Dark Recollections

by Chris Philbrook

  Of course you know what that means by now. Something worth eating was on the other side of the door. Something living. I had enough shots between the shotgun and Sig to kill all the zombies gathered at the door. At this point though, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that. From my cursory examination of the aisles I knew there was plenty of stuff worth taking already without adding any additional danger to this trip. Of course my thoughts led me think I’d tip these zombies off to my presence if I tried to be sneaky, plus I just couldn’t leave these people, whoever they were, behind the door like that.

  I crept down the aisle that was a straight line to them, and started shooting once I got to about 20 feet. Head level shotgun blasts are flat out terrifying. The spread of the pellets combined with the proximity makes for just a massive amount of damage. With just the shotgun I was able to drop all the zombies before I had to start backpedaling. Once they were all down, I drew the sword and finished the two or three that didn’t die. To be honest, I was sort of in a panic wondering what was on the other side of the door anyway, and I wanted these fucking things dead before I had to deal with that.

  I think I’m psychic. No sooner than I’d yanked the blade out of the ear of the last zombie the swinging doors flung open, and a huge prick jumped out with a double barrel shotgun leveled at me. He was about five and a half feet tall, nearly as round as he was tall, and was wearing dirty bloody slacks and a button down shirt that was still buttoned and tucked in. It was spattered with blood, but it was still tucked in. His round belly hung over his belt sort of comically.

  I also recognized him as one of the managers of the store. He looked scared out of his fucking mind. He instantly started laying into me with threats at 140 decibels.

  “Move and I’ll fucking blow you away you motherfucking prick!” I think was the first thing he said. In response I just stayed frozen holding the sword. I think I even shrugged a little at him. Didn’t defuse the situation, pretty much made it worse. He took two or three steps at me, stumbled a bit over one of the zombie bodies I’d just stabbed in the head, and started going down. When he impacted the floor, half on a zombie, both barrels of the scattergun let loose, and he shredded a zombie torso into bits.

  Double barrel shotgun. Ruh roh asshole. You’re outta bullets.

  So I forget exactly, but I think I kicked him in the face three, or maybe four times. Not super hard, just really hard. Hard enough that he knew I was pissed at him, and he knew I could kill him, but not so hard that it did kill him, or knock him out. I put the sword away and grabbed his ass hard. I pinned him up to the wall in a sitting position and got right down in his face.

  “What the fuck is your problem you asshat?” Was the first thing I said to him. At that point he pissed himself, and started talking incessantly through his busted lip and fucked up teeth. Turned out I probably kicked him too hard in the face. He could lose weight, but his face would be fucked up forever.

  To paraphrase his conversation, he essentially said he had “hired” local people to protect the store. During the worst of the end of “that day” people started coming in and just stealing shit. He offered free food, water, and money to anyone that’d help him keep the store safe. About twenty folks joined in over the course of the day. They kicked everyone out, fortified the place with the barricades, and had a pretty good thing going. Late last night though, another group of locals came to get food, and a gunfight ensued.

  Best I could piece together from Chubby McSmashface was that there were heavy losses on both sides. Most of the people died in fact. The zombies inside here were the people that holed up with him, and the dead outside were likely the majority of those that died in the assault. Once the first batches inside started going down… well, you can probably figure out what happened then. Dead bodies make zombies, and zombies bite people…

  He and the single other survivor made it into the back room. He stayed at the door, making sure they didn’t get in, and his remaining Alamo buddy went to the roof to make sure they weren’t assaulted again. I’m guessing that was the shooter who tried to kill me on the roof. Shitty news was that the shooter had taken all their spare guns and ammo up to the roof, and that the ladder to access it was pulled up. Couldn’t get there from here.

  I’d heard enough by that point. I understood his situation, even sort of agreed with his plan and whatnot, I just couldn’t give a fuck. He just leveled a shotgun at me, and to be honest, I fucking KNEW he was going to try and kill me if he hadn’t tripped. Thank God he was a nincompoop. Yeah that’s old school Mr. Journal. Trying to bring it back. Nincompoop. Try it out it’s fun.

