At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head

by Philbrook, Chris

  I really didn’t want to leave those bodies there, so I got my rubber gloves, my shitty overalls, and got the four wheeler with the little trailer on it, moved the vans, and drove the two corpses to the far back side of the campus, out where the faculty residences are. Or used to be. Not sure what the proper tense is on that. I mean technically, the residences are still there, but the faculty that used to live in them is long since gone. I guess it doesn’t matter. Both of the bodies were heavy as hell, and smelled fucking awful. Not the sick, rotting putrid flesh smell, more of a rotting fecal matter and kelp odor. I know, charming.

  Anyhoo… moved the vans back, chilled out for a bit to make sure everything was quiet, and I hit the campus cafeteria and snagged some canned stuff to eat for the day. I’m finally getting accustomed to moving about without the constant fear of being attacked around every corner. At first, right after all the shit started, I moved through life in a slow and smooth combat walk, gun at the ready. Every single door was breached like I was either a super secret sneaky spy, or like I was kicking in a door in a slum in Baghdad, looking for wahabi.

  It’s only been the last few days that I’ve felt safe enough to basically just live life like “normal.” Lol. Normal. What the fuck is that now? Normal is not being pretty okay with watching a dead human being gnawing away at the flesh of a slowly dying person. Normal is not reasoning with yourself that everything in that situation is okay, because the zombie is busy eating that person, and will thus not attack you for some time, ergo, you are “safe.” How fucked up is that?

  So I’m feeling pretty good right now. I have some warmed up canned corned beef hash, a couple slices of canned brown bread, and some hot instant coffee. I’m feeling a little better about my utter scumbaggery re: leaving the love of my life to die a bitter, lonely death, and I actually feel like dropping more into this journal. Sound okay to you Mr. Journal?

  I thought you’d like the attention. Soon as I get Otis off the screen of the laptop, I’ll tell you a story.

  There we go. I’m sure he’ll be back up in my lap shortly anyway. I’ll get done what I can in the meantime.

  Where was I? So I had formulated a plan to get to what I felt was relative safety. Food, supplies, guns, check on friends and family, and get here to the school. Not necessarily in that order. I live about 2 miles from the local gun store. I could see and hear cars still driving by on main street outside the complex so I knew it wasn’t total devastation. Probably panicked, probably fucked up a lot, but probably still, you know, held together.

  After I got dressed, I grabbed a mess of shit and loaded my car. A suitcase and a duffel bag of clothes were first. I grabbed my two best swords, and strapped my dad’s old hunting knife to my belt. It’s a badass knife my uncle made a long time ago out of a piece of heavy duty file. It looks like something straight out of horror movie. I use an old K-Bar sheathe for it for when I go hiking, so it looks even more badass. Like how badass I look is going to help when I am getting mauled by the undead, right? Very feminine of me to think about how I look at a time like that. Cass always said I was sensitive.

  I snagged an old plastic milk crate and loaded all the food in the kitchen that would last into it. Everything canned, everything frozen, anything bottled. I filled every water bottle we had, and dumped out the milk jugs, and filled those with water too. No idea how long running water would be available, and I wanted as much as possible. I grabbed Cass’ sewing kit, my dad’s old fishing rod and tackle box, our first aid kit, and my toolbox. I grabbed a few other odds and ends like boots and shoes, miscellaneous items that might come handy, books, some hobby oriented shit, and then I got Otis into his travel cage thingy. He fucking despises that thing with a passion. Some of worst scars have come from him fighting me when I try and get him in there. That day though, he was pretty good.

