usually when he goes into his “something wicked” routine, it means there actually is something wicked lurking around. I’m not a religious man, as you know, but I have to say that being in this church does give me some strange feeling of comfort. It’s not like I think the “good lord” is going to come down off of his thrown and save us if we get overrun by walkers, but hey any little bit of peace of mind I can get is welcome.
4:20pm: Ok so the church idea wasn’t a very good one. Emma and I are still in the upper floor of the church, but they have somehow gotten in. I can hear them banging on the door in the hallway, trying to get in. I don’t know if they can smell us or heard us or what happened, but they know we’re here and it’s not good. Emma is sitting in the corner and Sam is perched on her knee. She’s petting his feathers with a blank stare in her eyes. It’s like she is unaffected by what is going on, she kind of fades in and out of this state of catatonic bliss, like she’s in another place or something. I guess it’s just a defense mechanism, but I can’t blame her, she’s been though more than any 15yo girl should ever have to be. Well there is no way those fuckers are getting through the door, but still their banging and moaning is driving me insane. I’ve got to try to figure out a way out of this mess. Hopefully I’ll still be alive later to share more…. We’ll see!
7:45 am: It’s been ten days since my last update. The first five days of that, Emma was in a catatonic state, almost completely unable to communicate. I really think Sam my little feathery friend has had a lot to do with helping the girl come out of her shell. Yesterday she came out of her shell for the first time and started telling me a bit about what happened to her family. It seems her father had gotten a correspondence from his older elderly aunt (most likely not by phone, being Amish) shortly after the zombie shit had hit the fan. Apparently she and her elderly husband lived somewhere south, near Albany or Troy. She seems to think that it wasn’t far from the medical facility where all this started. Her story, if I understood her correctly, is that her mother and father had gotten the message that something horrible had happened to her uncle. He had been attacked in his yard by some crazed lunatics and killed. Then it seems the lunatics were trying to get into the old lady’s house. Emma’s father was trying to make his way down there with his wife, in nothing more than a horse drawn buggy, when they too were attacked. Emma’s mother had been bitten in the attack, but they were able to turn and make it home without any further injury.
Ah, the seed of destruction. That single bite was the undoing of the Stutsman family. The way Emma’s story goes, the mother got deathly sick and ‘turned’ and ended up biting the older brother, who in turn ended up joining the ranks of the undead and biting both of his brothers, before good old Zachariah could subdue them all. According to her, the family members in the living room had been there for well over a month and a half, keeping in mind that this part of the state had been overrun well before New York was affected. Emma said a couple of weeks into the horror, her father started acting weird…. “crazy like” in her words. It was then that he and his daughter had run out of food and he started to lure the odd straggling survivor that came upon his far, into the house and they inadvertently ended up in the smoke house. She admitted to me that she had resorted to cannibalism out of sheer terror of what her father would do to her if she didn’t obey him. It was about that time that the poor girl was forced to take over her mother’s “wifely” duties, if you know what I mean. She said that by the time I had stumbled upon the farm, her father had been out of his mind for weeks. Well I can’t say it makes me feel better for blowing his brains out, but in this sick new world… shit happens and then you move on!
I’d like to meet the fuckers in that medical facility that started all this shit. I’d love to put a slug in their brain pans… but I’m sure they’re long since stumbling around slobbering and eating each other’s brains. I have tried to get something on the jeep’s radio, but with no luck at all. At the moment we’re camped out in a small church about a mile from the Canadian border. It’s several stories tall and we’re right up at the top, barricaded in so we can get a decent night’s sleep. Sam has been very quiet lately, which I’m taking as a good sign. Usually when he goes into his “something wicked” routine, it means there actually is something wicked lurking around. I’m not a religious man, as you know, but I have to say that being in this church does give me some strange feeling of comfort. It’s not like I think the “good lord” is going to come down off of his thrown and save us if we get overrun by walkers, but hey any little bit of peace of mind I can get is welcome.
4:20pm: Ok so the church idea wasn’t a very good one. Emma and I are still in the upper floor of the church, but they have somehow gotten in. I can hear them banging on the door in the hallway, trying to get in. I don’t know if they can smell us or heard us or what happened, but they know we’re here and it’s not good. Emma is sitting in the corner and Sam is perched on her knee. She’s petting his feathers with a blank stare in her eyes. It’s like she is unaffected by what is going on, she kind of fades in and out of this state of catatonic bliss, like she’s in another place or something. I guess it’s just a defense mechanism, but I can’t blame her, she’s been though more than any 15yo girl should ever have to be. Well there is no way those fuckers are getting through the door, but still their banging and moaning is driving me insane. I’ve got to try to figure out a way out of this mess. Hopefully I’ll still be alive later to share more…. We’ll see!
June 29th 2015
Well this diary started with me, but it’s not going to end with me. Last night, Emma and I got out of the church… she is safe and sound. I told her about my diary and I asked her to continue on with it if anything happens to me, which something has. The reality of what it all means probably hasn’t hit me yet but during our escape from the church I got bitten. Some old bitchy hag of a zombie took a chunk right out of my fucking arm. Getting out of the church wasn’t easy and we had a hoard of those fuckers waiting for us on the ground.
To get out of there, I had to do an Errol Flynn out of the window of the top floor with some curtains I ripped in strands and tied together. I hit the ground first, with Emma close behind me. With my nail bat, I was able to hold off the dozen or so zombies that were there to meet us on the ground and that’s where old “Nellie Nibbles” met me on the ground and took a chunk out of me. It took me completely by surprise. She had her gnarly yellow rotting teeth around my forearm and was biting down before I knew what was happening.
The Nail Bat is great for clearing out a small crowd, but it can slow you down sometimes, when the nails get stuck in the skull of one of those fuckers and you have to pry the bat out of their head before you can continue cleaning house. That’s actually what happened. I had hit this gigantic rotting man square in the skull; Looked like a football coach or something, and the nails on the bat got stuck in the bone. I had his head pinned to the ground with my foot and was trying to pry the bat loose when old Nellie got me. I have to give the bitch some credit though. For a rotten old hag, she was pretty dam fast. I almost want to laugh. If you’re reading this diary, and have followed me this far in my journey to survive, don’t be sad. I have to admit that from that day I was dangling off my 21st storey balcony, I never would have dreamed I’d get this far.
I am taking the whole thing much better than Emma. I can’t blame her. She can’t help but think about the fact that after I “turn” and she has to dispatch me, she is going to be alone. I’m not a praying man, but if I were, I would pray that we find at least one other survivor before I turn. I’ve been teaching her how to use the gun and the other weapons. She’s not a very strong girl, but I have a feeling she will rise to the occasion. Anyway, to finish my story, we got out of the church and fought our way through a small sea of zombies, and finally got to the jeep and were able to get the hell out of there. We finally crossed the border and now we’re camping in a clearing in some woods just off the beaten path of a road side parking area about 30 miles north of the Canadian border, which we had no problem crossing. The Border Guards were no problem at all, especially the one I had to shoot in the head…. Just a little zombie humor, anyway, I’ll write more later if I haven’t turned yet.
June 30th 2015
6:33am: Well I’m feeling a like shit, but I’m far from being a zombie yet. I have a nagging low grade fever and I’m feeling a bit achy in my muscles. I’m finding it a bit strange the things that are going through my head. I never thought about the dilemma I would have once I ever got bitten, but I’ve been thinking about it all morning. The decision I am faced with is rather or not I want to just turn and be one of those things or if I want to be killed once I turn. Now you have to realize I’ve never had a suicidal bone in my body and frankly the thought of blowing my brains out or having someone else do it, really scares the hell out of me. Part of me just wants to turn and slink off into the darkness, but I don’t want to hurt anyone else, namely Emma. She is such a good kid and she has been through so much. We’ll be breaking camp soon and hitting the road.
