Today's Halloween. I had to chuckle at that. Kat and I went as leathers, like we've been doing for several days now. It's also the two year anniversary of the first reported outbreak of zombies. Honestly, it couldn't have happened it on a more apt day. The entire nation, even the world, didn't take it seriously. Who would? Zombies running around the streets on Halloween? Any other day and we would have taken notice. We would have been prepared. Instead, we gave the virus a head start on us, and it devoured our population.
Kat and I talked about the anniversary a bit this morning. It's a very strange thing to be remembering. Well, if you still remember 9/11 which happened 20 years ago and is a very minute tragedy in comparison to an apocalypse, you're going to remember the first zombie outbreak, which only happened two years ago. She asked me if I remembered where I was on that day. I did.
I was with Johanna. She was at my place helping me pass out candy to the trick or treaters. She was dressed up as Jill Valentine from Resident Evil. God, I loved that woman. Any woman who cos-plays is a keeper. I was dressed up as an extra in a movie, the one who gets shot by stray bullets in a police thriller from the bank robber's gun. I had a friend who worked in special effects, and he hooked me up with a few squibs. The first group of trick or treaters were in for a real special treat. The doorbell rang, I opened the door, Johanna pointed a fake gun at me, I yelled out, "NOOO!" and hit the remote on the squibs. POP POP POP! Blood everywhere on my shirt and I went down without so much as a scream. I saved that part for the kiddies. It was a riot!
We were in bed by 11, but Johanna wanted to turn on the news, something we very rarely did. I asked why, and she felt for some reason she just needed to watch the news. CBS 13 ran a live breaking story about a zombie outbreak happening in Boston, MD. There was a lot of chaos in the streets in the background, so much information being reported and it looked incredibly real and believable. But, it was Halloween . We watched it for 15 minutes, and then grew tired and turned it off and went to sleep. When we woke up the next morning, the feed was still going. It became worldwide news at that point. Every media outlet on TV and the web reported outbreaks happening all over. A couple of days later, the first case of zombies hit Maine, and well... I'd rather not bring that up again.
It was my turn to ask Kat what she was doing. She started by telling me she was at a Halloween orgy dressed as Wilma Flintstone and she was going for her thirtieth partner when the crowd drew silent after they turned the news on when someone got a Facebook alert on their phone about the story. She looked at my face after she said that, and my eyes were wide and my mouth was open, thinking of her with that many guys. She punched me in the arm and said she was messing with me, and that I was an asshole for thinking she'd ever go to an orgy. She got me good, I must admit.
No, she was taking her niece Emiline out trick or treating because her sister and her husband were both working that night. Kat was dressed as a french poodle (I told her those were some of the ugliest dogs around and got punched again) and her niece was dressed as Mulan. They rang the doorbell of Emiline's teacher, who she knew, when they were invited inside to chat for a bit. At the moment, the horror marathon the teacher had going on was preempted by a special report. The news story of zombies came on, and Kat and Emiline's teacher both high fived each other thinking how awesome that was, that their local news station would go to such lengths to do a realistic story about zombies. It was far more realistic than we knew that day.
But it's pointless to keep dwelling on that fact. It happened. It grew beyond our control and now all we can do is live as best as we can. We can continue to cry about the people we've lost to the horde, or we can focus on keeping the ones we still have left closer to us and be forever thankful they're still in our lives. I miss Johanna so fucking much right now, but being with Kat has pretty much kept me alive in more ways than one. No one can replace Johanna, and Kat knows that, but that isn't her job. It's never someone's purpose in a relationship to replace the person they've loved before, because it's impossible. Kat will never love me like Johanna, but she doesn't need to. She loves me in her own way, and I love her in my own way. That's enough. If the role was reversed and I was dead with Johanna living on, I wouldn't want her wasting away in a constant state of lamentation either. If she ever found someone worth living for, then I'd want that for Johanna.
So Kat and I did a little trick or treating of our own. We commented on each other's zombie costumes saying, "My, what a SCARY looking zombie you are!" "Wow, your costume is SO disgusting! I LOVE it!" We gave each other beef jerky and stale crackers and granola bars and sunflower seeds. I miss chocolate. Good old fattening teeth-rotting chocolate. I miss peanut butter cups and Snickers and pulling my fillings out trying to eat Milk Duds. I was never into fruit candy, and thought it was an insult to get them when I was trick or treating. I made mental notes of each house that gave me Jolly Ranchers and Starburst and Now and Laters and Smarties, and I returned to them in the middle of the night with eggs and a slingshot. I miss my Halloweens, but this Halloween with Kat, both of us dressed up in real, stinky, hastily stitched together zombie skin exchanging old snack food, was somehow the best Halloween I ever had.
After enough Halloweening and reflecting, we set off on the road again. My leg was feeling a bit better, so I pushed a little faster, although when the road started inclining, I got off my bike to walk. It was more work to bike up a hill than down, and I didn't want to put anymore stress on my leg than I had to. Kat's leg started feeling better by the day, but even after more than a month of being hit, I didn't trust it to do any kind of pedaling. Kat wanted to give me a break, though. She said I've been pushing so hard since we left Terre Haute that she wanted to tow me for a while. I kept trying to insist that I do all the work because I was worried about her leg, but she simply had to have her way. I let her pedal, but only when the road went downhill. She was doing an okay job, but when the road flattened out again and she actually had to work to pedal, I heard her yip. That was enough for me to put my foot down and have her get back in the wheelchair. At least she can walk without crutches, though. We left them behind at the hotel. Less dead weight to carry around.
We also had to fight off a few leathers for the first time in a long while. They were literally smack dab in the center of the road, and we tried to skirt them, but they noticed us. The smell wasn't enough to fool them, but they didn't charge us. They followed us, most likely curious as to why one of their fellow zombies was riding a bike, towing another in a wheelchair. They started clicking to each other, one making low pitched growls and I knew they were planning to attack. So I stopped, got off the bike and turned around, getting the machete out of the pack Kat was holding.
The leathers and I had a stare down. They clicked to other a few more times and then did something I never saw them do before. They got down on all fours, and that's when I noticed something different about their physiology. Their legs tended to stretch out from their hips a bit more than most humans, and the arms seemed to articulate in their sockets in ways that weren't intended. They were almost like four-legged spiders getting ready to pounce on prey stuck in their webbing. One of them began hissing, a long extended hiss, like air escaping a tire that was quickly going flat. Then the other two began hissing as well. It was an intimidation tactic, and it was working. This was the first time we actually drew this much attention from them since having the suits on, and then I remembered what Rampert said about them smelling fear. They where smelling it. I was afraid.
But just because I was afraid, it didn't mean I wasn't ready to fight. In fact, I was more ready to fight because I was afraid. I've had many opportunities to use the adrenaline pumped into my system by fright to my advantage, so when the first lept at me, I swung upward with the machete out of pure reflex. The cold, razor sharp blade cut through the leather's skull as if slicing a tomato and its contents spilled out as such. The second zombie went after Kat, leaping on her and knocking the wheelchair over, but I didn't have time to see what happened after that as the third zombie advance on me. It ducked my swing and chomped on me with all its might, but I fell completely backward to dodge the attack as I heard its teeth shatter from the force. I had to remember to shudder later from thinking how much a bite like that would have hurt.
I heard a gunshot go off, but my undead assaulter had me preoccupied. It grabbed my upper arms and dug its nails into my skin, and I felt a couple of them poke through. It picked me up part way and forced me back down again, smacking my head against the pavement making me see stars. I don't remember letting go of the machete but I heard the clang of the metal bouncing off the ground. Trying to focus again, I was able to make out the leather rearing back for another bite when I felt something hot and wet spraying me in the face. The next second, the zombie's head was gone and then I saw a foot push the headless torso off me. I looked up, and there was Kat, my machete in hand, dripping with leather blood. I cracked a joke and told her saving me all the time was starting to get real annoying. To be honest, she never looked sexier to me than she did at that moment. Certainly wasn't going to have sex with her in the middle of the highway, though. That's for damn sure.
We covered 55 miles today, ending up in Roscoe, just south from the Wisconsin border. I-39 also turned into I-90 at this point. We took up shelter at the Willowbrook Middle School, but it wasn't a pretty sight. We could see evidence of zombies attacking and eating the children that used to occupy these halls. Some of the corpses were still here, too grizzly for me to want to recite the details. I've seen dead bodies before, but for some reason, it's always so much worse when it's kids. We searched classrooms until we found the most pristine one, the chemistry class. This room must have been unoccupied when the attacks came, because there wasn't one single broken beaker or condenser.
Normally, you wouldn't want to sleep in a building where you knew there was a slaughter, but once you've been around enough, you tend to become numb to it. Sure, the unease is always there, knowing the awful events that transpired, but the weariness of traveling easily trumps that feeling. You just want to sit down and relax, eat a meal and go to sleep, which is what we're doing. Hope you had a safer Halloween than we had!
Until tomorrow.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
October 30th, 2021
Kat saved my life today. I always knew not knowing how to swim would get me in major trouble some day. When I woke up this morning, I walked around on the leg a bit to see if it improved at all. It did, but not by much. I felt somewhat confident enough that I wouldn't do any further damage to it if I tried traveling on it. We left the hotel at around 10 once it started warming up.
I got on the bike and started to pedal, and it wasn't that bad actually. It was slow going, and I had to put most of my weight on my left leg whenever I pedaled. Not even a mile up I-39, we hit the bridge stretched across the Illinois River. As we were crossing it, we saw a semi truck coming towards us. We almost couldn't believe it!
The first thing I did was hop off my bike and run down the street in front of the truck waving my hands out to get him to stop, but he was moving a lot faster than I thought he was at first. The driver barely had enough time to slam on his brakes when he saw me, and it caused his truck to jackknife. He was able to steer the cab away from me, but the trailer swung out from him in my direction. I only had three options. A) Get crushed by the trailer. B) Dodge to the right into the path of the cab. C) Jump the rail into the freezing river below.
Obviously since I'm writing this, I went with C. It must have been a good 50 feet drop into the water below, but it felt like much more. I kept holding my breath waiting to hit the water, and just went I tried to breathe again, SPLASH! My world became water. Water forced its way into my nose, gagging my throat as I involuntary breathed it in, burning my lungs as the liquid found residence. My eyes were forced shut and the shock of the cold water seized my muscles preventing me from extending my limbs out all the way in a weak attempt to tread water. I didn't know which end I was facing, the current taking over and treating me like laundry in a washing machine. I felt bludgeoned all over my back, as if someone was beating me with lead pipes. I realized the current was dragging me across the river bed, across the rocks that rested along the bottom. Maybe it was just instinct, but I realized at that second, I needed to propel myself up to the surface. I knew I was at the bottom, so there was only way to go. I kicked off as best as I could until I felt the cold snap of air assault my face as my head broke through.
I tried to cough the water out, but every time I did, I swallowed more water. I thrashed around with my useless arms and kicked with my equally useless legs but I had no concept of rhythm in order to keep myself afloat. I was panicking. I was freezing. I was drowning. Death had me all around, its formless fingers yanking at me from every direction, tugging at me trying to reclaim that prize it once had: my head. The river wanted me back under, and it was having its way. I lost all my energy, spent from desperately trying to swim, sapped from the cold waters of the river.
I was under. All I could do was stair up into the water looking at the sun, the blue sky, distorted by the water's surface. I felt the current pushing me along, twisting my body around to keep me so disorientated, I would never get lucky enough to reach the air again. Until I felt something else grab me, something firm and tangle. I felt pressure hook me from under my shoulder just as I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was coughing up water and then vomiting it up. It was a one-two punch, first the burning of the esophagus from the puke, and then the burning of the water still draining from my nostrils. I only felt a few moments discomfort before the violent shivers took over and prevented me from feeling anything else. I looked up and there she was, Kat, in her all her soaking glory. She jumped in after me, narrowly missing the truck herself. She swam down the river chasing me until she finally caught me. It felt like eternity, but all in all, it was only a few minutes from when she jumped in to when she pulled me up on the bank.
The first thing she did when she saw me come to was take off all my clothes and wring them dry as best as she could. When she finished with my clothes, she did the same with hers. Instead of putting the clothes back on, she covered us with them and hugged me tight, my naked body against hers, to transfer her body heat to me. After she felt me warming up a bit, she helped me put my clothes back on and got dressed herself. She hugged and kissed me all over and I returned in kind, but then she berated me for not knowing how to swim. I said one day, she'll have to teach me. She saved my life! She was so happy that I was still alive and it seemed like all the frustrations we had the past couple of days were completely lifted. I had the sudden feeling that everything between us was going to be just fine.
The river took us about a half mile southwest from the bridge. We started heading back to it, but when we got there, the truck was abandoned. We shouted out "HELLO?" several times hoping that whomever drove the truck was still around, but no one yelled back. I started to investigate down the bridge where it connected to land and that's when I saw the blood trail, a line of drips randomly changing in intensity and frequency. I followed it down several more feet until the drips turned into one giant smear trailing off the side of the road. I stopped following the track knowing there was no longer a reason to.
I went back to the truck and realized it was stilled running. The first thing Kat and I did was hop in the cab and blast up the heat. It felt SO GOOD to have all this hot air blowing on us! We actually took our clothes off again and used the heater to dry them off. After putting them back on, Kat asked me if I knew how to drive a truck. I said I didn't even know how to drive stick. She made a snarky remark about how if I don't know how to drive a truck or swim, what good am I? She flashed me a smile and a wink to know she was just kidding. I asked if she knew how to drive a truck and she shook her head.
My bike was smashed, though, so there wasn't much of a choice. It wasn't our truck and we didn't have to worry about insurance, so I figured it was worth a shot to try to figure it out. The problem was there was a lot of unmarked buttons and switches and there were two gear shifts which really threw me off. I had no idea how to get the thing into the proper gear to even get it to move. Then, I also remembered the jackknifed trailer. I got out and inspected the hitch. I didn't know much about trailers, but I knew that a bent piece of metal in the back of the semi's cab meant this trailer wasn't coming off without machinery.
