100 Days of Death (4 page)

I’m a little panicked because I’m wondering if I may be infected. It’s mostly just a sore throat and stuffy nose. I’m not experiencing the “flu-like symptoms” that everyone was warned about. But I am, of course, concerned nonetheless. From all the reports infections have about twelve hours of incubation before they turn someone. I guess I’ll know by dinnertime.

I decided to go about my day as planned otherwise I would drive myself nuts. I went over my back fence into my other neighbor’s house, carefully avoiding the dead Mexican woman. The gate to the driveway was off its hinge. Now I know how the two infected Latinos got into the backyard.

I had to (quietly) lift the gate back on its hinge and reset it. Even then, it was still pretty flimsy. I couldn’t afford to nail a cross beam into place to support it, for fear of attracting Them with the noise. I settled for zip-tying the gate to the support post and bracing the backside of the gate with a 2x4 I found in my garage.

I dragged the dead woman around behind the pool and dug a shallow grave for her in the flower garden. The whole time I felt like crap because of my sore throat.

I went into the neighbor’s house through an unlocked window in the back. The house has been empty and up for sale for the last six months. It was completely vacant and I cleared it with only one incident.

A large rat had taken up residence in the kitchen. It hissed at me as I walked by it, scaring the crap out of me. I would have shot the little bastard if I wasn’t so worried about making noise. It begrudgingly crawled away under the counter.

It was a smart call not firing as only moments later I heard something (things) run up my street and start banging on a house nearby. I cautiously looked out the front window and saw them milling in front of my neighbors’, Dawn and Jon’s house, directly across the street from my house.

I went out the back window, crawled over the fence, and went back in my house. Chloe was frantic because I had left her inside while I was next door. I was a little worried about what would happen to her if I became infected. I pushed the thought out of my mind and went to go catch Gerald Ritchie’s report.

Like clockwork, the broadcast came on at noon. The scene he showed us was shot from on top of a building several blocks away from a parking area and football stadium.

There were thousands of people there in a makeshift tent community out on the playing field. The perimeter of the parking lot was fenced and manned by military personnel.

The camera turned to Gerald.

“We’re coming to you live from the Pasadena Evacuation Center. All morning the center has been turning away refugees. We witnessed several attacks by infected on civilians just outside the gates. The military did nothing to stop them. The situation is getting dire. If you are in the Pasadena area, do not attempt to go to the Pasadena Evacuation Center”. Gerald concluded.

The camera followed Gerald across the rooftop to the other side of the building. The camera zoomed down to the street below where Pasadena Police were confronting an attack from infected people. The police fired dozens of rounds into several dozen infected. Only a few fell.

The rest overran the police in seconds. The camera zoomed back out and turned back to Gerald. He looked visibly shaken by what he had witnessed.

He continued, “Most of Los Angeles County has been overrun with the infected. There are reports of the epidemic worldwide”.

Gerald went on to recap the same stuff that I’d been hearing for weeks. There was not really any new information to be had, but to his credit, Gerald continued to report the news anyway. After forty minutes of recapping the last weeks of events Gerald said that AM 1060 was still on the air.

I hadn’t even thought about turning on the radio. Ever since I got my iPod that was pretty much all I ever listened to. Gerald closed his report and the broadcast went dead. It wasn’t as earth shattering to me as it had been the day before. I guess I’m getting jaded easier these days.

I made lunch and then went through my book shelves looking for two books in particular. After an hour of searching I found them. They were; Paul Miller’s
Boom
, a book on manufacturing homemade explosives, and
How to Make Disposable Silencers
, by Flores. I bought them both years ago in my more paranoid days and hadn’t thought about them until just the other day. I went through Flores’ book and made a list of materials I will need.

It’s 11:30pm and, while I still feel like shit, I’m reasonably certain I’m not infected. I took my temperature so many times today that the battery in my electronic thermometer went dead. I was 98 degrees pretty consistently all day.

