Journals of the Damned (Book 1)

by GJ Zukow

  The false floor in the closet has a rung ladder set in the side of a concrete wall that leads down to a room just large enough to fully open the kind of a hatch that you would expect to find onboard a naval ship. Beneath the hatch there is a set of stairs that are almost straight up and down that go down into the bunker itself. I had to take breaks from just dragging up the grimy, blood and gunk covered clothes and accumulated trash he had down there. Even though there is a small washer and dryer set down there, amazingly, it looks like he just wore whatever clothes he had until they almost rotted off of him (kind of like what I’ve been doing, but he had no excuse to not wash). A lot of shit down there is just battered and broken, including every dish and glass. That damned soul of a carrier must have vented his rage on whatever was at hand when he had nobody to torment.

  At the end of the last couple of days I had my own private bon fire getting rid of all that refuse. I threw junk that I knew wouldn't burn in there too, hoping to at least purify with fire any contaminate left on it.

  Dug the burn pit well away from the house, not that zeds are attracted to fire, but because the extended drought had caused a lot of the vegetation to just dry up. I didn’t want to accidentally start a forest fire that would engulf my new home.

  On one of my breaks from my custodial duties I decided to try and see if the “Red” had indeed stashed a vehicle somewhere around here. He did. He had an expensive but reliable Land Rover with four wheel drive stashed away. He dug a trench with one sloping side (to drive the Rover in and out), covered with plywood, which was itself covered with topsoil. It was overgrown with weeds and plants and I didn’t notice anything special about it until I was standing right on top of it. When I did notice something unusual it was because the ground seemed to give way slightly when I walked on it and it had a bit of a bounce to it. I jumped up and down a couple of times and I heard a distinct crack of splintering wood. I kicked the dirt around to see what was buried and there it was. After a year or so the plywood had started to rot. Getting the layer of sand and soil off of it enough to drag the plywood aside took longer than I expected.

  Some dry-gas and a fresh charge to the battery were all I needed to get the Rover running. Took it out for a spin to the neighbors. The house where Kimmy used to live. Raided it for clothes mostly but also grabbed a good bed and some clean, fresh sheets. Nothing about the house had changed. The dead woman in the bedroom was still, thankfully, dead. One day when I go back I should bury her. There are other houses scattered here and there and I should go scope them out too. I’ve got plenty on my to do list as it is, so that will have to wait.

  What was notable though while I was there was the distant sound of gunfire that I could hear coming from the direction of town. I swear, but I’m not sure that I heard someone yelling through a bullhorn. For a while the gunfire and yelling (I couldn’t make out what was being said) seemed to be coming closer to me. The ruckus appeared to taper into silence at the cross road where I almost became zombie chow. I don’t have any clue as to what’s happening back in town, but I am worried. I’m going to have to stay low for a couple of more days here, at least another two weeks, before I’ve healed up. Then I’ll go and check out the town.

  It’s raining like hell now. I’m not going anywhere until it stops. Knowing central Florida though, it could be weeks or even a month before that happens.

  No matter how much I clean down here it still stinks. I know I’ll eventually get used to it but damn. I’m going to have to go to town just to load up on air freshener and shit.

  As I sit here writing this, there is a large monitor that flashes the feeds from the security camera. The light is fading rapidly and on one of the outside feeds I thought I saw movement.

  A lone zed is wandering outside. Can barely make him out between the night and the rain. One isn’t a problem. Tomorrow I can evict his undead soul from the planet. Tonight I can’t do anything about it except stay quiet and catch some shut eye.

  On a side note, I have been taking Zoloft for my depression, and while it does seem to help (a little), there is no getting past the fact that if I weren’t depressed by my fucked up life I would be insane. I’m also using sleeping pills to help me fall asleep. The sleeping pills don’t stop my nightmares but without them I can’t seem to shut my mind off enough to doze off.

  17

  When I awoke this morning, the first thing I did was to check the three outside monitors. It was still raining slightly, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the number of walking, decaying corpses that seemed to be slowly moving to the west. I was expecting to have to go and silently crush an undead skull or two, even a handful of them with my sledge hammer. A small number of them are manageable, but there are zeds all over.

  There's a dog pack following the swarm. The grainy black and white monitors don't have any sound, but I don't need to hear the spectacle taking place outside. In the early morning, before the swarm became too thick, I spotted a number of mangy, flea ridden curs weaving in and around the slow moving shamblers. I watched them take one down and quickly devour and rip it to pieces. At times they seemed to actually play with their food, rushing up on one and knocking them down from behind. The dreadful, animated undead have a hard time struggling back up from any prone position and the dogs, being much faster, would grab one by the arm or leg and shake the limb around like it was some rotted chew toy. They tugged and shook until the limb came apart or was pulled from its socket completely. The pack seemed to actually be enjoying themselves, making a great game of it.

