Dark Recollections (19 page)

I shot the nerdy kid shortly after I shot her, and I shot her husband not long after that. He was much worse off than she was. He was tripping himself up on his own guts. Apparently they’d been ripped out of him during his failed death struggle with his bat. Sad really. The last one I killed from my sniping position was Amy. I always liked her too. She was just pretty enough that you could imagine falling in love with her. She had a great personality too. Warm, kind, funny.
 

I killed her just like the others. From a distance it wasn’t quite real yet though, but it was real as hell when I started cleaning later.

So for the moment, once I had killed the slow bleed of zombies trickling out of the admissions building, there was no movement anywhere. I hung out for 20 more minutes, and actually fell asleep for a bit. Technically it was more of a “blacked out from exhaustion.” I think I was out for 2 hours, but I’m not sure. I wound up waking up when I heard one of the cars parked in front of admissions take off like a bat out of hell. Some luxury import moving like a bullet. Lol. They clipped the side of a huge SUV and blew out the tire on it before speeding away. I think there were 3 or 4 people in the car when it left. Don’t know for sure.

I was pretty refreshed from getting some actual sleep. Felt like a million bucks. I checked the campus, which was all clear, checked the hallway, also clear, and made my decision to head over to the staff office house to see why all those zombies were banging on the door earlier.

Only a few more neat tales to tell about the clearing out of the campus Mr. Journal. Exciting eh? After that I think I have a few other good stories to tell about my time after that, but still before the first journal entry. Stuff like how I got more food from the grocery store. What a fricking nightmare. Plus how I got my .30-06 when I returned to Moore’s. I’m just about ready to tell that story.

Moral of today’s story Mr. Journal: Never underestimate the staggering drawing power of Lady Gaga on zombies.

Until we meet again Senior Journal.

-Adrian

November 10
^th

I am very tired today quite literally from sucking hose. Siphoning gas is a horrible process that tastes terrible, is surprisingly exhausting, and has left me with little to no interest in writing tonight. However, I feel guilty for not writing anything at all, so I wrote this. Thus Mr. Journal, I give you:

10 things I miss the most right now

(in no particular order)

1.) I miss meat. Like, a legitimately well grilled steak, or a pork chop. I haven’t had fresh meat since… I don’t know when. And you know what? I miss bread too. I need to figure out how to bake bread.

2.) I miss sports. I used to love watching basketball, football, and baseball on tv. I miss that a lot. I miss competition! Being alone fucking sucks.

3.) I miss my bed. We had a great frigging bed at home. I have half a mind to go get the damn thing and get it up here. The student bed I’m using is new, but it’s shitty for my back.

4.) I miss my friends. A lot. I miss joking around, and getting picked on, and picking on them.. man. I hope they’re all okay.

5.) I miss Cassie. Oddly enough though, I do not miss sex. I’m so tired all the time I wouldn’t even have the energy to get my dick wet even if I wanted to.
 

6.) I miss internet pornography. (reasons withheld to preserve the illusion that I am a decent human being)

7.) I miss Chinese food. General’s chicken, lo mein, spring rolls, crab rangoons. Jesus I would straight up fist a horde of zombies for some decent Chinese takeout.

8.) I miss shopping. I really miss going out for the day on a weekend with Cassie and just going to the stores we liked to see if a new movie was out, or a new CD, or if we needed a new shirt, or a comic book or something. I miss getting out.

9.) I miss being able to wear shorts and pants without a belt. I don’t go anywhere anymore without a sword, and my Sig on a belt. I miss sweatpants and gym shorts. I know that may sound stupid, but at any moment in time, I need to be able to get up, and get the fuck out. Dress appropriately.

10.) I miss the kids here at the school. They were always a source of endless entertainment. So young and naïve, but still open to the world. As we get older we seem to forget about all the wonder the world holds.
 

Well…. What wonder the world used to have.

-Adrian

November 11
^th

Good morning. Mr. Journal, it is Veteran’s Day today. I noticed it just a few minutes ago when I looked at the calendar after I got out of the shower. I think from now on I’m going to be hyper aware of holidays because of their previous significance.
 