10:10am: Ok I’m still here and I’m not going to dwell on the negative. I still feel like shit and I can feel it slowly getting worse, but I have some time before I become a piece of walking beef jerky. We stopped for gas at one of those large roadside trucker stations. There were only three walkers there and together we dispatched them quickly. One of them was probably the most disgusting thing I have yet to see. He looked like a college kid, probably a jock. He had what was left of a football jersey on and his entire chest cavity had been ripped open and he was basically hollow. Missing lower jaw and eyes, he was just meandering around, following whatever sounds he could decipher. Seeing him really did make me think twice about becoming one. I would hate to end up like him and putting him out of his misery really felt like we were doing him a favor.
When we finished off the others, I let Emma do most of the work as she needs to get used to feeling comfortable taking those bastards out without feeling regret or guilt. We gassed up the jeep and filled the three gas cans we salvaged along the way, so we should be good for a while. I don’t want Emma to have to make this kind of stop again for a while. I’m hoping long after I’ve gone my separate way.
1:15pm: We had a blowout. We were winding our way through an interstate pile-up and I’m sure we must have driven over something sharp that eventually took out our left front tire. Emma is changing it after I explained to her what to do. I’m just too weak to do it myself. The pounding in my head is almost unbearable and my muscles are so tight and sore that getting up and walking around is a major task. I can still write though, so I decided to enter at least one more entry. Sam is still with us and he seems to be doing ok. He certainly keeps Emma happy. She just loves the bird. She’s teaching him bible verses and he can actually say the beginning of the “lord’s prayer”. He gets a bit stuck on “Hallowed be thy name”. She seems to be doing ok with the changing of the tire and she is in ok spirits, except I know she is worried about me.
The tire blew right under a huge bill board sign that advertises some sort of theme park about 50 miles away. We both decided that getting there would be a good goal for us, probably lots of food and maybe even somewhere to hold up for a day or two… for her to hold up. I really don’t think I’m going to be around that long….
2:30pm: It’s time… my body is on fire and I can barely move. I’m in the jeep and we’re parked in the parking lot of the theme park. I don’t know what it’s called… honestly I can barely see. I see the huge sign at the entrance to the park, but I can’t make out what it says. Emma is outside at the back of the jeep, crying. I had to beg her to use the silencer and put me out of my misery once I turn. I don’t want to live as one of those things… if that’s even what they do…. Live. I can feel it…. burning me… killing me on the inside. I thought somehow I could fight it… but I can’t… its taking me… and…I…can’t……..do………….. anything……
Well this diary started with me, but it’s not going to end with me. Last night, Emma and I got out of the church… she is safe and sound. I told her about my diary and I asked her to continue on with it if anything happens to me, which something has. The reality of what it all means probably hasn’t hit me yet but during our escape from the church I got bitten. Some old bitchy hag of a zombie took a chunk right out of my fucking arm. Getting out of the church wasn’t easy and we had a hoard of those fuckers waiting for us on the ground.
To get out of there, I had to do an Errol Flynn out of the window of the top floor with some curtains I ripped in strands and tied together. I hit the ground first, with Emma close behind me. With my nail bat, I was able to hold off the dozen or so zombies that were there to meet us on the ground and that’s where old “Nellie Nibbles” met me on the ground and took a chunk out of me. It took me completely by surprise. She had her gnarly yellow rotting teeth around my forearm and was biting down before I knew what was happening.
The Nail Bat is great for clearing out a small crowd, but it can slow you down sometimes, when the nails get stuck in the skull of one of those fuckers and you have to pry the bat out of their head before you can continue cleaning house. That’s actually what happened. I had hit this gigantic rotting man square in the skull; Looked like a football coach or something, and the nails on the bat got stuck in the bone. I had his head pinned to the ground with my foot and was trying to pry the bat loose when old Nellie got me. I have to give the bitch some credit though. For a rotten old hag, she was pretty dam fast. I almost want to laugh. If you’re reading this diary, and have followed me this far in my journey to survive, don’t be sad. I have to admit that from that day I was dangling off my 21st storey balcony, I never would have dreamed I’d get this far.
I am taking the whole thing much better than Emma. I can’t blame her. She can’t help but think about the fact that after I “turn” and she has to dispatch me, she is going to be alone. I’m not a praying man, but if I were, I would pray that we find at least one other survivor before I turn. I’ve been teaching her how to use the gun and the other weapons. She’s not a very strong girl, but I have a feeling she will rise to the occasion. Anyway, to finish my story, we got out of the church and fought our way through a small sea of zombies, and finally got to the jeep and were able to get the hell out of there. We finally crossed the border and now we’re camping in a clearing in some woods just off the beaten path of a road side parking area about 30 miles north of the Canadian border, which we had no problem crossing. The Border Guards were no problem at all, especially the one I had to shoot in the head…. Just a little zombie humor, anyway, I’ll write more later if I haven’t turned yet.
June 30th 2015
6:33am: Well I’m feeling a like shit, but I’m far from being a zombie yet. I have a nagging low grade fever and I’m feeling a bit achy in my muscles. I’m finding it a bit strange the things that are going through my head. I never thought about the dilemma I would have once I ever got bitten, but I’ve been thinking about it all morning. The decision I am faced with is rather or not I want to just turn and be one of those things or if I want to be killed once I turn. Now you have to realize I’ve never had a suicidal bone in my body and frankly the thought of blowing my brains out or having someone else do it, really scares the hell out of me. Part of me just wants to turn and slink off into the darkness, but I don’t want to hurt anyone else, namely Emma. She is such a good kid and she has been through so much. We’ll be breaking camp soon and hitting the road.
10:10am: Ok I’m still here and I’m not going to dwell on the negative. I still feel like shit and I can feel it slowly getting worse, but I have some time before I become a piece of walking beef jerky. We stopped for gas at one of those large roadside trucker stations. There were only three walkers there and together we dispatched them quickly. One of them was probably the most disgusting thing I have yet to see. He looked like a college kid, probably a jock. He had what was left of a football jersey on and his entire chest cavity had been ripped open and he was basically hollow. Missing lower jaw and eyes, he was just meandering around, following whatever sounds he could decipher. Seeing him really did make me think twice about becoming one. I would hate to end up like him and putting him out of his misery really felt like we were doing him a favor.
When we finished off the others, I let Emma do most of the work as she needs to get used to feeling comfortable taking those bastards out without feeling regret or guilt. We gassed up the jeep and filled the three gas cans we salvaged along the way, so we should be good for a while. I don’t want Emma to have to make this kind of stop again for a while. I’m hoping long after I’ve gone my separate way.
1:15pm: We had a blowout. We were winding our way through an interstate pile-up and I’m sure we must have driven over something sharp that eventually took out our left front tire. Emma is changing it after I explained to her what to do. I’m just too weak to do it myself. The pounding in my head is almost unbearable and my muscles are so tight and sore that getting up and walking around is a major task. I can still write though, so I decided to enter at least one more entry. Sam is still with us and he seems to be doing ok. He certainly keeps Emma happy. She just loves the bird. She’s teaching him bible verses and he can actually say the beginning of the “lord’s prayer”. He gets a bit stuck on “Hallowed be thy name”. She seems to be doing ok with the changing of the tire and she is in ok spirits, except I know she is worried about me.
The tire blew right under a huge bill board sign that advertises some sort of theme park about 50 miles away. We both decided that getting there would be a good goal for us, probably lots of food and maybe even somewhere to hold up for a day or two… for her to hold up. I really don’t think I’m going to be around that long….