  I pulled his ass to his feet, picked up his shotgun, and flung it over my shoulder towards the front of the store, and told him to get his fat ass marching. If I so much as saw him again, he’d get all 12 gauges to the goddamn face. I can still remember his lip quivering when he took off running. I waited a few minutes until I heard him grunting to get out the window, making his final escape.

  After that I checked the backroom. By then it was mostly empty. Usually grocery inventory was stored there, but it was long since gone. I’m guessing they just restocked over the course of “that day” and by that point they had what they had on the shelves. Once I knew it was safe, I went shopping.

  There was enough food in the store to fill three carts. Most of it was total shit, but I couldn’t afford to leave anything behind. Cans of generic beans, box after box of frigging Jello, luckily there was a few jars of peanut butter left, and there was a surprising amount of the organic aisle stuff there too. I guess even with the apocalypse occurring people still weren’t interested in eating healthy. Fuck em. I’ll eat the shit.

  I realized with a sort of dim anger that the prick I’d just let go probably had a key to the padlocks holding the doors shut. Whatever. From the inside it was easier to hit the hinges on the doors, which I did with the shotgun. Literally blew the doors off the hinges Mr. Journal. Funny stuff I assure you.

  One cart at a time I sprinted across the parking lot and loaded it into my car. First cart was no sweat, second cart was no sweat, and just as I loaded the third cart into my car, things started getting sticky. Mr. Asshat manager was coming back. He was running right down the middle of Main Street, full tilt, with at least 20 more zombies following him. He didn’t make it though. He gassed out and collapsed right on the solid yellow line and had every single last one of those undead fall on top of him. His screams were long, and shrill. Hearing him die was not as satisfying as I imagined it would be. It’s not cool to go that way.

  I got my car loaded as fast as I could, but they killed him and ate what they were going to eat very fast. It was about then that I realized that they don’t sit and eat for long. Once whatever they’re after is dead, they seem to lose interest. Eating is almost like a secondary thing for them, it’s just an effective weapon I think. I don’t know exactly. Not sure about much anymore really.

  I got in the Camry and started it. I backed out as fast as I could, but I backed up a wee bit too much. The ass end of the car plowed into the first handful of zombies that were coming my way, and the car backed up, and onto the bodies. Here’s my ground clearance story.

  Bodies underneath cars with low ground clearance, mean the vehicle’s wheels make little to no contact with the ground. Wheels that aren’t on the ground cannot make a car go forward, or backward. I was stuck, parked on top of five or six zombies, with at least a dozen more right on their heels. So to do a quick callback to the pros and cons of ground clearance on vehicles in the post zombie apocalypse car market…. I highly suggest investing in cars with enough room underneath to drive over a dead body. End of callback.

  I ran like a bitch. I ran like a sissy boy in a prison shower. I ran like the wind. I ran like Secretariat. I ran my ass right back into the grocery store. Now these motherfuckers can’t run, which is one of the biggest saving graces. They have two speeds: slow, and stop. Sprinting back to the store gave me the time to gather my wits, make sure my
guns were loaded, and start to shoot.

  Now like the moron I am, I left the shotgun, and the .22 in the front seat of my car. All I had was the Sig, and the two spare clips. I count my blessings here because inside earlier I managed to drop all those zombies at the back door without having to use the pistol. How fucking clutch was that huh? You know my being alive at this point is by the slimmest of margins, and largest piles of shit-ass luck.

  Sometimes Mr. Journal… a little luck is all you need.

  I opened fire once I got my wind back. It took me every fucking bullet I had to drop the remaining 15 or so zombies. In fact, when I started to run low, I switched to shooting at their knees to ensure I’d hit them and drop them. Their legs move less than their heads when they’re walking, and I figured I’d just kill them with the sword anyway. Which is just what I did. Empty gun sitting in my holster, I waded carefully into the pile of half-dead undead, and did what I had to do. Fuck my life right?