You know, I’m also making a pretty big assumption that you’re an American Mr. Journal. I mean, it’s completely possible that you’re from somewhere else. Shit, you might even be an alien. Martian or Venusian. Or from one of the moons of Jupiter. How cool would that be? You could also be an illegal alien, which doesn’t really bother me anymore. There aren’t a lot of job opportunities out there to be stolen, so no skin off my back.

I digress. I wanted to put a short entry in this morning to reflect on the idea that these holidays are “still happening.” I mean, if we have a holiday, and there’s no one celebrating it, does the holiday mean anything? Wrap your head around the meaning behind that.
 

Thinking about the fact that it’s Veteran’s Day here in America got me thinking even more about the situation the world is in. Here in America, and in most of the “western” world, and by “western” I guess I mean any country with healthcare, infrastructure, safety etc. We are much better suited to dealing with the aftermath of this, then say a place like Somalia, or Nigeria, or the Congo, or Iraq. Imagine how fucked they are now? I mean shit was bad when I was in Iraq, and there were no goddamn zombies then. It’s probably better now though, now that I think about it. Less IED’s and VBIED’s. Zombies are an entirely different breed of insurgent.

Holy train of thought Batman! Thinking about Iraq got me back on the thought of it being Veteran’s Day. Can you imagine how fucked up it would be to be a current member of the military when all this went down? I mean a deployed member of the military? Fuck, we have tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting. That’s not even taking into account all the servicemen and women who are stationed in all our overseas bases.

Germany, Japan, Italy, Turkey, Guam, Uzbekistan, Cuba, England, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the list goes on and on. I don’t know if that’s evidence of imperialism or whatever, but my point here today is that all the people who volunteered to serve their nation are now stuck wherever it is they were last deployed to.

They’re cut off from their families, at risk of death, lonely all the time, frequently stressed out, armed 24/7, and in constant danger. You know Mr. Journal, that’s exactly how it was before this all started. That’s the life of a person who volunteers to serve.

I enlisted when I was a kid because my dad served, and my grandfather served. It made me feel like I could finally measure up to my dad if I could do what he did. I’m glad I served. It was hellish at times, thought I was going to die a few times, but in the end it’s something I can be proud of. I can vote and know that I am invested in my country, and no one can take away the fact that I sacrificed my personal time, my professional time, and put my life on the line to give my fellow citizens a chance at a better life.

Serving in the military is an underappreciated sacrifice Mr. Journal. People don’t understand how much it tears families apart, and how much loneliness and separation it puts on the table. You lose years of your life to the military and to politics, not to mention the sad rate of pay many of them deal with.

I’m ranting now. I guess I am single handedly attempting to celebrate Veteran’s Day all by myself.
 
So let me try and end this on a more positive note:

Celebrate those people who give their time, energy, and possibly their lives to sustain your freedoms and safety. Regardless of the political motivations of whatever administration is in charge of your country at any given time, we need to make sure the people who are ready to protect us at all times are rewarded with our gratitude. Sometimes the only way to ensure peace is to be ready to inflict harm on those who would take it from you.

One of the best quotes I’ve ever read goes something like this;

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us."

Fellow Veterans, American and otherwise, friend and foe, living and dead, I salute you.
 

Busy day today, lots to do.

-Adrian

November 12
^th

Greetings and such. It’s been a hellishly exhausting string of days here Mr. Journal. Getting sick of doing everything alone. The campus itself doesn’t require a ton of maintenance, but the day to day things that I have to do for myself takes up a ridiculous amount of time. I still do two patrols a day which take half an hour or more each, plus prepping three meals a day for myself, as well as moving all the fuel around for the gas generator downstairs.
 

Every time I fire my weapons they get cleaned, and even if I don’t fire them, I clean them once a week anyway. I do my own laundry every couple of days here. Luckily the school had artesian wells that run on electric pumps that work as long as my generator is going. So as long as I have the generator going, I have running water, and if I wait until morning when I’m about to turn off the generator, the hot water tank has heated up, and I get a hot shower. I am so profoundly thankful for regular hot showers.