2:30pm: It’s time… my body is on fire and I can barely move. I’m in the jeep and we’re parked in the parking lot of the theme park. I don’t know what it’s called… honestly I can barely see. I see the huge sign at the entrance to the park, but I can’t make out what it says. Emma is outside at the back of the jeep, crying. I had to beg her to use the silencer and put me out of my misery once I turn. I don’t want to live as one of those things… if that’s even what they do…. Live. I can feel it…. burning me… killing me on the inside. I thought somehow I could fight it… but I can’t… its taking me… and…I…can’t……..do………….. anything……
The Emma Dilemma:
July 1st 2015
9:47am: My name is Emma Stutsman…. I told Vance that there would probably never be anyone to read this, but he kept writing in it religiously. I’m not sure what to write, but I promised him that I would continue his diary if something happened to him. It was very important to him and I made a promise, so I’m going to keep it no matter what. Vance is gone. He’s not ‘dead’ as far as those things are concerned. I told him I would use the gun and end his misery, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He turned while he was sitting in the jeep and thank god his seatbelt was fastened. After he became one of those things, he lunged for me, but he couldn’t reach me for the seatbelt. Three different times I pointed the 9mm at his head but my hand was shaking so badly and my guts were turning flips and I just couldn’t do it. Finally after an hour or so of him writhing around in the jeep, fighting the confinement of the seatbelt, I took the sword, held it to his chest to pin him back and I unbuckled the seatbelt and ran for my life to hide.
Now he’s gone… and I’m not sure where. I hid in a ticket gantry, so that I could see him but he couldn’t see me. He finally left the jeep and wandered off somewhere. He must be the most handsome zombie I’ve ever seen, since he’s not all torn to shreds and never will be since they don’t really rip apart and eat their own. I just hope his soul is in a happy place. I always imagined that these walking corpses are just husks that are animated by some scientific chemical imbalance or something. I choose to believe that the actual person, or their soul as we call it, has gone to be with God.
Enough about that, I guess I should write about what’s gone on since Vance’s last and final entry. He left me quite a bit of food, weapons and ammo and most importantly he showed me how to drive the jeep. He even let me get in some practice yesterday while we were coming here to the theme park. I feel pretty confident driving it but I guess I don’t have much of a choice. I did decide to stick around here at the park a while. The parking lot is pretty empty and the Jeep is parked in a safe place between some abandon rigs. I have done a bit of exploring around the outer grounds, but I have not ventured into the actual park grounds.
The entrance to the park, where the ticket booths are, is probably three hundred meters away. There are a few roamers hanging around there and I’m sure there are more inside, but this place is huge and I am sure there are some valuable things to find here, namely more food and supplies. This is my first time to see a theme park up close, so I am a bit excited to see what’s in there. It’s too bad I had to wait till the world has fallen apart but better late than never. My father didn’t believe in places like this. He said it was where the devils minions abound, but he pretty much ended up being the devil himself, so I don’t put much stock in his opinion. I plan to have something to eat and then venture into the park. It’s called the WONDERLAND, Family Fun Park.
3:30pm: There is a huge fence that surrounds the entire park… and this place is HUGE. It has five different kinds of rollercoaster’s, dozens of kiddy rides, everything I ever imagined a place like this to have and even thought the electricity is still working, there is no way to ride any of them. In certain places, the outer gates are swarming with those undead things, but inside the parks fences there are only a few here and there. Even if they banned together and attacked at once they would probably be manageable… Oh dear, I’m starting to sound like Vance. That reminds me; I thought I saw him today. I was rummaging around inside of one of the theme park’s restaurants, and I looked out the window and could see a section of fence. I could have sworn I saw Vance, or what is left of him, just meandering around out there, trying to find a way in. I probably should have put him out of his misery after he turned, but I just couldn’t do it. Please forgive me, Vance…. I’m weak!
6:26pm: The sun is going down and I thought I saw something strange just before I left the park to come back to the jeep. It looked like a young boy. Not a zombie boy, just a regular boy. I say young, but I mean early teens, maybe even twelve, but he saw me too, I think. I am not sure it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks, but it makes me wonder if maybe there are other survivors in this park somewhere. It’s huge enough for whole church congregation to hide without being seen. It’s funny that I used that reference. I used to secretly hate going to church with my mother and father but now I would give anything to be in the same room with all those people…. Alive that is. I miss my family… even my father. I know he did so many horrible things to me, but he wasn’t in his right mind. Before all this stuff happened, he was very strict but he was a kind loving man. He loved my brothers and I and he treated us right. I guess the horror of this new world we live in and his losing my mother, just caused his mind to snap.
I think I’ll fix something to eat now and try to get some rest. I need to feed Sam as well. I just let him fly around as he pleases. I don’t really think those things out there care much for fresh fowl carcass, so he doesn’t have much to worry about. I have started getting the hang of keeping this diary. At first it was a bit strange, but I sort of like it. It keeps me from feeling too alone. I’ll write more in the morning… maybe after I go check out the park again and see if there really is a little boy living out there somewhere.
July 1st 2015
9:47am: My name is Emma Stutsman…. I told Vance that there would probably never be anyone to read this, but he kept writing in it religiously. I’m not sure what to write, but I promised him that I would continue his diary if something happened to him. It was very important to him and I made a promise, so I’m going to keep it no matter what. Vance is gone. He’s not ‘dead’ as far as those things are concerned. I told him I would use the gun and end his misery, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He turned while he was sitting in the jeep and thank god his seatbelt was fastened. After he became one of those things, he lunged for me, but he couldn’t reach me for the seatbelt. Three different times I pointed the 9mm at his head but my hand was shaking so badly and my guts were turning flips and I just couldn’t do it. Finally after an hour or so of him writhing around in the jeep, fighting the confinement of the seatbelt, I took the sword, held it to his chest to pin him back and I unbuckled the seatbelt and ran for my life to hide.
Now he’s gone… and I’m not sure where. I hid in a ticket gantry, so that I could see him but he couldn’t see me. He finally left the jeep and wandered off somewhere. He must be the most handsome zombie I’ve ever seen, since he’s not all torn to shreds and never will be since they don’t really rip apart and eat their own. I just hope his soul is in a happy place. I always imagined that these walking corpses are just husks that are animated by some scientific chemical imbalance or something. I choose to believe that the actual person, or their soul as we call it, has gone to be with God.
Enough about that, I guess I should write about what’s gone on since Vance’s last and final entry. He left me quite a bit of food, weapons and ammo and most importantly he showed me how to drive the jeep. He even let me get in some practice yesterday while we were coming here to the theme park. I feel pretty confident driving it but I guess I don’t have much of a choice. I did decide to stick around here at the park a while. The parking lot is pretty empty and the Jeep is parked in a safe place between some abandon rigs. I have done a bit of exploring around the outer grounds, but I have not ventured into the actual park grounds.
The entrance to the park, where the ticket booths are, is probably three hundred meters away. There are a few roamers hanging around there and I’m sure there are more inside, but this place is huge and I am sure there are some valuable things to find here, namely more food and supplies. This is my first time to see a theme park up close, so I am a bit excited to see what’s in there. It’s too bad I had to wait till the world has fallen apart but better late than never. My father didn’t believe in places like this. He said it was where the devils minions abound, but he pretty much ended up being the devil himself, so I don’t put much stock in his opinion. I plan to have something to eat and then venture into the park. It’s called the WONDERLAND, Family Fun Park.
3:30pm: There is a huge fence that surrounds the entire park… and this place is HUGE. It has five different kinds of rollercoaster’s, dozens of kiddy rides, everything I ever imagined a place like this to have and even thought the electricity is still working, there is no way to ride any of them. In certain places, the outer gates are swarming with those undead things, but inside the parks fences there are only a few here and there. Even if they banned together and attacked at once they would probably be manageable… Oh dear, I’m starting to sound like Vance. That reminds me; I thought I saw him today. I was rummaging around inside of one of the theme park’s restaurants, and I looked out the window and could see a section of fence. I could have sworn I saw Vance, or what is left of him, just meandering around out there, trying to find a way in. I probably should have put him out of his misery after he turned, but I just couldn’t do it. Please forgive me, Vance…. I’m weak!
