Journals of the Damned

by GJ Zukow

in intensity for two days, only dying down for an hour or so as the eye of the hurricane passed over us. By the time the storm passed two days after that, the whole of Orlando looked like a war zone.

  The plastic bags we had used to cover the upstairs window proved no match for the winds no matter how much tape we used. The remaining whole pane of glass in the window didn't last long, being shattered to pieces during the hail. Through the broken window we watched first as trash and small bits of scrap flew through the air. As the storm escalated in intensity larger and larger pieces of rubble hurtled through the air. At first anything not nailed down flew in the wind. By the end of the second day, roofs, sheds and anything that wasn't solidly built cart wheeled and tumbled into things, creating more debris.

  Something big smashed into the front of the firehouse on the second day, denting and pushing one of the bay doors out of shape. When whatever it was hit the building, it also cracked the wall and busted open the fence. We watched as pieces of lumber and shingles piled up along the back fence. Allan and I shared a little laugh whenever we witnessed one of the undead trying to struggle helplessly in the wind as it was roughly blown into the rear yard. The undead were beaten and impaled, stuck by the force of the wind against the back fence to be buried under ever more debris. It was dangerous just looking out the window by that time, nails and bits of junk were in the air, along with rain that hit so hard it actually stung. We retreated from the kitchen, avoiding the worst of the winds by staying in the bunkroom.

  When the storm abruptly stopped, the air pressure changed. It was silent except for distant car and burglar alarms going off all over Orlando. The change was quick and we both came to the conclusion that we were then in the calm eye of the hurricane. We decided to go out and eliminate as many zeds as we could while they were still reeling from the storm. That and it gave us a chance to survey the building and surrounding neighborhood for damage. What I saw was bad, and it got worse. The bay door and wall were so damaged that if any of the undead had wanted to get through they easily could with very little work. There were undead all over the place, many with broken limbs that were incapable of doing anything but dragging themselves after us. Many seemed to have come through in relatively decent shape and we drove our axes into their skulls first. Half the buildings were without roofs and none had any unbroken windows. When the storm started back up again we packed up the Chevy Suburban with all our stuff. We both clearly knew that this place was no longer secure and we would have to leave as soon as the storm let up.

  When the storm resumed it started back up where it left off. Sometime in the night of that third day the roof of the firehouse came off with a horrendous noise. It started with the corner over the damaged bay lifting up and banging around. The battered roll up bay door came off its mounting on the more badly damaged side and repeatedly bashed into the tow truck until it finally gave way and completely came off the wall. The wind now attacked the roof not only from the outside but also from the inside as the wind pressurized the bay and added an upward force. We witnessed, wide eyed, as the roof kind of curled up and in an instant it was gone. It hurtled into the back fence and knocked most of it down. The back fence was already leaning from the weight of the accumulated wreckage and the force of the wind, the roof hitting it finished it. The wind and rain quickly made the entire second floor unbearable so we were forced to take shelter in the offices below. Rain ran down the walls and pooled an inch deep. Not much later the electricity went out.

  My original plan was to try to get up north where the winter's freeze would put the zombies into a frozen hibernation. Despite the fact that there might not be any electricity or heat. I decided that the chance to move about unthreatened by being eaten alive by the hungering undead for a few months added a better chance to survive than having to scrounge for firewood.

  It wasn't difficult getting past the battered undead that got in our way. Since we weren't worried about drawing the zeds to us with gunfire we unloaded on them. They could shamble their ugly asses towards the sound as much as they wanted because by the time they arrived we would be long gone.

  The level of destruction visited on the Orlando area was astounding. No building we saw had been unaffected. The rain had stopped and the un-natural heat had returned. Before the Madness struck, people had been worried about the Greenhouse effect. The problem of too much pollution and factories and power plants spitting out greenhouse gases has been basically eliminated. Now and for the foreseeable future, the weather would be in a state of flux. How the environment was going to work this out I can only wait and see.