  As the day progressed the swarm became thicker and thicker. Once the numbers of zombies became too great the dogs ran off and I haven't seen them since. There are so many of them out there now, all slowly moving towards the gulf coast. Each zed seems to be following the zed in front and around them. I have no idea why they act like this, blindly following each other in groups like this.

  The clumsy bastards keep stumbling and falling into the lake. As the swarm of bastards became a densely packed herd, more and more of them come over the rise and roll down the steep slope to disappear into the now murky water.

  There was something that was disturbing me about the zeds themselves though. I figured out what was different about them. Before the rain the corpses were starting to look more like the mummies you see in museums, all desiccated and leathery. Since it started raining though, the fuckers seemed to have been revived a bit. The rain moistened and softened the dead flesh. Just a week ago the vast majority of them struggled just to move around it seemed, but now they appear to move around much easier and faster. Damn it all to hell. It’s as if the parasites were on the brink of dieing from thirst, if that was possible. Even if the dead flesh of its host didn’t need water any longer, I’m sure the parasites themselves need it to survive.

  The zeds are in various states of decomposition and undress, with most wearing nothing but tatters of clothing. Some walked, some crawled and some dragged themselves around with one clawing arm attached to a partial torso. The demons have no regard for any others of its kind, crushing and trampling any who get in their way.

  I’m safe here, underground in this modern bomb shelter. I can wait for a long time until the herd passes.

  18

  Been two days since my last entry. The water pump overheated and shut off. What water it had been giving was tainted and dark. It gave the odor of death and I know it was contaminated. I hope it shut down because the filtration system got clogged. I pray it was due to something I can easily fix once the herd moves on. I have some bottled water so I’m not in any immediate danger of going thirsty.

  I crept upstairs to the house to check on the old fashioned hand pump in the kitchen. It may have been that the hand pump was a back up to the automated water supply but I found a flaw in the system. It seems that the water supply for the hand pump and the modern electrically driven pump got their water from the same source. That source had to be from the lake.

  The curtains, drawn t
ight across the triple pane windows, showed the shadows of the wandering undead outside. I pumped the lever to the hand pump as quietly as I could, praying that the hungry dead just a foot away didn’t hear me. I don’t think they heard my efforts, thankfully, but the pump was dry.

  When I returned to the bunker the generator quit. The electricity switched off and went into battery backup mode. It won’t last for long. I kept the lights on only as long as it took me to find out what happened. The water wheel, which acts as the electricity generator, has a main panel in the utility room here. Something is jamming it. I shut it down knowing that the only way to get it running again is to go outside and manually clear the obstruction. It has got to be a zed or detached body part that has clogged it.

  The situation outside is unbelievable. The once clear, spring fed, lake is now an overflowing mass of writhing, grasping corpses. As body upon undead body goes into the lake they make a horrible mash of those that are beneath them. All are grasping, struggling, and clawing their way out of the steep sided depression. The water churns and quickly turned black. It’s now a thick viscous soup of rancid flesh. They climb over and on top of each other in their struggle to escape while more and more are added to this scene. All the time more fall in and they rip each other to pieces like they're in some hellish meat-grinder.

  The small dock, even though it was sturdily built, has been destroyed. Grasping and groping for purchase they pulled and wore down the wooden posts at the end of the dock first. The dock collapsed and the monsters seethed over each other using the docks wreckage to make their way out of the depression. The dock is completely gone now. Pieces of stray planks resurface every now and then, breaking the surface momentarily, only to be pulled back down into the writhing mass. Flotsam on a sea of death.

  If they keep coming I fear wondering just how deep the zeds will pack themselves into this depression. The roof of the house is actually lower than the rim and if the zeds keep coming, the house itself could possibly disappear under decaying flesh.

  The lake is a nightmare scene taken straight from hell. The quality of the air itself now is horrible. The air, and it’s not just the air in the bunker but all the air inside and out, smells of rot and decay and disease. A foul miasma of filth and death. The odor is so strong that I retch unless I keep a towel soaked with cologne around my face.

  No way can I leave now. I’m trapped here. I can deal with the lack of electricity but eventually water will become a problem. Sanitation is going to be a problem. Toilet don’t flush, of course, but I can’t just open up a window to empty out a make-shift chamber pot. I sure as hell can’t go do my business outside either. This situation is going to get rather bad rather soon.

  The herd does seem to be slowly moving on. They move a mile or two an hour on average. There must be a hundred thousand of them in this herd. Easily. Florida had a population of over eighteen million before the Scarlet. It seems like most of them are coming to my house to visit.

  Nothing I can do but wait it out.

  19

  It's taken about a week for the herd to move on. During the thickest core of the undead mass I could hear them even through these thick walls. Their constant stumbling and bumping into each other, forcing fetid, rancid air past the remnants of vocal cords causes them to emit a truly terrifying sound (especially when its multiplied by the tens of thousands). The relentless sound of legions of rotted and foul footsteps endlessly trampling over everything in their path, including their slower comrades. The disturbing sounds of a multitude of grasping claws randomly pounding and grasping the building. Added to this is the horrible splashing and thrashing of the things struggling to escape the now rancid pit that was the lake.

