by GJ Zukow
That odd behavior I witnessed before with the zeds started to manifest itself again as they seemed to be slowly drawn to the infected. Before the two drove off, the walking dead had started to gather around the office, slowly lurching themselves into a small herd. When the electric car drove off, the undead seemed to wander after it for about twenty yards and then they lost interest and went back to their normal aimless meandering. If they had been after the uninfected they wouldn't have stopped for anything, they would have continued to stagger in the direction they last saw a meal until they either caught it or they died again.
I had no luck again waiting for Allan. I found a decent spot to watch the partially collapsed house from, waiting for his return. From a second story window a couple of houses down and across the street, I can monitor both the front and the side doors. I can't believe another week has gone by. Time seems to both speed by and drag along ever so slowly at once. I waited for a couple of hours but I saw neither hide nor hair of him. Next week then.
From across the city, while I waited for Allen, I could still see tendrils of heavy smoke, drifting into the cloudy sky. By the time I returned to my hiding spot overlooking the shopping plaza, the old office building was nothing more than a smoking ruin. Only a couple small licks of flame still struggled to consume the last bones of the structure.
Nothing happened 'til the late afternoon yesterday, as it was, I almost missed them. I caught a quick glimpse of two people, one man and one woman, hastily making their way from the Publix supermarket. Both of them were loaded down with packs full of water in plastic gallon jugs, both of them obviously uninfected survivors. I could tell they were uninfected as the undead that spotted them eagerly chased after them just as fast as their necrotic legs could propel them. Even though I had my pack and things ready to go at a moment’s notice, I still lost sight of the two quickly. The undead pointed me in the two survivors general direction, every dead thing that caught even the slightest glimpse of them was shambling in whatever direction the two traveled. I couldn't just run down the street after them, there were too many of the abominations out in the open. I had to take back routes through yards and down alleys, stopping to cut down any of the repulsive things that got in my way. For a minute or two, I had thought I had lost them for good when they changed their direction. The two backtracked and when I spotted them again they were struggling to hoist their overloaded packs over a high brick wall. I should have expected that, it’s a tactic I use all the time. By the time I reached the other side of the brick wall myself I had lost them for good. They can’t be too far from here, they were struggling with their load to begin with.
Once over the high brick wall I found myself in a gated and walled community of expensive homes. The whole neighborhood seemed to be in decent condition, I spotted only a few scattered walkers inside the subdivision. As I investigated the private residences, I found the main entrance blocked by multiple cars and trucks, allowing only a few, rather determined, of the undead to negotiate the jumbled roadblock.
The appearance of the subdivision turned out to be misleading. Someone had done a lot of work in that walled and isolated group of homes. Whether it was set up as one big trap or there is (or was) survivors actually living there, I’m still not sure. It wasn’t until I came across a section of the neighborhood of upper middle class homes that I had a clue that there was something amiss there. Two of the backyards were so filled with the buzzing of flies, gnats and other insects that I heard and saw them before I caught whiff of whatever they were attracted to. Once I did catch the scent, it was one of rot and decomposing flesh. The wooden fence that had previously separated the two houses had been knocked down and the backyards had become an open grave. Most of the corpses had decomposed down to their ivory bones, leaving behind piles of broken skeletons mixed with the rags that were once the dead’s clothes. Those old skeletal remains were at the bottom of the pile of disgusting tainted cadavers, the freshest of the corpses being on top. Everything was covered with bird shit and cockroaches, adding to the smell. Judging how long ago the undead were laid back to rest is tricky like this, with the mangled bodies exposed to the elements and animals. My best guess is that the last of the mortal remains were placed on the pile about a month ago. Somebody had been keeping the area clear. Most of the putrefying dead had their skulls crushed with something big and heavy by the looks of it.
When a booby-trapped door almost took my head off I became a lot more cautious. Someone had tied a double barreled shotgun’s trigger to the doorknob. The gun’s position had luckily shifted over time as its blast splintered only the uppermost part of the door while the main centering of pellets punched through the ceiling and then the roof. The more I looked around the once manicured lawns and now rusting swing sets, the more snares and hidden dangers I saw. To my horror, when I went back to the corpse dump I saw it had been protected by a tripwire. The only reason I hadn’t of set off the claymore previously was because the fishing line used to trigger the explosives had weathered and stretched out so that it lay upon the ground. Whoever had placed all of these pitfalls must not have been maintaining them for a while.
I could have died twice inside that subdivision and wouldn’t have seen it coming either time. Guess I got careless, I got used to the lack of traps on the houses recently. Usually, the only trapped buildings were buildings that I expected to be booby-trapped and not a whole community. My risks weren’t without some reward though. I was able to defuse a couple of the traps. The claymore guarding the grave site, along with a new shotgun and a few hand grenades will definitely get used. The abandoned houses I did get into held almost nothing of value to me. They had all been looted for anything useful long ago.
Though the subdivision was interesting, it wasn’t where the two other survivors had run to. More than likely they slipped over the wall someplace else while I was trying to catch up to them.