I went back in and told Kat we're pretty much going to have to abandon the truck. Then she remembered Johnathan's bike and I smiled. That's right! He left it behind. And well, he wasn't going to have anymore need of it, so I told Kat to stay in the cab and keep warm. I'd go back to the hotel and get the bike.
It was still there, where Jonathan left it, but the darkened bloodstains on the seat did not make me want to ride it. I had no choice, though, and just gritted my teeth and rode it back to Kat. Once there, I swapped my seat, which was still in good condition, for Jonathan's and I felt much better about using it now. While I was retrieving the bike, Kat went through the glove compartment and the sleeper compartment for anything useful. She found a couple of flares and some beef jerky, a revolver with three rounds and a flashlight you recharge by shaking it. Not a bad find. I decided to check the trailer itself, but it was locked tight. Whatever was in the trailer would just have to stay there.
We warmed up some more in the cab, but we started getting lazy and actually dozed off for an hour or so. We didn't want to leave the blissful comfort of the truck, but then we heard the clunk-clunk-clunk of the engine as it ran out of fuel. So, at roughly two in the afternoon, we mustered ourselves up and go back on the road.
I kept myself at about 10 miles an hour and with roughly four hours of light left, we only made it about 40 miles when we decided to look for shelter for the night. We got off I-39 and went east until we came across another farmhouse and barn. I made sure I wasn't going to repeat the same mistake I did before and I searched the property thoroughly: absolutely no sign of anyone still living there.
The house was locked up, so I had to break the window in the door to reach in and unlock it. We parked our tired butts in chairs too comfortable to be dinning chairs, and we ate dinner of newly discovered beef jerky and the last jar of fruit we had . We savored it, because we had no idea when we were going to come across canned fruit again. It was a delightful treat.
We found the master bedroom, and it was like it was never touched. Whoever lived here, if they were attacked, were not attacked here. They never made it home. At least their bed would serve the purpose of giving two very wary souls a good honest night's rest.
Until tomorrow.
I got on the bike and started to pedal, and it wasn't that bad actually. It was slow going, and I had to put most of my weight on my left leg whenever I pedaled. Not even a mile up I-39, we hit the bridge stretched across the Illinois River. As we were crossing it, we saw a semi truck coming towards us. We almost couldn't believe it!
The first thing I did was hop off my bike and run down the street in front of the truck waving my hands out to get him to stop, but he was moving a lot faster than I thought he was at first. The driver barely had enough time to slam on his brakes when he saw me, and it caused his truck to jackknife. He was able to steer the cab away from me, but the trailer swung out from him in my direction. I only had three options. A) Get crushed by the trailer. B) Dodge to the right into the path of the cab. C) Jump the rail into the freezing river below.
Obviously since I'm writing this, I went with C. It must have been a good 50 feet drop into the water below, but it felt like much more. I kept holding my breath waiting to hit the water, and just went I tried to breathe again, SPLASH! My world became water. Water forced its way into my nose, gagging my throat as I involuntary breathed it in, burning my lungs as the liquid found residence. My eyes were forced shut and the shock of the cold water seized my muscles preventing me from extending my limbs out all the way in a weak attempt to tread water. I didn't know which end I was facing, the current taking over and treating me like laundry in a washing machine. I felt bludgeoned all over my back, as if someone was beating me with lead pipes. I realized the current was dragging me across the river bed, across the rocks that rested along the bottom. Maybe it was just instinct, but I realized at that second, I needed to propel myself up to the surface. I knew I was at the bottom, so there was only way to go. I kicked off as best as I could until I felt the cold snap of air assault my face as my head broke through.
I tried to cough the water out, but every time I did, I swallowed more water. I thrashed around with my useless arms and kicked with my equally useless legs but I had no concept of rhythm in order to keep myself afloat. I was panicking. I was freezing. I was drowning. Death had me all around, its formless fingers yanking at me from every direction, tugging at me trying to reclaim that prize it once had: my head. The river wanted me back under, and it was having its way. I lost all my energy, spent from desperately trying to swim, sapped from the cold waters of the river.
I was under. All I could do was stair up into the water looking at the sun, the blue sky, distorted by the water's surface. I felt the current pushing me along, twisting my body around to keep me so disorientated, I would never get lucky enough to reach the air again. Until I felt something else grab me, something firm and tangle. I felt pressure hook me from under my shoulder just as I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was coughing up water and then vomiting it up. It was a one-two punch, first the burning of the esophagus from the puke, and then the burning of the water still draining from my nostrils. I only felt a few moments discomfort before the violent shivers took over and prevented me from feeling anything else. I looked up and there she was, Kat, in her all her soaking glory. She jumped in after me, narrowly missing the truck herself. She swam down the river chasing me until she finally caught me. It felt like eternity, but all in all, it was only a few minutes from when she jumped in to when she pulled me up on the bank.
The first thing she did when she saw me come to was take off all my clothes and wring them dry as best as she could. When she finished with my clothes, she did the same with hers. Instead of putting the clothes back on, she covered us with them and hugged me tight, my naked body against hers, to transfer her body heat to me. After she felt me warming up a bit, she helped me put my clothes back on and got dressed herself. She hugged and kissed me all over and I returned in kind, but then she berated me for not knowing how to swim. I said one day, she'll have to teach me. She saved my life! She was so happy that I was still alive and it seemed like all the frustrations we had the past couple of days were completely lifted. I had the sudden feeling that everything between us was going to be just fine.
The river took us about a half mile southwest from the bridge. We started heading back to it, but when we got there, the truck was abandoned. We shouted out "HELLO?" several times hoping that whomever drove the truck was still around, but no one yelled back. I started to investigate down the bridge where it connected to land and that's when I saw the blood trail, a line of drips randomly changing in intensity and frequency. I followed it down several more feet until the drips turned into one giant smear trailing off the side of the road. I stopped following the track knowing there was no longer a reason to.
I went back to the truck and realized it was stilled running. The first thing Kat and I did was hop in the cab and blast up the heat. It felt SO GOOD to have all this hot air blowing on us! We actually took our clothes off again and used the heater to dry them off. After putting them back on, Kat asked me if I knew how to drive a truck. I said I didn't even know how to drive stick. She made a snarky remark about how if I don't know how to drive a truck or swim, what good am I? She flashed me a smile and a wink to know she was just kidding. I asked if she knew how to drive a truck and she shook her head.
My bike was smashed, though, so there wasn't much of a choice. It wasn't our truck and we didn't have to worry about insurance, so I figured it was worth a shot to try to figure it out. The problem was there was a lot of unmarked buttons and switches and there were two gear shifts which really threw me off. I had no idea how to get the thing into the proper gear to even get it to move. Then, I also remembered the jackknifed trailer. I got out and inspected the hitch. I didn't know much about trailers, but I knew that a bent piece of metal in the back of the semi's cab meant this trailer wasn't coming off without machinery.
I went back in and told Kat we're pretty much going to have to abandon the truck. Then she remembered Johnathan's bike and I smiled. That's right! He left it behind. And well, he wasn't going to have anymore need of it, so I told Kat to stay in the cab and keep warm. I'd go back to the hotel and get the bike.
It was still there, where Jonathan left it, but the darkened bloodstains on the seat did not make me want to ride it. I had no choice, though, and just gritted my teeth and rode it back to Kat. Once there, I swapped my seat, which was still in good condition, for Jonathan's and I felt much better about using it now. While I was retrieving the bike, Kat went through the glove compartment and the sleeper compartment for anything useful. She found a couple of flares and some beef jerky, a revolver with three rounds and a flashlight you recharge by shaking it. Not a bad find. I decided to check the trailer itself, but it was locked tight. Whatever was in the trailer would just have to stay there.
We warmed up some more in the cab, but we started getting lazy and actually dozed off for an hour or so. We didn't want to leave the blissful comfort of the truck, but then we heard the clunk-clunk-clunk of the engine as it ran out of fuel. So, at roughly two in the afternoon, we mustered ourselves up and go back on the road.
I kept myself at about 10 miles an hour and with roughly four hours of light left, we only made it about 40 miles when we decided to look for shelter for the night. We got off I-39 and went east until we came across another farmhouse and barn. I made sure I wasn't going to repeat the same mistake I did before and I searched the property thoroughly: absolutely no sign of anyone still living there.
The house was locked up, so I had to break the window in the door to reach in and unlock it. We parked our tired butts in chairs too comfortable to be dinning chairs, and we ate dinner of newly discovered beef jerky and the last jar of fruit we had . We savored it, because we had no idea when we were going to come across canned fruit again. It was a delightful treat.
We found the master bedroom, and it was like it was never touched. Whoever lived here, if they were attacked, were not attacked here. They never made it home. At least their bed would serve the purpose of giving two very wary souls a good honest night's rest.
Until tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
October 29th, 2021
I woke up this morning to find Kat in my bed. I thought this was a good sign that she's forgiven me, so I kissed her awake and was instantly proven wrong. She slapped me in reciprocation and after witnessing my stunned expression, she said she's still mad at me. She only snuck into my bed during the night because she didn't feel safe by herself.
She wasn't as mad at me today as she was yesterday, but she was still pretty pissed off. We ended up fighting back and forth most of the day. One of the subjects we talked about (well, fought about) was her reading from my journal about how I wished I never got her pregnant. I tried to convince her that I still wanted the baby, but she kept going on about how right I was in saying that this was no world to have a child in. She said it was better to just end the pregnancy now and she grabbed my machete and motioned to stabbing herself in the stomach.
I lept on top of her and tried to wrestle the blade away, but she was surprisingly strong and wouldn't let go. I tried gripping her hands and prying her fingers off the handle and as she was pulling back out of resistance, my hands lost hold of hers and the Alligator whizzed by my face, the rectangular edge catching the outside corner of my left eye and slicing down to my ear. I recoiled off her in surprise and held my hand to my face, and it was that moment when she hurt me, the fight completely drained from her. She dropped the machete and came to my aid, but my initial reaction was to throw her against the wall and put my fist through it via her face. I knew it was an accident and she didn't mean it, so I let my anger cool and let her approach me.
I wished that moment could have lasted forever. She was so tentative to my wound, so gentle and so focused on making sure she stitched it up that she wasn't thinking about fighting. Kat made sure I was bandaged up as best as could be, and then plopped down next to me on the side of the bed. I tried to put my arm around her, but she threw it off. She apologized for cutting me, but that's as far as she was going take it.
She wanted to make sure she that I understood completely no more secrets, no more withholding information that was pertinent to any kind of threat, either to her or me. Of course I nodded. I told her that I won't ever be able to stop feeling horrible about what happened yesterday. What she said next, I couldn't really believe. She said that anytime I had a doubt about someone, anytime she had a doubt about someone, we were to kill them straight away. I told her I didn't like that idea, but she said it was the basic rule of survival, to eliminate threats before they came threats. I asked her wouldn't that make her feel like a murderer? She just went cold. She told me she didn't care. From now on, we trust no one. She also said she if I didn't trust her on this, I should go my own way.
Of course I won't, though. I love her too much. We need each other, especially now since we're having a child. She made a lot of sense. Timothy nearly killed me. Johnathan left me for dead and tried to rape Kat. Yet, Wallace nearly killed Hector and Temperance hit me over the head with a frying pan. On those grounds alone, we should have killed them both. We didn't, and they turned out to be good people. Hell, even Rampert didn't turn out to be the monster we thought he was. He actually went after the monster named Jonathan. I didn't want Kat feeling like this, but I completely understood.
Then I got to thinking about the vivensmortua virus, how it might be turning people who are immune to it insane. There has to be some kind of reason for this. Something, some kind of stress or duress, has to trigger a sudden behavioral change in them. I mean, Jonathan was such a nice guy for what little time I knew him, yet he degraded so quickly. He went from simple depression to sexual aggressor in a matter of days. He turned on us so quickly, almost like a new persona was downloaded into him from the Cloud. Rat was incredibly young, yet her feral tenacity was ferocious. For such a little girl to take down leathers to make skin from, she would have had to have undergone a complete psychological transformation. Torsten went from family man to a slasher straight out of B horror film. Then there's Rampert. He believes he's devouring the power of zombies as he eats them. He actually thinks zombies are scared of him! Whatever his thinking, though, his altered brain gives him the strength needed to hunt those things. We're changing. Not into zombies, not into draggers or leathers, but we're definitely changing into something else.
Kat wants us to kill on a whim. Does that mean she's starting to change as well? I know it's a defensive mechanism, but the emotional trauma of what she went though, would that be the catalyst to cause her to go insane? By her logic, kill anyone you can't trust, does that mean I have to kill her if I somehow can't trust her? Will she kill me if she can't trust me? God no. I don't want to think that! I don't want to be afraid of her! But, what happens if I somehow go insane? What if I try to do something to her? She'll definitely kill me then. It's all wrong. All so wrong... (I let her read this by the way. She said we'll deal with it if it ever comes up.)
And we didn't even travel today. It's not that my leg's bothering me. It hurts, but I was able to move around on it. I just don't think I'd be able to ride a bike the way it is now, especially towing Kat. Not that it matters anyway. It snowed this morning, well into the afternoon. I'm guessing we got at least a couple of inches on the grass. It wasn't cold enough the day before to allow the snow to collect on the pavement, but it was cold and wet enough to make traveling absolutely miserable. Remember what I told you. Don't travel during rain and snow, because if you catch cold, that only makes matters worse.
Speaking of the cold, it was seeping through into our room like a ghost paying us an unwelcome visit. We gathered up some furniture from a few rooms and broke it up into firewood. I used the machete to cut into the carpet and peeled it back to expose the bare concrete underneath as the base for our fire pit. After we got a cone of wood together, we sprinkled a little rubbing alcohol on it and lit it with a match. The fire took, and we sat next to each other watching the falling snow through the window.