I had planned to let Chloe outside to take her chances if I got any worse. I didn’t want her to starve to death inside if I turned, or worse, get eaten by me. I’m pretty sure the lack of sleep and stress are the reasons for my cold.

The Infected are still across the street, wailing and making a ruckus. They are interested in something there. The last thing I did before making this entry was to string some white mini Christmas lights up in my bedroom. Sleeping in the dark is creeping me out. I haven’t had to use a nightlight since I was ten.

DAY 12

I slept terribly last night.

Although the Christmas lights were comforting, the moans and noises made from the Infected across the street were seriously disturbing. I peeked out the front window again and there are more of them than yesterday. I’ve counted fifteen so far. In a rare (and brief) moment of silence, I swore I faintly heard some kind of New Age Hindu music coming from somewhere.

I can’t imagine Dawn and Jon are still home. I haven’t seen any movement from any of my neighbor’s houses in almost two weeks. Whatever those things are so attracted to is a mystery that’s going to have to wait until later for me to look into.

My cold is still persisting but doesn’t seem to be getting any worse. I scrounged through my medicine cabinet and found some decongestants. Hopefully they will help me function a little better. When I looked in the mirror, I noticed that I am losing weight.

By contrast, Chloe is getting fat. Lack of exercise is our problem. I vowed to do something about that myself. As for Chloe, if I take her out for a run we’re both likely to get more exercise than we need if those things find us.

I struggled through my regular regime of stretching, 130 push-ups, two sets of 20 pull-ups, and 130 abdominal crunches. I don’t remember being quite so winded in the past. Of course, there’s the fact that I haven’t exercised in over two weeks, I’m sick as a dog, and I’m not sleeping because I’m in constant fear for my life that I’m going to get eaten. I will stay in shape from here on out, regardless. As for Chloe, I will hopefully find a solution for her soon.

While I was making breakfast, I looked out my kitchen window and spied two rats running across the top of my fence. I remembered the pellet pistol I had found and raced into my bedroom to retrieve it.

By the time I got it, remembered where I had put the Tic Tac box full of pellets, loaded the weapon and went out to confront the disgusting little creatures they were long gone. I hate rats. I put the pistol on my kitchen table where I will have easier access to it next time. I fed Chloe the eggs that had burned while I was out chasing rats.

My plan for today is to make a trip to the Do It Center for supplies to make sound suppressors for most of my weapons.

My list of copper tubing, PVC pipes and end caps, hose clamps, window screen materials, rubber gaskets, and several other items should easily get filled there. There are a few other things I need as well.

I went up on to my roof and carefully looked over the peak and across the street. It looks like a few more of Them have joined the party. I definitely hear music coming from inside Dawn and Jon’s house. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is, or why I never noticed it before.

Whatever’s going on, it has put a serious crimp in my plans. There is no way I am going to be able to open my gate, pull the truck out, and close the gate, let alone get back in my vehicle before those things are all over me.

I have decided to go over my back fence, through the property behind me, and onto the next street over. Hopefully I will be able to find an abandoned vehicle I can borrow. The Do It Center is too far away to walk to.

I have readied myself as best as I can. I am wearing the tactical vest I got when our company was competing in Paintball tournaments last year. It still has a faded orange splotch from where I got sniped in the back. Its pouches are loaded with six, 30-round magazines for my CAR 15, and my Blackhawk Small Pry tool is attached inverted on my back.

I also fastened my 14" bolt cutters on the Molle compatible straps. I attached my Camelbak water pouch and slipped an empty single-strap quick release backpack over it all that should hold most of what I am hoping to find.

I put my Colt 1911 in my Blackhawk tactical leg holster, which also houses two extra magazine pouches. The last items are my Mark 7 gas mask satchel strapped over my other shoulder with a cleaning kit and other odds and ends inside, and my single-point sling attached to my CAR 15.

I strapped on my Ontario RAT 7 camp knife and pocketed my Spyderco Endura just for good measure. I waddled around the house like a duck, trying to tie everything down so it wouldn’t rattle when I move. I must be thirty pounds heavier.

