It's Been Too Quiet

We haven't seen any Zombies. Days? Weeks?

For those that have been living in denial there is this excitement that they have made it. They're busy making plans to go back to their homes and pick-up where they left off. I wish them good luck with that. Delusions are only good if they don't get you killed.

Sarah and I have spent months trying to talk sense into those people and even when they could hear the screams of those who left it still didn't sink in for them. According to them it's all been a temporary set-back.

The rest of us are feeling a deep dread. Why haven't we seen any Zombies? Are they hiding? Did somebody else manage to kill them off? Did they just die? I'm just afraid one of these days we're going to go out on a foraging run and round a corner to see like 100,000 zombies. It scares the hell out of me.
So we continue with our plans, we continue preparing. We have to keep pushing forward, because the alternative really sucks.

Well this is day 4 - the guys should be back tomorrow. I can definitely feel the anticipation building. It will be fun to see what they found, it sort of feels like Christmas is coming!

Are you a zombie yet?

Heidi again. There is a subject we don’t talk about – ever, our families.

A few of the people in our group actually have their spouses and kids with them. The kids are great to have around, it keeps us reminded of what we’re working for. The flip side is that some of the people had to destroy their zombie friends and family. I’m grateful I didn’t have to go through that, but for those that did . . . well, let’s just say there are some haunted looks and screaming at night.

My whole family is in Wisconsin. I transplanted several years ago. Of course when this thing started I tried calling my family– no luck. Not long after we settled in here, back when cell phones still worked, I noticed this office tower that looked pretty close, so one night I snuck out to get closer.  Not the brightest thing to do, but I was feeling desperate. I left a “good-bye cruel world” letter on my sleeping blanket, just in case I didn’t make it back. I figured if I ended up as a zombie midnight snack at least the rest might feel bad about my demise instead of pissed off that I went out alone. Of course the tower was much further away than what it appeared at first. Once I started though, I just couldn’t stop. I stayed on all fours and just kept crawling. When I got to the tower my phone was showing a moderate signal so I called Mom and Dad. Their phone started ringing and my heart started racing – was it possible? After four rings the voice mail came on:

“Hi, we’re not home right now as my husband tried to kill me, so in self-defense I killed him. He didn’t get any better so I chopped off his head, because that’s what everyone else is doing. I don’t want to die and be a zombie so I am going to take the car and my husband’s body to the dump and I’m going to set us on fire. If our daughters hear this message please know that your father and I loved you both very much. Please be safe and survive this horror. Just remember to chop off their heads. Oh, and you don’t need to leave a message.”  (Mom always was the practical one.)

I sat at the bottom of the tower for awhile wondering how my sister and her family were doing. I figured I’d had enough “news” for one night, so I got down on all fours again and crawled back. I stopped twice because I smelled zombies, but I’m not so sure now as my mind was wondering a bit. I was able to make it back before anyone woke up, got rid of my “letter” and went to bed. I remember staring at the wall unable to sleep. By the morning I had almost convinced myself that it was all a dream. Maybe it was. who knows.

Whatever it was, real or dream, i made me think about all the tragedy around me. It was a defining moment realizing that I could give up – like some of our group, or be strong and do what needs to be done and survive.

I want to survive.

Guarding the Homefront

It's me, Heidi. We said “Good-Luck” to Roger, Matt, Justin, Mike and Corey today. They took off for Cabela’s. There were some heavy conversations about what supplies we would need. It was finally agreed that if it wasn’t “Survival” related we didn’t need it. The only thing I really wanted to add to the list was binoculars. We only have one pair here and they are existing only because we found some duct tape to hold them together. Louie found them shortly after we holed up here in this building. Unfortunately, he was so excited about the “find” that he dropped them running up the stairs to the roof to show us. (we don’t let Louie handle valuables anymore.) Once we hit the road binoculars will be vital in scouting out the area and any problems we encounter.

Anyway, Shawn and I have been left in charge of those staying behind. The first thing we had to deal with was the whining from those who wanted to leave. We did our best trying to talk “sense” into these people. Finally Shawn just told them that if they wanted to leave that was fine with him, but they had to wait for Roger and the others to get back first. No one was more surprised then me when they agreed. I have been quietly urging these people to see reason for months and all I got was dirty looks and rude comments. Well after today they won’t be getting anymore sympathy from me. As long as they are staying for now they will be useful. We have work to do on the vehicles we are taking when we leave this place, as well as cleaning the few pieces of clothing we have and organizing the food and water we have left.

