Alone No More

by Philbrook, Chris

  Oh well, all good things come to an end I suppose. After my trip back to Moore’s on July 4th I got pretty motherfucking paranoid. Realizing a pipsqueak teenager had blown the head off of my cop friend really put the fear of humanity into me. I holed up here in Hall E and moved back and forth between here and the cafeteria like I was on patrol in Iraq. Everywhere I was guns up, looking for trouble. I fully expected either a horde of undead, or a 10th grade class of Uzi wielding assholes to jump me at every corner. Mercifully I found no hordes of undead, or submachine gun wielding teenagers.

  I started to clean the campus up after July 4th. The heat was terrible that month and the smell in the air became entirely unbearable. I would occasionally just dry heave when I got a good whiff of it, and I couldn’t take much of that before I got up the motivation to deal with it. I found some good overalls in the maintenance barn, plus some work gloves and rubber gloves. I got the four wheeler and the little trailer all set up, and I started to move the corpses to the far end of campus, near the staff housing area. Shit what an awful process that was.

  There were quite a few undead roaming the campus though after that. I think the sound of the four wheeler drew them out. I found a few extra kid zombies in the far rear of campus near the staff housing sometime in mid to late July. My gut tells me they were hiding there and starved. Unlike in zombie movies, most of the zombies appear pretty much as they appear in life, as opposed to these emaciated stick figures you see in movies nowadays. Why would zombies get skinny? It’s not like they need to eat to maintain weight, they’re fucking dead bodies. If anything, you’d imagine they’d be fat as hell after eating all the rest of us. Most of the undead I’d seen or killed looked like normal living people, just dead. And real fucking smelly.

  These kids I saw were emaciated though. I think they hid from me when I cleared staff housing and wound up starving to death, or OD’ing on something. I found like 6 or 8 of them, and they got handled with relative ease. I found the archery shit about… August 3rd or so, and started to put range time in. I got to be a pretty good shot with the crappy bows, and I vowed then to use them first if possible. That reminds me, as soon as I can I really need to get back to the range, even in this cold. I haven’t fired the bow in fucking forever, and with ammo as low as it is, every bullet is as precious as can be. I can get 5 or 6 shots out of every arrow if I take good care of them. I can’t say that I am that comfortable bringing the bow out as a tactical weapon yet, but I desperately need to get back to practicing with it once I’m able. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.

  I lost a lot of weight back then. I should definitely mention that. The school food supplies were really substantial, but I was so frigging scared of running out of food I ate like a bird until mid September. I think I put myself on a 3 can a day diet once I went through or lost all the fresh foods. Like I said, I was out of eggs the first week of July, and I had to throw out so much produce it makes me angry to this day. Heads of lettuce by the box went. I wish I’d started growing shit in July. I’d have had the most bitching compost heap to jumpstart it. So many missed opportunities to make life easier for myself. Live and learn. Learn or die is more like it.

  Most of August was spent laying low. It was brutally humid and rainy that month which really did nothing for my demeanor. The other side effect of the rain was causing all the blood and gore to run off the roads and sidewalks. I was so fucking afraid of the run off getting into my water supply I hoarded water and drank nothing but my stored supply the entire month. I still to this day don’t know if the… disease or whatever it is that’s causing this is transmittable. As I’ve said, I don’t think it’s a virus or a disease. It has got to be something worse. At the very least I wasn’t willing to risk drinking water that had human filth in it. One of the fastest ways to die in a warzone is getting disease from dead bodies and shit. Cholera, dysentery, diphtheria, you name it.

  And Mr. Journal, dead bodies poop. I know, you wouldn’t think that would be the case, but all dead bodies poo. Once we die the muscles that control our bowels and sphincter call it a day, and if they have poo in the pipes, it all falls out. Campus was very unpleasant during the clean up. That also partially explains why the undead smell so fucking terrible. In addition to being rotting bodies, they’ve shat themselves.

