by GJ Zukow
noodles before it gets dark. Can’t risk a fire at night. Sleeping on the roof, even in this one man tent, means no flashlight to write by either. Been awhile since I had something hot, even if it is just simple noodles and instant coffee.
24
The roof doesn’t drain properly, even after I tried to clear the drainage spouts and grates. Grass, weeds and even a small sapling have taken root on these flat roofs. I had to go inside the docks and find some pallets to put under my tent. I couldn’t just haul them up the ladder, the hatchway was too small for the pallets. Finally had to go around and scavenge up some rope to haul them up here.
I almost became zombie chow while rummaging around the stores for an adequate length of rope. Damn "sleeper" woke up and tried to eat me for breakfast while I was distracted. Fucking things…It’s hard to tell, with the rot and decay of the dead, which corpses are actually dead and which corpses are still undead. The cannibalistic ghoul was that of a boy no more than ten years old or so. It really sucks to see someone so young die so violently, but by now I was used to it. Besides, there were many much younger. There were many much younger than him that I had buried this very axe in their rotted faces, deep into what was left of their grey matter. For the future I’m just going to have to preemptively start crushing the craniums of any corpse I come across.
What had caught my attention was a portable battery operated CD player. The packaging hadn’t been touched since all hell broke loose and I almost didn’t even notice them. I was actually looking at some cable wire and thinking how I might be able to tie enough of them together to reach the ground from the roof. As soon as I saw the CD player I was like a child in a candy store, oblivious to the fiend lying only a few feet behind me. I was having a hell of a time, even with my bowie knife, trying to open the stupid plastic packaging.
The foul ghoul had risen to its knees and reached out with a cold, fetid, clawed hand and grasped my thigh like a vice. It grabbed a hold of me with an iron grip and dug its filthy nails in deep. I let out a horrified shout (I probably sounded like a scared little girl) and instinctively tried to jump away. It was that jump that caused the vile thing to miss biting a chunk out of my leg. It was also that jump that ripped open my jeans and allowed my flesh to be harshly dug into by its nasty nails.
I could see the undead things reaction to the smell and sight of my warm, fresh blood. The evil, dead, beast that once was an innocent child, seemed to double the speed of its actions. I did what I could. I drove the Bowie knife into its skull damn near to the hilt. Thick black blood flowed from its wound and it staggered from the blow. Normally a maiming like that would have put the thing down permanently, but every now and then I run across a zed that is more resilient than the others of its damnable kind. Even with eight inches of steel buried in its brain, it didn’t loosen its grip on my leg one iota. I had to chop the damned things hand off with my axe and then pry open its fingers. I was nauseated as I felt old, infirm, rotted flesh squish onto my hands as I struggled to open its clawed fingers. The strength of these things is amazing. Never in life would a ten year old boy have such strength. The parasites couldn’t feel the pain of their hosts and worked the dead’s muscles like the strings of a marionette. If more than one of them grabs you it’s all over.
The crawling corpse shook like it was having an epileptic seizure, then it stabilized and came at me again.
“Fuck this bastard.” I thought and brought my axe down squarely on the rotted things neck.
No medieval executioner could have done a better job. The things head separated cleanly from its shoulders and rolled away.
The body collapsed but the lifeless head still moved. Black orbs for eyes, covered with opaque milky cataracts, still rolled in their rancid sockets, keeping its gaze locked on me. Yellowed and rotting teeth surrounded by blackened gums still snapped violently, hoping to tear open my flesh. A horrible mucus coated, blackened tongue still writhed, waiting to taste its prey.
I picked up the head by the handle of my Bowie, as it was still lodged firmly through its right temple, and firmly ground my boot heel into what was left of his face as I pulled the blade out. After a few hard stomps, which resulted in some satisfying crunching and a goodly spray of black blood and brain matter, it finally ceased its futile grasp on undeath. Even though the zombie was a child, any morality or pity any normal person would have felt was misplaced here. Guilt and sorrow is out of place when dealing with the undead. I felt bad about the situation, but not about killing a mindless automation. Even a toddler in diapers, once it joins the ranks of the undead, is a deadly foe.