That’s not all the work either Mr. Journal. I clean obsessively almost every day. I can’t risk vermin or the sickness they bring, and even though Otis is the fucking MAN when it comes to killing mice, I’m scared they might bring something in that’ll give me dysentery or something like that. I have no doctors to go to, and very little medicine to take, so maintaining my health is a big deal.

I also force myself to read a lot. There’s just so much I don’t know how to do still. If my car breaks down… it’s broken. I have zero fucking mechanical skills. I am learning more about growing my own food, but when I do start growing it, I’ll have to tend it, harvest it, and more than likely, I’ll have to figure out how to can it too.
 

The real frigging irony is I just described the life of a house wife during the great western expansion of the 1800’s. Too funny. I am a frontier mom now. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Enough bitching. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me go on and on about how tough my life is anyway. So the last I left it with you I was planning another trip down to the gas station down the street where I went before. I think that was on the 8
^th
or so. I spent the 9
^th
and 10
^th
running around campus with my 2 gallon gas cans siphoning fuel from the cars I know I’ll never use. For example, sub compacts. Their fuel efficiency doesn’t mean shit really because they can’t hold much for gear or salvage or stuff like that, and I can’t run over anything in them. I’ll share my story about running over zombies some other day. I assure you it’s amusing, and will turn you away from sub compacts in the post-apocalypse market. I highly suggest upgrading to something with decent ground clearance.

So to make sure I wasn’t siphoning any crap out from the car gas tanks, I filtered the gas through some rags into my boy Blue. (that’s the big ass blue barrel I found) Gotta be careful with fumes though, as I really don’t want to set myself on fire. Not only are there no doctors around, but no one has picked up 911 in forever. So I’ve been extra cautious.

So after emptying enough cars to fill Blue to about three quarters full I decided that was enough, and I drained out the Tundra I stole (read: salvaged) from that cape on my last trip. It was solid, basically brand new, and had a huge tank I could fill again. (Not to mention some serious ground clearance) I managed to siphon it down to about one eighth of a tank, which meant I’d get something like 26 gallons or so. I also emptied the 5 gas cans I have, so I can theoretically get 25 gallons or so in the truck, plus 13 gallons in the cans. Quite a bit. I’m thinking that’ll fill blue right up to the top. I wish I’d found another blue barrel so I could stockpile more up here, but that’s probably reaching considering I still have hot water. Don’t want to be too greedy right?

So by the end of the day on the 10
^th
my siphoning was done. After I made the early morning entry on the 11
^th
, I couldn’t figure out a reason why I should put it off, and gathered my crap to go down. I figured the same shit I brought with me before would be good, so I grabbed the gauge, the sword, and the Sig as usual. This time I was a little more intelligent and grabbed my first aid kit too. See? I can learn!

The weather has been kind of fucked up. Feels like winter is coming a little early. We had a straight up wintry typhoon blow through here the other day. Sleet, snow, freezing rain, you name it and it fell from the sky. Dropped down to 20F the last few nights too, which has formed up some pretty good ice on the smooth surfaces that the sun doesn’t hit during the day. It’s made my morning patrols a little treacherous. Almost ate shit several times on the sidewalk.

Anyway before I left I bundled myself up a little heavier than I did the time prior. One thing I forgot to grab in my rush on “that day” was a heavier jacket for cold weather. Heaviest thing I brought from home that day was a hoodie. Not exactly survival gear. Lucky for me, Dr. Potter’s winter jacket was in his staff closet, and once I gave it a good wash it was close enough in size to fit me. I’m not anywhere near as fat as he was, but I am a pretty big guy. Shoulders wise it has always been a bitch to find shirts that aren’t stretched on me funny.
 
My sleeves are always too short. I was fortunate Dr. Potter had the coat in his closet. Sucked that it was covered in goop from the shootout in the classroom, but beggars can’t be choosers.