Tonight I’m sleeping in the house with the highest roof in the neighborhood. The survivors couldn’t have gone on much further, as much water they were carrying. I’m pretty fit and even then, carrying around Allen’s and my packs of gear for a few miles, like when I hauled them to the church, just about wore me out. I’ll hang out in the area for at least a few days, keeping an eye out for any clue of people still clinging onto life and sanity. Time really isn’t important now, the only place I have to go is to the fallen safehouse on Fridays. I might camp the area until I find them, now that I know that others are nearby. Maybe I’ll take up residence in the community center of the walled residences if the area stays calm like it is now. If they’re around, I’ll find them.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Allan never showed up last Friday, I didn’t feel like writing a separate journal entry for it, it would have been too short.
Since losing sight of those two people, I haven’t seen one living soul. I had been staying at one abandoned house or building for a few days then moving to a different spot in the general area, attempting to find any sign of where those two survivors had disappeared to. Two days ago I think I spotted signs of recent human activity. The first clue I had that I was in the right area was the sight of fairly fresh kills of the undead. The recently dead corpses of the wandering undead were scattered about the neighborhood, all suffering from head wounds. Only humans do that. The area I found the corpses of the recently dead again horrors in is part residential with the other section being mainly an industrial/office park.
There does seem to be more of the undead in this section of Ocala than in other parts, whether or not that means there are other survivors is another question. The undead ebb and flow through the streets like the tides, constantly moving.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I found a big clue that there were others around. Unless the animals that survived the parasitic infection and madness have started growing little gardens, that is. By the time I found the small, well tended and watered garden, dusk had started to fall. Potatoes, green beans, green onions and lettuce were
ready to be harvested. Some of the plants had obviously been harvested before, about half the rows of green beans and lettuce were already gone. Someone will show up soon to gather the rest of the produce, of that I’m sure. In the meantime I helped myself to some fresh vegetables. It’s been such a long time since I had fresh food. I had almost forgotten how good real food was, the raw potatoes and green beans tasted so much better than the soggy canned beans and the instant mashed potatoes I have been living off.
I decided that I would stay in the house next door to the garden. The backyard garden was hidden well from the street, it’s surrounded by an overgrown privacy fence and unless you know it’s there you’ll never see it. It’s the same with trying to spy on it from afar, it’s too well hidden to be easily seen from anyplace except next door or the house that holds the garden itself. It shouldn’t be too long before someone comes to along, the garden will have to be harvested soon or the vegetables will rot on the vine.
As I set up my new temporary camp in the deserted house next door, I had a third clue that I was in the right area. I detected the unmistakable odor of someone cooking. I decided that in the morning I would more fully explore the industrial buildings. The sun was going down by the time I had made my night’s camp. There are just too many of the hungering beasts shuffling around to do any kind of reconnaissance in the night's darkness. Running around an unknown area filled with the jaws and claws of the walking dead and worse won’t serve any purpose. Besides, there are plenty of places someone can hide around here if they wanted to, and it does seem they want to. Can’t say I blame them. Myself, I’m tired of hiding like some timid little mouse. I’m tired of being cooped up like some caged animal, staring at the same four walls, afraid to even peek out a window in fear of being spotted and surrounded by the ghoulish cannibals that wander the cracked and potholed streets. Holing up in one spot for a long period of time hasn’t worked out well for me in the past, I actually enjoy sleeping in a different house every night after a long day of murdering the undead. The thing that I have the hardest time dealing with is the sheer amount of boredom in my life.
That’s how it is though, days of boredom followed by a few moments or minutes of sheer terror. Like last night. Over a week of boredom ended in a split second.
Shortly after nightfall, I watched nervously as a vast number of the undead started to slowly make their way towards my general vicinity. A huge herd, composed of hundreds (if not more) of the slowly decomposing things, started migrating their way into the neighborhood. The huge herd would completely swarm the area by dawn, threatening to scour the land and devour any living human flesh they found. I wasn’t in a fortified building, if I were to stay and try to hide inside one of the unsecured buildings they could easily overwhelm me once they found me. Then there was the food problem. If I chose to hide and wait them out, hoping that they pass me by, I could easily run out of food and water. There’s no telling how long they would stay in the vicinity, the undead might not leave for days or weeks before wandering off again. So I started gathering up my things to bug out ahead of the always hungry masses of the undead.
If the undead came within a block of me I was going to leave. There was no way I was gonna try to ride this wave of gnashing teeth out. By midnight the numbers of the necrotic, mindless cadavers grew, easily doubling my earlier estimates and still I could see more following the herd in the distance. They trampled and knocked over everything in their path. Mailboxes, fences, porch railings and anything else damaged by the previous year's worth of neglect and storm damage was battered and clumsily kicked until it collapsed. I watched as an eight foot high fence, topped with rusting old barbed wire, suddenly broke. The fence bowed and stretched, straining both the cement secured posts and the thick wires that tied the links to the posts and railing. Then one of the posts shifted and it toppled along its whole side in a domino effect, as it proved too weakened to withstand the sheer weight of all the zeds as they broke around it like waves around an outcropping of rock. The undead follow each other like a river around whatever is in their path. Once the chain link fence with its uprooted posts collapsed, the undead flowed onto the property in massive numbers.