  Oh what a world.

  Um so what happened during July and August that’s worth writing about for historical integrity? Well, I stopped hearing planes fly over sometime around June 30th. I didn’t see any parents after July 4th or so. Last living people I saw actually for some time. I can’t recall exactly, but after killing the kid downtown, I don’t think I saw another living person until I went down to the gas station in October. And even that sucked ass. Crazy ass wife pulling a gun on me.

  I wonder what happened to her and the little kid? Mr. Journal if you get a lead, gimme a holler. Inquiring minds want to know.

  And that’s it. Random undead, asshole parents, cleaning campus…. Oh yeah, as I cleaned campus I tossed all the kid’s rooms for usable stuff. A mother load of marginally useful shit. Lots of cologne and perfume, some snack foods, clothing, cd’s, ipods, dead cell phones… Lots of junk. Not all junk, just lots of it.

  I’ve made my decision, tomorrow I’ll hit the range and get some archery time in. Day after that, if the leg is feeling good, I’ll head down to the gas station and refill my cans and try and get big blue back up to the top. I really need to make sure my fuel supplies are good, as the roads are sure to turn to shit soon, (if they haven’t already) and I don’t want to get stuck a mile down the road with a stiff leg and little to no ammunition.

  Mr. Journal, I bid you adieu!

  -Adrian

  December 18th

  It has been a day of conspicuous occurrences Mr. Journal. I am pretty sure I am not alone anymore. I’ll get to that in a moment.

  As I said I was going to, I spent the majority of the day outside. Holy shit it’s cold out. I had forgotten what it was like outside being cocooned up in Hall E for over a week now. Shit I can barely type this, my hands are so stiff, and I’ve been inside for hours now.

  Early on, sometime around 10 in the morning I went out to the archery range. There’s only a few inches of snow on the ground, so it wasn’t too bad. My leg is getting better and better, and with a good dressing on it I can move around pretty good. I can’t run, but I can waddle at a good magazine. I spent about an hour at the range, missing targets with amazing regularity. It’s funny how fast you can forget how to do things. I wonder how long it’d take me to send a text message today?

  I took three trips out to the range, heading back inside to warm myself. I didn’t see any undead moving around on campus, so that was a big relief. Towards the end of my afternoon my arrogance got the best of me, and I saddled up on the four wheeler. It hurt like a bitch to bend my leg to get it on the peg, and I couldn’t shift and brake worth a shit, but I did it nonetheless. I used the four wheeler to make my rounds of campus. I haven’t done a real patrol outside since before I had my nuts nearly bitten off, and despite getting my nose frozen solid, it felt good to check out the whole joint.

  When I was finishing my trip, I saw a wild rabbit hopping across the snow. It was a fat bastard, easily the size of Otis. He had white and grey downy fur, and came to a stop when I rounded the bend coming up from the athletics field. He and exchanged a friendly moment of quiet, and he continued his journey across the snow. That’s only the third animal I’ve seen since I got up here. The deer, Leviathan the evil dog, and now the rabbit. Weird.

  I had a late lunch, refilled the gas tank on the generator, did some basic maintenance around the Hall and then finally made the brilliant decision that I was okay to make a trip to the gas station. I can already sense the disdain Mr. Journal. Don’t get all uppity on me, I’ve got cabin fever.

  I’m fine, really. Just stiff.

  I had the gas cans pretty much already gathered here at the Hall, and I knew it would be a cakewalk. The houses are all clear
down there, and all I needed to do is pull up, fill the tanks and get out. If there were zombies, I’d either run over them with the Tundra, or back off and plink them in the grapefruit at distance with the .22. Easy peasy.

  I was right. Nothing happened down at the station. I filled up all my gas cans as fast as I could crank the damn pump. I had to steal a folding chair out of the garage to sit down though, because it was hurting my leg something fierce to stand there bent over. Taking a knee wasn’t an option either. Hurts too much to bend the leg. Feels like someone twisting corkscrews into the meat after I stand on it too long. I had to take half a vicodin about an hour ago to take the edge off of the pain.