The flakes were huge, so they stacked on top of each other rather well. They reminded me of bodies of zombies piling up on each other as they tried to advance on an army They would shoot one down only for five more to take their place. The more and more zombies were slain, the more the piles of bodies would grow. The piles became so massive that it restricted movement. You could fight off an entire city of the undead for as long as you wanted, but the numbers would eventually overwhelm you. Dammit. I can't even enjoy something as peaceful as falling snow without thinking of zombies...
As I lost myself to the snow, I felt Kat's head rest on my shoulder. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I wasn't sure if that would upset her so I refrained. Then she told me, "I still love you, you know. I just think you're a fucking idiot." I just huffed to myself and decided to try for it. I put my arm around her and she let me keep it there. I told her I didn't want us to be upset with each other when she went to bed, so she finally forgave me to erase the slate clean. I put another chair on the fire before getting in bed with Kat.
We need to get going tomorrow, though. We didn't travel for two days. Whatever progress we gained from biking was negated by yesterday and today. We still need to reach Rhinelander and we still have a long way to go.
Until tomorrow.
She wasn't as mad at me today as she was yesterday, but she was still pretty pissed off. We ended up fighting back and forth most of the day. One of the subjects we talked about (well, fought about) was her reading from my journal about how I wished I never got her pregnant. I tried to convince her that I still wanted the baby, but she kept going on about how right I was in saying that this was no world to have a child in. She said it was better to just end the pregnancy now and she grabbed my machete and motioned to stabbing herself in the stomach.
I lept on top of her and tried to wrestle the blade away, but she was surprisingly strong and wouldn't let go. I tried gripping her hands and prying her fingers off the handle and as she was pulling back out of resistance, my hands lost hold of hers and the Alligator whizzed by my face, the rectangular edge catching the outside corner of my left eye and slicing down to my ear. I recoiled off her in surprise and held my hand to my face, and it was that moment when she hurt me, the fight completely drained from her. She dropped the machete and came to my aid, but my initial reaction was to throw her against the wall and put my fist through it via her face. I knew it was an accident and she didn't mean it, so I let my anger cool and let her approach me.
I wished that moment could have lasted forever. She was so tentative to my wound, so gentle and so focused on making sure she stitched it up that she wasn't thinking about fighting. Kat made sure I was bandaged up as best as could be, and then plopped down next to me on the side of the bed. I tried to put my arm around her, but she threw it off. She apologized for cutting me, but that's as far as she was going take it.
She wanted to make sure she that I understood completely no more secrets, no more withholding information that was pertinent to any kind of threat, either to her or me. Of course I nodded. I told her that I won't ever be able to stop feeling horrible about what happened yesterday. What she said next, I couldn't really believe. She said that anytime I had a doubt about someone, anytime she had a doubt about someone, we were to kill them straight away. I told her I didn't like that idea, but she said it was the basic rule of survival, to eliminate threats before they came threats. I asked her wouldn't that make her feel like a murderer? She just went cold. She told me she didn't care. From now on, we trust no one. She also said she if I didn't trust her on this, I should go my own way.
Of course I won't, though. I love her too much. We need each other, especially now since we're having a child. She made a lot of sense. Timothy nearly killed me. Johnathan left me for dead and tried to rape Kat. Yet, Wallace nearly killed Hector and Temperance hit me over the head with a frying pan. On those grounds alone, we should have killed them both. We didn't, and they turned out to be good people. Hell, even Rampert didn't turn out to be the monster we thought he was. He actually went after the monster named Jonathan. I didn't want Kat feeling like this, but I completely understood.
Then I got to thinking about the vivensmortua virus, how it might be turning people who are immune to it insane. There has to be some kind of reason for this. Something, some kind of stress or duress, has to trigger a sudden behavioral change in them. I mean, Jonathan was such a nice guy for what little time I knew him, yet he degraded so quickly. He went from simple depression to sexual aggressor in a matter of days. He turned on us so quickly, almost like a new persona was downloaded into him from the Cloud. Rat was incredibly young, yet her feral tenacity was ferocious. For such a little girl to take down leathers to make skin from, she would have had to have undergone a complete psychological transformation. Torsten went from family man to a slasher straight out of B horror film. Then there's Rampert. He believes he's devouring the power of zombies as he eats them. He actually thinks zombies are scared of him! Whatever his thinking, though, his altered brain gives him the strength needed to hunt those things. We're changing. Not into zombies, not into draggers or leathers, but we're definitely changing into something else.
Kat wants us to kill on a whim. Does that mean she's starting to change as well? I know it's a defensive mechanism, but the emotional trauma of what she went though, would that be the catalyst to cause her to go insane? By her logic, kill anyone you can't trust, does that mean I have to kill her if I somehow can't trust her? Will she kill me if she can't trust me? God no. I don't want to think that! I don't want to be afraid of her! But, what happens if I somehow go insane? What if I try to do something to her? She'll definitely kill me then. It's all wrong. All so wrong... (I let her read this by the way. She said we'll deal with it if it ever comes up.)
And we didn't even travel today. It's not that my leg's bothering me. It hurts, but I was able to move around on it. I just don't think I'd be able to ride a bike the way it is now, especially towing Kat. Not that it matters anyway. It snowed this morning, well into the afternoon. I'm guessing we got at least a couple of inches on the grass. It wasn't cold enough the day before to allow the snow to collect on the pavement, but it was cold and wet enough to make traveling absolutely miserable. Remember what I told you. Don't travel during rain and snow, because if you catch cold, that only makes matters worse.
Speaking of the cold, it was seeping through into our room like a ghost paying us an unwelcome visit. We gathered up some furniture from a few rooms and broke it up into firewood. I used the machete to cut into the carpet and peeled it back to expose the bare concrete underneath as the base for our fire pit. After we got a cone of wood together, we sprinkled a little rubbing alcohol on it and lit it with a match. The fire took, and we sat next to each other watching the falling snow through the window.
The flakes were huge, so they stacked on top of each other rather well. They reminded me of bodies of zombies piling up on each other as they tried to advance on an army They would shoot one down only for five more to take their place. The more and more zombies were slain, the more the piles of bodies would grow. The piles became so massive that it restricted movement. You could fight off an entire city of the undead for as long as you wanted, but the numbers would eventually overwhelm you. Dammit. I can't even enjoy something as peaceful as falling snow without thinking of zombies...
As I lost myself to the snow, I felt Kat's head rest on my shoulder. I wanted to put my arm around her, but I wasn't sure if that would upset her so I refrained. Then she told me, "I still love you, you know. I just think you're a fucking idiot." I just huffed to myself and decided to try for it. I put my arm around her and she let me keep it there. I told her I didn't want us to be upset with each other when she went to bed, so she finally forgave me to erase the slate clean. I put another chair on the fire before getting in bed with Kat.
We need to get going tomorrow, though. We didn't travel for two days. Whatever progress we gained from biking was negated by yesterday and today. We still need to reach Rhinelander and we still have a long way to go.
Until tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
October 28th, 2021
Sometimes, the monsters we fear turn out to be harmless. The most dangerous monsters are the ones we never expect. I used to be so good at trusting my gut instinct, and my gut was to deal with Jonathan. Either tell him to go his own way, or kill him. After what happened today, I should have killed him. I wish I did. He tried to rape Kat today.
I guess I'll start by how that was even possible. When I woke up in the morning, Kat was still snoozing. John was up, and had been for a few hours. He said he stirred awake in the middle of the night and wasn't able to get back to sleep. I asked if he wanted to go out for a walk while Kat slept. I wanted to fill the canteens, and the Illinois River was only a half mile away. He said sure.
I'm not going to bother telling you what we talked about it. It was all bullshit. Him lying about how he was fine, that he was totally cool with Kat and me. When I got close to the river, I ended up setting my foot in an animal trap. It snapped shut on my right leg taking me down. I think one of the springs popped loose as it closed on me, because my leg isn't broken. It hurts like hell, but again, it's not broken.
The trap did have enough pressure, though, to keep me pinned in one spot. The trap was chained to a tree and it had a spike wedged in between two of the links. John heard the trap go off and came running over to me but when he saw the predicament I was in, he halted. He just stared at me and I asked if he was going to help me. He approached me, crouched down and looked at the trap and then reached over me and yanked my pack off. I asked, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Just as he turned the other direction, I saw an evil grin on his face. He went back towards the hotel, towards Kat. I screamed after him until I tore my vocal cord.
I tried with all my strength to get this trap undone. Even with a broken spring, I couldn't get the proper leverage to open the trap. I started panicking and hyperventilating and had to force myself to regulate my breathing. It wasn't helping much. All I could think of was Johnathan, having gone insane, and wondering what he was going to do - was doing - to Kat. I had to get to her, but I just couldn't. I just couldn't get the fucking trap open!
After what must have been a couple of hours, I began to hear my name called. It was Kat! She was okay! I answered back and she followed the sound of my voice. When she got closer, I saw she wasn't. Her shirt was ripped open along the left side, and she was holding up the flap of fabric so her breast wouldn't fall out. Her right eye was swelling and she had a welt under it as well, split open. She had blood dripping from her chin down her shirt, and I soon learned it was Johnathan's. He had tried to force himself into her mouth and when she wouldn't open, he began to hit her. Finally, she let him in and just when he couldn't get any farther in, she bit down and tore as hard as she could. She spat his severed member out on the floor, and he reeled back howling in pain. Kat tried finding a weapon to go after him with, but he ran back in to his room and out the window. Her leg being wrapped up kept her from chasing him, but she felt with John recently neutered, he wasn't going to pose a threat any longer. She took off to find me.
We tried to get the trap open, but something wasn't right. Maybe the broken spring prevented it from being open, and she started crying. I told her we'd take a break and try again when we got our strength back. I asked what happened with Johnathan and she said he just came barging into the room. She asked where I was and he said, "Sorry, but that zombie trapper got him." He looked sorrowful at first and started to cry, putting on a real act to get Kat's guard down and when she held out her arms to him crying as well, he went in for a hug. That's when he started groping her. She immediately fought him off asking what the hell he was doing, and he said that now that I was dead, he could have her all to himself. He said he didn't want to die a virgin, and he was going to make sure he corrected that because death was getting closer to him every day. He completely went bat shit crazy. This was not the same man that I met nearly a month ago.
Kat almost broke her fingers trying to get the trap open again, and I told her to stop. She collapsed into my chest and started to cry, but I heard rustling of fallen leaves and hushed her. The shuffling was getting louder and I tried to lay as low as I could on the ground, pinning Kat down as well. I thought it was a zombie and if we just laid still, we'd be okay. But it was something we feared was worse. It was the hunter.
The man stood 6 foot 5 inches, as burly as a WWE wrestler with a beard that was roughly trimmed on the sides but grew several inches down his chin. His hair was disheveled, overgrown and covering his ears where it fell just around his shoulders, dark as night. His eyes were massive as if born from a Greek statue come to life. He wore a shirt mottled with blood stains as much as it was patterned by flannel and his greenish pants may have at one point in their lives been grey. He was an extremely intimidating man. He cocked his head to the side, squinting his eyes until the irises were hidden, panning his head back to the other side. He was studying us.
He spoke. "Da hell yous doin wearin dem zombie skins? You tryna get kilt?" I didn't know how to react. I thought this man was going to kill us and then eat us for sure considering what we saw him do yesterday. He told me to take off my hood and I did. He crouched down to me, pulled out a wickedly massive knife and stuck it under a lever in the trap. He then grabbed each side of the trap with his massive hands and pulled back until he heard a click. I pulled by leg out and began to massage it immediately. Kat and I held each other, looking at this man, not sure what to expect next. She asked if he was going to hurt us.
He answered with a question of his own: were we zombies? We shook our heads, so he said no. He told us he doesn't like fresh meat anymore, said he developed a taste for rotten meat. He considered it a delicacy. His name was Rampert. He hunted leathers and ate them. We asked why, and he said he believed it was a way of gaining power, similar to some ancient Indian customs about cannibalizing their enemies. He then asked us again why we were wearing zombie skin. I told him it was to mask our scent and then he laughed a bellowing laugh, something like you would hear from a lumberjack.
Rampert told him they don't hunt by simple body odor. They hunt by smelling fear. The reason why the suits were working was because we believed they were and thus weren't giving off the fear hormone. I told him I didn't believe that, and he told me, "Don't no zombie come lookin for me. I be lookin for dem." He brought up parallels to apex predators, how we were still supposed to be the apex predators, but we were so spoiled and softened by modern conveniences that we, as he put it, became "pussified". He asked if we saw the tree with his trophies and we nodded. The trophy tree was to let the zombies know there was someone out there more dangerous than them. The leathers are deadly predators, but Rampert's killed them by the hundreds, entirely by himself. He believes zombies don't just respect him; they fear him.
A part of me thought this man was insane. A part of me was certain he was insane but regardless, he helped us. He asked me, "What happen to you little ladyfriend?" I was going to speak for her, but she immediately told him and then Rampert squinted his eyes again. He was like he was trying to pull great distances in the horizon with his gaze so he could view the details as if scanning them with a magnifying glass. It was the iconic look of a serious, and deadly, hunter. "Rampert will take care uh dis," he let it trail on the S like a hiss, "Johnathan. Maybe I have some fresh meat again, no?" and then uttered another hearty laugh.
He helped walk me back to the hotel, Kat by my side the entire time. As we approached the Days Inn, we saw Johnathan's bike on the ground, about 100 feet from the front door. The seat was covered in blood; he was obviously in too much pain to ride the bike. I didn't need Rampert's adept hunting skills to know Johnathan was bleeding out. I told Rampert if he still wanted fresh meat, he'd better hurry, because he was going to turn. Rampert bowed his head to me and gestured tipping his imaginary hat and was off.
There wasn't anyway I was going to travel today. My leg was swollen and even though it wasn't broken, I wanted to rest it at least for the remainder of the day. Kat's eye was puffing up and I wished I had an ice pack, but I did have some antiseptic wipes, so I used one to clean up her cut. She didn't even so much as wince. I used the rest of the wipe to clean her face of Johnathan's blood, cringing at the thought of what she had to do. To think of fighting off a man like that. The courage it must have taken.
