Saturday, June 4, 2011

In Case Anyone Ever Sees This...

I guess before I launch into this blog, I should summarize the events that led me to it. Describe the end of the world in 500 words or less. No problem. It started in 2013. Everyone thought it would be 2012, but they were off by a year. Strangely enough, it may have been on December 21st, the day was that the Mayan calendar ended a year earlier—at least that's when the the first case or two showed up. I remember seeing something about it on the news around Christmas time. They didn’t call them zombie cases then—it was just a case of some guy in a Santa suit freaking out and biting somebody. By the time the first of the year came, we all knew what we were up against.

Everybody had seen the movies. Even the CDC had something on their website about "Surviving the Zombie Holocaust." For awhile it looked like we might weather the storm, as a society. The problem was that the movies weren’t exactly right. A blow to the head, or even a shot to the head might stun a zombie, even knock it unconscious (can a zombie be unconscious?), but then they get up again. The brain tissue reconnects or the nerves reroute or something. The only way to kill one is to decapitate it or render "Catastrophic damage" to the brain. At least that’s what Anderson Cooper said before they ripped him apart on live TV. I never really cared for him anyway, but I digress.

The cities are gone. Too many people equals too many zombies in short order. The suburbs aren’t much better. That’s where I’m at now. Where I’ve been since it happened. We had the local zombie population under control, but then the city zombies started wandering out. Kind of an undead urban sprawl, I guess. I imagine they’re doing better out in the country. The whole zombie thing is probably kind of fun for rednecks. I’m picturing them running around like those guys from "Swamp People" bagging zombies instead of alligators. I like to think my "Kin folk" down in Arkansas are alive and doing well. Anyway, I don’t really know how anybody is doing. Phones are down, cable and satellite TV are down. The only thing I can find on the radio is people begging for someone to come and save them and evangelists telling us the end has come. Sometimes it helps me sleep at night picturing zombies ripping the evangelists to shreds. I know I sound like a horrible person, but there’s only so much you can take, you know?

I’ve got a pretty nice set-up here. I was in security back when there was such a thing as security, so I was able to use my expertise to set up a nice little suburban fortress. We’ve got a few people here in our merry little band, and we split the work pretty well. The food won’t last forever, though. Sooner or later we’re going to have to go out and forage for food—can’t wait to see how that goes. Our group used to be quite a bit larger, but it seems like some people just can’t stay in one place too long. They go out to try to find friends or family, or to find some other remnant of civilization that they can cling to. Usually, we can hear them screaming within 15 minutes of the time they go out the gate. Not always, though—I like to think a few of them made it out and maybe found what they were looking for.

I guess the good thing about the zombies is they’re even dumber than they look in movies. They don’t organize or hunt in packs; they just kind of wander. The don’t seem to have very good hearing or smell, either—they seem to not know we exist until they see us. The thing that’s kind of a pain in the ass is that they’re patient. If they see you walk into a building, they probably won’t even try to open the door and go after you, but they’ll just stand outside the door. You could be in there for a week, and when you come out, the zombie will still be there, unless something more interesting came along. In the movies, these things never rot away—I’m hoping that’s wrong, too. Maybe we can outlast them.

I’m not even really sure why I’m writing this. For posterity, I guess. In the hope that we survive and someday move far enough away from this day that we need a written record to remind us of it. It happens. The black plague, the great depression, the holocaust—sometimes when you’re in the middle of something you can’t ever envision a time when the world will be right again, but then a few decades later you’ve got kids sitting in a classroom reading about it without a freaking clue. I hope my grandkids end up in that classroom. I wish I was there now. Anyway, I'm going to save this and post it if we ever find a live network connection somewhere so other survivors can see they're not alone. With my luck I'll get a bunch of televangelists posting back, telling me about the "End of Days."

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