6:26pm: The sun is going down and I thought I saw something strange just before I left the park to come back to the jeep. It looked like a young boy. Not a zombie boy, just a regular boy. I say young, but I mean early teens, maybe even twelve, but he saw me too, I think. I am not sure it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks, but it makes me wonder if maybe there are other survivors in this park somewhere. It’s huge enough for whole church congregation to hide without being seen. It’s funny that I used that reference. I used to secretly hate going to church with my mother and father but now I would give anything to be in the same room with all those people…. Alive that is. I miss my family… even my father. I know he did so many horrible things to me, but he wasn’t in his right mind. Before all this stuff happened, he was very strict but he was a kind loving man. He loved my brothers and I and he treated us right. I guess the horror of this new world we live in and his losing my mother, just caused his mind to snap.
I think I’ll fix something to eat now and try to get some rest. I need to feed Sam as well. I just let him fly around as he pleases. I don’t really think those things out there care much for fresh fowl carcass, so he doesn’t have much to worry about. I have started getting the hang of keeping this diary. At first it was a bit strange, but I sort of like it. It keeps me from feeling too alone. I’ll write more in the morning… maybe after I go check out the park again and see if there really is a little boy living out there somewhere.
July 3rd 2015:
I woke up yesterday to a horrible sound and my jeep rocking back and forth. It seems even thought I tried to hide the jeep between two large trucks, those ‘things’ still found me. I’m safe inside, but I’m trapped in here with nothing to do but write in this diary. I have to admit it helps me keep my mind off of those things… sort of. I packed both backpacks with all the supplies I had and was prepared to make a run for it the first chance I got, but before I could I found myself surrounded. It’s horrible… stuck in here for hours, having to do my unspeakable into a large cup that happened to have been left in the jeep by Vance. I can’t even open the window to get rid of the contents. I was thinking that I could probably start up the jeep and drive away, even thought those creatures are blocking both the front and back, but when I went to start the engine, it wouldn’t start. I think I may have done something Vance warned me about…. I think I may have flooded it. At the moment, I’m lying in the back floorboard and waiting, hoping that if they can’t see me, they will eventually leave, but that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s driving me crazy… those smelly, gruesome zombies, smearing their decaying bodily fluids on the windshield and windows. I don’ know how I’m going to get out of this. OH MY GOSH! I just looked down at the date on this diary and realized something… today; July 3rd is my 16th birthday. With all the horrible stuff that has been going on the last couple of months, I hadn’t even realized that my birthday was coming up. I can’t believe it’s today… I wonder if I am going to see 17. How Ironic is this? This is the beginning of my Rumspringa. I know you’re thinking what on Earth is that… let me explain. When an Amish child turns 16 they are able to go into the world and make their way, experiencing all the things the world has to offer, without being held to the rules and regulations of the Amish church. Well now’s my big chance and what a world to be sent off into. Wait! That windshield is break………………
I woke up yesterday to a horrible sound and my jeep rocking back and forth. It seems even thought I tried to hide the jeep between two large trucks, those ‘things’ still found me. I’m safe inside, but I’m trapped in here with nothing to do but write in this diary. I have to admit it helps me keep my mind off of those things… sort of. I packed both backpacks with all the supplies I had and was prepared to make a run for it the first chance I got, but before I could I found myself surrounded. It’s horrible… stuck in here for hours, having to do my unspeakable into a large cup that happened to have been left in the jeep by Vance. I can’t even open the window to get rid of the contents. I was thinking that I could probably start up the jeep and drive away, even thought those creatures are blocking both the front and back, but when I went to start the engine, it wouldn’t start. I think I may have done something Vance warned me about…. I think I may have flooded it. At the moment, I’m lying in the back floorboard and waiting, hoping that if they can’t see me, they will eventually leave, but that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s driving me crazy… those smelly, gruesome zombies, smearing their decaying bodily fluids on the windshield and windows. I don’ know how I’m going to get out of this. OH MY GOSH! I just looked down at the date on this diary and realized something… today; July 3rd is my 16th birthday. With all the horrible stuff that has been going on the last couple of months, I hadn’t even realized that my birthday was coming up. I can’t believe it’s today… I wonder if I am going to see 17. How Ironic is this? This is the beginning of my Rumspringa. I know you’re thinking what on Earth is that… let me explain. When an Amish child turns 16 they are able to go into the world and make their way, experiencing all the things the world has to offer, without being held to the rules and regulations of the Amish church. Well now’s my big chance and what a world to be sent off into. Wait! That windshield is break………………
1:00pm: SHIT… THERE’S SOMETHING DOWN THERE! I’m guessing it’s what’s left of someones kid, but it seemed more like a rabid blood-covered chimp or something. It jumped on Carl and almost ate his face. He’s ok physically, but I don’t know if his heart can handle another heart-thumper like that. We got down to the middle of the “wagon wheel” where all the corridors come together. I swear…. I know why the weasel went after that thing....it makes a sound just like a child whimpering, like some poor lost toddler crying for its mother. The kind of sound that moves you while at the same time, sending chills down your spine.
We found Wayne, by the way. Or part of him. It was only a section of his left arm, which I was able to identify because his watch was still attached to it. I’d love to believe he’s still down there and only hurt with part of his arm missing…. But reality is that he’s one of those fucking things now. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I have to admit it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy! My gut tells me he’s still down there, wondering around dead, bumping into walls in the dark, just waiting for something warm and bloody to dig into. Well that ain’t gonna be me.
4:45pm: The others are having a “meeting” to try to decide what to do next. Like it or not, Wayne was sort of our ‘go-to-guy’ for anything we needed to know about this park. Not having him around is going to make life a bit more difficult.... I'll be back when I have some news.
July 8th 2015:
7:13am: So it looks like Me, Jake and Karl are going in. I’ve traded the notebook in for a hand held digital recorder. Jake noticed that I had taken over this diary that belonged to that girl Emma (I think was her name). Anyway Jake liked the idea of keeping a diary so he gave me this digital recorder he found in one of the offices he was rummaging around in. It’s got fresh batteries and 500 TB memory card. It’s plenty of room to record a million diaries for a million lifetimes.
Anyway enough of that shit, I’m actually going to carry this thing with me as we go back into the tunnels. Sort of document a play by play as things unfold. Our goal being to find the Weasel if he’s still around there, but mostly to find out what’s down there and put it out of our misery. We will never be safe until we clear this place out completely… can’t have any rabid rug-rats wandering around down there.
8:15am: We’ve been down here about ten minutes. I just remembered to turn this fucking thing on. It’s really bad down here. If them zombies don’t kill ya, the smell sure as hell will.
Ok I’m whispering because I don’t want Karl and Jake to hear what I’m saying. This is a really shit idea. We found Wayne’s arm for fuck sake. The thought of him possibly still being alive and un-infected are a big fucking ZERO in my book.
“Hey turn that thing off! They’re going to hear us!”
Back later, CLICK!
8:45am: The stench is almost unbearable, but we really haven’t seen anything yet. The occasional moan from somewhere in the distance is all we’re able to make out. With the lights out, this maze of hallways down here is a brain fuck. The series of “wagon wheel” shaped hallways we had already been though actually empty out into what looks like a sub-basement full of pipes and electrical conduits. A place obviously not meant for the general public, but for maintenance men.
“I saw something up ahead… c-mon.”
That was Jake... He’s leading the way. You would think being the ‘big biker’ that they would insist on ME going first, well they didn’t and I’m just fine with that. Karl is old but he’s a bit of a bad ass. He sure has bigger balls than I do. Guess I’m going to fallow them. I’m signing out for now… save some battery juice. CLICK!