From my vantage point up on the roof and with the aid of my night goggles, I watched the whole mass of the undead herd start to converge on the old brick building located merely two and a half blocks away from me. One moment the undead were slowly marching past the old heating and cooling shop, the next they were excitedly trying to break into it. I’m not sure what set the ravenous herd off, but in a heartbeat, every single zed turned and moved straight as an arrow to the industrial building.
It’s Wednesday morning now and there has got to be a thousand of the nasty things in and around the building with its sun faded and peeling yellowish paint. The whole of the remaining fence has been destroyed, with the parasite driven corpses bashing and pounding upon the whole length of the building. If there is somebody inside the building I’ll know soon. The building seems secure, although anything can happen when a bloodthirsty mob starts trying to rip apart seemingly secure structures. The undead’s only desire is to eat the soft, warm, flesh cringing in fear inside the tough shell, like the building is nothing more than a giant clam or shellfish to be cracked open through brute force.
Unfortunately, I think the walking abominations found the two survivors before I did. I’m going to stay and observe what happens here for at least the next few days. If there are others inside that building currently under siege they might need some help when they try to escape. I don’t know how long they can make that water they humped over here from the Publix last, especially if they were using some of it for the hidden garden. It hasn’t rained around here in awhile and a lot of the flora and fauna are starting to suffer from the lack of it.
Monday, November 25, 2013
The days pass, the worst of the summer sun has abated but it’s still too hot and too humid. Seriously, I don’t know how anyone lived in Florida before electricity and the blessing of air conditioning.
Friday came and went again with no sign of Allan. I’m not going to bother writing down his failures to show after this. I’m starting to doubt I’ll ever see him again. The next time I write of him, hopefully it’ll be to say I found him.
The single minded undead are still pounding and clawing at the building down the street. They fling their mangled limbs at the thick brick and mortar of the building, causing a pile of broken fingers, hands, and bone splinters from mangled limbs to form on the ground. They still heedlessly beat upon the building, only to grind an ever growing pile of their own broken body parts into a disgusting mash under necrotic feet. Slowly, bits and pieces crumble off chipped or weather weakened bricks, falling and mixing with the disgusting ooze. Once secure boarding over windows crack and splinter. For as much damage as the undead do to themselves, they do just as much damage to the building. Eventually they will tear the building down with their bared, snapping teeth if it comes to it. I know this.
I can safely view the undead and their progress from rooftop. The dead are quite intent on their goal, rarely looking away from it. Even when one of the mindless automatons does glance in my direction they never look up. The fact that the things are still continuing their frantic exertions after five days leads me to believe there actually is somebody inside. Usually when a zed, or a group of zeds, gets confused or gets excited for the wrong reason they generally stop actually beating on the structure after a few days.
If the survivors, trapped inside the place, turn out to be anyone other than the two I had been looking for, I’ll be surprised. I’ve been wracking my brain to try and figure out a way to clear the undead from the area but I haven’t come up with anything so far. There’s just too many of them for me to deal with myself. I’ll keep watching to see if I can help when they finally try to make a break for freedom.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
I had retreated indoors from the heat of the afternoon sun, opening up the win
dows of the second floor room for the slight breeze. However better the view is from the roof, it becomes too hot for me to stay up there for any length of time once the broiling sun comes out. There was one bedroom, on a corner of the house, which had a window on each of its two outside walls. One overlooked the neighbor’s garden, while the other gave a decent view down the nearby cross street. It wasn’t a bad view, if I sat on the edge of the bed I could easily turn my head and monitor them both quite easily. The view wasn’t perfect but it did the job. The heat and the boredom of constantly scanning, constantly squinting through the binoculars, started to give me the twinge of a headache. So I slept, something I never seem to get enough of anymore. Not that it matters, when I do sleep, I always wake up after a couple of hours. This time when I awoke and I scanned the garden, nothing had changed. When I next peered into the distance through the other window, there was a bad change. It didn’t have anything to do with the undead ghouls. The hungering corpses still hadn’t gained entry to the building, they were still heedlessly pounding their broken limbs on the still solid framework. The same black electric car from the other day was parked and idling in the middle of the street at the driveway to the besieged structure. That was the bad thing. I had no idea how long they had been out there or even where they had gone to if they had left the vehicle. The windows are darkly tinted and I couldn’t tell if there was anyone inside the car or not. In the minuscule amount of time it took for me to bend down and grab my weapon, I heard the sound of one of the cars doors solidly thump closed. By the time I raised my weapon to line up a shot I saw the driver’s door slamming shut. I didn’t even get the time to line up a good shot before they drove off. I could have taken a pot shot at them, but that would have done nothing but alert them. I do like to maintain the element of surprise.