  I started back across the parking lot when I heard this super ugly thump/crunch from behind me. I spun around and saw a twitching body right at the front of the store. I was totally like what the fuck? Then I realized it was the shooter from the roof. I had shot him, he had died up there, and in his IQ impaired zombie state, he walked off the edge of the roof trying to get at me. It must’ve been a good 40 foot drop, and he was pretty well dead for good when he hit. I got a good chuckle out of that. It also forced me to look in that direction, and that’s when I saw the rifle he dropped earlier.

  I jogged over, saw it was busted to shit, and got pissed. However, in some freakishly bizarre twist of coolness, the scope on the rifle was pristine. Whatever, right? My .22 needed a scope, so I took the rifle, emptied the shooter’s pockets of ammo (.30-06 if you’re curious, which was cool because later on I got a good rifle in that caliber) and got back to the car.

  All of the zombies underneath it were either pinned, or dead for good. I did need a different car though. I had to search pockets and parked cars for more than an hour until I found keys and the corresponding car. Totally hit a homerun though. Ford FOCUS! BOO YA!

  World ends, free cars everywhere, and the best thing I can get is a Ford Focus? Really God? Really? All I’m saying is that something a little nicer would be pretty sweet, right? I shouldn’t bitch. With all the luck I’ve had so far I have zero fucking ground to stand on.

  I had to push the cars out of the way in the lot to get the Focus into the road, but I did, and got the groceries moved about. I waved longingly and lovingly to the car that had served me so well, and I came back here.

  What a shitty ass trip Mr. Journal. Shrug. I did get a lot of food. Even if it was just Spam, Beans and Jello. Of course it took two or three weeks for my split open chin to knit shut. Butterfly bandages and gauze and all that jazz. Still have a pink ugly scar along my jaw line from it.

  Ta-ta for now big guy.

  -Adrian

  November 29th

  Not a happy camper today Mr. Journal. Nope. Unfucking happy Boy Scout right here. Not sure why, but I was woken bright and goddamn early by banging on the front door of Hall E. Hard banging. Intentional banging. Clearly not sexual banging.

  I frigging leapt out of bed like a crackhead near a soup kitchen and snagged up the .22 near the bedroom door. I peeked out the window and saw not one, nor two, but three zombies down at the frigging door, smashing their little heads off to no end.

  Gonna use the whole words here… What. The. Fuck. I threw a fucking hissy fit for REAL. Once I was done with my three year old temper tantrum I threw the window open, and proceeded to shoot the dumbass walkers trying to beat down my front door. Wasn’t too pleased either because one of them was juuuuust enough around the edge of the building for me to literally yell and scream to get him to walk around the corner to get a clear shot. You want to talk about irritating. Idiot zombie wouldn’t walk into my line of fire like a good side of beef.

  Not asking for much God. As if it wasn’t enough to have all these fucking dead people walking around you have to make killing them a challenge too? Do you not fucking like me? What’d I do in a past life? Cornhole a nun? Cornhole a bus filled with nuns? Fucking A.

  AND IT WAS WHILE I WAS TRYING TO SLEEP. I get no fucking breaks.

  Phew. End of rant.

  So. Here we are with this.. awkward thing going on between the two of us Mr. Journal. You think I’m all dangerous and edgy, and I could explode into a rage at any moment. So you’re thinking to yourself, I’ll just be quiet, maybe lay low, play the listener role for a bit, let him get his anger out somewhere else. Smart call really. I could explode again. I could blow up like a Pinto’s gas tank.

  I’m harmless I assure you. I haven’t shot a real person in at least a month. Probably longer than that. Shot plenty of dead ones though. Working on setting that high score.

  My thumb is still really sore. Definitely sprained it the other day. When I woke up the day after it was all bright red and swollen. Hot to the touch as well. I iced it, took some ibuprofen, and kept it elevated. Within a few hours I was in pretty good shape, and decided I’d do just two houses yesterday. Need to take a little bit of a breather. That and the weather has sucked balls. Lots of sleet and cold rain. Early in the morning the sidewalks and roads have been covered in black ice. That is one of the things I do not miss about driving back and forth to work. Cold as hell.