And then I realized it was all my fault. I should have told her about that look he gave me the other day. She should have known about that, because then maybe she would have felt like we needed to handle Johnathan right away. I decided to tell her, and then she smacked me hard. Twice more, each time harder than the last. She demanded to read my journal and I let her read it. Everything. If she slapped me harder this time, I wouldn't know because my face was becoming numb.
She was so furious after yelling at me for breaking my promise of not holding anymore secrets, she didn't even cry. Her face just radiated red like embers from a campfire. She barked at me to get out of the room, to go sleep somewhere else. I was so defeated, so disappointed in myself that I had no energy to respond. Just before I walked out the door, she told me to take my tablet with me, as she threw it at my head but missed. It hit the wall and fell, leaving a diagonal crack across the screen. The tablet still works, but every time I see a sentence I'm typing cross the crack, I'm reminded of Kat's anger at me for letting her down. She didn't speak to me for the rest of the day.
I ended up taking the room Johnathan had next to us. I just laid back on the bed trying to gaze at the stars through the ceiling, tears rolling down my eyes and being soaked up by the pillow like a sponge. I'm allowing myself this moment of wallowing. I've been trying too hard to stay so strong in order to survive. To be honest, being around people weakened me. Having to look out for others, I started caring for them. Staying strong all the time is exhaustive. I'm actually wanting a drink right now, but I heard a distant scream off in the night somewhere. I want to say it sounded like Johnathan, and then I let the rage back in. I let the anger burn away the desire of ever wanting alcohol. I wasn't going to let myself get in that bad habit again.
I'm hoping Kat and I can talk tomorrow. I'm also hoping my leg will feel good enough to get back on the road again. As much as what just happened to us today, we still need to keep the goal of getting to Rhinelnder in front of us. We just lost a day today. I'm turning in early.
Until tomorrow.
Monday, October 27, 2014
October 27th, 2021
I have good news, and I have bad news. I'll begin with the good news. I'm going to be a father! Kat's been trying to find the right time to tell me, but she just ended up doing it this morning. She kissed me awake and when she thought I was alert enough, she whispered into my ear, "I'm pregnant." I got so excited, I nearly threw her off me onto the floor. We were so overjoyed, we ran into John's room and told him....
And that's the bad news. We forgot to take into consideration his depressed state. I believe our news only made it worse. He tried to smile through it, and you could see him struggling to keep his head straight as he nodded, and there was a slight timbre in his voice when he said congratulations. As much as he tried to hide it, we saw that it bothered him. The moment quickly became an awkward one and we backed out of his room and shut the door. I could have sworn I heard something go thump when we walked away.
The thought of being a father... To be honest, I'm more worried than I am excited. I was so happy when she first told me but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure it would be a good idea. It's an extremely dangerous world right now where our meals aren't even guaranteed let alone our safety. Heh... one rule of survival in a zombie apocalypse: don't get pregnant. I know I shouldn't be talking about this but honestly, a baby is something that can bring risk to you. With all the crying and screaming, it's a zombie magnet. It has needs that will constantly send you out to find food and better shelter, and it also hinders your mobility.
Kat's going to kill me if she ever reads this journal, because I'm going to keep another secret from her. As much as I want to a be a father, I wish I could go back in time when we first had sex and change it. I shouldn't have came in her, but neither of us thought about that. We were so caught up in the passion that it just happened. The thought of me impregnating her was on the back of my mind, and I kept it there because I had to focus on other matters such as keeping everyone else alive. I was hoping maybe there was a chance it would never happen, but I guess it did.
She's not 100 percent sure she's pregnant, though. Since we don't have access to a pregnancy test, all we have to go on is the fact that she's missed her period. She usually has it around the 19th and when she was a few days late, she brought it up to Temperance to get her thoughts. That's why the two of them shushed whenever I came around them. It's now the 27th, so she's more than a week late. With every day that she missed, she grew more certain that she was pregnant, so she finally decided to tell me today. There is, however a slight chance that she's just running far later than usual, and now that I've been thinking of the possibility of being a father, I hope that's not the case.
This means that's it become even more important to get to Rhinelander and hope that it's a sustainable community. If it is, especially a safe one, it would be the perfect place to start a family with Kat. Hell, I'm even hoping Johnathan manages to find a girl there. That's exactly what he needs to calm him down. Unfortunately, we got a late start today. I normally would have liked to get on the road before 9, but it was raining almost until two in the afternoon. It was still quite cold, and I realized we needed to keep a lookout for warmer clothes. Once it starts snowing, we're going to be in bad shape.
We ended up taking Main St. north through the heart of Bloomington. It was slow going though, as cars littered the road everywhere. Towing Kat behind us, we had to make sure we weren't swinging her into any abandoned and tipped over cars. We passed several parks, a coliseum that looked like it was set up as a triage and shelter, a cemetery, a theater and three different colleges until we hit I-55. We took it just east until we got to I-39 and continued on north.
After about 40 miles, we decided to stop at the town of Oglesby. It's more farm area and we were going to stop off earlier at a house we found, but Kat noticed something extremely sickening. She pointed at a tree that had about 30-40 things dangle from it. We rode over to the tree and inspected it, and to our horror, they were zombie heads, complete with spinal cords, hung with rope on branches. Their nervous systems intact meant they were still alive. They were also all leathers. Their eyes focused on us, roughly 40 pairs of them. Having that many eyes trained on us was intensely unnerving. What made it worse was each one of them had their mouths wide open as if trying to scream. They chomped and gnashed their teeth at us and the movement of their jaws caused their heads to start swaying back and forth, and their mouths only became more violent when they realized how much of a vain struggle trying to bite us became. These heads with vertebrae. These were trophies. Someone was hunting leathers. We then remembered we're wearing leather zombie skin, so we quickly pedaled up north.
We put an extra mile between us and that tree just to be on the safe side. We got off the interstate and came across a Best Western when we saw a camper trailer on the side of the road. It still had its lights on, so I had everyone take their suits off. We knocked on the door to see if anyone was home and got no response. I knocked one last time, and then tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I had John stay outside with Kat as I went in saying, "Hello?" One step into the trailer, I immediately turned around and had John get on his bike as I got on mine and pedaled as fast as we could from that trailer. John asked what it was that I saw. I said I saw headless zombies with pieces of them missing. I took a guess saying that it was the hunter's trailer and he was eating the zombies. Kat immediately got sick hearing that and had us stop so she could throw up. I rubbed her back and held her after she was done and I guess that display was enough to annoy John, who then snapped at me saying, "LET'S GO!" I don't know, maybe he was just freaking out over the fact that there's a man hunting zombies - the worst kind - and eating them.
We instead decided to stay at the Day's Inn down the road. We hauled our bikes in, along with Kat's wheelchair, and we took up residence in a room with John in a room next to us. I advised him to push something against the door just in case this zombie eater is on the prowl and I did the same. We managed to actually find a room that was in immaculate condition, except for the layers of dust everywhere. It actually felt good to be able to sleep in a bed that you knew no one else slept it before.
Kat and I just held each other, neither of us in the mood for anything else. Too much was our minds. We were thinking of the possible child we're having together, Johnathan's current state of mind and now a psychopath on the loose. To be honest, I didn't feel comfortable staying here, but we were far too tired to keep traveling. Also, my logical side suggested that whomever this killer is, he only kills zombies who make far interesting prey than a couple of lovers sleeping in a hotel room. That's what I'm hoping for anyway...
Until tomorrow.
And that's the bad news. We forgot to take into consideration his depressed state. I believe our news only made it worse. He tried to smile through it, and you could see him struggling to keep his head straight as he nodded, and there was a slight timbre in his voice when he said congratulations. As much as he tried to hide it, we saw that it bothered him. The moment quickly became an awkward one and we backed out of his room and shut the door. I could have sworn I heard something go thump when we walked away.
The thought of being a father... To be honest, I'm more worried than I am excited. I was so happy when she first told me but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure it would be a good idea. It's an extremely dangerous world right now where our meals aren't even guaranteed let alone our safety. Heh... one rule of survival in a zombie apocalypse: don't get pregnant. I know I shouldn't be talking about this but honestly, a baby is something that can bring risk to you. With all the crying and screaming, it's a zombie magnet. It has needs that will constantly send you out to find food and better shelter, and it also hinders your mobility.
Kat's going to kill me if she ever reads this journal, because I'm going to keep another secret from her. As much as I want to a be a father, I wish I could go back in time when we first had sex and change it. I shouldn't have came in her, but neither of us thought about that. We were so caught up in the passion that it just happened. The thought of me impregnating her was on the back of my mind, and I kept it there because I had to focus on other matters such as keeping everyone else alive. I was hoping maybe there was a chance it would never happen, but I guess it did.
She's not 100 percent sure she's pregnant, though. Since we don't have access to a pregnancy test, all we have to go on is the fact that she's missed her period. She usually has it around the 19th and when she was a few days late, she brought it up to Temperance to get her thoughts. That's why the two of them shushed whenever I came around them. It's now the 27th, so she's more than a week late. With every day that she missed, she grew more certain that she was pregnant, so she finally decided to tell me today. There is, however a slight chance that she's just running far later than usual, and now that I've been thinking of the possibility of being a father, I hope that's not the case.
This means that's it become even more important to get to Rhinelander and hope that it's a sustainable community. If it is, especially a safe one, it would be the perfect place to start a family with Kat. Hell, I'm even hoping Johnathan manages to find a girl there. That's exactly what he needs to calm him down. Unfortunately, we got a late start today. I normally would have liked to get on the road before 9, but it was raining almost until two in the afternoon. It was still quite cold, and I realized we needed to keep a lookout for warmer clothes. Once it starts snowing, we're going to be in bad shape.
We ended up taking Main St. north through the heart of Bloomington. It was slow going though, as cars littered the road everywhere. Towing Kat behind us, we had to make sure we weren't swinging her into any abandoned and tipped over cars. We passed several parks, a coliseum that looked like it was set up as a triage and shelter, a cemetery, a theater and three different colleges until we hit I-55. We took it just east until we got to I-39 and continued on north.
After about 40 miles, we decided to stop at the town of Oglesby. It's more farm area and we were going to stop off earlier at a house we found, but Kat noticed something extremely sickening. She pointed at a tree that had about 30-40 things dangle from it. We rode over to the tree and inspected it, and to our horror, they were zombie heads, complete with spinal cords, hung with rope on branches. Their nervous systems intact meant they were still alive. They were also all leathers. Their eyes focused on us, roughly 40 pairs of them. Having that many eyes trained on us was intensely unnerving. What made it worse was each one of them had their mouths wide open as if trying to scream. They chomped and gnashed their teeth at us and the movement of their jaws caused their heads to start swaying back and forth, and their mouths only became more violent when they realized how much of a vain struggle trying to bite us became. These heads with vertebrae. These were trophies. Someone was hunting leathers. We then remembered we're wearing leather zombie skin, so we quickly pedaled up north.
We put an extra mile between us and that tree just to be on the safe side. We got off the interstate and came across a Best Western when we saw a camper trailer on the side of the road. It still had its lights on, so I had everyone take their suits off. We knocked on the door to see if anyone was home and got no response. I knocked one last time, and then tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I had John stay outside with Kat as I went in saying, "Hello?" One step into the trailer, I immediately turned around and had John get on his bike as I got on mine and pedaled as fast as we could from that trailer. John asked what it was that I saw. I said I saw headless zombies with pieces of them missing. I took a guess saying that it was the hunter's trailer and he was eating the zombies. Kat immediately got sick hearing that and had us stop so she could throw up. I rubbed her back and held her after she was done and I guess that display was enough to annoy John, who then snapped at me saying, "LET'S GO!" I don't know, maybe he was just freaking out over the fact that there's a man hunting zombies - the worst kind - and eating them.
We instead decided to stay at the Day's Inn down the road. We hauled our bikes in, along with Kat's wheelchair, and we took up residence in a room with John in a room next to us. I advised him to push something against the door just in case this zombie eater is on the prowl and I did the same. We managed to actually find a room that was in immaculate condition, except for the layers of dust everywhere. It actually felt good to be able to sleep in a bed that you knew no one else slept it before.
Kat and I just held each other, neither of us in the mood for anything else. Too much was our minds. We were thinking of the possible child we're having together, Johnathan's current state of mind and now a psychopath on the loose. To be honest, I didn't feel comfortable staying here, but we were far too tired to keep traveling. Also, my logical side suggested that whomever this killer is, he only kills zombies who make far interesting prey than a couple of lovers sleeping in a hotel room. That's what I'm hoping for anyway...
Until tomorrow.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
October 26th, 2021
We woke up freezing this morning. The temperature took a major drop over the night. The clouds were grey and heavy, threatening to lay a blanket of snow down on us, but only a few flakes fell. Fortunately, we missed what had the making of the first real snowstorm of the season. Fortune favors us in another way as well. We have bikes!
After walking about 10 miles west on I-74, we came across what must have been 15 or 20 bikes scattered across the road. There must have been a pack of bikers touring down the Interstate when they ran into some zombies and made several of them of crash. With so many riders close together, it was one massive domino effect. Most of the bkes were ran over, but some were on the side of the road and perfectly usable. There were a couple of them that had airless hard rubber tires and we took those. We towed Kat behind us with an extension cord and she was having the time of her life! Amazing what a little good luck can do for the spirit. Even Johnathan seemed happy.
We've been managing about 15 miles per hour, so we covered a huge amount of distance today. 100 miles in fact. That puts us just south of Bloomington where we're now staying at Center for Hope Ministries. It's a one story modern church building, and it was spray painted with several different messages.
WHERE IS GOD?
REPENT OR YOU WILL BECOME ONE OF THEM!
NO SANCTUARY
SATAN HAS WON! 666
END OF DAYS ARE UPON US!
