Werewolves/Zombies
Page 7
March 4, 2012
There are 15 other survivors here, so the band and I make 20. Some of them are from far, a few hundred miles—there are three cars and a motorcycle outside—but most came from one of the nearby towns, which are a dozen or more miles away from here. Apparently earlier on folks would venture to the towns to see what could be salvaged. There are great stores here of water, gasoline, clothes, tools, some lumber, bedding, etc. Nobody really bothers searching towns any more. “There’s nothing there.”
It feels good to be around people again.
March 5, 2012
Doing my part around “The Farm.” Cooking and cleaning. Laundry! Clothes hung on lines out of the windows during the day.
Went on a patrol today around the near woods. On the way back we saw two zombies trying to break open a woodshed door. One of them just clawing at it, but one of them had a log and was hitting the door. This is the first sign I’ve seen of adaptation and problem solving, and it’s a bad sign. They were after a stray cat that had crawled under the door. Do they eat animals? Are they starving? We beheaded and burned them.
March 6, 2012
Killed two zombies who had come up to the house this afternoon. Deeper back in the woods we saw about two dozen zombies who just seemed to be watching? At any rate they only came toward us when we drew close. It took a big group of us but we managed to behead and burn the whole group of them before they could encroach the property.
Tried the radio today to see what else we can pick up here. There are several other stations broadcasting, one from Regina, one from Churchill, Manitoba. Pockets of humanity are reestablishing themselves.
March 7, 2012
Katherine showed up at the Farm today. You don’t really expect to see people again, but she’d been the one who had told me about this place. She’s driving a white delivery van with horrible smears and crumples all along the sides, front and back. She says that the towns she’s seen are either empty or “full,” meaning full of the undead. She stayed for dinner (potatoes, canned green beans). She’s been here before, and they seem to accept that she’ll be leaving again without discussion. When I ask her why she doesn’t stay, she says, “there are too many of you here.”
March 8, 2012
Todd Smith fell suddenly ill, symptoms identical to the early days of the infection. He hasn’t been bitten, and no more exposure to zombies than any of us on patrols, no direct contact. We moved him to the cottage and have posted watch.
March 9, 2012
Todd’s dead. Beheaded, burned. It happened fairly quickly. At first he seemed to know what was happening, then he seemed less aware, almost feral, simply reacting to whatever was happening in his system—the seizing up, the intense pain. People are still succumbing to the compound buildup in their systems. I asked Dale if this had happened here before and he said, simply, “Yeah.” We threw what was left of Todd in the pit.
March 10, 2012
No zombies sighted today on patrols or watch.
I took a sample of Todd Smith’s blood before we incinerated the body. Not much I’m able to do with it in these conditions. I did manage to get a reaction. I pricked the end of my finger and collected a sample of my own blood. I bandaged, wrapped, and regloved my hand. Then combined the sample of my blood with Todd's, The combination fizzed like peroxide on a wound, then clumped into a curdled knot. Tried it again, same reaction. So at the state of Todd’s transformation the necrotic tissues have an intense and seemingly caustic reaction to other human tissue. Additional human blood (mine again) added to the combination infected and uninfected sample didn’t cause the same reaction, no fizzing, but it did curdle the new blood so that it resembles the other dark gore on the glass in front of me. So what do we know? That zombie tissue contact can have a corrupting influence on living human tissue, and that the reaction is active I want to say “aggressive,” even at the level I’m dealing with here, just a bit of blood. And when did we know that? We knew that about two months ago during the first wave of corruption of the living by the dead.
March 12, 2012
No sign of zombies on patrols or watch. That’s 3 days now. Disposed of the rest of Todd Smith’s sample, no real point to tinkering without proper equipment. Someone out there must be working on figuring out what’s happening. It’s nice here when not under siege. Been playing some backgammon. Tossing a tennis ball to Marty, the Farm’s German shepherd.
My nerves are still raw. If you get hit with a stick every day, you come to expect the stick. Everyone, apparently, has nightmares (I do), and because of the watches we sleep in shifts, which means while asleep there’s always something to mishear and trigger the fight-or-flight reflex, or you can just be scared to death by the sounds of someone else waking up from a nightmare. My recurring dream has me being chased by my ex-girlfriend. Undead. I trip over something, fall, and find myself pinned to the ground. She's kneeling beside me with my hand raised to her mouth. Before I can tear it away, she’s chomped down, chewing . . .
March 13, 2012
Fourth day with no sighting of zombies on patrols or watch, a record.
