Zournal (Book 1): It All Started

by Randall S. Merritt

· Underwear, t-shirts, pants and socks

  · A towel, because I am a fan of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

  · A water bottle with some of the nasty water out of my tub.

  I was headed out into this nightmare of a new world with nothing but a knapsack full of crap and an unsharpened sword.

  I got the door to open quietly and made sure it closed only partially behind me so I could get back in quickly if need be. Then I slowly shuffled around the concrete barrier to try and get a look into the neighbor’s apartment. I had met her on the stairs multiple times, probably around 60 years old, nice enough lady, I helped her carry up her groceries if I happened to see her when she was at the bottom. Living on the fourth floor can be a serious pain in the ass. I liked to look at it as free stair masters but figured a 60ish-year-old woman probably looked at it as a stroke waiting to happen.

  I was able to maneuver myself around enough to look into the open doorway but did not see anything really exciting. It looked like a dark living room that needed some serious maid service. I moved forward a bit more until I could actually see into the apartment. Still about the same impression. The place had obviously had some stuff thrown around in it but nothing too crazy other than the fact that the door had been ripped off and thrown out into the alcove. I moved into the apartment and angled towards the kitchen. I was hungry. Seriously hungry after eating nothing but ancient Meow Mix wrapped in Velveeta for the last few days.

  I got in the kitchen and almost started crying when I saw all the food laying around in there. It was a food fucking bonanza. It was insane. There were bottles of fresh water, slightly spoiled looking fruit, cases of soda, and a pantry full of F-O-O-D spells delicious. I grabbed a can of warm RC Cola and started wolfing down a bag of Fritos. Reality did manage to creep back in and I realized I was making a good bit of noise and should investigate the rest of the apartment before letting my guard down. I shoved another handful of Fritos into my mouth and worked my way through the apartment.

  I checked all the drawers and cabinets in hopes of finding a gun but mostly just found 60-year-old woman stuff. The kind of stuff that fills up your grandma’s house. Pictures all over of people I assumed were her grandkids and such. They could have just been the pictures that came with the frame for all I knew. Or cared at that point, she had food, what else mattered?

  It was at this point that I used the sword to open up the door to the bathroom off the hallway and noticed the half-eaten cat. The smell and look of the half-eaten cat was not pleasant. I may not be a huge animal lover and I have never have volunteered to raise money for PETA but a half-eaten cat is both gross and sad. Looking over the cat, I saw the woman lying in the tub. More specifically, I saw the body of the woman lying in the tub followed by seeing the rest of her. She appeared to just be wearing a pair of panties and a sports bra. Also, she was pretty much the color blue due to what looked like her blood veins and capillaries all rising to the surface.

  She looked like she was sleeping. Her mouth and face looked like they were covered in fur and blood so I guess that answered the cat question. On closer inspection, she was not really blue but it looked like her skin was really pale and her blood veins were super pronounced. She was breathing fairly loud. Based on the fact that she was halfway through eating Mr. Frisky I opted not to try waking her up. I slowly and quietly backed out of the bathroom. I went into the kitchen area and filled my bag up as quickly and quietly as I could with as much food as I could.

  Once I had as much food as I could carry, I started to head back towards my apartment but stopped as I realized I had not tried to really see what was going on outside of the apartment complex yet. I walked over to the edge of the stairs and looked out. I was met mostly by darkness with a few fires burning off in the distance. I stood there for a minute listening and didn’t hear anything of note. Planning to check out the area at night turned out to have the flaw that at night it gets pretty dark. It is pretty obvious to me If I am going to survive whatever this is I need to get a lot smarter real fast.

  Entry 5: Shhhh….

  I began slowly making my way back into my apartment. I was taking extra care to be quiet as I reached for the door knob. Which is when the 12-Pack of Diet RC Cola I was holding in my other hand decided to rip apart and start raining soda cans against the door and into the alcove. It broke through the quiet like a fat guy farting during a prayer service. But instead of having to hold back laughter, I was trying to hold back sheer terror as I watched the cans moving in slow motion. Especially when I heard the sounds of something moving around in the apartment I had just vacated.

  Stopping the generic soda downpour from continuing by clamping down as hard as I could with my free hand, I used my right hand to get the door open and hauled my ass inside as fast as I could. I shut the door, locked it and commenced not moving at all out of fear I’d manage to make even more noise. The sound of footsteps from outside coming towards my door had my complete attention. I moved over towards the door enough to be able to get my eye near the peephole, being very careful the entire time not to drop anything else.

  Looking out the peephole I could see that the mostly nude woman from next door had managed to wake up and come over to visit. Her face was still grimy from the lunch she had made out of Mr. Tinkles but there were two other things much more striking about her. Well, three things if you took into account her amazing rack. Her eyes were seriously red and crusty. She looked like she had a major case of pink eye going on. The other thing was the blueish tinge all over her body seemed to have gotten even darker blue. Instead of just the veins and capillaries showing through like they had been before, she looked bruised in a bunch of places now as well.