Those were just a few. Once inside, we found several draggers that we had to clear out. It really is too easy with these suits on. They see us but to them, we're just another group of zombies. Then the ax and machete come down on them and the other zombies don't seen seem to notice. There was a small group of leathers down the street that watched us, but they made no sign of acknowledging us as anything but zombies. It makes me wonder, though. Either we're getting more and more used to the smell of the zombie skins we've been wearing, or the stink is slowly going away. I thought back to Rat, and it looked like she was wearing hers for at least several weeks. I mentioned to the group that we shouldn't take our suits for granted and still keep our distance from any zombie encounters as best we can.
There was a really nice stained glass window of Jesus Christ praying, which seemed to be the only window that wasn't either smashed in or boarded up. There was a piano in the pulpit and the pews looked well-worn. This must have been a very busy house of worship, but look where worship has gotten us? I still haven't forgotten that I owe you an entry about how I feel in regards to God. Since I'm in a church now, I figure it might as well be the perfect opportunity. So, my thoughts on god.
I consider myself to be agnostic, leaning towards atheist. I was raised Christian, but the moment I turned 18, I discarded the church in exchange for a more liberating free-thinking stance. I adopted science as my source for answers, more interested in how the world works than why we were put on it. I always felt that a good modern society doesn't need religion to operate. Not being dicks to each other just seemed like common sense.
However, I could never discount the possibility of there being a God. You can believe in science all you want, but science doesn't really disprove a god's existence. If anything, it's only explaining how that god is working. Let's say, though, there is a God, and He's a Christian God. Well, God's an asshole right now. We were taught to believe that God loves us and God protects us from evil. I don't see that love and I don't see that protection here in this world today. Instead, I've only seen people relying on each other, not some deity that was described in a book written thousands of years ago by a group of men.
"God works in mysterious ways" is one of the largest cop outs in history. It's a Christian's go-to excuse when they've been confronted with a question they can't answer. If there is a God, then why He let this happen to His world truly is mysterious. He's supposed to be a loving father, but every loving father I've ever known has always protected their children. They played football with them and read with them and taught them how to take care of pets. They've cured their illnesses and taken them out of schools when bullying wasn't being addressed and yanked them out of the street before a car narrowly ran them over. Loving fathers don't let a population turn into the walking dead and let them eat the living.
As far as I'm concerned, if there's ever a God, I refuse to accept Him. If I'm at the Pearly Gates, I'll spit in St. Peter's face and turn back around on my way to Hell. This may sound blasphemous to you if you're the religious type and if it offends you, I'm sorry, but that's how I feel. If you still pray to God, if you love God, if you still believe that this.. this whole apocalypse is just part of His grand scheme of things? Well, more power to you. But that's enough for now. Even though I'm agnostic, I still get a weird feeling going on a rant about God in one of His houses.
There really wasn't much else to write about today. I'm so happy with our progress today, I think I'll let everyone sleep in tomorrow. We could all use the rest.
Until tomorrow.
After walking about 10 miles west on I-74, we came across what must have been 15 or 20 bikes scattered across the road. There must have been a pack of bikers touring down the Interstate when they ran into some zombies and made several of them of crash. With so many riders close together, it was one massive domino effect. Most of the bkes were ran over, but some were on the side of the road and perfectly usable. There were a couple of them that had airless hard rubber tires and we took those. We towed Kat behind us with an extension cord and she was having the time of her life! Amazing what a little good luck can do for the spirit. Even Johnathan seemed happy.
We've been managing about 15 miles per hour, so we covered a huge amount of distance today. 100 miles in fact. That puts us just south of Bloomington where we're now staying at Center for Hope Ministries. It's a one story modern church building, and it was spray painted with several different messages.
WHERE IS GOD?
REPENT OR YOU WILL BECOME ONE OF THEM!
NO SANCTUARY
SATAN HAS WON! 666
END OF DAYS ARE UPON US!
Those were just a few. Once inside, we found several draggers that we had to clear out. It really is too easy with these suits on. They see us but to them, we're just another group of zombies. Then the ax and machete come down on them and the other zombies don't seen seem to notice. There was a small group of leathers down the street that watched us, but they made no sign of acknowledging us as anything but zombies. It makes me wonder, though. Either we're getting more and more used to the smell of the zombie skins we've been wearing, or the stink is slowly going away. I thought back to Rat, and it looked like she was wearing hers for at least several weeks. I mentioned to the group that we shouldn't take our suits for granted and still keep our distance from any zombie encounters as best we can.
There was a really nice stained glass window of Jesus Christ praying, which seemed to be the only window that wasn't either smashed in or boarded up. There was a piano in the pulpit and the pews looked well-worn. This must have been a very busy house of worship, but look where worship has gotten us? I still haven't forgotten that I owe you an entry about how I feel in regards to God. Since I'm in a church now, I figure it might as well be the perfect opportunity. So, my thoughts on god.
I consider myself to be agnostic, leaning towards atheist. I was raised Christian, but the moment I turned 18, I discarded the church in exchange for a more liberating free-thinking stance. I adopted science as my source for answers, more interested in how the world works than why we were put on it. I always felt that a good modern society doesn't need religion to operate. Not being dicks to each other just seemed like common sense.
However, I could never discount the possibility of there being a God. You can believe in science all you want, but science doesn't really disprove a god's existence. If anything, it's only explaining how that god is working. Let's say, though, there is a God, and He's a Christian God. Well, God's an asshole right now. We were taught to believe that God loves us and God protects us from evil. I don't see that love and I don't see that protection here in this world today. Instead, I've only seen people relying on each other, not some deity that was described in a book written thousands of years ago by a group of men.
"God works in mysterious ways" is one of the largest cop outs in history. It's a Christian's go-to excuse when they've been confronted with a question they can't answer. If there is a God, then why He let this happen to His world truly is mysterious. He's supposed to be a loving father, but every loving father I've ever known has always protected their children. They played football with them and read with them and taught them how to take care of pets. They've cured their illnesses and taken them out of schools when bullying wasn't being addressed and yanked them out of the street before a car narrowly ran them over. Loving fathers don't let a population turn into the walking dead and let them eat the living.
As far as I'm concerned, if there's ever a God, I refuse to accept Him. If I'm at the Pearly Gates, I'll spit in St. Peter's face and turn back around on my way to Hell. This may sound blasphemous to you if you're the religious type and if it offends you, I'm sorry, but that's how I feel. If you still pray to God, if you love God, if you still believe that this.. this whole apocalypse is just part of His grand scheme of things? Well, more power to you. But that's enough for now. Even though I'm agnostic, I still get a weird feeling going on a rant about God in one of His houses.
There really wasn't much else to write about today. I'm so happy with our progress today, I think I'll let everyone sleep in tomorrow. We could all use the rest.
Until tomorrow.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
October 25th, 2021
We woke up to find Johnathan not in his bedroll. We assumed he must have gotten up early, so I went outside to look for him. I didn't see him anywhere outside the barn door, so I called out for him. I heard him answer from behind the barn and I went to him. He was standing next to a pair of graves. They read "Samuel S. Mason 1963-2020" and "Elizabeth F. Mason 1959-2020". Each tombstone, made out of what looked to be broken slabs of counter top marble. shared the same inscription. "Forever joined, no longer suffering. May Heaven be all the more blessed to receive them."
Johnathan broke down and began crying quietly. No bellowing. No snobs. Just audible sniffling. I asked if he knew these two, and he said he didn't. I had to give him a few minutes. After he composed himself, he said he needed to talk to me. We sat on the fallen log that looked to be placed next to the tombstones as a bench for visitation.
He apologized before he began, and I had a look of concern on my face. He said he hates us, Kat and me, being together. I was taken aback by it, eyes wide open staring at him. He hated feeling that way, guilty for being so jealous, but it was pure jealousy flowing through him. He was trying his best to not let it get to him, but last night when Kat and I were fooling around under the blanket mere feet from him, was too much. I apologized again, but he said it was like we were rubbing it in his face. I assured him we weren't, that we just lost control, but it didn't matter to him. He was sick of us having sex all the time. I just didn't know how to reply to that.
He started getting angrier by the moment, occasionally raising his voice to a shout. I held out my hands to him trying to get him to calm down, but it had little effort. Instead, I asked him to really explain where this was coming from. That's when he told me he was a virgin. He felt like a loser. Even though John did well, working from the bottom of Home Depot and climbing up the ladder to owning one, he never had luck with women. It was always something. He wasn't the right type. He wasn't a good kisser. He had no ambition (even though he made 75k a year, it wasn't enough for some women apparently). Sometimes he dated women who were already dating, or even married to, other men. He never found love and thanks to the zombie apocalypse, he never would. Kat and I fell right into each other's laps, and he hated that, just absolutely hated that.
I truly didn't know what to say. What are you supposed to say to someone like that? How are you supposed to act around someone like that? Part of me was angry with him and wanted to cuss him out for having the audacity to be pissed off at two people in love with each other, but this was a sensitive issue, and I didn't want to make the situation worse. We needed Johnathan. Not only was he important to us as a group, he was also our friend. I just put my hand on his shoulder expecting him to shake it off, but he didn't. I used it as an invitation to start talking.
The first thing I told him, as cliche as it sounds, is that there's someone for everyone and that living in an apocalypse doesn't rule out the possibility of finding love. Kat and I were proof of it. He blurted out "BULLSHIT," but I let it slide. I was upfront him, though, saying that this jealousy of his was going to be a problem because it would affect trust. Trust is the most important thing to have in this world, especially when the three of us are traveling 500 miles north. I made him a promise that we would try to keep PDA to a minimum around him. He apologized for feeling the way he did, but I actually thanked him for telling me. It took some courage to say that, and the fact that he talked to me about it revealed a level of honesty that I appreciated. That made him feel better, and he also asked me not tell Kat about all this. Of course I wouldn't.
Just then, Kat came around the corner having some trouble with her crutches as they dug into the soft dirt. She wanted to check on us and see if we were okay. She caught Johnathan puffy eyed and he turned away wiping his face with his sleeve. She asked him if he was alright and before he answered, I waved to the tombstones and said it just got to him. She let out an aww and hobbled over to him and hugged him. He looked at me over her shoulder and although he tried to conceal it right as it happened, his face had a look of murderous intent. I don't know if he saw me pick up on it or what, or maybe I just imagined it but whatever the case, I just got a very bad vibe from him.
Kat let go of John and turned to me and I quickly had to erase the concern off my face as she hugged me next and kissed me good morning. I had to make the kiss short as I watched John hurry back to the barn. She felt me pull away abruptly and asked if everything was okay. I lied and said it was, that I was just in a rush to get breakfast going so we could take off and make the most out of the morning sun.
With Jonathan close by to us all day, I didn't have time to talk to Kat while we were walking. Even though I told John I wasn't going to talk to Kat about what he told me, the look I saw on his face when she hugged him, although it didn't last for more than a fraction of a second, chilled me to the core. I'm trying not to dwell on it, because I told him that trust was everything. If I started to think he somehow wanted to harm either of us, that would weaken the trust. I was afraid that I might actually end up trusting him less than he already trusted us. It's so uneasy now.
We managed to push a full 30 miles hitting I-74 heading west. There was a Hampton Inn that we decided to make our stay at. I guess the one good thing about apocalypses is that you can stay in hotels for free. The downside to that is no housekeeping. The hotel's air was both dusty and smelled of mildew. It looked like the roof leaked in several places. A few rooms were too messy to stay in. One actually had a pile of corpses in it as if someone were killing zombies and used the room for storage.
Johnathan said he was going to take off and find a room of his own. I told him not to take one too far away, that we should be close to each other in case of an attack. He didn't bother answering back. He just took off down the hallway, passed several rooms, and then went into one and closed the door a bit harder than you normally would. Kat knew something was going on, and squinted at me when she asked if everything was okay. Hector, man, I could sure use some tips on poker faces. I tried to say it was, but she did that thing that women do when they suspect you of lying. She turned her head just slightly to her left, squinting even more. Fuck...
So I told her, but I held back his look of murderous intent. I really didn't want her starting to feel uneasy about John, and I started doubting myself for keeping that kind of information from her. She didn't seem to be too bothered by the jealousy. In fact, she said she understood perfectly. She wanted to go down to his room and talk to him, but I told her I didn't think it was wise. He needed to be left alone to get his thoughts together. If he wanted to talk about it, he would come to her. And well, I did tell him I promised I wouldn't tell Kat. She looked down and said, "Oh." I don't like betraying someone's confidence, but I did make a promise to Kat a while back saying no more secrets, and I'm already breaking that one as it is.
We had a small dinner of dried apricots (which I'm not a fan of) and granola bars. Kat said she missed real food. She wanted me to take her out to a real restaurant where the waiters held towels over their arms and read off wines you never heard of and gave you menus with names of entrees you couldn't pronounce. She wanted us to go out on a real date where afterword, we'd hold each other's arms and walk around the block talking about how good the dinner was and how great of a time we were having. She wanted to be that girl who would invite me up to her apartment for some coffee knowing full well coffee wasn't coffee. I just closed my eyes imagining the real world that escaped us so long ago.
Thank God she crashed the moment she laid in bed. To be honest, I wasn't feeling like cuddling, which would probably lead to sex. I needed to think clearly tonight. My mind's a mess right now. I'm trying to sort this whole Johnathan shit out. I'm really bothered with it to be honest. Now I have to act differently around Kat because of him, and I really think that's unfair! I'm trying not to be angry by it, but I just feel like the good thing Kat and I have has to suffer because of his bad luck. It's not my fault he always had relationship problems. But I will say this. The MOMENT he tries anything, either with me or Kat, I won't hesitate to kill him. For John's sake, I hope he keeps his emotions under control
Until tomorrow.
Johnathan broke down and began crying quietly. No bellowing. No snobs. Just audible sniffling. I asked if he knew these two, and he said he didn't. I had to give him a few minutes. After he composed himself, he said he needed to talk to me. We sat on the fallen log that looked to be placed next to the tombstones as a bench for visitation.