  I remember vividly one of my last memories of my condo that day was seeing that nurse’s body in the parking lot again. Her blood wasn’t anywhere near as red on the pavement anymore. It had already started to turn a muddy, rusty brown color, which is normal. Blood is bright red, especially when it’s arterial blood, which is what she had been squirting all over the place when I first saw her. I can remember still that seeing her body the second time around didn’t weird me out at all. I think I can attribute that to two things; first, my natural sense of calm when the shit hits the fan, and second, I knew that the nurse was probably undead when she was shot. It kind of made me feel good to know that someone had the presence of mind to drop her quickly. Of course I also wonder today that maybe someone just blew her head off and was going to use the whole zombie thing as an excuse. The more I think about it, the more plausible some variation of that idea seems right. After all, when you kill a zombie, they don’t really bleed, they just kinda… ooze. She was totally squirting. Sounds totally dirty. Maybe she had just been bitten, was still alive, and then she got shot? Who knows.

  My last memory from my place was seeing her body in the parking lot. I loaded Otis in the car, double checked that I had everything I would need, and we were off to Moore’s Sporting Goods. Moore’s was a scene straight out of an end of the world movie. There was a cop in the parking lot providing barely adequate security as like 30 cars filled with people stormed in and out of the shop, buying everything in sight. I remember being suddenly doubtful of me being able to get anything at all there, but I was there, and I had to go in.

  I know all the cops in town on a first name basis, or at least by face, and the cop in the parking lot was one I’ve known for years. Officer McGreevy. Big dude, bigger than me, and that’s saying something. Bald as shit though, which is something I’m not. He was struggling trying to talk to a few panicked older people and we exchanged glances. I knew just from the look on his face shit was bad all over. He had that no nonsense, shit was bad look on his face. You know the one.

  There was almost a line to get into the shop. Luckily Moore’s had extra people behind their counter, so they were ringing people up pretty quickly. I noticed a few big hastily scribbled signs taped up in conspicuous places around the shop, each said the same thing;

  There is a one rifle, one handgun, and one shotgun limit per customer. Thank you, Moore’s.

  Good enough. If you couldn’t figure out how to get through this with all that, you were fucked anyway I think. I waited patiently in the three deep crowd at the counter until one of the clerks finally motioned for me to come up. I can remember his nametag was crooked, like the little safety pin had come undone in the back. His name was Phil. Phil was overweight like I was, had salt and pepper hair, and the look of a person who had had fucking enough. I made my decision to keep it professional.

  I calmly requested to Phil that I was interested in a Glock handgun, preferably a 9mm or .40 caliber, a pump or semi auto shotgun, preferably 12 or 16 gauge, and a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle, one preferably with a magazine. He told me they were flat out of Glocks entirely, but they did have a few Sig 9mm’s left. I told him that was fine, and he got the rest of my order.

  Now I’m not saying the fine folks of Moore’s made a poor decision that day, or that our legal system failed our nation, but there was NO background check performed on anyone while I was there. Now I have a clean record, but some of the folks there were Shady as hell. Capital S added for extra emphasis on Shady.

  Phil was nice enough to sell me 2,000 rounds of the .22 cal ammo, 200 rounds of 9mm, and 48 12 gauge double ought shells. He told me he was giving me the “hook up” and even sold me two spare magazines (that’s a clip, for the uninformed) for both the rifle and the pistol. Those would be a big deal as you’ll see in later entries. I also got a few extra things of gun oil, a fresh gun cleaning kit, as well as a holster and a hunting vest to wear for the shotgun shells and supplies.

  The line had died down pretty dramatically while Phil waited on me, and he and I chatted a bit. The folks here were in tight with the cops and they had a better local feel for what was up. Apparently there were no zombies
from here, yet. The few zombies seen nearby were people who had come in from out of state already bitten, or already sick somehow. Of course, those few folks had bitten some other folks, and it was slowly spreading. The cops were doing a great job of containing shit from the sound of it, but even after hearing that, I wasn’t fucking around. I had Phil charge it all on my credit card, and walked out more or less armed to the teeth.

  Officer McGreevy was currently unimpeded by panicked customers when I walked out, so I waved hello, and he tiredly waved back. I loaded up my weapons, illegally, right in front of him in the parking lot, and we exchanged one last wave.