9:05 am: SHIT! I don’t know where they went. I was right behind them and they turned a corner and there was this horrible scream. I don’t think it was either of them, but now I can’t find them. I’m hiding in an electrical room. It’s so dark down here I can barely see anything. I keep hearing this moaning growling sound. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. I thought those things just died and came back… whatever is down here sounds like it’s some sort of zombie mutant or something.
“Ahhhhrrrg…. HELP!.... it’s got me…get it off of me….. it’s just a ki………”
Oh god, did you hear that? It sounded like Karl. Wait…. Oh god… I can see something moving round in the shadows. I’m looking through the door that is just barely cracked open. The only light is coming from Karl’s MAG LIGHT that is laying on the floor shining upward. There is something there. It’s moving in and out of the beam, but keeping mostly to the shadows. I can’t really make it out, but it’s got Karl and I can see that it’s….. oh god…. It’s dismembering him. SHIT… I can’t watch…. CLICK!
It’s a kid…. It’s a fucked up zombie kid with the strength of some sort of mutant monster. It’s eating Karl. Ripping him to shreds and eating him. Oh god… it’s looking over here. SHIT! IT SEES ME! …NO…. NO…NO………………..
CLICK!
February 20th 2016:
CLICK! Hello…. Does this thing work?
July 5th 2015:
7:30am: That shit is all kinds of fucked up! I just checked out the prior entries into this diary. Those poor bastards… That Vance guy didn’t ask me to carry on with it, but I’m pretty sure he would have wanted me to, so here goes. I’m not used to this sort of shit. Writing down my thoughts and stuff, but I’ll give it my best shot. I really think that poor girl would have wanted us to carry on, giving future survivors of this god awful shit-storm some way of knowing what it was like while it was happening. I’m not sure why, but maybe to make them appreciate not having to go through it? I’m personally pretty confident that someday these fucking zombies will all rot all up and blow away like dust in the wind and things will evolve again into a thriving society, but hell, who knows. Maybe I’ve just watched too much sci-fi shit in my youth. Guess I should introduce myself... Craig Slaminsky here. Everyone just calls me SLAM! I picked that nickname up when I was the leader of one of the biggest biker gangs in North America, before all this shit hit the fan. I’m pretty sure I’ve survived only because I’ve always been a natural born ‘skull cracker’.
We’ve been hold up in this theme park for about a month now. It’s pretty much home for the eight of us. The park itself is fenced in and there are only a few of those shit bags in the park, so we move around pretty freely. We saw the girl and her friend Vance drive up. Little Billy (Billy the kid we call him), was out rummaging for food when he caught a glance of the girl. We were actually debating rather or not to go outside the gate and get her, but I guess we debated a little too long…. Me and Jake finally went out there yesterday and that’s when we found her. All chewed up and still in the back seat of her jeep. She had turned… but she was pretty docile. The other shit bags had already wondered off enough that we could get her out of the jeep and bring it inside the fence. I hated to do it but I had to plug her in the head and put her out. Ok I’m stopping here for now… Got some trouble at the East gate. Later!
12:45pm:
Well two of those shit-bags found their way through the East gate. Lucky for us it was only two. If a whole mob of those fuckers had found that weak place in the fence we’d be in for a world of hurt. The new weapons that Vance guy made work great. I particularly like the Conan sword. Works for me!
The eight of us have been here, living together, like I said, coming up on a month. Billy the kid was here when we got here. He’s was some poor little tyke that lost his parents here at the park when everything went wrong. Let me quickly rattle off the others who are here with me. Well there’s me, Slam, Billy, Jake, he’s some queer theme park performer that was left over from the staff here, but he’s cool for a fag. There’s Beth and Tina, a couple of college girls who were backpacking their way into Canada from the US when all this happened. They’re both pretty fucking hot if you ask me, but they’re not really into burly biker types. Karl and Maxine are a married couple in their late 50’s, sort of the mom and dad of the bunch. They’ve been great for little Billy…. And then there is Wayne the ‘weasel’ as I like to call him. He’s one of those asshole bossy types. He was… or still is… the manager of the theme park, so we are a bit indebted to him for letting us be here, but I’ve had to hold back from wringing the guy’s neck a few times. He’s an ok guy, just bossy as hell. And I ain’t nobody’s bitch! Get what I’m saying?
I think that girl and her friend Vance brought some sort of parrot with them, because suddenly this colorful bird appeared and is flying all over the park. We catch a few words here and there but can’t really make out what he’s saying. I only think he came with them because he appeared when they did. Weird if you ask me.
3:15pm: Billy showed up with that bird. I finally figured out what he was saying. “pop-eye help me” that’s one weird thing for a fucking bird to say, but it gave us all a good laugh, so he’s welcome as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know how that kid caught the bird but they are best pals now. He needs something to keep him occupied. I’m always afraid the kid’s going to go wondering off somewhere he’s not supposed to be… you get me? I don’t want to have to be the one to….. you know, if he were to turn….. anyway I’ve got shit to do. More later!
10:30pm: I was out walking the perimeter when I found the kid crying. He’s been tough as nails this whole time I’ve known him. Running off alone, scouting the park bringing back useful stuff. Maxine is always yelling at him and telling him to stop running off alone, but he’s a firecracker. We all worry for the kid, but since none of us are his real parents he only listens to us to a point. I think he’s got a death wish deep down inside. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Tonight I can only guess it’s all sort of come to a head… the reality of his parents being dead or undead as it were. I know they are still out there… he pointed them out to me once. He catches a glimpse of them from time to time, lumbering around among the other shit-bags. The kid and I have bonded quite a bit, but he still doesn’t open up to me about what’s going on inside his little 11yo head. I try not to influence him too much…. The last thing he needs it so grow up like me… a middle aged biker with a bad attitude, but on second thought, it’s a new world out there. Maybe if he did end up like me that might be the very thing that saves his life one day. Ok, time for this grizzly to hibernate. I’m supposed to go out on a supply run with the weasel tomorrow, so I’m up at the butt crack of dawn…. Later!
July 6th 2015:
12:45pm: Well Wayne and I ventured into a portion of the park we hadn’t been in before. You see this theme park is divided into five sections. In its glory days when families came here to enjoy the fun and fantasy of it all, there were five separate wonderlands they could enjoy. But now they are more like five levels of hell, well make that four, because the jungle safari section where we’re hold up is completely cleared out and each section is fenced off from the others. There is an underground network of tunnels full of offices and break rooms and changing and shower facilities where all the costumed character workers used to prep. With the network of tunnels, they could go to and from any section of the park without being seen by the general public. Well what was once a series of convenient access tunnels is now a dangerous unexplored potential death-trap. So that’s where the weasel and I went this morning.
We didn’t get far, but we did get into corridor’s ‘A’ and ‘B’, which were where most of the offices for the park management were located. We were hoping to find a cafeteria or something like that, where we could stock up on food and supplies. I don’t know about the rest of the world out there and rather they still have power, but the park has had a steady flow of electricity up until a few days ago. It started as short flickers and then a couple of black-outs fffyesterday, which lasted about five minutes each. I am sure it’s just a matter of time before the grid all over North America is completely out. There are generator rooms in each section of the park, but we haven’t even tried to get any of them started. It’s just a task none of us have felt up to volunteering for, since we hadn’t had the need.
With all the gift shops in our section of the park alone, we have been well stocked on batteries, but they won’t last forever, but this morning we took plenty to help us with our exploring, in case we lost the lights again while we were underground. Corridors ‘C’ through ‘E’ go a few floors deeper and branch out to the farthest sections of the park. We’ve pretty much decided we’re going to save those for later. No need to press our luck now, since we have no idea what to expect in there.
6:15pm: SHIT! I lost Wayne somewhere in corridor ‘A’. We were exploring when we heard a sound, like a whimpering of a dog or a child or something. The sound seemed to have an innocence about it but at the same time was creepy as hell. It sounded like a small child calling out, but around here you never know if it’s going to be an actual child or the horrid remnants of what was once a child.