  Anyway I got all my gas cans filled and loaded into the truck bed, and got out before anything happened. I can’t even describe to you the naked feeling I have without the Sig on my hip. Don’t get me wrong, the .45 is great and all, but I’m really low on ammo, and frankly, I just miss the old gun. Familiarity is a big deal with weapons, and I’m scared I’ll draw the .45 and forget to thumb the safety off, and that one moment of oops will get me killed. Small mistakes lately have had pretty dramatic consequences.

  Luckily, I made it back with no issues. Big Blue is filled to the brim with spare still left in the cans. I figure I’m good to go for another week or so at least before I need to figure another trip out. However, I think I need to make a new trip, with a potentially horrifying destination.

  I heard gunshots today. Very close gunshots. I think they were pistol shots, something like a 9mm, or maybe a .38. I can’t be certain exactly where the shots came from, but I’ve got a good idea. I was unloading the gas cans into big Blue here at the Hall just as it was getting dark when I heard the shooting. Pretty sure it was one gun, and there were maybe 6 or 7 shots. One shot, then a pause for a second, then a couple more. That pattern happened again maybe a minute later. I fucking froze SOLID. I wasn’t scared, I think I was just shocked as balls that someone was that near to me, and they were shooting at something. Remember the stages of gunshots Mr. Journal? This was a class A shot. Just gunshots in the distance.

  I would put down cash money (now entirely worthless, mind you) that those shots came from the Prospect Circle area. That’s maybe a mile away, and really more like half that. I haven’t checked any of the houses out there yet, and I’m wondering if someone else is looting them right now, while I’m laid up here. Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to go check it out. I’m gonna gear up for World War 3 and swing down and do some recon on the cul de sac. If I see someone taking shit from those houses I’m gonna….

  Shit. What am I gonna do? Kill them? Scare them off? That crap isn’t really mine. I don’t really have any claim to it. It still belongs to the people who used to live there I guess. Well whatever happens, I plan to find out what’s up. If I have to shoot some motherfuckers, then I will. I hope I don’t, but what I want, and what happens is usually pretty fucking different nowadays.

  I’ll throw an entry up tomorrow night when I get back.

  -Adrian

  The Chief

  One thought ran through Chief Moore’s head as he drove down the highway at nearly 90 miles an hour on June 23rd, 2010;

  “The world had come undone.”

  The phrase repeated over and over in his head as cars pulled over for his cruiser’s lights and siren. He blasted past them like they were standing still. At least some people still had sense left he thought. The high speed traffic headed in the opposite direction was bumper to bumper, and they were flying along nearly at the speed he was going. They were probably headed to the interstate to get north to escape whatever the fuck was happening. It was just a matter of time before there was a catastrophic accident on the road. All it takes is one person to drift into the other lane, or someone to brake sharply and there would be a wreck. A big one.

  He didn’t even know what to think as he looked over his shoulder at his little daughter sitting in the backseat next to her grandmother, his mother. He forced a smile through his worry in the rear view mirror at his little girl. He could see the anxiety on her little face. Tiny Sarah forced her own little smile out to match his. God his little girl looked just like her mother. It was uncanny.

  His mom was barely keeping it together sitting next to her. Just fifteen minutes ago when he scooped them up from their day out at the Butterfly Museum he’d pulled her aside and told her there had been an incident at his father’s gun store. Her husband, his dad, had been bitten by a child infected with some strange disease, and he’d died. He didn’t tell her the child had been dead when he bit her husband, and he didn’t tell her that his dad had been shot in the head by Phil, his father’s best friend. It was the only way to stop them. To stop the dead from returning to life.

  Once again the line came back to him, deep inside his head, “The world had come undone.”