  As I drove away down the road, I heard a few gunshots from behind me, back down where the shop was. I stomped the brakes, threw it in reverse, and backed down the road into the parking lot. A new car with out of state plates was in the lot, and McGreevy had his weapon drawn on the vehicle. One of the Moore’s employees (not our intrepid hero clerk Phil) was in the doorway, handgun drawn as well. From inside my car I could see that the driver of the out of state sedan was face down on the ground, bleeding a circle out underneath him. The passenger of the car was a little boy, maybe 14 years old, brown hair, screaming bloody murder. McGreevy’s pistol shot once more, caving in the back of the dude’s head, splattering shit everywhere on the fender of the car. I noticed then that the guy had a huge red mark on the sleeve of his dress shirt. Looked an awful lot like a big fucking bite mark.

  My guess was he looked sick, McGreevy saw the bite mark, and made a quick decision. I could see clearly from his face the cop was not cool with what had just happened. I could also see the Moore’s guys coming out, practically celebrating that they had “gotten one.” McGreevy looked up at me in my car, sighed once, and nodded really slightly. The kid was still screaming.

  I never saw any of them again.

  -Adrian

  October 4th

  Hello again Mr. Journal. You know all this week I was wondering to myself why I sort of randomly decided that you were Mr. Journal, as opposed to Ms. Journal, or Mrs. Journal, or even Miss journal. Maybe I am subconsciously only comfortable spilling my guts to an artificial male? Dunno. Maybe at a later date I’ll decide to spill my guts to a new target audience and change it (you)to Miss Journal. Maybe Miss Journal will want my shit, and I’ll get laid again. Guess I should make my stories good then eh? Another thought occurs to me though; if I change Mr. Journal to Miss Journal, and I’m hoping Miss Journal wants my shit does that mean I’m into trannies? Now there’s a Zen train of thought for you.

  It’s been a pretty good week since my last entry. Not much of anything has happened here on campus. I spent the majority of my time working in the vocational building in the woodshop. We had a shit-ton of lumber stored there and I was working on making myself some barricades. The dorms here aren’t like you’d imagine for a normal boarding school. They aren’t like Hogwart’s, and they aren’t like apartment buildings. We have five dorm buildings all broken up by age groups and grades. Each building is more or less like a giant house. Three of the dormitories are two floors, one is three floors, and one is just one floor. Stylistically they are all pretty similar to houses, but they’re beefed up and industrialized.

  Each dorm’s exterior doors are all fire doors with heavy duty locks. That means they are steel, lock when they close, and are set in heavy duty frames. Perfect for fending off zombie attacks basically. Now each dorm has certain perks going for it. Hall A is good because it’s dead center in campus. Windows in the dorm face in all directions, and it’s got a great view of the bridge that people (or the undead) would cross to get here. Hall A is shitty because the first floor is very low to the ground. Its windows would be easy to break, and there are a lot of windows for the breaking. The second floor is good because the two stairwells are separate from the first floor, both are behind fire doors, and they’re on separate ends of the building. Plus the second floor has a little balcony off the staff apartment that used to belong to Mr. Trendwell, the physics teacher.

  Hall E is about 200 feet down the sidewalk from A. Both Hall E and Hall A are near the river that skirts campus, which is nice when you open a window. You can hear the babbling of the water, and it’s relaxing. Hall E has a lot of things going for it. It’s kind of on the edge of a hill, and there are no windows on ground level. The bottom of the windows start at about five feet above ground level, so breaking a window would be difficult for a zombie. I’ve already got those windows barricaded with 2x4’s and plywood, so that’s covered. I was clever and only blocked off the bottom two thirds of the windows so I could still see out the window, or shoot out them if necessary. Other benefits of Hall E are as follows: Full kitchen, three floors, two living rooms, standard issue double fire doors at both entrances, and 18 bedrooms. Hall E seemingly had the least drawbacks, so that’s where I’m set up now.

  I’ll tell more about the campus and the other buildings here later. Just about every building here has some kind of fucked up story to tell about it, and I don’t want to miss any of the juicy details. Gotta impress Miss Journal for when she shows up, right?

