Alone No More (30 page)

I found a mediocre haul of food. Few cans of Chunky soup, some plain soups, more green beans and corn, a couple boxes of rice, a handful of granola bars, and a couple boxes of macaroni and cheese. Decent, but nothing to write home about.

Stuff wise it was actually a pretty good haul. I found another 5 gallon gas tank, already filled with gas, and another really nice chainsaw. I don’t know what I need 2 chainsaws for, but if one breaks, or if someone needs one, I’ve got spare now. I also found an ass ton of paper goods. An 8 pack of paper towel, and a 16 pack of toilet paper, and it was the good stuff, so that was a score. No chapped ass for Adrian. The first house had a decently stocked liquor cabinet, and I took everything out of that in a suitcase. The second house also had a gigantic linen closet filled with all kinds of vitamin supplements. They also had a small indoor workout area that had a treadmill, elliptical machine, and a stationary bike. I’ve got that stuff in the gym already at the school, but again, it’s good to know it’s here if I need it. 

I swung by Gilbert’s place and we split the food right down the middle. He offered to let me keep all the food if I gave him all the liquor, and told him hell no. I’d split it, but frankly I was a little scared he’d drink himself to death with all the brandy I found. He seemed let down, but I told him to grow up, and he laughed. He did take all the damn brandy though. I guess that’s cool.

So I got in at about dark again. Did yet another patrol in the Tundra and called it a night. Here I sit, talking to you Mr. Journal. Me and my buddy.

I’m feeling positive today. Got some decent stuff the last couple days, I’ve got a new neighbor, the weather was mild today, and I saw that red fox.

Oh shit yeah. Almost forgot to mention. Funny too, I’ve got the fucking wildlife book right in front of me here on the table.

So out of curiosity when I got back earlier today I went over to the library and found a wildlife book so I could figure out what kind of fox I saw. It was some kind of red fox. I don’t recall the exact coloration, but from the pictures in the book, it was a red fox. According to said book the mother fox takes care of the young for about 3 weeks until they’re able to regulate their body temperature.

Sounds good right? Nothing too weird so far.

Here’s the mindfuck of the day: Red Foxes have their litters in Spring.

It’s almost Christmas. That mother should not have pups. They are at least 3 months early according to this book. What does that mean? Did she just… randomly find a male in heat the same as her four or five months ahead of schedule? That seems really fucking unlikely. 

And why the sudden appearance of more animals now? Usually I see fewer animals during the winter, but now it seems like I’m seeing more of them? Maybe it’s just that I’m fucking loony and I have no idea what’s going on, and I’m making something out of nothing. I don’t know though. This has weird written all over it. 

It makes some sense to me that the animals would come near me here, because I’ve killed all the zombies, and destroyed a lot of the bodies that were left behind. Maybe they can sense the air is cleaner or safer here. Maybe I’m the pied piper of the apocalypse? Having all the animals follow my 12 gauge pipe as I go to and fro?

This is cool, but at the same time, it doesn’t sit well with me. I feel like I’m missing something, some obvious piece of the puzzle that I should be seeing, but I’m not. That feeling drives me nuts.

Anyway, I guess it’s moot to kill myself about it. If it was meant to be, it was meant to be. I’ll figure it out in good time I’m sure. Or I won’t, and I’ll have frustration for the remainder of my life on this burnt to shit world.

Join me next time Mr. Journal, where our intrepid hero continues to clear houses of the undead, and prepares to set up his safe houses downtown, to hopefully draw new residents into his NerdCave!

BAM! POW!

-Adrian

December 24
^th

My life is filled with ups and downs. On one hand, things basically couldn’t be much worse for me. This is going to sound really stupid. This might be the best Christmas I’ve ever had. And I really mean that. Even though my life has fallen apart, the world has shit the bed, I’m missing the love of my life, and I have a stiff leg due to attack by land shark.

I don’t know. I just feel really good about things today. I feel like things are finally turning the corner. I think it’s because of Gilbert. I’m living not only for myself, but for him as well. I’m invested you know? When I wake up I worry about something other than me. I enjoy seeing him and helping him out. There’s tangible reward when I give him something he needs, or we trade and both of us come out better after. It’s interaction without insanity in a world gone mad.