I am wolfing down my lunch as I write this entry. I noticed the pellet pistol on the table and put it in my Mark 7 bag. I poured out a handful of pellets and pocketed them. You never know. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared.

Oddly enough, my biggest worry is Chloe. If something happens to me she will be trapped in the house. I put out a forty pound bag of food that she can tear into if she has to, and she knows how to drink out of the toilets.

I am leaving this journal on the kitchen table so it is easy to find. The numbers listed at the bottom of this page are the combination to my gun safe. If I didn’t make it back and you are reading this, and Chloe is still alive, please take care of her for me. She is a good dog.

However, if you are looking at this and you are one of Them, and you have eaten Chloe, then I hope you f---ing choke on her. More later… I hope.

DAY 13

A lot has happened to me since my excursion to the Do it Center.

Unfortunately, I am a little worse for wear. Not only is my cold still nagging at me, I hyper extended my knee and it has been bothering me ever since.

When I left to go to on my foraging trip yesterday I got to the next street over without incident. I spent over an hour trying to find a car that either had keys or could be hot-wired (a trick I learned on the Internet years ago).

The only viable option seemed to be a motorcycle sitting in a driveway with its keys on the seat. There was no way I was going to ride that and risk one of Them jumping in front of me. The result of that would most likely get me killed.

I finally found a beat-up Ford landscaping truck parked up the block, its equipment already unloaded and sitting on someone’s lawn. The keys were in the ignition. I saw no sign of the gardeners (they were probably at the New Age concert across from my house).

I got in the truck and turned over the ignition. It stuttered once then started up. It desperately needed a new muffler. I didn’t wait for it to warm up, but put it in gear and drove north. It threatened to stall several times at first, but finally got into its groove. When I reached Magnolia Boulevard, I turned right, heading east. The street looked like a war zone.

A big rig had driven right into the gas station on the corner and collapsed the roof. A row of pumps lay on their sides like bowling pins. I was surprised nothing had caught fire or exploded. I guess that only happens in the movies. I went north on Vineland up to Chandler and turned right, heading east again. Chandler is a quiet street that runs parallel to the train tracks and there were less abandoned cars on it.

As I made my way up the block, a group of about a dozen Infected came charging out from behind a dilapidated house after me. If I had stolen an ice cream truck broadcasting music out of it instead of a landscaping truck with a bad muffler it might have been funny, but as it stood, it was terrifying.

In life, they had been Latino gang bangers or something similar. They all ran after my truck like Olympic sprinters, at speeds they probably could have never achieved when they were living. I couldn’t go any faster because I was dodging abandoned cars and other crap strewn across the road.

The fastest of the group was only thirty feet away and closing. In the side-view mirror I could see he was wearing an angled ball cap, a blood-stained wife beater, and oversized baggy jeans pulled down to the crack of his ass.

Suddenly, the waist of his pants slipped down to his knees and stopped him in mid-stride. He was propelled into the air by his own momentum and went crashing to the street face first. He didn’t even put his hands up to protect himself.

In spite of my fear, I busted up laughing and almost hit a parked car because my eyes were on the scene behind me and not on the road. I cleared the last obstacle and accelerated down the street, leaving the rest of Them behind. I continued to chuckle to myself.

As I got closer to Hollywood Way I heard what sounded like engines up ahead. Out of nowhere, a half-dozen motorcycles roared by in front of me on Hollywood Way, headed north. I quickly pulled in behind a car on the side of the road and killed the engine.

Another half-dozen motorcycles drove past, followed by several trucks and vans. I couldn’t see the features of the riders, but they were alive. As they noisily made their way up the block, several Infected appeared from houses around me and raced up the block, following the sounds of the convoy. One of them ran right past my truck, not even noticing me.

I waited for a minute, holding my breath the whole time. I reached down to start the truck up again, and froze. There were still several Infected milling about. I thought about how much time I would have if the truck didn’t start up on the first try. I was an idiot for shutting down the engine. Several of Them were walking back toward me after giving up pursuit of the choppers.