March 15, 2012
6 days, no zombies. Talk of a party tonight. Why not? I guess. I think we’re stir crazy. Not really realizing how the constant threat of the zombies shapes everything, and no zombies for days! Some rum-fueled speculation as to what it might mean. Conservative view is it means nothing, we have to assume it’s the same as ever. Others feel certain we’ve turned some kind of corner. We didn’t really understand what happened before so why would we understand what's happened now? At any rate, a celebration, at least blow off a little steam. The guys are going to play tonight. Singing, dancing. Guards posted per usual, of course.
March 16, 2012
The Farm’s gone. Hundreds of them. We were completely overrun. Somebody dropped a gasoline cocktail—we’d been throwing them from the windows—caught the main house on fire and sent us out among them. Dale was bitten and went down, torn apart. Joe locked himself in one of the guard posts but they swarmed it and it collapsed. Amy, Ian, Carl. As far as I know, Marty and I are the only survivors. We’re sleeping in the band’s van about 2 hours north of the Farm, as far as I could drive before a massive adrenaline crash and I shook myself to sleep, or something like sleep. I killed— I just kept killing them but there were so many. How had they massed together out here in such numbers? I shot them, I set them on fire, I took off their heads. Still they kept coming.
Another safe house burned to the ground. This time I managed to save the dog.
March 19, 2012
Drove for days before I remembered the van’s radio and found the AM signal for Churchill. I don’t know what the point is anymore except that, this is going to sound stupid, but I feel a responsibility for Marty. To Marty. There’s this deep, human-canine connection that's developed since we started domesticating them. I’m still human, and Marty’s affirming that for me.
I’m also waaaay out here with my own thoughts, and ready to risk making for human civilization again. I’m not sure what else is left to do.
March 25, 2012
Churchill is a small town that’s been re-imagined for a siege. There’s something almost medieval about it. They’ve consolidated the townsfolk to a grouping of buildings facing Hudson Bay and surrounded these with an 8-foot-tall wall made from dismantled portions of the structures outside the perimeter. The rule is shoot or torch anything that moves, though I can’t imagine much does. Everything is, literally, frozen up here. Since it’s understood that zombies can’t drive vans, Marty and I were admitted, after a thorough inspection, and some interest in the dried foodstuffs and our gasoline. Despite the radio signal, I’m the first vehicle to have made it up here.
Larry Wilder, who grew up in the town:
* * *
“We haven’t had any of the trouble everyone else has had down there yet, but we’re not taking any chances whatsoever. Nothing gets in here. We’re self-sufficient people and always h
ave been.”
* * *
Nobody here has seen an actual zombie. It seems impossible—have I made it far enough north to have outrun, or to outlive this thing?
March 26, 2012
Marty and I have a room at a cottage on the bay that we’re sharing with 87-year-old Nora Riley, another local who has lived here her entire life. Basically, they moved us into her space, and she’s not thrilled about it. I have not really been forthcoming with any details of the life and death down south, and she’s been preemptive. “You’re from where there are all those ‘dead people.’ You seen any of em? Nothing happening up here. I just don’t believe it. Government lies to us all the time.” The fence around the town? “Larry Wilder’s a kook. Gets people to do things they don’t want to do. You’re here, aren’t you?” It’s a little edgy around Nora, Marty picks up on it, hasn’t really relaxed in fact since we got here. He does not like Larry. Anyway, we’ll need to get along here.
March 27, 2012
The nightmares keep coming.
Went out to the lake to sketch but this is what I'm "seeing."
March 28, 2012
It’s early morning. Coffee and time for thinking. There is, weirdly, very little to report. Nora and I don’t talk about zombies, the topic is off the table. I’m just living in her house through some kind of lottery we’ve both accepted, and moving on, then. To be in such a bizarre (for me) setting, the ice, the snow, a strange house, and also to have the person I spend the most time with in this new setting refuse to accept my own reality of the last few months is . . . hard to reconcile. Marty is barking. It could be Larry Wilder—he checks on everyone in town almost daily. Marty still barks at him.
Later, I will tr
Publisher’s Note
Dr. Twombly’s journal was discovered by Canadian rescue crews who arrived at the town of Churchill on July 18, 2013.
They found no survivors.
Copyright © 2009 by becker&mayer!
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data on file.
ISBN 978-0-8118-7745-9
ZOMBIES is produced by becker&mayer!, Bellevue, WA.
www.beckermayer.com
Design: Paul Barrett
Editorial: Amy Wideman
Production Coordination: Shirley Woo
ZOMBIES was illustrated by Chris Lane
and written by Don Roff.
The producer would also like to thank Steve Mockus
for his assistance in preparing this publication.
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