I was going to come up with a plan of attack to go and investigate, but the fucker just took off after it and now I don’t know where he is. I spent an hour calling his name in hushed tones, as to not attract anyone or anything that wasn’t him, but he hasn’t responded. Corridor ‘A’ is the longest corridor of them all. Imagine the corridor’s under this place like a wagon wheel. Corridors B through E are like the spokes of the wheel. They all intersect in the middle, but corridor A is like the wheel itself. It makes a huge circle around the park and intersects with every corridor. This makes looking for the bastard almost impossible. We’ll literally have to scour every dam inch of the underground just to find him and I just don’t think I’m going to do that. Hell I didn’t even like the guy! Anyway back to the tree-house. We’re all sleeping on it and we’re gonna see what we come up with in the morning.
July 7th 2015
It’s 7:40am and I’m doing a quick entry to this diary while I wait for Carl. He and Maxine were arguing about his involvement in searching for the Weasel. Anyway while I was waiting I wanted to explain something. I mentioned a tree-house last night. Well I failed to explain to whoever eventually finds this and listens to it, that we’re all safe and sound for one really good reason. We live in a tree-house. This park has it’s “jungle” section and in the jungle is what they call “Tarzan’s Jungle Tree-House” It’s a huge man-made tree with lots of elaborate little rooms and walkways and rope ladders, built right into it. It’s the Perfect fucking place to live if you want to stay away from dead people who can’t climb trees. The only way into the tree-house is through a five person cable and pulley operated elevator. It’s built to look like it’s all made of logs and bits of rope from a wrecked ship, but it’s actually made of metal, fiberglass, and steel cables. It also runs on a counter-weight system, so no batteries required. Since we have control of its movement up and down, we can secure it at night so nothing or no one can sneak in. All the rooms are very elaborate, with their “Tarzan of the Jungle” motif, but everything is fake. You know, molded fiber glass furniture, nailed down props and plastic leaves, but each room has its own hammock and that rocks.
Ok, Carl is coming, so I guess he won the argument. We’re gonna go find the weasel I guess. LATER!
1:00pm: SHIT… THERE’S SOMETHING DOWN THERE! I’m guessing it’s what’s left of someones kid, but it seemed more like a rabid blood-covered chimp or something. It jumped on Carl and almost ate his face. He’s ok physically, but I don’t know if his heart can handle another heart-thumper like that. We got down to the middle of the “wagon wheel” where all the corridors come together. I swear…. I know why the weasel went after that thing....it makes a sound just like a child whimpering, like some poor lost toddler crying for its mother. The kind of sound that moves you while at the same time, sending chills down your spine.
We found Wayne, by the way. Or part of him. It was only a section of his left arm, which I was able to identify because his watch was still attached to it. I’d love to believe he’s still down there and only hurt with part of his arm missing…. But reality is that he’s one of those fucking things now. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I have to admit it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy! My gut tells me he’s still down there, wondering around dead, bumping into walls in the dark, just waiting for something warm and bloody to dig into. Well that ain’t gonna be me.
4:45pm: The others are having a “meeting” to try to decide what to do next. Like it or not, Wayne was sort of our ‘go-to-guy’ for anything we needed to know about this park. Not having him around is going to make life a bit more difficult.... I'll be back when I have some news.
July 8th 2015:
7:13am: So it looks like Me, Jake and Karl are going in. I’ve traded the notebook in for a hand held digital recorder. Jake noticed that I had taken over this diary that belonged to that girl Emma (I think was her name). Anyway Jake liked the idea of keeping a diary so he gave me this digital recorder he found in one of the offices he was rummaging around in. It’s got fresh batteries and 500 TB memory card. It’s plenty of room to record a million diaries for a million lifetimes.
Anyway enough of that shit, I’m actually going to carry this thing with me as we go back into the tunnels. Sort of document a play by play as things unfold. Our goal being to find the Weasel if he’s still around there, but mostly to find out what’s down there and put it out of our misery. We will never be safe until we clear this place out completely… can’t have any rabid rug-rats wandering around down there.
8:15am: We’ve been down here about ten minutes. I just remembered to turn this fucking thing on. It’s really bad down here. If them zombies don’t kill ya, the smell sure as hell will.
Ok I’m whispering because I don’t want Karl and Jake to hear what I’m saying. This is a really shit idea. We found Wayne’s arm for fuck sake. The thought of him possibly still being alive and un-infected are a big fucking ZERO in my book.
“Hey turn that thing off! They’re going to hear us!”
Back later, CLICK!
8:45am: The stench is almost unbearable, but we really haven’t seen anything yet. The occasional moan from somewhere in the distance is all we’re able to make out. With the lights out, this maze of hallways down here is a brain fuck. The series of “wagon wheel” shaped hallways we had already been though actually empty out into what looks like a sub-basement full of pipes and electrical conduits. A place obviously not meant for the general public, but for maintenance men.
“I saw something up ahead… c-mon.”
That was Jake... He’s leading the way. You would think being the ‘big biker’ that they would insist on ME going first, well they didn’t and I’m just fine with that. Karl is old but he’s a bit of a bad ass. He sure has bigger balls than I do. Guess I’m going to fallow them. I’m signing out for now… save some battery juice. CLICK!
9:05 am: SHIT! I don’t know where they went. I was right behind them and they turned a corner and there was this horrible scream. I don’t think it was either of them, but now I can’t find them. I’m hiding in an electrical room. It’s so dark down here I can barely see anything. I keep hearing this moaning growling sound. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. I thought those things just died and came back… whatever is down here sounds like it’s some sort of zombie mutant or something.
“Ahhhhrrrg…. HELP!.... it’s got me…get it off of me….. it’s just a ki………”
Oh god, did you hear that? It sounded like Karl. Wait…. Oh god… I can see something moving round in the shadows. I’m looking through the door that is just barely cracked open. The only light is coming from Karl’s MAG LIGHT that is laying on the floor shining upward. There is something there. It’s moving in and out of the beam, but keeping mostly to the shadows. I can’t really make it out, but it’s got Karl and I can see that it’s….. oh god…. It’s dismembering him. SHIT… I can’t watch…. CLICK!
It’s a kid…. It’s a fucked up zombie kid with the strength of some sort of mutant monster. It’s eating Karl. Ripping him to shreds and eating him. Oh god… it’s looking over here. SHIT! IT SEES ME! …NO…. NO…NO………………..
CLICK!
February 20th 2016:
CLICK! Hello…. Does this thing work?
We found Wayne, by the way. Or part of him. It was only a section of his left arm, which I was able to identify because his watch was still attached to it. I’d love to believe he’s still down there and only hurt with part of his arm missing…. But reality is that he’s one of those fucking things now. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I have to admit it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy! My gut tells me he’s still down there, wondering around dead, bumping into walls in the dark, just waiting for something warm and bloody to dig into. Well that ain’t gonna be me.
4:45pm: The others are having a “meeting” to try to decide what to do next. Like it or not, Wayne was sort of our ‘go-to-guy’ for anything we needed to know about this park. Not having him around is going to make life a bit more difficult.... I'll be back when I have some news.
July 8th 2015:
7:13am: So it looks like Me, Jake and Karl are going in. I’ve traded the notebook in for a hand held digital recorder. Jake noticed that I had taken over this diary that belonged to that girl Emma (I think was her name). Anyway Jake liked the idea of keeping a diary so he gave me this digital recorder he found in one of the offices he was rummaging around in. It’s got fresh batteries and 500 TB memory card. It’s plenty of room to record a million diaries for a million lifetimes.
Anyway enough of that shit, I’m actually going to carry this thing with me as we go back into the tunnels. Sort of document a play by play as things unfold. Our goal being to find the Weasel if he’s still around there, but mostly to find out what’s down there and put it out of our misery. We will never be safe until we clear this place out completely… can’t have any rabid rug-rats wandering around down there.