He apologized before he began, and I had a look of concern on my face. He said he hates us, Kat and me, being together. I was taken aback by it, eyes wide open staring at him. He hated feeling that way, guilty for being so jealous, but it was pure jealousy flowing through him. He was trying his best to not let it get to him, but last night when Kat and I were fooling around under the blanket mere feet from him, was too much. I apologized again, but he said it was like we were rubbing it in his face. I assured him we weren't, that we just lost control, but it didn't matter to him. He was sick of us having sex all the time. I just didn't know how to reply to that.
He started getting angrier by the moment, occasionally raising his voice to a shout. I held out my hands to him trying to get him to calm down, but it had little effort. Instead, I asked him to really explain where this was coming from. That's when he told me he was a virgin. He felt like a loser. Even though John did well, working from the bottom of Home Depot and climbing up the ladder to owning one, he never had luck with women. It was always something. He wasn't the right type. He wasn't a good kisser. He had no ambition (even though he made 75k a year, it wasn't enough for some women apparently). Sometimes he dated women who were already dating, or even married to, other men. He never found love and thanks to the zombie apocalypse, he never would. Kat and I fell right into each other's laps, and he hated that, just absolutely hated that.
I truly didn't know what to say. What are you supposed to say to someone like that? How are you supposed to act around someone like that? Part of me was angry with him and wanted to cuss him out for having the audacity to be pissed off at two people in love with each other, but this was a sensitive issue, and I didn't want to make the situation worse. We needed Johnathan. Not only was he important to us as a group, he was also our friend. I just put my hand on his shoulder expecting him to shake it off, but he didn't. I used it as an invitation to start talking.
The first thing I told him, as cliche as it sounds, is that there's someone for everyone and that living in an apocalypse doesn't rule out the possibility of finding love. Kat and I were proof of it. He blurted out "BULLSHIT," but I let it slide. I was upfront him, though, saying that this jealousy of his was going to be a problem because it would affect trust. Trust is the most important thing to have in this world, especially when the three of us are traveling 500 miles north. I made him a promise that we would try to keep PDA to a minimum around him. He apologized for feeling the way he did, but I actually thanked him for telling me. It took some courage to say that, and the fact that he talked to me about it revealed a level of honesty that I appreciated. That made him feel better, and he also asked me not tell Kat about all this. Of course I wouldn't.
Just then, Kat came around the corner having some trouble with her crutches as they dug into the soft dirt. She wanted to check on us and see if we were okay. She caught Johnathan puffy eyed and he turned away wiping his face with his sleeve. She asked him if he was alright and before he answered, I waved to the tombstones and said it just got to him. She let out an aww and hobbled over to him and hugged him. He looked at me over her shoulder and although he tried to conceal it right as it happened, his face had a look of murderous intent. I don't know if he saw me pick up on it or what, or maybe I just imagined it but whatever the case, I just got a very bad vibe from him.
Kat let go of John and turned to me and I quickly had to erase the concern off my face as she hugged me next and kissed me good morning. I had to make the kiss short as I watched John hurry back to the barn. She felt me pull away abruptly and asked if everything was okay. I lied and said it was, that I was just in a rush to get breakfast going so we could take off and make the most out of the morning sun.
With Jonathan close by to us all day, I didn't have time to talk to Kat while we were walking. Even though I told John I wasn't going to talk to Kat about what he told me, the look I saw on his face when she hugged him, although it didn't last for more than a fraction of a second, chilled me to the core. I'm trying not to dwell on it, because I told him that trust was everything. If I started to think he somehow wanted to harm either of us, that would weaken the trust. I was afraid that I might actually end up trusting him less than he already trusted us. It's so uneasy now.
We managed to push a full 30 miles hitting I-74 heading west. There was a Hampton Inn that we decided to make our stay at. I guess the one good thing about apocalypses is that you can stay in hotels for free. The downside to that is no housekeeping. The hotel's air was both dusty and smelled of mildew. It looked like the roof leaked in several places. A few rooms were too messy to stay in. One actually had a pile of corpses in it as if someone were killing zombies and used the room for storage.
Johnathan said he was going to take off and find a room of his own. I told him not to take one too far away, that we should be close to each other in case of an attack. He didn't bother answering back. He just took off down the hallway, passed several rooms, and then went into one and closed the door a bit harder than you normally would. Kat knew something was going on, and squinted at me when she asked if everything was okay. Hector, man, I could sure use some tips on poker faces. I tried to say it was, but she did that thing that women do when they suspect you of lying. She turned her head just slightly to her left, squinting even more. Fuck...
So I told her, but I held back his look of murderous intent. I really didn't want her starting to feel uneasy about John, and I started doubting myself for keeping that kind of information from her. She didn't seem to be too bothered by the jealousy. In fact, she said she understood perfectly. She wanted to go down to his room and talk to him, but I told her I didn't think it was wise. He needed to be left alone to get his thoughts together. If he wanted to talk about it, he would come to her. And well, I did tell him I promised I wouldn't tell Kat. She looked down and said, "Oh." I don't like betraying someone's confidence, but I did make a promise to Kat a while back saying no more secrets, and I'm already breaking that one as it is.
We had a small dinner of dried apricots (which I'm not a fan of) and granola bars. Kat said she missed real food. She wanted me to take her out to a real restaurant where the waiters held towels over their arms and read off wines you never heard of and gave you menus with names of entrees you couldn't pronounce. She wanted us to go out on a real date where afterword, we'd hold each other's arms and walk around the block talking about how good the dinner was and how great of a time we were having. She wanted to be that girl who would invite me up to her apartment for some coffee knowing full well coffee wasn't coffee. I just closed my eyes imagining the real world that escaped us so long ago.
Thank God she crashed the moment she laid in bed. To be honest, I wasn't feeling like cuddling, which would probably lead to sex. I needed to think clearly tonight. My mind's a mess right now. I'm trying to sort this whole Johnathan shit out. I'm really bothered with it to be honest. Now I have to act differently around Kat because of him, and I really think that's unfair! I'm trying not to be angry by it, but I just feel like the good thing Kat and I have has to suffer because of his bad luck. It's not my fault he always had relationship problems. But I will say this. The MOMENT he tries anything, either with me or Kat, I won't hesitate to kill him. For John's sake, I hope he keeps his emotions under control
Until tomorrow.
Friday, October 24, 2014
October 24th, 2021
It wasn't until I checked the map this morning that I realized how daunting our trip to Rhinelander would be. It was more than 500 hundred miles. Even a full push at three miles an hour from sunrise to sunset would only net us 33 or so miles a day, and that was provided we didn't encounter any problems. Zombies were easy to avoid now with the leather suits, but who knows what else? It's been my recent experience that humans are actually worse than zombies nowadays. Then, it was the trek back to Terre Haute and if we deemed Rhinelander to be safe, another 500 miles back.
I did the math, and I already knew the results were ugly. On foot at full pushes each day with sunlight, we're looking at 45 days of travel. This would put us past November and into December. There's no doubt snow would fall during those weeks, and that would really put a hamper on traveling. A decision had to be made. Either Wallace and Temperance come with us and we risk Hector's health, or they stay behind for the winter while we stay in Rhinelander, and that's even assuming Rhinelander's safe.
We talked with Wallace, Temperance and Hector, and after debating all the pros and cons, they reached their decision. They would stay behind. Kat, John and I would stay in Rhinelander. We'd try to brave the winter and when spring hit, we'd head back to Terre Haute and get them. However, if anything changed, say if we found transportation, we'd head back to them immediately and grab them.
So the six of us had one final breakfast together. It was a peach cobbler made with a jar of peaches we brought and the left over biscuits Temperance made. I'm not a fan of a peaches, or her biscuits, but honestly, this was a very important meal for us. I could have been eating a plateful of night crawlers with rotten eggs and still eaten it graciously.
Wallace left the table after breakfast to go upstairs and he came back down with something to give me. It was a box of ammunition for my handgun, but I told him to keep it. They would need it more. We most likely weren't going to encounter problems with the suits we were going to wear. I held up my mask and he wrinkled his nose at it. He said it was so disgusting, and he didn't know how we could do it. I told him we made it this far. Sometimes you have to do extremely unpleasant things, because there's nothing more unpleasant than being eaten alive. I also suggested to him if he killed leathers (I just don't like the sound of alphas), he should try doing the same thing. He said he'd rather die than wear their skin. I said survival has a great way of changing one's mind.
We said our last goodbyes and we headed out. Kat's wheelchair needed a bit of work, though, as the bullet that hit the wheel the other day bent the rim. Johnathan was all too happy to straighten it out and we were on way.
Our journey started by heading west on I-70 until we reached HWY 41. We took it north, which lead us straight through downtown Terre Haute. There was evidence of military occupation here as well. We saw everything from gas stations being stenciled with "DRY" to bullet holes in cars and shopfronts to crumbled walls from tank blasts and even collapses triages. Some cars were crunched, forever imprinted by the treads from the slow moving behemoths. Surely, if you had tanks, you'd want to stay in a city and try to defend it, right? I remembered Indianapolis, though, how huge the perimeter was. It wasn't about the number of tanks. It was the number of personal needed to man them. So, some cities simply had to be abandoned.
After about eight or nine miles, HWY 41 branched off into County Road 63, which we took. 63 was littered with cars and vehicles. We saw an overturned school bus, and we only hoped it wasn't full of kids. It also had scorch marks, which made us wince all the more. Five miles up, we noticed a leather off in the fields who was acting like a lion stalking its prey. We tried to see what it was studying and all we saw was a freshie. The leather then took off like a brown streak and tackled the unsuspecting zombie. He bit him and then took off and into the distance. The freshie got up, looked around as if wondering what just happened and then went about wandering aimlessly in the fields. I stroked my chin thinking, and then realized my beard was getting rather thick. I may just keep it. I'm sure it will come in handy for warmth during the cold weather.
Seven miles farther, we came across South Vermillion High School. It was roughly four o'clock and we were debating whether or not to check into the school and set up camp there, but we we still had a few more hours worth of daylight and I wanted to keep moving. Kat said she needed a break from the wheelchair to get up and walk around. so I let her stretch her legs. Jonathan sat on the road and pulled out a pad and began drawing in it. I took a break myself and sat next to him and asked what was drawing.
He was drawing a house. I asked him if he had any inspiration for the house, and he replied no. He was just drawing whatever came to his mind. He said writers sometimes do what's called free writing. They shut their brains off and then let their fingers do the typing. They just start typing words and then one word leads to the next and without thinking, the writers have a story. He was doing the same thing with architecture. It was his way of letting his mind relax. One line lead the next. One angle begat another angle. Ten minutes later, Kat returned from her stroll and Jonathan had a wonderful looking house drawn. It was a three story Victorian with a half circle porch protruding from the front. Two massive chimneys adorned each side of the house, and the slanted roof had three triangular rooms jutting from them. I said I was rather impressed by his talent to draw houses, and he thanked me. It was the kind of house he wanted to start building if he ever got his license. I said I wouldn't mind living in it. At least I would know it wouldn't fall over in a storm. We laughed a good deal about that.
We traveled six more miles until we got to HWY 36, and the sun was setting. No buildings were immediately visible, so we took a gamble and got off on 36 east. We only had to walk about 500 feet until we came across a barn. The doors were latched with a flimsy looking pad lock and chain, so I waved my hands cuing to Jonathan who then broke the lock with a swift swing from his fire ax. The noise was much louder than I expected, and if any zombies were around, they'd be sure to hear it and come to investigate. We wasted no time getting in the barn and we closed the door behind us. I turned on the Solar Flare so we could look around.
There was a hayloft in the back of the barn, so we went to it. We climbed the ladder and we immediately assaulted by cobweb after cobweb. Poor Kat was screaming uncontrollably having a severe fit of arachnophobia. I actually had to cover her mouth while I hugged her to keep her from screaming any further. I reminded her that there are worse things out there than spiders, and she'd be drawing them to us. She took a deep breath and started calming down, but I kept holding her tight motioning to John to clean up the cobwebs as best he could. I turned Kat around only when I thought he cleaned up the majority of webs. We fashioned mattresses out of the hay and placed our bed rolls on top of them.
We talked while ate jerky and nuts. The conversation followed a random path, changing from missing bananas to no political ads being a good result of the apocalypse to the hope of ever having children. Johnathan said he wanted four. He came from a big family having two sisters and three brothers himself. His ideal family was two boys and two girls. I said I'd love to have a son of my own, but the world needed to improve far more for that to happen. Kat didn't bother speaking when it was her turn. She just nodded in agreement to what I said.
Johnathan dozed off first. Kat and I had our bed rolls merged together and yes, I still managed to keep that comforter with me that I found a month back, which we had over us keeping us warm. I started to ache for Kat, actually. John was resting only a few feet from us, but I wanted to start rubbing her body so badly. She picked up on my heated breathing and took the initiative. She slid her hand down my shorts and I did the same with her panties. We stroked each other softly, kissing slowly in one locked kiss, breathing through each other's nostrils. We tried to remain as still as we could, but my fingers finally triggered something within her and she wriggled more than she could help, my mouth trying to muffle her moaning. That excited me to the point of moaning myself and I released into her delicate hand.
Our wonderful intimate moment was ruined with, "GET A ROOM, YOU TWO! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" John rolled over and buried his head in hay. We nearly jumped out of the covers, startled by John's objection, and then giggled. We apologized to John and blushed so hard we started sweating. As our heart rates slowed down, she looked into my eyes, sparkling from the dim light of the Solar Flare. Her mouth was partly open, as if she was going to tell me something. I asked her, "What is it?" She looked off to the side for a bit and then back at me. "I love you," she answered. I hugged her close and whispered it back.
"ROOM! NOW!"
Dammit, Johnathan. I'm going to punch you first thing in the morning.
Until tomorrow.
