Dark Recollections (5 page)

Mom lives on School street downtown, weirdly enough, next to the school. She was getting up there, about 70, and she had just moved into senior housing a few months earlier. She hated it, but she couldn’t afford much else. Cass and I both felt her moving in with us was not an option. I left the parking lot of the grocery store driving slowly. This time though I had the Sig in my lap as I drove. Things were much more serious in my mind now. I’d just seen a zombie, just shot a zombie, and I now knew for sure it was happening right here, right now.

School street was maybe a mile away. The short drive to mom’s place put things in perspective for me. I didn’t see a single zombie on the way there, but that makes total sense. Unless you were bitten, or died of some other cause, there would be no reason to see one. Mind you, I was still operating partially thinking the CDC was right about how transmission was only by bite. I hadn’t quite fully made the connection that parking lot zombie had never been bit yet. Anyway, I realized there was probably a bit of a buffer of time still until people started to die. As long as I could avoid human on human violence, I should be pretty good.

Keeping suit with my new criminal side I ran the light again, but this time turned onto School street heading toward mom’s. There were way more people out and about now. Lots of folks still boarding up their places, and even more loading up their cars and vans with shit to get out of town. I imagine a lot of people were going to head north to get to even more rural areas. No idea how that panned out. Judging by my success, as long as they weren’t total idiots, a lot of them should be just fine.

I saw a few more fender benders before I got to mom’s place, but nothing that would generate a dead body, so no worries there. The senior housing place mom lives in is a huge two floor building. Imagine a hospital style setting only less sterile, and mildly more homey-feeling. I pulled my sedan into the parking lot, right near the entrance closest to my mom’s apartment, and got out. The scene there was also pretty hectic. From the looks of things people were picking up their elderly family members and getting the fuck out of Dodge. Lots of old folks getting wheeled out in wheelchairs at top speed to waiting cars. I hopped out, locked the car, and headed towards the door. I left the Mossberg behind in favor of the Sig. The barrel of the shotgun was probably going to be longer than needed, and would likely be a hindrance if shit hit the fan.

Speaking of that, just as I got to the big glass doors, someone burst out, nearly smashing me in the face. I remember stumbling backwards a few steps when I saw blood on them. It was a middle aged man, somewhere around 45 maybe. I recall his hair was receding pretty badly, and he had an epic comb over, and really thick eyeglasses. His palms were slick with blood, and his sleeves were streaked with red all the way up the elbows. His neck was also covered in what looked like a spray of bright red blood too. He just blew right by me in a total panic. I couldn’t see any wounds or bites, so I didn’t think to stop and ask him what was up. After watching him sprint across the parking lot to his waiting car, I pulled open the doors and headed in, drawing the Sig.

There were bloody footprints all along the carpet in the lobby. The bloody tracks headed through the nurse-station area, originating down the hallway my mom’s apartment was. I instantly got a really bad feeling. I started to move really slow, handgun up, taking wide berth of doors. The intersection where the bloody footprints turned was a four-way, and you could see huge smears of blood on the walls and on the handrail that ran everywhere in the place. I swept around the corner and saw a cluster of people huddled in the middle of the corridor about 20 feet away.

I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of “hey there.” But loud, like, attention grabbing. The people stood up slowly, and turned. At first I just thought they were old, and moving in an arthritic fashion, but once I got a clear look at them turned around I knew they were dead. Two old ladies and an old man, sallow and sunken faced, covered in blood and gore. The lady closest to me had a massive wound in her neck that was ragged and semi-circular, like a bite. The three of them had been eating someone on the floor in the hallway and my shout had interrupted them.

The trio of old zombies started to shuffle towards me. If it wasn’t so fucking gross it might’ve been kinda funny. Older people zombies or injured people zombies seem to reanimate in as good a condition as they were in life, this is something I’ve learned. They stumbled, bumped into the walls and moved at a crawl towards me, dripping blood all the way. I took a quick check behind myself to make sure there wasn’t any behind me, and once I noticed it was all clear, I dealt with the three Methuselah. I am a pretty good shot, thankfully, and put one in the face or forehead of all three of them. Start to finish the entire encounter maybe lasted six seconds. At the time it felt like forever, but adrenaline has this neat effect of slowing time down for you. Thank you for that big person upstairs.