  I’ve caught myself talking to myself and even having small arguments with myself. Whenever I became aware of my verbal outbursts it was with horror. I never realize when it starts, but when I catch myself doing it I fearfully wonder if any of the ghouls outside heard me. Then I huddle in the darkest corner of the bunker and fret that they know I’m in here. I’ve picked up the bad habit of chewing my nails. I don’t know when that began but my nails are gnawed down to the point they start to bleed. I seem to slip into this verbalization of my thoughts without realizing it. I think I’m going slightly mad. The boredom is a palpable thing now. The few books and magazines down here are useless, having been written, torn, scribbled over and covered with unknown stains. I haven’t even thought of peeking outside through the curtains to watch the legion of the undead march by.

  Trapped here, with the smell of the death and decomposing flesh and the addition of the smell of my own unwashed body, is almost unbearable. Additionally, I’ve added to this is the odor of my own excrement. I started using the freezer that had once held the remains of Kimmy as my chamber pot. The freezer closes still, but it doesn’t stop the smell from escaping. The reek is overpowering and I’m constantly nauseous.

  I have to get the fuck out of here. I’ve got my trusty backpack and a sturdy duffle bag all packed up and ready to go. I haven’t heard anything from outside for a full day now, except the cawing of birds. No water or electricity isn’t the reason I need to flee so badly. It’s the stench. The stench is laden with the taint of disease. The lake, even though the natural spring that feeds it is clean and clear, won’t be safe for swimming, fishing or drinking for a long time. I know it’s a festering hole of infection. I think I remember reading how people used to poison wells and water supplies with dead bodies. This is beyond that, way beyond that.

  I’m going to go up and peek outside soon. I wanted to put down my thoughts in the journal beforehand because it does a lot for my grasp on reality and helps me order my chaotic mind. I need to steady myself and not screw up and let some passing dead fucker see me and call down the horde on me.

  20

  The sight that greeted my eyes needs to be written down. I thought I would never see a vision worse than the hellish lake of churning bodies but I was wrong. My nightmares are going to be worse now, of that I’m positive.

  The multitude of the damned was gone. I peered out the front window long and hard for any of the undead. Only a few scattered crawlers were left, all busily heading westward, towards the coast. It’s a complete mystery to me why the hell they group up in such a huge mass like this and start, seemingly aimlessly, heading off in one direction or another.

  I grabbed my .38 and my shotgun and gathered up some weapons for quiet killing. The sledge hammer and a sharp hand axe was all I needed though.

  The house’s driveway was the only gentle slope that led away from the natural depression that formed the boundaries of the lake. It was here that those of the zeds that escaped the lake continued their unholy pilgrimage. It was here that I dispatched the first of the handful of crawlers.

  A nasty partial torso being dragged along by rotted and broken hands. The skull had most of its flesh gone and stringy strands of filthy long blonde hair hung from it in small patches. It had to be a mercy for it to be finally sent to rest when I crushed its head with my sledge. There was no way to tell if it had once been a man or woman when it was alive. The tissue on its chest had been worn away and only broken ribs showed.

  I had been more worried about dispatching these isolated monsters than my actual surroundings though. Overlooking the lake of the damned I killed those few that seemed to have a chance of escaping, easily dispatching them and kicking their rank bodies back into that abyss of zombie stew. The waterline had risen with the sheer mass of the zeds that had tumbled into it, sending the foul dark water with its chunks of unrecognizable body pieces to just below the back doorway. A sickly oil and filth cover the surface and haphazard limbs form an unnatural dam that partially blocks off the stream.

  When I was sure that there were no more stragglers is when I finally focused on the landscape around me.

  In all of human history, with the multitude of its forsaken battlefields, could any site match the utter dreadfulness. Body parts, tattered pieces of clothing, t
rampled ground and felled trees. Every living thing had been trampled into the mud. Not one blade of grass nor bush or shrub survived. Not one sapling stands. Large trees and palmettos, having stood for decades in the sandy soil, were knocked down. Those trees that still stand have been stripped of their lower limbs. Everywhere the soil has been mashed into a muddy soup from the rain and the tens of thousands of uncaring, unfeeling feet. Mixed into this carnage were pieces, chunks and sometimes whole limbs. One arm and hand sticks up from the mud, clenching and writhing as the body it is attached to tries to lift itself out of the mire after having been driven deep into the earth during the undead’s slow stampede. In every direction, as far as I could see was a nightmare.

  If the devil were real, he would love this place. He would turn this into his summer home. I can see him reclining on a fold up chair. Admiring the beauty of a sunset as it slowly descends over the anguish of the lake. Sipping a tall, cold glass of despair from the ruins of the dock. Smiling at the earth covered with mangled body parts. Breathing deeply the stench of rotting human meat.

  Oh God, I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know why I wrote that. I have got to get away from here. This place is cursed. If I go to hell after I die, I fear I will be chained to this place.