  She was also not acting like a normal person. She was shuffling around looking pretty confused and obviously trying to figure out where the noise had come from. Unable to figure out it probably came from behind the door where the sodas were scattered around. I couldn’t really hear that well through the door but it sounded like she was moaning and making other noises as she walked around. I saw some additional movement out of the corner of my eye that turned out to be what looked like three more of the sick people joining Smurfette outside. They all looked just as confused and like they were breathing pretty hard from running up the stairs.

  My mission had just become not to make any noise to alert them to the fact that I was standing like 6 feet away from them. Standing 6 feet away from them with a backpack full of random food I had taken from the apartment next door as well as bottles of water and a left hand that was grasping a half empty pack of sodas that felt like it could start ripping open again at any second. I slowly made my way over to the couch and spent about 5 minutes setting down the sodas. Another 5 minutes was invested in getting the backpack off and set down quietly. I didn’t need to worry about the sword since I realized I had left that on the counter by the food in the other apartment.

  Which meant that my foray out into the darkness had basically just made matters a bit worse for me. I was now back to roughly where I had started in terms of supplies. I had added Cheetos, cans of Spaghettios, and a pack of Oreos in the backpack in addition to the water. Evidently my neighbor had a fascination with buying food in the end in the “O” sound group. Of course, I was too afraid to open the water or a soda or touch of any of the food due to the noise it would make. When you are trapped in your apartment by 4 blue half-naked cat eating freaks who seem to be very attracted to noise you tend to want to keep as quiet as possible.

  With that thought in mind I decided to just carefully maneuver myself into the back bedroom and take a nice long siesta on the carpet. Hopefully, the freaks would have wandered off into someone else’s doorway while I was out. I took a step backwards, tripped over the edge of the coffee table, fell backwards while kicking the couch which caused the cheap ass old person soda cans to come raining down again. Hitting the floor knocked the breath out of me and as I lay there and nothing happened I began to think I may still be alright. Then
the pounding began on the door. Even worse than the pounding on the door the screams and yells got really loud and I heard them being echoed from elsewhere as well.

  Entry 6: Stop with the Pounding

  It seemed like there had been continuous pounding on the door for a few hours as I laid in the middle of the living room alternating between calling myself an idiot and wondering how long before they broke through the door and ate me. It had occurred to me as I lay there that the missing chunks I had seen from the bodies outside may well have been from these blue freaks gnawing on the tasty human buffet in the courtyard. Considering Smurfette had skipped past a closet pantry full of yum to munch down on a cat told me they were not picky eaters. I lay there on the floor and started considering my options.

  I could lay there until they eventually beat down the door, got inside and ate me. I could open the door and try to get past them and make a run for it. Which would probably mean opening the door and being knocked down and eaten. I could cause a distraction and then make a run for it. I could lay there and hope they were too wimpy to break the door down. Considering my next-door neighbor’s door had been ripped off the hinges and thrown into the atrium area kind of stopped me from being too optimistic there. I began to think along the lines of causing a distraction and making a run for it. It was starting to get light outside now so I figured if I was going to do something I had better do it soon.

  I pulled myself up and quietly went into the bathroom and grabbed my poop-pot slinging device and headed into the kitchen. I opened up the utensil drawer and started putting in all the forks and spoons from the drawer into the pot. I then went and set the pot, which did not have a pleasant odor, over by the window I had been using to dispose of my wastes earlier. I picked up the knapsack and put it back on after taking out the two scariest looking knives I had loaded in there earlier. I’m pretty sure one was actually the bread knife from an Outback Steakhouse… Taking a last look around I figure this wouldn’t be much stupider than anything else I had done recently. I picked up the pan full of utensils and slung it out the window. It made some noise in the air with everything clanging together but it made a lot more noise when it hit the ground.

  It had the desired result in that the pounding stopped and I heard the sound of footsteps rushing down the stairs. I made my way over to the door and looked out and the coast was clear. Taking that as my cue and being very careful not to slip on one of the damned soda cans by the door or kick them and make more noise I walked into the neighbor’s apartment and grabbed my sword. Not knowing what else to do and wanting to avoid getting trapped in an apartment on the fourth floor and running out of food and water I began going down the stairs on the other side of the complex away from the courtyard.

  The sun was coming up and visibility was starting to improve to a scary degree. I kept moving down the stairs with my head constantly swiveling to look left and right. So far I had not seen anything too ominous, other than the greater than normal accumulation of litter in the stairwells. If I did see anything at that point I was not sure what I would do. I had the blunt sword with me now but could I really whack some sick guy in the head with it hard enough to knock them out or kill them? At that point I was really hoping I was not going to have to find out.

  I was basically looking to try and find a car or a bike or something I could ride and start moving out of here. Not knowing how widespread this was I figured I would head for my parent’s cabin in Tennessee. Hopefully they had been there when this all happened, since it was in the middle of nowhere they should be safe if they stayed put. At that moment, I just mostly wanted to find a car and cruise out of there. If I had known a Zombie Smurf Apocalypse was happening in a couple of months I would have tried harder to keep up on the payments for my Jeep.