  The barricades I worked on this week were for some of the buildings that are low to the ground here. Specifically I really want to get the deck on the end of Hall E more secure. It’s on the edge of the building that’s overhanging the hill, so it’s about 8 feet off the ground, but I really want to shore up the railings in the event I’m swamped and trapped here. So that was my project this week. I had enough lumber, skill and ambition to get that project done. Huzzah me. The whole time I was working in the shop I kept my shotgun handy, and didn’t use any of the power tools. Noise is bad, and plus there’s no sense in wasting my gas. My supply is obviously limited, and it’s not like I’ve got more important shit to do. Handsaws for the win.

  I think I should probably fill in more details about my trip here though. There’s still so much story left just from the day the world fell apart. I’ll be talking about it in journal entries until Thanksgiving more than likely.

  So I think I said earlier that things happened so fast a plan was kind of impossible. Everything according to my plan had gone pretty much perfectly up until the shooting at Moore’s. And really, that incident didn’t change my plan at all. That was the first really fucked up thing I was sort of involved in that day, so I kind of look at that as the tipping point where things started to seriously come undone for me.

  So I left the gun shop and started to update my plan. I now had guns and ammo. The most important and useful things from my house were in my trunk and backseat, so all I needed to do was to check on my friends, and stock up on food. Non-perishable stuff of course. As I got off the side street Moore’s is on I saw the local agriculture store and it suddenly dawned on me I might need to grow food. I also noticed that the parking lot was almost empty so I made my first detour. Everyone in the store was huddled at the counter listening to the radio, and the news streaming out of it from NPR. I didn’t want to waste any time, as it was already starting to get late, so I just went straight to the seed display. I literally grabbed one little pouch of everything they had, and snagged one of those garden weasel dealies. I knew the grounds keeping equipment at the school would probably have whatever else I needed. I remember it took me asking about ten times before the chick running the register even realized I was waiting to pay. She rang me up totally wrong, and only charged me like 15 bucks for everything. I had enough cash, so I paid, took my bag and garden aero-ater thingamabob, and walked out totally unnoticed.

  All that shit went into the backseat and I was off again. When I was about to pull out of the parking lot one of the town ambulances flew by, headed down the road Moore’s was on. I assumed they were headed to deal with the shooting. Another one of our town’s finest was right on the ambulance’s ass as well. That was actually the last time I saw a cop. Weird now to think that it’s been months since I’ve seen a cop. Weird now to think that the dead come alive and feast on the flesh of the living too. Lols and whatn
ot.

  Sooo…. Our local chain grocery store is on the other side of downtown, about 3 miles or so from where I was. I knew it’d be a madhouse, but I really needed food. I drove just under the speed limit mostly because I wanted to scan the surroundings for weirdness. Oddly enough, I saw little. There were a lot of people packing their cars, and I saw a lot of dads and son out in the yard hammering nails into sheets of plywood covering windows. I saw one desperate dude hammering up a door over a window and had to laugh. I wonder still how many of those folks are still holed up in their houses. I haven’t done any tests, but I imagine a sheet of plywood wouldn’t last long against a bunch of the undead hitting it over and over. Granted, they are weaker than a person, but they don’t fucking get tired. The only “break” they take is to gnaw your flesh off your bones. Otherwise, they just keep at it, whatever it is they’re doing.

  Anyway, downtown was pretty tame. The power was still on, and I ran the red light cautiously in the center of town. There was no traffic, and I wanted to get to the store to get food before it was literally gobbled up. The final two miles to the store was more or less uneventful. I got passed on the road twice by jackasses driving giant pickup trucks. One of them flipped me off as he passed me on a solid yellow and I just had to laugh. World is ending and this guy is such a dink that he has give me the finger for not doing 60 in a 30. Some people are just assholes. I hope he got eaten by another asshole. The second guy who passed me was much nicer though. No middle finger.