Shawn and I are now working on a schedule for roof top surveillance. Keeping everyone busy will hopefully cut down on anxiety levels while the guys are gone.

Growing and Going

We've got two new survivors who joined us today--Geoff and Cynthia. They seem like nice twenty-somethings, a couple. It was one of those things we were wondering about--they were holed up in a building like 2 blocks from us, living on rainwater and rice. For some reason I have yet to understand, they must have had like 50 bags of rice--they're already okay in my book; I love rice. Anyway, we apparently shop at the same stores. We found them in the 7 Mart or whatever the heck it is while we were scrounging for power bars, batteries and water. I think we were the first non-zombies they've seen in a long time--they were really happy to join up.

Now it's almost like we know what we're doing. We've got supplies and even a destination. We want to hit a sporting goods store, hoping to grab some weapons and survival gear (I know, I know--maybe that would have been a good idea like 5 months ago). Heidi suggested Bass Pro Shops up in Gurnee because it has (or had) everything we need and because she knows the layout of that mall pretty well and could probably get us in and out of there easily. My issue with that is that it's in a mall. Every clown who ever saw "Dawn of the Dead" will be heading to a mall, and that's the biggest one in northern Illinois. It's been ransacked at best, at worst, it's full of zombies or whacked-out survivalists trying to start a new world order. No thank you.

I managed to convince the group that Cabela's in Hoffman Estates is a better bet. It's a stand-alone store in an industrial park, so the zombie count is probably low and I'm guessing not as many people thought to go there when this hit. I'm not expecting locked doors and a full inventory, but maybe we come away with a shotgun, some sleeping bags and a propane stove. I wish their website was still up--I would love to put together an accurate shopping list and get the layout of the store. We debated about whether to use a truck or golf carts to get there--it's kind of a haul. We decided to chance it with a truck, since at least it would offer us more protection than an open cart and it could hold more gear. That means I can look forward to  pushing cars out of the way all day--I can't imagine the roads are clear from here to there. If all goes well, we leave tonight. Matt's coming with me--he knows what to look for in guns, more so than I do. Shawn wanted to ride along, but I talked him out of it--we're bringing Corey instead. He's smaller and faster (and has two working knees, unlike Shawn) so he can scout for us. We're going to leave the computer here, so Heidi and Shawn will have to do the blogging for awhile (or forever, if we don't make it back).

Creeping me out

Before this whole thing hit, I was somewhat of a "Zombie fan." I saw all the movies (Romero's original "Dawn of the Dead" being my favorite) and loved them. I saw the tv show ("The Walking Dead") and yes, I even looked at zombie webpages, places like zombiehunters.com and allthingszombie.com, but something has been kind of bugging me. More and more, I'm starting to think I've seen this blog before. I know it's a generic blog format and a million sites looked like this, but a million zombie sites didn't--they usually had black backgrounds with blood and all that other stuff that made the site look creepier.

What really got me was when we put the names at the top. I saw my name and had a total feeling of deja vu. I remember seeing this site and thinking "Oh cool, this guy is named Roger, too." I don't remember reading much of it, though. Maybe things are finally getting to me. The date stamp on this thing keeps taunting me. 2011. Could this blog actually be some kind of link to 2011? I must have watched too much Doctor Who. I'm going to have to figure out how to test this idea, though.

In the meantime,we're going to be doing a quick foraging run to get supplies for a longer trip. We've hit most of the local stores, but there's still one or two that might have something left--we really need some more bottled water and power bars and transportable stuff like that, not to mention flashlights and batteries. We haven't quite settled where the longer trip is going to be yet--Shawn wants to go toward Evanston, but I think that's suicide--the population is too high and it's too close to Chicago, but he thinks we have a better chance of finding survivors there. Heidi wants us to go up north toward Wisconsin (once a cheesehead, always a cheesehead), but she's probably not even going on this trip, so it's not up to her. I'd kind of like to go west, maybe toward Crystal Lake or Carpentersville, see if we could find some abandoned farm or something. Matt just wants to go. He's becoming more and more sullen and I think it's driving him nuts that we're not doing anything. More and more, I think he's starting to think he'd rather be out killing zombies than hiding from them. That kind of thinking got a lot of people killed--I hope we don't have to add him to the list. Everybody else in our group is just content to stay here--there's a lot of shell-shock, or PZSD (post-zombie stress disorder) as I call it. I hope they come out of it soon and start contributing, because right now they're just eating our food and drinking our water...Sorry. I've got to be more sensitive about these things.