I did the math, and I already knew the results were ugly. On foot at full pushes each day with sunlight, we're looking at 45 days of travel. This would put us past November and into December. There's no doubt snow would fall during those weeks, and that would really put a hamper on traveling. A decision had to be made. Either Wallace and Temperance come with us and we risk Hector's health, or they stay behind for the winter while we stay in Rhinelander, and that's even assuming Rhinelander's safe.
We talked with Wallace, Temperance and Hector, and after debating all the pros and cons, they reached their decision. They would stay behind. Kat, John and I would stay in Rhinelander. We'd try to brave the winter and when spring hit, we'd head back to Terre Haute and get them. However, if anything changed, say if we found transportation, we'd head back to them immediately and grab them.
So the six of us had one final breakfast together. It was a peach cobbler made with a jar of peaches we brought and the left over biscuits Temperance made. I'm not a fan of a peaches, or her biscuits, but honestly, this was a very important meal for us. I could have been eating a plateful of night crawlers with rotten eggs and still eaten it graciously.
Wallace left the table after breakfast to go upstairs and he came back down with something to give me. It was a box of ammunition for my handgun, but I told him to keep it. They would need it more. We most likely weren't going to encounter problems with the suits we were going to wear. I held up my mask and he wrinkled his nose at it. He said it was so disgusting, and he didn't know how we could do it. I told him we made it this far. Sometimes you have to do extremely unpleasant things, because there's nothing more unpleasant than being eaten alive. I also suggested to him if he killed leathers (I just don't like the sound of alphas), he should try doing the same thing. He said he'd rather die than wear their skin. I said survival has a great way of changing one's mind.
We said our last goodbyes and we headed out. Kat's wheelchair needed a bit of work, though, as the bullet that hit the wheel the other day bent the rim. Johnathan was all too happy to straighten it out and we were on way.
Our journey started by heading west on I-70 until we reached HWY 41. We took it north, which lead us straight through downtown Terre Haute. There was evidence of military occupation here as well. We saw everything from gas stations being stenciled with "DRY" to bullet holes in cars and shopfronts to crumbled walls from tank blasts and even collapses triages. Some cars were crunched, forever imprinted by the treads from the slow moving behemoths. Surely, if you had tanks, you'd want to stay in a city and try to defend it, right? I remembered Indianapolis, though, how huge the perimeter was. It wasn't about the number of tanks. It was the number of personal needed to man them. So, some cities simply had to be abandoned.
After about eight or nine miles, HWY 41 branched off into County Road 63, which we took. 63 was littered with cars and vehicles. We saw an overturned school bus, and we only hoped it wasn't full of kids. It also had scorch marks, which made us wince all the more. Five miles up, we noticed a leather off in the fields who was acting like a lion stalking its prey. We tried to see what it was studying and all we saw was a freshie. The leather then took off like a brown streak and tackled the unsuspecting zombie. He bit him and then took off and into the distance. The freshie got up, looked around as if wondering what just happened and then went about wandering aimlessly in the fields. I stroked my chin thinking, and then realized my beard was getting rather thick. I may just keep it. I'm sure it will come in handy for warmth during the cold weather.
Seven miles farther, we came across South Vermillion High School. It was roughly four o'clock and we were debating whether or not to check into the school and set up camp there, but we we still had a few more hours worth of daylight and I wanted to keep moving. Kat said she needed a break from the wheelchair to get up and walk around. so I let her stretch her legs. Jonathan sat on the road and pulled out a pad and began drawing in it. I took a break myself and sat next to him and asked what was drawing.
He was drawing a house. I asked him if he had any inspiration for the house, and he replied no. He was just drawing whatever came to his mind. He said writers sometimes do what's called free writing. They shut their brains off and then let their fingers do the typing. They just start typing words and then one word leads to the next and without thinking, the writers have a story. He was doing the same thing with architecture. It was his way of letting his mind relax. One line lead the next. One angle begat another angle. Ten minutes later, Kat returned from her stroll and Jonathan had a wonderful looking house drawn. It was a three story Victorian with a half circle porch protruding from the front. Two massive chimneys adorned each side of the house, and the slanted roof had three triangular rooms jutting from them. I said I was rather impressed by his talent to draw houses, and he thanked me. It was the kind of house he wanted to start building if he ever got his license. I said I wouldn't mind living in it. At least I would know it wouldn't fall over in a storm. We laughed a good deal about that.
We traveled six more miles until we got to HWY 36, and the sun was setting. No buildings were immediately visible, so we took a gamble and got off on 36 east. We only had to walk about 500 feet until we came across a barn. The doors were latched with a flimsy looking pad lock and chain, so I waved my hands cuing to Jonathan who then broke the lock with a swift swing from his fire ax. The noise was much louder than I expected, and if any zombies were around, they'd be sure to hear it and come to investigate. We wasted no time getting in the barn and we closed the door behind us. I turned on the Solar Flare so we could look around.
There was a hayloft in the back of the barn, so we went to it. We climbed the ladder and we immediately assaulted by cobweb after cobweb. Poor Kat was screaming uncontrollably having a severe fit of arachnophobia. I actually had to cover her mouth while I hugged her to keep her from screaming any further. I reminded her that there are worse things out there than spiders, and she'd be drawing them to us. She took a deep breath and started calming down, but I kept holding her tight motioning to John to clean up the cobwebs as best he could. I turned Kat around only when I thought he cleaned up the majority of webs. We fashioned mattresses out of the hay and placed our bed rolls on top of them.
We talked while ate jerky and nuts. The conversation followed a random path, changing from missing bananas to no political ads being a good result of the apocalypse to the hope of ever having children. Johnathan said he wanted four. He came from a big family having two sisters and three brothers himself. His ideal family was two boys and two girls. I said I'd love to have a son of my own, but the world needed to improve far more for that to happen. Kat didn't bother speaking when it was her turn. She just nodded in agreement to what I said.
Johnathan dozed off first. Kat and I had our bed rolls merged together and yes, I still managed to keep that comforter with me that I found a month back, which we had over us keeping us warm. I started to ache for Kat, actually. John was resting only a few feet from us, but I wanted to start rubbing her body so badly. She picked up on my heated breathing and took the initiative. She slid her hand down my shorts and I did the same with her panties. We stroked each other softly, kissing slowly in one locked kiss, breathing through each other's nostrils. We tried to remain as still as we could, but my fingers finally triggered something within her and she wriggled more than she could help, my mouth trying to muffle her moaning. That excited me to the point of moaning myself and I released into her delicate hand.
Our wonderful intimate moment was ruined with, "GET A ROOM, YOU TWO! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" John rolled over and buried his head in hay. We nearly jumped out of the covers, startled by John's objection, and then giggled. We apologized to John and blushed so hard we started sweating. As our heart rates slowed down, she looked into my eyes, sparkling from the dim light of the Solar Flare. Her mouth was partly open, as if she was going to tell me something. I asked her, "What is it?" She looked off to the side for a bit and then back at me. "I love you," she answered. I hugged her close and whispered it back.
"ROOM! NOW!"
Dammit, Johnathan. I'm going to punch you first thing in the morning.
Until tomorrow.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
October 23rd, 2021
I've always believed in yin and yang. When there's a positive force, there's a negative force usually on the other side. I present to you the case of Hector and me. I've struggled for a restful night's sleep for days, and Hector's always been able to sleep like a log. (just an FYI, light sleepers tend to live longer). I finally had a perfect night's sleep from the time I zonked out to the time I woke up nearly nine hours later. I hate to say this, but it was at the cost of Hector's discomfort.
The pain kept him up, even through the drugs. His shoulder, missing the arm, was throbbing, and he was in need of something much stronger than Temperance had to offer. Temperance got up several times during the night to check on him, and had to change his bandages. He told me he had crazy dreams as well. One was about his arm crawling around the floor and climbing up into peoples' beds and choking them in their sleep. Sounds like one of the nightmares I would have had.
Jonathan was going stir crazy. He needed something to do, and he realized it was the fact that he hadn't fixed anything in some time. He loved making and fixing things. It didn't matter what it was; if it belonged in a house, he could fix it. He even once bet a friend a thousand dollars that he could build a small house, complete with water and electric, faster than his friend could. The bet was on, and John lost the thousand dollars, but the joke was on his friend. Jonathan's house remained upright. His friend's housed collapsed in a thunder storm. John broke down and asked Wallace if there was anything that needed repairing. He nearly giggled when Wallace told him about a couple of cabinet doors that didn't quite close right, and a table that was uneven. Off he went to occupy himself.
Kat appeared to get along with Temperance alright. The two talked for some time. Kat learned that Temperance was a restaurant manager in Baton Rouge. She was working swing shift when a customer began throwing up after eating some hors d'oeuvres. She thought he must have had an allergic reaction or something, She called paramedics, but the customer's condition rapidly declined. He couldn't breathe and passed away before the medics arrived. When the coroner came to examine the body who was covered under a silk tablecloth, the body sat upward and bit the coroner on the carotid artery tearing it out. That was Temperance's first exposure to zombies, no longer a hoax like she and everyone in Baton Rouge believed. Also, Kat sounded like she was having a serious discussion with Temperance, but the two of them hushed up when I came within earshot of them. I wonder what they were talking about...
Wallace was a firearm dealer, a better salesman than a sharpshooter, he admitted. When his wife called him at work about the attack, he rushed over to take her home. They turned on the TV and watched the local news for hours. Very slowly, more and more reports of zombie attacks were happening, not just in Baton Rouge, but in all places in Louisiana. They drove back to his shop and began to load up on guns and ammo. Being an owner of a gun store was a double-edged sword, though. He had enough weapons and ammo to take down thousands of zombies, but everyone wanted his weapons at the same time. He ended up in his store at the exact same time the town began to be looted, and his shop was the primary target. He killed far more humans than he ever did zombies. They decided to abandon the shop after too many people rushed it. For many months after that, he never bothered to even pick up a gun. He said even if Temperance and himself ever became cornered by zombies, it would just be their time. Six months ago, Temperance revealed to him that she was pregnant, and that changed everything.
Wallace spoke of a town in Wisconsin called Rhinelander that supposedly was a pilot town for the Solar Powered Roadways project. The mayor of Rhinelander won his state's Powerball and instead of spending the money on himself, he invested in what could have been the nation's greatest self-efficient energy source. I've heard of these before. Heavy duty solar panels are connected together to form a roadway and apparently, you can tap into the roadway to power your grid. He heard rumors that there's a small community up there, living entirely off the energy from that roadway. When Kat and I heard about that, we both looked at each other and grinned. California would have to wait. We HAD to check out Rhinelander!
We told Wallace we wanted to head up north and see these solar roadways ourselves. We thought it was so important, we wanted to get moving first thing in the morning. He asked, "Well, what about Hector?" That's when I asked him if the two could please look after him. Hector would need at least several days to heal up and we could be halfway there by then, provided we couldn't find any faster methods of travel other than walking. Hector didn't seem to mind, although I wasn't quite sure if he had on a poker face. Wallace and Temperance agreed, and actually said they'd owe us a huge debt of gratitude if we'd check on Rhinelander for them.
So it's settled. Tomorrow, John, Kat and I will be traveling north towards Rhinelander, WI. If this town turns out to be accommodating (I hope it's not under military lock down like Indianapolis), then it would be the perfect place to settle down. The mountains still sound a bit safer, but if this town has electricity, then it means it would most like have water as well. It could even have security, like electrified fences or something! It's a huge risk deviating from our course, but it could really pay off!
Until tomorrow.
The pain kept him up, even through the drugs. His shoulder, missing the arm, was throbbing, and he was in need of something much stronger than Temperance had to offer. Temperance got up several times during the night to check on him, and had to change his bandages. He told me he had crazy dreams as well. One was about his arm crawling around the floor and climbing up into peoples' beds and choking them in their sleep. Sounds like one of the nightmares I would have had.
Jonathan was going stir crazy. He needed something to do, and he realized it was the fact that he hadn't fixed anything in some time. He loved making and fixing things. It didn't matter what it was; if it belonged in a house, he could fix it. He even once bet a friend a thousand dollars that he could build a small house, complete with water and electric, faster than his friend could. The bet was on, and John lost the thousand dollars, but the joke was on his friend. Jonathan's house remained upright. His friend's housed collapsed in a thunder storm. John broke down and asked Wallace if there was anything that needed repairing. He nearly giggled when Wallace told him about a couple of cabinet doors that didn't quite close right, and a table that was uneven. Off he went to occupy himself.
Kat appeared to get along with Temperance alright. The two talked for some time. Kat learned that Temperance was a restaurant manager in Baton Rouge. She was working swing shift when a customer began throwing up after eating some hors d'oeuvres. She thought he must have had an allergic reaction or something, She called paramedics, but the customer's condition rapidly declined. He couldn't breathe and passed away before the medics arrived. When the coroner came to examine the body who was covered under a silk tablecloth, the body sat upward and bit the coroner on the carotid artery tearing it out. That was Temperance's first exposure to zombies, no longer a hoax like she and everyone in Baton Rouge believed. Also, Kat sounded like she was having a serious discussion with Temperance, but the two of them hushed up when I came within earshot of them. I wonder what they were talking about...
Wallace was a firearm dealer, a better salesman than a sharpshooter, he admitted. When his wife called him at work about the attack, he rushed over to take her home. They turned on the TV and watched the local news for hours. Very slowly, more and more reports of zombie attacks were happening, not just in Baton Rouge, but in all places in Louisiana. They drove back to his shop and began to load up on guns and ammo. Being an owner of a gun store was a double-edged sword, though. He had enough weapons and ammo to take down thousands of zombies, but everyone wanted his weapons at the same time. He ended up in his store at the exact same time the town began to be looted, and his shop was the primary target. He killed far more humans than he ever did zombies. They decided to abandon the shop after too many people rushed it. For many months after that, he never bothered to even pick up a gun. He said even if Temperance and himself ever became cornered by zombies, it would just be their time. Six months ago, Temperance revealed to him that she was pregnant, and that changed everything.