  The dead weren’t staying dead, the living was going insane with panic and no matter how Chief Moore tried to rationalize it, he came back to the same thing. The world had come undone. It was as simple as that. No other words made any sense when he thought about it.

  His mother had a tissue in her hand and steadily raised it over and over to dab away the tears welling in her eyes. Her husband had always been at risk of getting killed. Before her son was Chief his father was the Chief, and getting hurt as a cop was part and parcel with the job. When he retired from the force and opened the gun store she’d thought all that danger had finally walked out of their life. Apparently not. It was somewhat fortunate that she she’d built such a thick skin over the years, all the late nights waiting for that phone call had given her some resiliency. She knew it’d set back in someday soon, maybe tomorrow she thought.

  The Chief had called his wife about an hour prior and told her what was going on. Just like with his mother he didn’t tell her the whole story. Chief Brian Moore went into work early every day. It was his personal oath that if you weren’t early, you couldn’t be on time. His morning started off shitty and had only gotten worse. He said good morning to his two dispatchers and gave his day shift guys a standard issue pep talk before they headed out. His email inbox was four inches deep with an assortment of federal and state notifications plus the fax machine had emptied its paper tray printing out incoming alerts. He refilled the fax, got his morning coffee, and sat down to go through everything that had come in.

  They all cycled through a steady escalation of events. The first and oldest messages warned of strange behavior overseas. As he sat at his desk, flipping from one warning to the next, the warnings got steadily worse, and closer to home. Violence in Africa overnight turned into sickness by morning. Violence in Europe and Middle East in the morning turned into sickness by midday. Violence in midday in Asia and South America turned into sickness by afternoon. The same pattern had started here in the states at early morning.

  The briefings that started to roll in at about 7am sounded like jokes. Brian actually looked at his calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. There had been dozens of fatal car accidents, work accidents, and fairly mundane crimes all over the country resulting in mob violence shortly thereafter. Keeping with the pattern, there were outbreaks of fatal fevers in the same cities shortly afterwards. At noon the CDC issued a broadcast saying the violence seemed to be linked to the sickness, but without any samples to test, they were unsure. They were strictly speculating to government and state agencies at that point.

  It escalated dramatically at 10am or so. The FBI and ATF started sending out much more serious messages and the State Police started to issue local alerts as well. They were setting up road blocks at the borders to screen for illness, and almost immediately they started to have trouble at them. The State Health Department started to send out warnings about people who had been bitten, or appearing ill. Any sickness at all should be treated as deadly serious, and the ill should be brought for medical attention immediately. The CDC and Department of Homeland Security were apparently in full panic mode. The news had absolutely lit
up with footage of violence and video of hospitals overflowing with the sick, and the people who thought they were sick. The violent people looked wrong on the television. Brian couldn’t think of it any other way. They walked funny, moved stilted and stiff, and attacked anything that moved with a primeval, animal instinct. It was almost like rabies. Well, if rabies killed you and brought you back to life as a lunatic cannibal he thought.

  From 10am to 2pm earlier that day Chief Moore had his five patrolmen on heavy duty traffic enforcement. Brian instructed them to pull over every single vehicle exceeding the speed limit, or doing anything even remotely sketchy on the roads. He felt that if he could prevent some of the car accidents or arguments he might just be able to prevent any of the bizarre violence gripping the rest of the world. Plus, the more people his officers saw that day, the more likely they’d be to see someone acting funny, or showing signs of being sick.

  At 2pm his personal cell phone rang. His father was calling, and he needed help at his gun shop. Apparently the crowd was getting a little too large for his liking, and he wanted to know if Brian could spare an officer to park in the lot and help maintain order. Without a second thought he radioed for his largest officer, Danny McGreevy to head over. Danny was a solid six foot three or so, and easily put up 2 and half bills. His bald head and dark sunglasses was usually enough to enforce the law without a gun or a badge. He sent Danny over to the shop immediately.