I checked behind me again, and it was all clear. From the other side of the building I could hear the screams of people fleeing from the gunshots (or perhaps other elderly zombies) so I knew I had a little time. Of course this changed my estimates on my time buffer. These older folks had obviously died of natural causes and reanimated, so I knew at that point there was a much higher chance of there being more walking dead. I slowly approached the three bodies, and gave them a good kick. I can remember wishing I had bought sturdy work boots. Those are harder to bite through.

The body in the hallway was my mom. I could’ve built it up all dramatic like, but honestly I don’t have the writing skill. I think I knew, because when I got close enough to the body I wasn’t surprised at all that it was her. Her gray bushy hair, the silly track pants she always wears, and the ugly housecoat/nightgown thing she thinks is still stylish. I might’ve seen it in the fray maybe, I don’t know. I just remember not being surprised or moved really. She was in pretty bad shape though. Her clothes were ripped apart pretty good and her chest had been chewed at. The burgundy rug in the corridor was stained a terrible black brown around her from all the blood she’d lost. Her breast had been ripped or bitten off, leaving a gaping wound. She did have a peaceful look on her face, but I was pretty creeped out by her open eyes. I kneeled down, and slowly closed her eyelids.

Stupid move, majorly big-time dumb. She snapped at me as I pulled my hand away, and was about a pubic hair’s width from taking a finger right the fuck off. I can distinctly remember the clicking noise her teeth made when they clamped at the open air. I kicked away, launching my back right into the hall wall. That fucking hurt badly. She rolled over and started crawling towards me, pulling at my jeans to get closer. I fired a half dozen times from the hip as fast as I could pull the trigger, and at least two or three shots hit her in the face. God I hate what that does to the face. Just fucking nasty. I got hit in the side of the neck by a few of the ejected shell casings, which gave me a nice little burn or two.

She then slumped into my lap, and proceeded to ruin my pants that I had kinda hoped to salvage at a later date. At this point in the end of the world I still didn’t know if I would be able to wash gore out with normal laundry detergent.
 
I got her off me, calmed myself down thought about what, if anything she could have in her house that might be useful to me, and made my next plan. One amusing thing that occurred to me at that moment was the fact dear old mom had false teeth. Would she have been able to infect me with falsies? It was the clicking noise that made me think about it. Food for thought I guess.

And that’s the story of how I shot my mom. Think less of me yet?

-Adrian

October 11
^th

The weather seems to have taken a turn for the mild. It’s gone up about 20 degrees on average over the last week, which is pretty awesome. Those 35 degree nights are going to be bad enough in January, let alone all frigging October and November. Of course there’s nothing I can do about it, one way or the other. Can’t change the weather. I can however change how I stay warm. This weekend I actually did some work on what exactly I needed to do to stay warm.

I think I mentioned earlier on that I had electricity. Which I do. There was a good sized generator in the basement of Hall E (where I am) that I got running. That makes it sound like I’m a mechanical miracle worker though, which I’m not. It just needed a refill of gasoline, and some basic cleaning. With the fuel I have in the tanks of all the vehicles parked around campus I figure I have enough gasoline for electricity for maybe 6 hours a day. What I really need to think about is the fact that the heat here is supplied via oil furnace. The furnace has electric ignition though, which means it will only fire when there’s electricity supplied to it.

So there’s a few problems I need to deal with. I checked the various oil tanks on campus, and there’s a metric fuck-ton of oil for me to burn.
 