I love it. I genuinely fucking love it.

I’m missing Cassie kinda hardcore tonight. We always used to do our Christmas on xmas eve rather than xmas day. On Christmas day we’d drive all over creation to our family’s places to exchange gifts with them. We’d alternate which years we had dinner where, and despite all my bitching about spending Christmas driving in the car, I miss it today. I wish I had some gifts to give her.

I’m not crying though. Maybe I’m out of tears, maybe I’ve gone numb, maybe I’m just happy with the way things are going and that’s outweighing my negative emotions. I’m rolling with it though. I feel good and it’s been a long time since I felt good about things. A really long time it seems.

Let me recount the last couple days for you Mr. Journal, and you’ll see why I’m happy tonight. Actually I’m gonna put some Christmas music on first.

Done. I found some Christmas cds in one of the houses I raided awhile back. Didn’t seem important at the time enough to mention in an entry as “hardcore loot” but I took em anyway. I didn’t have any Christmas music on my laptop, and I figured I might as well grab some.

Yesterday I went back to the last two houses on Prospect. These were the two homes furthest from the cul de sac, and closest to the main road of Auburn Lake. Gilbert’s home was only barely visible down and around the slight bend of the loop. I didn’t tell him I was house clearing. My leg felt pretty awesome again yesterday, so I was feeling good to go. One house was on each side of the road, almost directly opposite one another. Both were flat ranches, and one had a huge shed behind it. I checked that one first, and it wound up being the only house I did yesterday.

The house itself was empty of anything dangerous, but there was a dead guy in the tub. He had put a gun in his mouth and sent his brains out the back of his head. The gun itself was a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver, which is pretty fucking nice. It’s far too heavy for casual use I think, but as a backup should I get low, it’ll do quite nicely. Later on during my house searching I found a locked gun box as well. He had the key in his pocket, and after breaking my back getting his keys out, the gun box had two packages of ammo, one full, the other half full or so. After counting it was 70 rounds of ammo, plus the 5 in the revolver. His car keys were on the ring as well, and they matched the big Chevy truck in the driveway. Major score.

The rest of the inside of his house had meh stuff. He had some food, nothing remarkable in quality or quantity. He had a small collection of batteries, which was nice, and he had a good amount of hygiene and cleaning stuff. You could tell from the decorations this was a single man’s home too. Ugly pictures of deer and bears and stupid posters on the walls. No curtains, mismatched furniture, and he didn’t own any sweaters. That’s a dead giveaway. Women always make us get sweaters. WTF is up with that anyway? What’s wrong with a sweatshirt?

So the house was a bust other than the pistol. However, the dude’s giant shed was a goldmine. Whoever this dude was, he had a fetish for woodwork. In various stages of done-ness in the shed were at least a dozen bookcases of really impressive quality. A few were waist height, a few head height. I immediately decided to take them back to the school for the books I’d accumulated so far. I figured at the very least the way I’m trying to hoard information for the future they’ll be handy later on.

More to the point, this dude was a serious motherfucking woodworker, and he had raw stock out the butthole. I actually didn’t bother counting all of it, because there was too much of it. I had to make three trips back to campus with just the wood. I had an entire truck bed filled with 2x4s, then one with just 4x8 sheets of plywood, then another truck bed filled with other finer stuff for finish work. He had all different kinds of wood in all different kinds of raw sizes. That’s a major score for the fortification efforts for this spring.

As you’d imagine, he also had the tools. I had another truck run back to campus just for his tools, and I still left his table saw. The fucking thing was ENORMOUS. Easily dwarfed the woodstove I still want to move back here. However, he had a few smaller ones as well as skilsaws, jigsaws, routers, a sawsall, and screws, nails, hammers, rasps, and even a lathe, but I left that there. It’s too heavy to move.

I dragged all those loads straight to the gym and left it all in the gym lobby. We have a woodshop, but frankly, this shit is waaaay better than the crap we had. Turns out there aren’t many nerds interested in woodshop, hence the craptacular tools. Now if you need a chess board….