8:15am: We’ve been down here about ten minutes. I just remembered to turn this fucking thing on. It’s really bad down here. If them zombies don’t kill ya, the smell sure as hell will.
Ok I’m whispering because I don’t want Karl and Jake to hear what I’m saying. This is a really shit idea. We found Wayne’s arm for fuck sake. The thought of him possibly still being alive and un-infected are a big fucking ZERO in my book.
“Hey turn that thing off! They’re going to hear us!”
Back later, CLICK!
8:45am: The stench is almost unbearable, but we really haven’t seen anything yet. The occasional moan from somewhere in the distance is all we’re able to make out. With the lights out, this maze of hallways down here is a brain fuck. The series of “wagon wheel” shaped hallways we had already been though actually empty out into what looks like a sub-basement full of pipes and electrical conduits. A place obviously not meant for the general public, but for maintenance men.
“I saw something up ahead… c-mon.”
That was Jake... He’s leading the way. You would think being the ‘big biker’ that they would insist on ME going first, well they didn’t and I’m just fine with that. Karl is old but he’s a bit of a bad ass. He sure has bigger balls than I do. Guess I’m going to fallow them. I’m signing out for now… save some battery juice. CLICK!
9:05 am: SHIT! I don’t know where they went. I was right behind them and they turned a corner and there was this horrible scream. I don’t think it was either of them, but now I can’t find them. I’m hiding in an electrical room. It’s so dark down here I can barely see anything. I keep hearing this moaning growling sound. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. I thought those things just died and came back… whatever is down here sounds like it’s some sort of zombie mutant or something.
“Ahhhhrrrg…. HELP!.... it’s got me…get it off of me….. it’s just a ki………”
Oh god, did you hear that? It sounded like Karl. Wait…. Oh god… I can see something moving round in the shadows. I’m looking through the door that is just barely cracked open. The only light is coming from Karl’s MAG LIGHT that is laying on the floor shining upward. There is something there. It’s moving in and out of the beam, but keeping mostly to the shadows. I can’t really make it out, but it’s got Karl and I can see that it’s….. oh god…. It’s dismembering him. SHIT… I can’t watch…. CLICK!
It’s a kid…. It’s a fucked up zombie kid with the strength of some sort of mutant monster. It’s eating Karl. Ripping him to shreds and eating him. Oh god… it’s looking over here. SHIT! IT SEES ME! …NO…. NO…NO………………..
CLICK!
February 20th 2016:
CLICK! Hello…. Does this thing work?
July 5th 2015:
7:30am: That shit is all kinds of fucked up! I just checked out the prior entries into this diary. Those poor bastards… That Vance guy didn’t ask me to carry on with it, but I’m pretty sure he would have wanted me to, so here goes. I’m not used to this sort of shit. Writing down my thoughts and stuff, but I’ll give it my best shot. I really think that poor girl would have wanted us to carry on, giving future survivors of this god awful shit-storm some way of knowing what it was like while it was happening. I’m not sure why, but maybe to make them appreciate not having to go through it? I’m personally pretty confident that someday these fucking zombies will all rot all up and blow away like dust in the wind and things will evolve again into a thriving society, but hell, who knows. Maybe I’ve just watched too much sci-fi shit in my youth. Guess I should introduce myself... Craig Slaminsky here. Everyone just calls me SLAM! I picked that nickname up when I was the leader of one of the biggest biker gangs in North America, before all this shit hit the fan. I’m pretty sure I’ve survived only because I’ve always been a natural born ‘skull cracker’.
We’ve been hold up in this theme park for about a month now. It’s pretty much home for the eight of us. The park itself is fenced in and there are only a few of those shit bags in the park, so we move around pretty freely. We saw the girl and her friend Vance drive up. Little Billy (Billy the kid we call him), was out rummaging for food when he caught a glance of the girl. We were actually debating rather or not to go outside the gate and get her, but I guess we debated a little too long…. Me and Jake finally went out there yesterday and that’s when we found her. All chewed up and still in the back seat of her jeep. She had turned… but she was pretty docile. The other shit bags had already wondered off enough that we could get her out of the jeep and bring it inside the fence. I hated to do it but I had to plug her in the head and put her out. Ok I’m stopping here for now… Got some trouble at the East gate. Later!
12:45pm:
Well two of those shit-bags found their way through the East gate. Lucky for us it was only two. If a whole mob of those fuckers had found that weak place in the fence we’d be in for a world of hurt. The new weapons that Vance guy made work great. I particularly like the Conan sword. Works for me!
The eight of us have been here, living together, like I said, coming up on a month. Billy the kid was here when we got here. He’s was some poor little tyke that lost his parents here at the park when everything went wrong. Let me quickly rattle off the others who are here with me. Well there’s me, Slam, Billy, Jake, he’s some queer theme park performer that was left over from the staff here, but he’s cool for a fag. There’s Beth and Tina, a couple of college girls who were backpacking their way into Canada from the US when all this happened. They’re both pretty fucking hot if you ask me, but they’re not really into burly biker types. Karl and Maxine are a married couple in their late 50’s, sort of the mom and dad of the bunch. They’ve been great for little Billy…. And then there is Wayne the ‘weasel’ as I like to call him. He’s one of those asshole bossy types. He was… or still is… the manager of the theme park, so we are a bit indebted to him for letting us be here, but I’ve had to hold back from wringing the guy’s neck a few times. He’s an ok guy, just bossy as hell. And I ain’t nobody’s bitch! Get what I’m saying?
I think that girl and her friend Vance brought some sort of parrot with them, because suddenly this colorful bird appeared and is flying all over the park. We catch a few words here and there but can’t really make out what he’s saying. I only think he came with them because he appeared when they did. Weird if you ask me.
3:15pm: Billy showed up with that bird. I finally figured out what he was saying. “pop-eye help me” that’s one weird thing for a fucking bird to say, but it gave us all a good laugh, so he’s welcome as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know how that kid caught the bird but they are best pals now. He needs something to keep him occupied. I’m always afraid the kid’s going to go wondering off somewhere he’s not supposed to be… you get me? I don’t want to have to be the one to….. you know, if he were to turn….. anyway I’ve got shit to do. More later!
10:30pm: I was out walking the perimeter when I found the kid crying. He’s been tough as nails this whole time I’ve known him. Running off alone, scouting the park bringing back useful stuff. Maxine is always yelling at him and telling him to stop running off alone, but he’s a firecracker. We all worry for the kid, but since none of us are his real parents he only listens to us to a point. I think he’s got a death wish deep down inside. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Tonight I can only guess it’s all sort of come to a head… the reality of his parents being dead or undead as it were. I know they are still out there… he pointed them out to me once. He catches a glimpse of them from time to time, lumbering around among the other shit-bags. The kid and I have bonded quite a bit, but he still doesn’t open up to me about what’s going on inside his little 11yo head. I try not to influence him too much…. The last thing he needs it so grow up like me… a middle aged biker with a bad attitude, but on second thought, it’s a new world out there. Maybe if he did end up like me that might be the very thing that saves his life one day. Ok, time for this grizzly to hibernate. I’m supposed to go out on a supply run with the weasel tomorrow, so I’m up at the butt crack of dawn…. Later!
July 6th 2015:
12:45pm: Well Wayne and I ventured into a portion of the park we hadn’t been in before. You see this theme park is divided into five sections. In its glory days when families came here to enjoy the fun and fantasy of it all, there were five separate wonderlands they could enjoy. But now they are more like five levels of hell, well make that four, because the jungle safari section where we’re hold up is completely cleared out and each section is fenced off from the others. There is an underground network of tunnels full of offices and break rooms and changing and shower facilities where all the costumed character workers used to prep. With the network of tunnels, they could go to and from any section of the park without being seen by the general public. Well what was once a series of convenient access tunnels is now a dangerous unexplored potential death-trap. So that’s where the weasel and I went this morning.