  The freeway was alternately empty and impassable. In some stretches there wasn't a car in sight, in others car upon car was lined or piled up in colossal accident scenes. There weren't many of the undead on the highway and those that were wandering around were easy to kill now that we could use our guns.

  We were northbound on I-4 just past Sanford airport when we ran into a military roadblock. There were no soldiers, or anyone else for that matter, maintaining the roadblocks anymore. There were concrete dividers set across all lanes of traffic with a few National Guard trucks and a tank lined up behind them. A vast line of cars had been stopped here and all of them were ridden with bullet holes and were nothing more than burned out piles of junk. There was one lane on either side without a slab of concrete blocking it. The problem was that the northbound lane had a tank parked in front of it. Neither of us had any idea how we could move it out of the way. Our only option was to try to go back and find a break in the guard-rails that stopped us from driving onto the medium separating the north and south bound lanes.

  We had to go back a couple of miles until we found an access point, even then we had to cautiously drive through and around the muddier spots of the unpaved medium, not wanting to get stuck in the muck.

  Once we were back on pavement we quickly made our way back to the southbound roadblock. To our amazement as we approached we saw a beat up station wagon with a flat slowly trying to squeeze its way past the checkpoint towards us. The driver saw us as soon as we saw him and he stepped on the gas, scraping the side of his car on the confining cement divider to get through before we could get there. The station wagon was going through the gap at an awkward angle and the front passenger tires' rim was sending sparks on the pavement, making any fine control impossible.

  When we stopped twenty yards in front of the opening in the roadblock the driver was stuck. He was frantically trying to go forward, then backwards, causing smoke to start billowing from his rear tires. Allan and I got out, fully armed and ready to shoot the driver. I didn't want to kill the driver, I wanted the idiot to get his car out of there. He had to get stuck in the worst place possible. Allan stayed back and covered me, keeping an aim on the driver as I approached.

  It was tense and I was nervous as hell, I had no idea how the driver was going to react. I know he was scared, there were two fully automatic weapons pointed at him, he turned out to be more scared of us than we were of him. Meekly he came out of the disabled vehicle after I told him to get out. When the driver complied I wondered to myself how this man was still able to force himself to go on. His right arm was bandaged, his left arm was bandaged and in a sling. The bandages were dirty and stained with blood and puss. There were deep, dark circles around his eyes and his face was gaunt, like he hadn't eaten well for weeks. We checked him for signs of the Scarlet, he was clean of the parasitic disease. He was sick though, the wounds on his arms were deeply infected.

  The driver of the dilapidated vehicle's name was Don. He was a middle aged man with balding grey hair who was on the verge of collapse. His demeanor wasn't threatening, in fact he pleaded and begged us for help. Even if he had wanted to harm us he couldn't. His only weapon was a forty-five with two rounds left and I had confiscated it.

  Allan put the haggard man in the back seat of the Suburban and gave him some water and food as I tried to move the stuck station wagon. As soon as I got into the car I could smell the guy'
s infection. I never smelled gangrene before but I had a hunch that's what I was smelling. Try as I might, the vehicle was wedged tight and I couldn't get it to budge an inch. I even tried to push the station wagon out of the way with the Suburban but I ended up doing nothing more than crumpling the fender and busting one of the headlights.

  I am a firm believer in providence and fate. I sat in the Suburban listening to what Don had to say while I was deciding what to do. It was an interesting coincidence that just as I had tried to go north, someone who had been there, someone who was trying to escape from there, ended up blocking my path. The tow truck would have helped greatly with the stuck vehicle but the tow truck had been battered by the firehouse's bay door and ended up being buried under half the cracked wall that finally came down when the roof was blown off. Too many coincidences for me to not believe that the Gods wanted me to take a different path.

  Don used to be married. When he and his wife split up and ended the marriage, his wife took custody of their only child. His wife had moved to Florida to be closer to her side of the family while he stayed