Afterwards, I found a crap load of batteries, they’re old and the charge on them isn’t what it used to be, but they work. I haven’t listened to any sort of music for a long time. Literally. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. I’ve got a shopping bag full of old CD’s, all grabbed from the bargain rack.
The wound in my thigh, while painful, isn’t deep and I poured enough hydrogen peroxide into it to kill anything.
I can see a three story building in the distance, a couple of blocks away, that’s closer to the jail and its waiting horde. It should provide a much better vantage point to observe the jail. Tomorrow I’m going to try to make my way towards it and check it out. I hate the idea of having to clear a building by myself, but if I can I will.
I thought I saw a light from inside the jail house last night but I can’t be sure. It was just a fleeting moment that I witnessed it. I could be mistaken but I still have to find out, if there’s other survivors I have to know.
I really need to find some binoculars. I think I can just barely make out the ruins of the Tool and Die shop I escaped from when I started this journal. If I can get over there I can figure out where the safe-house that Jannie and I holed up in until the mass of undead overcame our defenses was. I have to find out if she survived. It’s becoming a fucking obsession with me. Maybe, hopefully, the three story building will give me a better view.
The days are getting shorter and I’m going to enjoy my CD player tonight. Tomorrow I head out.
25
I made my recon to the big building in the distance. It didn’t turn out to be what I thought it was though. In fact the whole thing was an exercise in futility. The only good thing that I got out of it was a pair of decent binoculars. I write this now tired as hell. I had to spend the night underneath a dilapidated mobile home in some trailer park. Needless to say I didn’t sleep for shit. I was finally able to make my way back here to the Winn-Dixie. I left the tent set up here in case I ever came back this way, never thought it would be so soon though.
The closer I got to the building that was my destination, the denser the zeds got. I’m not going to give a blow by blow account of how many of the monsters I killed, but by the time I reached the building my arms were tired from swinging the axe.
The whole thing of it was that the building I was trying to get to was closer to the Marion County Jail than I thought it was. It’s hard to judge the distance from this roof top with all the trees and power lines blocking my view.
The building turned out to be some sort of huge factory where they built modular homes. The undead got so thick as I approached it that I knew more had spotted me than I could kill. There was an APC and an Abrams tank parked in front of the building. If there weren’t so damn many of the fucks I would have loved to try and loot them, at least see if I could grab the fifty cal. off of one of them. Thank God the main doors were left unlocked. I ducked in and locked the doors behind me. A number of the lethargic, shambling corpses were following me and I had no faith in the strength of the glass double doors to hold them back for long. I found myself in a foyer with a second set of double doors that led into an office area. I locked them too, meaning until they broke through them I may have possibly locked myself inside with no other way out. Nothing else I could do though. I was counting on such a big building having some other exit, mercifully I was right.
There were two putrid cadavers that I had
to put down before I was able to explore the office area fully. One of the undead was in battle dress and I grabbed his sidearm and what ammo he had on him after I split open his skull. I ended up needing it. The other was some unfortunate secretary or something that could barely even walk, she was hampered by having her nasty panties around her ankles. Whether the soldiers had raped her before they put a shotgun shell through her chest or her flesh had rotted away to the point where the elastic band on her once pink flowered undies couldn’t hold them up any longer, I don’t know, and I had no intention of lifting her skirt. I was searching for a stairwell to get up to the second floor when I opened a door I thought would lead to it.
As soon as I cracked open the door rotting arms grasped it and violently flung it wide open. I had no recourse but to pull out my shotgun and start loudly blowing their heads into little chunks. The first ones I killed were soldiers. There wasn't much ammo on them but one of the soldiers did have a nice set of binoculars. They came at me so packed together I was able to kill two at a time with most of my shots. More came through and I started to sweat about how many were in there. I backed away as I fired and