We didn’t get far, but we did get into corridor’s ‘A’ and ‘B’, which were where most of the offices for the park management were located. We were hoping to find a cafeteria or something like that, where we could stock up on food and supplies. I don’t know about the rest of the world out there and rather they still have power, but the park has had a steady flow of electricity up until a few days ago. It started as short flickers and then a couple of black-outs fffyesterday, which lasted about five minutes each. I am sure it’s just a matter of time before the grid all over North America is completely out. There are generator rooms in each section of the park, but we haven’t even tried to get any of them started. It’s just a task none of us have felt up to volunteering for, since we hadn’t had the need.
With all the gift shops in our section of the park alone, we have been well stocked on batteries, but they won’t last forever, but this morning we took plenty to help us with our exploring, in case we lost the lights again while we were underground. Corridors ‘C’ through ‘E’ go a few floors deeper and branch out to the farthest sections of the park. We’ve pretty much decided we’re going to save those for later. No need to press our luck now, since we have no idea what to expect in there.
6:15pm: SHIT! I lost Wayne somewhere in corridor ‘A’. We were exploring when we heard a sound, like a whimpering of a dog or a child or something. The sound seemed to have an innocence about it but at the same time was creepy as hell. It sounded like a small child calling out, but around here you never know if it’s going to be an actual child or the horrid remnants of what was once a child.
I was going to come up with a plan of attack to go and investigate, but the fucker just took off after it and now I don’t know where he is. I spent an hour calling his name in hushed tones, as to not attract anyone or anything that wasn’t him, but he hasn’t responded. Corridor ‘A’ is the longest corridor of them all. Imagine the corridor’s under this place like a wagon wheel. Corridors B through E are like the spokes of the wheel. They all intersect in the middle, but corridor A is like the wheel itself. It makes a huge circle around the park and intersects with every corridor. This makes looking for the bastard almost impossible. We’ll literally have to scour every dam inch of the underground just to find him and I just don’t think I’m going to do that. Hell I didn’t even like the guy! Anyway back to the tree-house. We’re all sleeping on it and we’re gonna see what we come up with in the morning.
July 7th 2015
It’s 7:40am and I’m doing a quick entry to this diary while I wait for Carl. He and Maxine were arguing about his involvement in searching for the Weasel. Anyway while I was waiting I wanted to explain something. I mentioned a tree-house last night. Well I failed to explain to whoever eventually finds this and listens to it, that we’re all safe and sound for one really good reason. We live in a tree-house. This park has it’s “jungle” section and in the jungle is what they call “Tarzan’s Jungle Tree-House” It’s a huge man-made tree with lots of elaborate little rooms and walkways and rope ladders, built right into it. It’s the Perfect fucking place to live if you want to stay away from dead people who can’t climb trees. The only way into the tree-house is through a five person cable and pulley operated elevator. It’s built to look like it’s all made of logs and bits of rope from a wrecked ship, but it’s actually made of metal, fiberglass, and steel cables. It also runs on a counter-weight system, so no batteries required. Since we have control of its movement up and down, we can secure it at night so nothing or no one can sneak in. All the rooms are very elaborate, with their “Tarzan of the Jungle” motif, but everything is fake. You know, molded fiber glass furniture, nailed down props and plastic leaves, but each room has its own hammock and that rocks.
Ok, Carl is coming, so I guess he won the argument. We’re gonna go find the weasel I guess. LATER!
1:00pm: SHIT… THERE’S SOMETHING DOWN THERE! I’m guessing it’s what’s left of someones kid, but it seemed more like a rabid blood-covered chimp or something. It jumped on Carl and almost ate his face. He’s ok physically, but I don’t know if his heart can handle another heart-thumper like that. We got down to the middle of the “wagon wheel” where all the corridors come together. I swear…. I know why the weasel went after that thing....it makes a sound just like a child whimpering, like some poor lost toddler crying for its mother. The kind of sound that moves you while at the same time, sending chills down your spine.
We found Wayne, by the way. Or part of him. It was only a section of his left arm, which I was able to identify because his watch was still attached to it. I’d love to believe he’s still down there and only hurt with part of his arm missing…. But reality is that he’s one of those fucking things now. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I have to admit it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy! My gut tells me he’s still down there, wondering around dead, bumping into walls in the dark, just waiting for something warm and bloody to dig into. Well that ain’t gonna be me.
4:45pm: The others are having a “meeting” to try to decide what to do next. Like it or not, Wayne was sort of our ‘go-to-guy’ for anything we needed to know about this park. Not having him around is going to make life a bit more difficult.... I'll be back when I have some news.
July 8th 2015:
7:13am: So it looks like Me, Jake and Karl are going in. I’ve traded the notebook in for a hand held digital recorder. Jake noticed that I had taken over this diary that belonged to that girl Emma (I think was her name). Anyway Jake liked the idea of keeping a diary so he gave me this digital recorder he found in one of the offices he was rummaging around in. It’s got fresh batteries and 500 TB memory card. It’s plenty of room to record a million diaries for a million lifetimes.
Anyway enough of that shit, I’m actually going to carry this thing with me as we go back into the tunnels. Sort of document a play by play as things unfold. Our goal being to find the Weasel if he’s still around there, but mostly to find out what’s down there and put it out of our misery. We will never be safe until we clear this place out completely… can’t have any rabid rug-rats wandering around down there.
8:15am: We’ve been down here about ten minutes. I just remembered to turn this fucking thing on. It’s really bad down here. If them zombies don’t kill ya, the smell sure as hell will.
Ok I’m whispering because I don’t want Karl and Jake to hear what I’m saying. This is a really shit idea. We found Wayne’s arm for fuck sake. The thought of him possibly still being alive and un-infected are a big fucking ZERO in my book.
“Hey turn that thing off! They’re going to hear us!”
Back later, CLICK!
8:45am: The stench is almost unbearable, but we really haven’t seen anything yet. The occasional moan from somewhere in the distance is all we’re able to make out. With the lights out, this maze of hallways down here is a brain fuck. The series of “wagon wheel” shaped hallways we had already been though actually empty out into what looks like a sub-basement full of pipes and electrical conduits. A place obviously not meant for the general public, but for maintenance men.
“I saw something up ahead… c-mon.”
That was Jake... He’s leading the way. You would think being the ‘big biker’ that they would insist on ME going first, well they didn’t and I’m just fine with that. Karl is old but he’s a bit of a bad ass. He sure has bigger balls than I do. Guess I’m going to fallow them. I’m signing out for now… save some battery juice. CLICK!
9:05 am: SHIT! I don’t know where they went. I was right behind them and they turned a corner and there was this horrible scream. I don’t think it was either of them, but now I can’t find them. I’m hiding in an electrical room. It’s so dark down here I can barely see anything. I keep hearing this moaning growling sound. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. I thought those things just died and came back… whatever is down here sounds like it’s some sort of zombie mutant or something.
“Ahhhhrrrg…. HELP!.... it’s got me…get it off of me….. it’s just a ki………”
Oh god, did you hear that? It sounded like Karl. Wait…. Oh god… I can see something moving round in the shadows. I’m looking through the door that is just barely cracked open. The only light is coming from Karl’s MAG LIGHT that is laying on the floor shining upward. There is something there. It’s moving in and out of the beam, but keeping mostly to the shadows. I can’t really make it out, but it’s got Karl and I can see that it’s….. oh god…. It’s dismembering him. SHIT… I can’t watch…. CLICK!
It’s a kid…. It’s a fucked up zombie kid with the strength of some sort of mutant monster. It’s eating Karl. Ripping him to shreds and eating him. Oh god… it’s looking over here. SHIT! IT SEES ME! …NO…. NO…NO………………..
CLICK!
February 20th 2016:
CLICK! Hello…. Does this thing work?