Wallace spoke of a town in Wisconsin called Rhinelander that supposedly was a pilot town for the Solar Powered Roadways project. The mayor of Rhinelander won his state's Powerball and instead of spending the money on himself, he invested in what could have been the nation's greatest self-efficient energy source. I've heard of these before. Heavy duty solar panels are connected together to form a roadway and apparently, you can tap into the roadway to power your grid. He heard rumors that there's a small community up there, living entirely off the energy from that roadway. When Kat and I heard about that, we both looked at each other and grinned. California would have to wait. We HAD to check out Rhinelander!
We told Wallace we wanted to head up north and see these solar roadways ourselves. We thought it was so important, we wanted to get moving first thing in the morning. He asked, "Well, what about Hector?" That's when I asked him if the two could please look after him. Hector would need at least several days to heal up and we could be halfway there by then, provided we couldn't find any faster methods of travel other than walking. Hector didn't seem to mind, although I wasn't quite sure if he had on a poker face. Wallace and Temperance agreed, and actually said they'd owe us a huge debt of gratitude if we'd check on Rhinelander for them.
So it's settled. Tomorrow, John, Kat and I will be traveling north towards Rhinelander, WI. If this town turns out to be accommodating (I hope it's not under military lock down like Indianapolis), then it would be the perfect place to settle down. The mountains still sound a bit safer, but if this town has electricity, then it means it would most like have water as well. It could even have security, like electrified fences or something! It's a huge risk deviating from our course, but it could really pay off!
Until tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
October 22nd, 2021
After a breakfast of dried fruit, granola bars and salted nuts, we restocked our packs and got ready to press on down I-70. We cloaked ourselves in the smelly zombie suits again, not looking forward to have fresh stink on us, but the trade off of not drawing passing zombies' attention was more than worth it. Jonathan got used to the smell by now, but still tried to keep breathing through his mouth.
The suits worked pretty well. Unfortunately, they worked so well, we looked like zombies to other humans. We walked about 10 miles until we saw a house in the distance. Just as we made it out, I felt the splash of something wet against my face. Then I heard the gunshot. I looked over, and Hector was on the ground, shot in the shoulder! The bullet's shockwave tore open a huge amount of tissue, more damage then the bullet did itself. Hector's arm was barely hanging on.
The rest of us ducked, and Kat fell over and out of her wheelchair. A kick of a gravel against my face followed by another gunshot seemed like a mistake by the shooter, something I didn't think was going to happen again, but I didn't want to wait to find out. I went against my instinct to stay down, took off my zombie leather mask and waved my hands around towards the house. I screamed as loud as I could, "WE'RE HUMAN!"
I felt the compressed air against my ear, blowing out my ear drum as the third gunshot's soundwave tried desperately to catch up to the bullet that whizzed by me. I immediately hit the ground and grabbed Dustin's old hunting rifle. I only ever hunted once, not caring for it, but it didn't matter now. My heart was pumping too fast and loud to acknowledge that my left ear was ruptured and in serious pain. The only thing my mind was processing now was to shoot this guy at the house.
I laid in the prone position. I must have looked pretty stupid trying to mimic a sniper, but I didn't care if I wasn't doing it to military standards. I heard a clang off Kat's wheelchair immediately followed by the report and now this asshole was firing on Kat! I looked through the scope and tried to see if I could make anyone out. I couldn't. He must have had a far stronger scope, which meant he had distance on his side. But if he could see us that easily, why the fuck was he firing on us? Couldn't he see we were pushing someone in a god damned wheelchair? Didn't he see me take the mask off and wave my arms about? I doubt he heard me yell. Since things happen here right before the sound of the shot reaches us, I've have to say he's at least 3000 feet away. I'm willing to bet he's just some punk kid who played too many A Call to Zombies games, knows we're human, but just wants to shoot real live targets for once. I had to make a choice. He was a lethal threat and I needed to dispose of it. First, I had to get closer.
Five, six and seven shots later, Jonathan managed to pull Hector off the left side of the highway while I helped Kat up and ran off to the right. Thank God his aim wasn't getting any better. The ringing was beginning in my ear and I was realizing I was going deaf in that ear. I waved at Jonathan to get Hector out into the bushes while I took Kat into the trees. I set her down and took off down the trees towards the house. After I ran for what felt like a thousand feet, I got out of the forest just enough until I could see the house, which rested atop a very small hill. I was answered by an explosion of splinters flying off the tree I was next to, pelting and piercing the right side of my face. I went down not as a result of being shot at, but because it really fucking hurt!
I brought up the rifle again, peering through the scope, and there he was. A man in an orange jacket sitting on the porch, his gun resting on the railing. We fired at the same time, both missing, his shot going over me and mine splintering the slat just to the right of him. He fell off his chair in surprise and ran into the house. I didn't see if he took the rifle in with him, but I didn't see it on the railing, so I assumed he did. I got up and immediately ran towards the house zigging and zagging to make a harder target. I didn't hear any future attempts on my life, so either he didn't have the gun with him, couldn't get a shot, or didn't have any ammo. Any of the three possibilities made me happy.
The house was a brown L-shaped structure with a partial second story. As I finally approached the property, I was expecting to get shot from the window of the second floor. I yelled up at whoever was there to come out now, or I was going to come in and I would shoot them myself. I gave another warning and after no response, I proceeded to the patio and kicked the door in. The hunting rifle was rather cumbersome in close quarters, so I slung it. I was fueled by adrenaline and I felt that any threat I saw in the house, I would be able to pounce on them before they could get another shot off.
BANG! That didn't come from a gun. It came from a frying pan hitting my head. I fell down holding my yet again injured skull (wasn't I supposed to get a helmet?) and it was a woman close to Kat's age and about seven or so months pregnant. She wasn't the one who was shooting at me. He came down the stairs, his rifle trained on me. He had a look on his face that if I so much as sneezed, he would let his gun say "Gesundheit." The fact that he didn't shoot me yet means his desire to kill me somehow dissipated, but he was still certainly threatening.
I held my hands up in surrender, and the pregnant woman bent down and disarmed the rifle off my back. I said again, "We're human! Didn't you see me waving my arms around? Couldn't you make out we were pushing someone in a wheelchair?"
His name was Wallace. He said he saw zombies changing, acting differently. He thought us walking down the street pushing someone in a wheelchair was some kind of trick. His wife's name was Temperance, actually six months pregnant with triplets. I let him know the urgency at hand, that our friend was bleeding to death back on the highway. He made a quick apology and followed me back to where they were.
Hector ended up losing his arm. The damaged done was just too severe to patch up. Temperance had some medical training, but surgery was too far out of her league. Hector's passed out from shock. I had to repress my rage towards Wallace over shooting Hector. He nearly killed me, nearly killed Kat. A part of me wanted him dead. And... a part of me wanted to bite him. Knowing the kind of deadly power I now possessed, it wanted to put it to good... I guess ... evil use.
I just fought it away. He was scared, and he had reason to be. We were wearing leather zombie skin, after all. Even though it seemed quite peculiar for zombies to be pushing someone in a wheelchair, I wasn't going to fault him for thinking they were developing a new tactic. I know the leathers - alphas - are getting smarter. But really? Pushing someone in a wheelchair? What really bothered me about Wallace was him still firing on me after I took the mask off. Again, he thought it was alphas changing into something else, able to shed their skin and look completely human. I guess it did kind of make sense.
And there's Temperance, not only pregnant but pregnant with triplets. These would be their first children. Of course a man is going to be overprotective of that. This also wasn't their house. They were traveling north from Louisiana trying to get to Wisconsin when Temperance started showing signs of stress from the traveling. When they reached the house, they decided to settle.
Wallace began feeling awful about Hector and allowed us to stay at his place until Hector begins feeling good enough to travel. He made it known though, that the house is meant for just the two of them. I said we understood and didn't want to impose any longer than needed. Temperance was even kind enough to make biscuits and gravy for dinner. It was rough having biscuits made without butter or eggs but we ate them as graciously as we could.
I always try to be a man who looks on the bright side. Glass half full. As much as I'm still angry at Wallace, it could have been worse. The bullet could have hit Hector's center of mass and at any spot on his torso, a rifle round with that much velocity could have pulped a vital organ and he would not have made it. Even if we were able to bring him to the house, Temperance would not be able to heal a wound that grave.
Hector's resting comfortably now in the den. He stirred a bit while I was typing, and I went over to him to ask him how he's feeling, and he says like he just had an arm cut off. He tells me he can still feel it. He can feel him moving his elbow and rotating his wrist and wiggling his fingers. Then, he dozed back off to sleep. I've heard of phantom feeling before, and even speaking with someone who's experiencing it, I still have a hard time believing it.
Jonathan was given the TV room to sleep in, and he's made his bed on the upholstered couch. They gave Kat and me the guest room. Temperance looked at Kat's leg and wasn't happy about her being out of the cast so soon. Even light travel wasn't good for a broken leg and ankle that was only a few weeks healed. She had no plaster to make a cast, but she did have a roll of bandages and sticks and did her best to make a cast strong enough to keep the leg and ankle from moving too much. She actually warned Kat that there's a chance her leg will heal crooked, if ever slightly so. I pumped Kat's hand for reassurance.
Yeah, it could have been worse. A LOT worse. Wallace had me dead to rights in his house, and he could have shot me dead. He could have gone out and finished Hector off, then Johnathan, and then Kat. But here we are, making the best of it. Tomorrow will certainly be awkward, but hey, it's a tomorrow that we almost didn't have.
Until tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
October 21st, 2021
We did a hard push today, covering almost 30 miles. John, Hector and I took turns pushing Kat in the wheelchair. I even ran while I pushed her and told her to hold her arms out like an airplane to try to lift her spirits, but it didn't work very much. I could see she was trying to smile, but then she'd go back to being reserved.
The zombie leather suits actually did work, although we didn't come across any leathers. We spotted a few groups of draggers and a couple of freshies and they looked at us, but disregarded us. The stench, though, was overwhelming, and if it wasn't enough to make one of us throw up, Johnathan losing his canned cherries at least made Hector throw up. I nearly lost it myself and Kat, well, Kat was too tired to care. I could see she just wanted to rest.
We ended up reaching a Pilot Travel Center off I-70 and State Road 76. This would be just on the edge of Terre-Haute. The sun was just setting, and I wanted us in the building before it got completely dark. There were a couple of semi trucks parked outside with several cars. The building's windows were boarded up including the front doors. Hector, John and I took turns kicking the board, shoulder ramming it and eventually just hacking away at it with Hector's ax until we finally got a hole large enough to put an arm through. I felt around and felt the iron bar that fastened the board securely against the door and jiggled it. It wouldn't move and then I realized it was it was threaded through the door handles, so I slid it down until it fell and clanged on the floor. We then continued to kick the door until the nails gave way and we were in.
Four zombies were inside, but they posed absolutely no threat. They were in an advanced state of decay, at least a couple of months by the looks of it. Three had varying degrees of flesh missing fro legs and arms, and one had hardly any face left. They laid on the ground, unable to move, their muscles withered as if they were living mummies. They saw us and started moaning out of extreme hunger, but with their throats all but gone, those moans amounted to nothing more than dry wheezing.
We removed them from the building, not yet dispatching them. They posed no harm, so there was no sense in destroying their skulls and mucking up the place we were going to spend the night in. After they were all outside, Hector took his ax to each one of their skulls while I went in to be with Kat. I asked how she was doing. She said she was okay, just mentally and physically drained. She wanted to walk around a bit, so I helped her up and acted as a crutch while we roamed the travel center.
I had Johnathan explore the other side while Hector finished up outside. I expected with four people holed up in here that there wouldn't be any food left, but there was a lot more than I thought. Packages of crackers and cheese, beef jerky, dried fruit, canned soups, salted nuts, granola bars. Nothing that could really be considered "food" food, but things that provided more nutrition than what you'd find in typical vending machines.
My thoughts returned to the four people who stayed here. I couldn't imagine them all getting sick and turning at the same time. One of them had to have turned and then attacked the others. Who knows? They might have gotten sick at the same time and became too weak to fight back or flee when the first turned. Then, after they all became zombies, they were trapped inside the building, unable to get out and track down live food. They wasted away in here, yet their zombie brains kept them "alive". What a horrible existence...
We either got used to the smell or we were just too tired to notice, but Hector remembered we were still wearing our zombie suits, so we took them off. I checked the showers in the back, but of course there wouldn't be running water. The showers were also completely filthy with mildew caked on the tiles so thick, it might as well have been paint. I did find a package of soap in the supply closet, so I grabbed several bottles of water and was going to have to a makeshift shower. I wanted to have this stink off me at least for the night.
I figured what the hell and asked Kat if she wanted to join me. She said she could use one as well, so we picked the cleanest looking shower we could find, put down a layer of newspaper so we weren't standing in filth and then took each other's clothes off. She favored her good leg, but the few instances she had to stand on her bad leg, she didn't seem to wince. I began to pour the first bottle of water on her and then lathered her up. I washed her body with my hands while she poured a bottle over me and began doing the same. This intimate moment was something she needed to break free from her depression. It was something I needed to break from my worrying to death about her. If she wasn't receptive to something like this, I'd be even more concerned about her. I was contemplating spending extra time washing her pelvic area, but the thought of making love in a mildew laden shower just didn't seem all that sexy. Several bottles later, we were rinsed and clean, but the smell was still there. At least having the scent of soap on us helped to cut it.
We brought out all the towels tucked away in the supply closet. After shaking all the dust from them, we started piling them on top of each other to act as bedding so we wouldn't have to sleep on the hard floor. I told Jonathan and Hector there was enough towels to do the same if they wanted. There was also plenty of bottles of water if they wanted to wash up as well. Johnathan sprinted up and grabbed water so fast, it was like a cartoon where he left a Jonathan-shaped cloud in his wake.
After they cleaned themselves off, they set up next to us and we just talked about random stuff until we got tired enough to fall asleep. Of course, that didn't take very long. We were all beat from all the walking. In fact, I'm beat as well. Kat's already asleep next to me, so I think I'm going to join her.
Until tomomrrow.
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