This was a substantial find for me yesterday. The really surprising thing about yesterday was the fact that even after moving all that shit outside, and being uber paranoid about getting jumped as I did it, my leg felt pretty good this morning when I got up. I mean sore still, but that’s to be expected. However, I was expecting like… a 7 out of 10 for pain, and only had a strong 5. Four ibuprofen later and I’m golden.

After I got done moving all the shit back I went and split the food I found with Gilbert, and told him about the tools. He was happy for me, and I asked him if he could show me how best to work with them, and he said he’d be delighted. I’m thinking maybe instead of using the second generator I found to get the heat going in another hall, I might use it to power my new woodshop so I can get some fortifications going. I might do that in early January depending on how things go.

I didn’t tell Gilbert about the gun I found, or the dead body. For some reason I kinda feel like the ammo is too important to tell him about. If he thinks I’m low, then he might be more likely to trade me his ammo out of sympathy, or for security reasons. Of course if he thinks I’m low, he might rake me over the coals. I dunno. Maybe that’s a mistake. I guess I can always tell him about it later. Though for some reason I really don’t want to LIE to him. Forget to tell him shit, sure, but a straight up lie seems really bad to me. 

Maybe it’s because deep down inside I don’t want the one relationship I have with the one human being that I know to have lies involved. I think the only way I can be a better person and feel better about all the shit I’ve done wrong is if really try to do things the right way. I don’t know. Wish I knew. No regrets about not revealing the gun though. I think I did the right thing on that.

So today I opened up with a fat ass breakfast. I had some of the cereal I have still in the bag in the box with some of the dry milk I reconstituted. Yay fruity pebbles! Not filling though, so I had a can of pear slices, and then a granola bar. It feels good to be stuffed. I can’t recall many days since June when I felt that way.

I only had the last house to clear, and I decided I’d do that. Kinda crappy thing was snow. When I was headed down you could see it in the sky, and it fell all damn day today. I think we’ve got about 4 inches outside right now, and it looks like it’ll keep going for awhile. Might get a foot if it goes all night. At least I’ll have a white Christmas.

So in the snow I cleared the last house. This one has drama so bear witness Mr. Journal. This ranch was right across the street from the house with the huge woodshed. There was a car driven into the yard that up until today I hadn’t noticed. The compact car was driven into the side of house, and from the looks of it, had rolled back some, and was parked in a pretty normal spot. I noticed the damage to the house when I was doing my exterior check.

A dusting of snow was covering pretty much everything so I didn’t see any footprints or anything. All the house windows were wide open, and the back door was open, with just the screen door there. I wound up entering through that. The house was set up with the kitchen, dining room and living room running into one another, and then a single centered hallway heading down the length of the house. It had vaulted ceilings, and actually would’ve been a damn fine house. 

I cleared the open area of the common rooms, and noticed some serious wreckage as I went. There were knocked over chairs, shit smashed off some shelves, a few pretty substantial dark brown crusty bloodstains on the carpets, and most importantly, the distinct odor of the dead. I stopped at the edge of the hallway and listened, and could hear a faint thumping noise coming from one of the rooms.

I went into panic mode for a few seconds, then got myself calm. Of the four doors off the hallway three were open, and only the one thumping was closed. I checked and cleared the three open rooms with the .45. Yeah Mr. Journal, I should mention that I’m using that for clearing right now. I still am a little nervous about the shotgun recoil with the sore leg, and seeing as how I’ve lost a step, it’s a lot easier to move and shoot with the smaller pistol. Anyways….

Without the shotgun, I couldn’t blast a hole in the door like I have been. So I went outside and checked the windows, and all of them were too damn high to see in. I limped across the street and found the woodworker’s stepladder, and brought it back. Clever me, I set it up outside and used it to get a look in the window for the room with the closed door.

The room was pretty dark, but I could see a female body face down on the floor, scratching and pushing against the bottom of the door. There was another body laying all half upside down next to the bed in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t moving. I took a few seconds as I got the .45 out and realized they were definitely dead. The woman’s right leg was shattered. I could plainly see she had one foot twisted almost all the way the wrong way, and the bone was sticking out of the side. The color of her skin down near the wound was pretty fucking clearly gangrenous. Skin tone of the undead is almost a bluish yellow color. Sort of like someone with jaundice freezing to death. Her leg was filthy green and brown with crusty yellow pus streaks.