  Anyway, keeping with the plan of clearing Auburn Lake Road, I worked my way up that road and did the next two huge houses in line. Newer development style bland houses that were pushing 3,000 square feet. I won’t bore you with the details, but both houses were empty of danger. Riveting stuff right there.

  I’m sure you’re interested in what I found though right? That’s almost always good news right? Well Mr. Journal, surprise! Didn’t get shit. Both houses were bare right down to the damn floor tiles. That’s an exaggeration. There was plenty of shit in both houses, but nothing worth loading into the truck and taking. To enhance positives though, I found empty doghouses at both places, which tells me they took their pets with them. Happy for that at least. It’s the little things, right?

  After that I wasn’t feeling like doing much of anything, so came back here, ate a reasonable dinner of bland canned food, and decided to fire up the Playstation. Seemed like a great idea right up to the point I had to use my sprained thumb. Plan B was a bad horror movie, which just left a sour taste in my mouth considering the current events of the world, so I settled on watching The Hangover again. Good times.

  This morning I awoke to my lousy ass neighbors beating on the door. Really unpleased about that. Can’t really describe how unhappy that makes me. How did they know I was in this building? All the other buildings up here are just as likely to have living people in it, so what drew them to me specifically? Did I leave some form of trail I haven’t realized yet? Did I make noise at some point that led them here? Were they led here by someone else? I’ve got so many questions, and so few answers.

  Once I got done killing the idiots downstairs, dragging their bodies way out back to my previous body pile, cleaning the doorsteps of Hall E, and getting a bite to eat, I decided I should just go back to bed. Fuck it.

  I woke up a couple hours later. Refreshed, yet with a fine layer of still pissed off about life. It’s a wonderful life I have here. Tedious toil, constant danger, shitty food, marginal living quarters, and a never ending stream of injuries to show for it. It is so much like Iraq it isn’t funny. Except the already dead people are the dangerous ones. Weird.

  Royally effing miffed about the zombies literally knocking on my front door earlier I decided I would do a single house today, zip down to the gas station to fill up all my available gas tanks, and then come back here and throw my feet up. I’ll die of exhaustion if I don’t give myself a breather here and there.

  When I hit the gas station the lower neighborhood area was devoid of signs of life. No walking dead, no black luxury cars with redheads, and no other signs of activity. The single hom
e I cleared this afternoon was the cape that I got the Tundra from. I had a bad feeling about it, and just kinda thought it would be wise to stick with just that house today. Now if you recall I referred to the zombie family as June and Wally. The Cleaver family right? Well it’s been pissing me off since that night because Wally was the goddamn other kid. Ward was the dad. I didn’t kill Wally, I killed Ward. Attention to detail Adrian, attention to detail. Shit like that bugs me.

  As you’ll recall from the October 13th entry, I wound up taking out two adult zombies and one young undead girl at the house. Their bodies were still outside the house where I’d left them all that time ago. I’ve been keeping an eye on them as well every time I drove by. Fortunately at least the twice dead stay dead nowadays.

  Their garage door was still open, and I was reasonably sure the house was devoid of the living. I didn’t bother honking or letting anyone inside know I was there. To be honest, I felt like bringing the goddamn pain anyway. After my rough start to the day I was looking for a fight.

  I let myself in through the garage, and used the shotgun as my weapon. I can’t remember if I mentioned this or not, but generally I use the shotgun when house clearing. It’s just too devastating a short range weapon. The garage entrance to the house opened into the kitchen, which was to be expected. I could see into the living room and dining room from there, as well as a second family room. Very open concept in design. I could see a door that looked like it led to a basement, as well as the railing on the stairs that led inside.

  There was a fairly large amount of blood on the floor in all of the rooms. It started out as a dribble in the kitchen, but turned into a pretty substantial bloodbath in the two family rooms. There were smears all over the walls, broken lamps, knocked over furniture, you name the sign of the struggle, and it was there. Something went terribly south in here. I cleared the first floor as quietly as I could, and slid up the stairs to clear up there.