  By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I had figured out my planning once again sucked. How was I supposed to find the keys to a car down here and how was I going to stay out of site now that the sun was up. Looking behind me into the courtyard on the other side of the stairs I could see movement as the Zombie Smurfs, I think I’m just going to call them Zombies for now for lack of a better word, wandered around in search of whatever had made the dinner bell noise they had heard. I did have a key to the workout area behind the manager’s office in the complex so I figured worse case I could head there to hole up and think things through.

  When I went around the corner I started seeing the bodies. A few had been chewed on and some were even showing that blueish coloration on them but they were all pretty obviously dead. It dawned on me that some of these dead people probably had their keys on them. Feeling completely grossed out I went to the first body and started groping around on it feeling for keys. I found a wallet in his back pocket and some wadded up napkins in his front pocket. I went to the next body which looked like someone had been treating the calf like a giant burrito. I puked in my mouth a little bit but I did find a set of car keys in her purse. Without thinking I stood up, aimed them vaguely at the cars, and pressed the buttons a couple of times to try and figure out which car it was. A crappy looking red Sentra at the other side of the parking lot beeped.

  For a crappy looking Sentra it had a pretty tuned up entry door beeper speaker system. It was loud. Loud enough to be heard in the courtyard evidently. I heard feet slapping and running noises from the courtyard as I turned and shoved my key into the workout area door key hole. It took me a few tries to get it open but once I did I rushed through it and carefully pulled it shut behind me. I assumed all the Zombies must have been staring at the source of the beeping as they tore around the corner because otherwise they should have seen me standing there fumbling with my keys. Looking out the window of the workout area I could see the Zombies just standing around the general area of the Sentra now. Tossing their heads this way and that and obviously looking around trying to figure out what made the noise they had just heard.

  There was about 12 of them out there now. It looked like more men than women had converted to Zombism. I was about 95% sure you could not see through the windows in the gym from the outside but that 5% was freaking me out so I decided to sit down and relax in the men’s room until it got dark. So here I sit and now that I have wrapped up this entry and have nothing else to do I’ll ty and get comfortable in the funked up smelling, 90-degree humidity feeling men’s room for a nice long nap on the urine stained tile.

  Entry 7: Rockin the Sentra

  Despite the miserable conditions in the men’s room, I did manage to fall asleep. I lay on the floor in a puddle of sweat just waiting to hear the glass outside crack open as those things forced their way in. The fear of being eaten evidently did not override my bodies need for some sleep. By the time I woke up the light that had been coming in under the men’s room door had pretty much gone away completely. Which meant I had to get up and grab my stuff and get out of there in complete darkness without making any noise. I took the time to drink one of the water bottles I had in the knapsack then use one of the urinals. Or it may have possibly just been a wall, it was pretty dark in there. The important thing is I made sure I was facing away from my knapsack.

  Once I had the knapsack on I started feeling around for my sword and the keys. I’d managed to piss all over both of them which was pretty awesome. I am really starting to not like this whole end of the world scenario thing I’m finding myself in. I honestly can’t believe I’m still alive after all the stupid crap I keep doing. I need to get smart, fast.

  For planning purposes, I sat down right by the men’s room door and mentally prepared for what I was about to do. I ran through every step of it in my head to get it straight and tried to think through everything that would probably go wrong. I knew there was another door into the manager area from the workout room. I decided not to push my luck with trying out that door unless it became necessary. However, it did play into my backup plan of running like a little girl if one of those blue freaks started chasing me. I figured my best bet was to go into the weight room and w
ork my way over to the window then slowly raise up and do some recon to see what my next step should be.

  I made it to the window but then got beat down by the fact that while I had been mentally preparing my plan the damned sun had gone down. Sorry about the cussing mom but maybe you should have tried not raising an idiot! Hell, dad was a marine and he had managed to evidently impart zero survival skills to his son!

  Anyway, I sat at the window looking out and not able to actually see anything so there went the whole Recon portion of my plan. I tried checking out the keys to see which button would unlock the doors so I would not have to fumble around with that but of course it was too dark to even see that much. When you lose power in a setting where you are used to having lights all the time it really is just weird. The revised plan was to quietly walk to the Sentra, get in, and drive to the main road leading out of the apartment complex then get on the highway that would take me to I-95 where I could head North and figure out how to get to Tennessee.

  With knapsack secured and the sword in one hand and the keys in the other I fumbled the gym door open and poked my head out to look around. Once again, I could not actually see anything. I moved out the door and let it shut behind me as slowly as I could make it move while holding a sword and keys and trying to look all around me at once. I started moving towards where I remembered the car being. I had seen the taillights flash next to a big grey pickup truck. I walked forward slowly with the sword a couple of inches above the ground in front of me to give me some advanced warning when I may be running into a curb or a dead body. You know, the normal problems you have when walking across a parking lot at night during an apocalypse…