Each building has oil heat, and almost every building has a pretty full 500 or 1,000 gallon tank. I should have oil for years. However, I do not have enough gasoline to run the generator for years. There’s about 20 vehicles on campus, and most of those have less than half a tank of gas. I figure that’s about 200 gallons of gas, at most. I will need heat overnight at the very least during winter, which is at least 6 hours, which means all my gasoline will be used up generating electricity, strictly to keep my furnace running. Not really a great situation. I definitely need to address two problems:

1. 1)I need way more gasoline. I need gas for the cars, should I need to leave here, and I need gas to power the electric generator.
   
2. 2)I need a more renewable heating system. Something like a wood stove. There’s trees all over the place here, and I will never run out of firewood. Shit, there’s enough downed trees to keep me in firewood for this year just on campus.
   

So now what? What’s my first step to solving the heat and gasoline riddle? I have no additional reserves here on campus to tap into that I am aware of, so that means going into town. Well, at least that means going to a convenience store or something where I can get more gas. Worst case scenario there’s a small gas station about 4 miles from here down the road I can hit. I know there are manual cranks to get the pumps working, and If I can scrounge up some gas cans, I think I can get myself set up pretty good. I know very frigging little about installing wood stoves though. I don’t even know where to find one.

So I guess I should start thinking about how to hit the gas station. If I’m even a little lucky the electricity will still be on down there, though if my power is out here, it’s probably out down there. I was surprised how long the power stayed running though, almost 6 weeks before it shit the bed.
 

There’s about 12 houses in the little neighborhood where the store is. There’s also a country store with gas pumps about half a mile from there too, which is an option. I’m betting there might be food at both places still. It stands to reason that if people downtown went out after the shit got bad to get food, they probably went to the grocery stores and the shops downtown. These fringes of town places might not have been picked over yet. I guess yet is the operative word here. I guess the sense of urgency in getting to any leftover supplies should motivate me to get my ass in gear.

Alright, here’s my plan: Find as many gas cans as possible first off. Maintenance has two F-150 dump body trucks. Those are pretty sturdy vehicles, and the dump body is big, and could be used to climb into if I get surrounded. It’s pretty high off the ground and the solid steel is obviously tough as hell. Plus I checked, and truck #1 still has a full tank, so that’s a plus. Take truck #1, load up the guns, sword, and ammo, and head to the closest convenience store.

At the store, my main plan is to get gas into all gas cans. That’s my primary need. I have enough food to last me for winter and then some, so that’s a secondary thing. However, if the coast is mostly clear, and I’m feeling good, I’ll check the store(s) for anything food or supply related that I could use. It’ll be a thrill for sure to head back out into the scary world again. What are the downsides of doing this though? I haven’t really considered that yet.

Getting killed is obviously one. I really don’t want to be eaten alive, and I sure as shit don’t want to get killed by another survivor. I could definitely lead zombies or survivors back here too. The school is at the end of a dead end road, so if anyone sees me make the turn up here, all they gotta do is go straight to find me. I know the zombies are stupid, but one thing they can do is go straight for a long time. If one sees me turn, I could lead them back here. That’d lead to me defending the campus with guns I’m sure, which might make enough noise to get more up here, spiraling everything into an enormous shit storm. Let’s face it, no one likes a fecal tornado.

Good, positive thoughts are important at a time like this. Sigh.

I’m sure there’s more that could go wrong. But, the simple fact is this: at the rate I’m burning through gasoline I will not make it through winter. I will freeze. Scary thought really. I also really need to think about alternative heating sources like the wood stove or something. Maybe I can look into solar panels or something? You know a woodstove would be great for cooking too, it’d save on the gas consumption big time. The electric stove is killing me I’m sure. That and running the fridge. Well not so much anymore really, as I don’t have anything perishable in there anymore to speak of. Leftovers. In the Winter I can easily just set my leftovers outside somewhere the bears can’t get at. Oh yeah, we have bears up here. Forgot to mention that.

I’m gonna go check around campus tomorrow to see if there are spare gas cans. I’ll also double check around truck #1 to make sure that it’s in good shape for a run outside. I probably ought to be starting these cars more often and letting them run for a bit. Families of squirrels and field mice are probably inside all of them by now too.