I wonder how China is doing

When the outbreak was at it's height, it seemed like China was getting the worst of it. It stands to reason--more people, more zombies. They had a very radical theory that they put into action at least once or twice. They basically sent out the word for all of the living to evacuate a city, then they nuked it. I know they killed a lot of innocent people, but I've got to tell you, they may have been on to something. We know the cities are the biggest concentration of zombies, so you eliminate those and you've got a fighting chance. Of course the down side (besides the loss of innocent life) is that now you've got radiation and blast damage in the neighboring areas. Basically anybody who gets killed without being incinerated or decapitated is a new zombie. I guess maybe by nuking the city you're just pushing the problem to the suburbs, because now everybody immediately around the city is dying of radiation poisoning and becoming radioactive zombies. The China solution may not have been such a great idea after all.

It's just so frustrating--not knowing what's going on. The radio is getting worse--even the televangelists are dropping off. I'm getting nothing on the internet; no blog responses, nothing. There is occasionally something weird on the net, though. Society is gone, every government and commercial website we can think of come up blank, but we can still find an occasional active porn site. There was a group with a business model to survive the end of the world. Still, we get no news. We have no idea if there are survivors in China, or the U.K. or India, or even a few miles away in Chicago. Hell, there could be 10,000 survivors in our own town a just few blocks from here and we would never know. We need to get out more--this is driving me crazy.

Zombie Bites

I promised to tell a bit about the theory of the zombie bite, and now that I've done a thorough skin check and I'm sure I haven't been bitten, I can discuss this clinically. First of all, the whole zombie thing does not appear to be a virus, or at least not a normal virus. It doesn't affect the living; only the dead. In other words, you can't "Catch" zombie-ism while you're alive, but if you die, regardless of the cause of death, you will become a zombie. This is key because in the beginning, most of the deaths weren't directly caused by zombies. Let me give you a zombie history lesson.

Picture this: Every corpse in a hospital morgue suddenly gets up and starts attacking people. Most of the patients in the hospital are not in any kind of shape to run or fight, nevermind that they have no clue what's going on. The patients get killed and now you've got the morgue zombies and the patient zombies. They quickly overcome whatever staff that doesn't escape, so now you've got the staff zombies. Now suddenly every hospital in the country is not only out of commision, but they've got a population of a couple hundred zombies that start to spread outward. With no hospitals and most of the health care workers dead, death rates go up, creating more zombies.  But that's just the tip of the iceberg--now comes the human factor. People start to find out what's going on and they go batshit crazy. Driving like maniacs to try to get to the country or their family or the CDC or whatever. They end up causing accidents, killing themselves and innocents along the way. All zombies now. The criminals and the crazies see this as their chance and they start looting and rioting, killing a few more people along the way. More zombies. The cops finally have to start shooting on sight to get control. More zombies. Your creepy neighbor has always wanted your car, your tv, your wife, whatever--figures this is his chance while the cops are busy. He comes over with a gun and either he shoots you or you shoot him or you shoot each other. More zombies. And once a family member turns, that whole house is gone--who can chop off mom or dad or junior's head?

Now back to the bite. I heard a guy on the news near the end saying that the bite itself was not infectious, but zombies were like kimodo dragons--they carry so much bacteria in their mouths that once you're bitten you will die of a systemic infection in a matter of days (hours?) if you don't get antibiotics. This of course caused a panicked run on antibiotics which resulted a whole new round of killings and a new generation of zombies. So the cause of zombie-ism? Who knows. The cause of the apocalypse? People. Stupid people. Here endeth the lesson.

Not Watching Us Anymore

Well, I did it. I'm not happy about it, but I did it--I took down the watcher. We talked about maybe Shawn and I going out there together, but in the end we decided that just doubled the zombie's chance of biting somebody. I put on the thickest clothes I had and some gloves (great freaking idea in July), grabbed this ice scraper/chopper thing we had (it had a nice blade and a long pole) and I went out there to seperate this stumbler from its head. I had a great plan--swipe at the legs to bring it down, then slam down on the neck. Quick and easy. Yeah, right.

Tool of the Trade for the Zombie Apocalypse

I hit it in the legs and it just kept coming at me. I finally jab at its neck and it ends up catching the pole. We dance around like that for a minute then I finally get it up against the wall and I start pushing with all I've got and the blade starts going into it's neck. The whole thing took like 10 minutes. It reminded me of that scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when the nazi was on top of the American GI and saying "Shhh" while the knife was slowly going in. This was some disturbing shit. I'll spare you the rest of the gory details and just suffice it to say that killling one of these things ain't quite like it looks in the zombie movies. I'm just grateful that none of its friends came by.

We got rid of the body (I never heard the definitive word on if zombies eat dead zombies, but we're not taking chances). When it was all done, the guys were congratulating me like I just won a a ball game or something. It kind of made me sick. I wish I could take a shower.

Killing Zombies

We're kind of at odds about what to do with this watcher. Matt wants to bust a cap in its ass (well, head, but you get the idea). We're all a little worried about the noise (as I mentioned) and what it might bring down on us. The problem we're facing is that nobody wants to volunteer for the alternative--going out there with a sharp implement and seperating this thing from its head. We all talk a good game, but when it comes down to it, killing these things is tough. Have you ever chopped someone's head off? Well, actually, if you're alive to read this, you probably have (unless, of course, you really are in 2011). It's really tough, unless you've got a Samurai sword or something (note to self--find Samurai sword). Plus, these are, or at least were, people. Luckily this watcher doesn't look like anybody I know, otherwise I'd have real issues. Then there's the whole bite thing. It seems like most, but not all, of those who get bitten end up turning. Somebody had a great theory on that--maybe I'll get into it in another post, but the bottom line is your chances aren't so good even if you get a superficial bite from one of these things. I guess what I'm saying is all those movies where the guys go out there with baseball bats and bash zombies like it's a freaking sport are pretty much full of shit, unless of course the heroes are thesort of people who are used to going around bashing people with baseball bats anyway (in which case it kind of makes sense). None of us really did that back in the normal times. I would have liked to sometimes, but never did it. Well, we're going to have to do something about this thing soon and I'm becoming increasingly afraid that I"m going to be the one who has to do it. If you don't hear from me again, you'll know what happened.  

The Watcher

So, we picked up a watcher today. That's what we call the zombies that just stand outside the door and stare, waiting for you to come out. Shawn went out scouting, trying to figure out where all the zombies went, and well, he found one. Thanks a lot, Shawn--now we have to use the back door if we want out of this place.

Watchers are pretty much what did everybody in--the other survivors, I mean. Your first thought when you get inside and close the door is "I've got to keep them out!" Then nothing happens and you breathe a sigh of relief and you relax a little bit. Maybe after a few hours you even go to sleep. You wake up in the morning, the zombie is still there. You wait a few days, a week, a month, the zombie is still there. Maybe a few friends have joined him--they tend to group up when they're watching. Finally you're out of food or water and you've got to get out, but now you need to get past the zombies. Usually you don't make it.

We've got to take this one down. Fast. Problem is that we don't like to use guns. We don't think the stumblers hear so well (if at all), but how well do you have to hear to notice a gun shot? It sure seems like they come after people with guns. I'll have to talk to Matt--he's kind of our armorer. I'm sure he's got something big and sharp we can lop this thing's head off with.