Z Day is Here (11 page)

There we stood, guns pointed at each other,
ready to shoot without hesitation, when out of the woods beside us
came a group of zombies. Without thinking, we all turned our guns
on them. They quickly moved in our direction. As the first one's
foot hit the pavement, the driver began shooting. We continued to
shoot until they were all gone. As the last one hit the ground, all
guns went back to their original location, pointed at each other.
The driver began to laugh, and pretty soon, we were all laughing.
We had just played out a scene that could be in a movie. The driver
lowered his gun and held out his hand to shake mine. He introduced
himself as Dustin and then introduced his passenger as Roger. They
were heading to the city to "take advantage of the luxuries it had
to offer." They had been driving for hours and wanted to be
downtown by nightfall.

Roger told us he was from Mexico and had met
Dustin in Florida just before the uprising had begun. They were
both on vacation and at the same hotel when everything happened.
Dustin said he and his wife were visiting some friends when it all
went down. He woke up one night to find his wife missing; all her
things were where she had left them, but she was gone. Roger
located her body in another hotel room. From then on, they decided
to stay close and help each other.

We told them we were making our way into the
city and asked if they wanted to join us. After a few minutes of
them talking and debating, they agreed to follow us, just to the
city.

Tonya didn't trust either of them, especially
Roger. She said he gave her a very strange feeling. To tell the
truth, he gave me the same feeling. If it wasn't for my desire to
keep as many people around me as possible, I would have wished them
luck and waved them goodbye.

I hope I haven't made a bad decision.

Back where I started.

Fifty-one days ago, I was sitting in the same
room I am now. So much has happened in fifty-one days. This place
looks and smells strange.

When we got here late last night, there were
no zombies to be seen. We made our way inside and blocked the front
door with two desks. With no one (or nothing) getting in or out, we
searched the entire building for any of the undead. As I walked
toward the break room, I passed the room where I put a fishbowl
through my manager’s head; her body was still laying in the same
place I left it. After fifty-one days, the smells coming from that
office were overwhelming. I closed the door and moved on. In the
break room, I gathered a little bit of food that was still good and
a few cans of Coke. We all met back in the "secure" area where I
first began this journal. The room was trashed beyond belief. My
desk was flipped over, and the computer lay on the floor with the
monitor smashed in. All the files I spent weeks filing were spread
across the floor. There was a fair amount of dried blood on the
walls and floor. It looks like someone has been in here since I
left. If they were, though, they are gone now.

Feeling safe, we all took a seat to rest and
formulate a plan. I made my way to my nice pleather chair that I
had at one time complained about because the wheels squeaked too
much. It's kind of funny how minuscule that problem seems now
compared to everything else going on. I remember being so angry
that Amanda refused to do anything about it. Now, though, it feels
like the most comfortable thing I have ever sat in. Tonya and Cole
flipped my desk back over and sat on it, while Roger and Dustin
both found chairs of their own to sit on.

I handed everyone a Coke and a small
snack-sized bag of chips. I told my story of how it began and how I
ended up here with Tonya and Cole. Dustin smiled and shook his head
at the "adventures" (as he liked to call them) I’d had. After I had
told my story, Tonya and Cole both told theirs. Again, Dustin
seemed very interested and even sad at times about the whole
ordeal. Roger seemed bored and uninterested in anything any of us
had to say. Once all the stories had been told, we were all very
sleepy and decided to try and get some rest before we headed out.
Our original plan was to have one person stay up as a watch for the
rest of us, but we all ended up falling asleep around the same
time.

Sometime around four or five a.m., I awoke to
see Roger standing over Tonya. He was staring at her, watching her
sleep. I could hear him whispering something to himself as he
looked at her. His whispering got louder, and it sounded as if he
were angry with her. I quickly sat up and asked him what the hell
he was doing. Startled, he spun around and looked directly at me.
His eyes were opened wide, and he was sweating profusely. He yelled
at me to mind my own fucking business and then stomped off to the
far corner of the room. His yelling woke up the entire room. Tonya
looked freaked out, Cole looked confused, and Dustin looked pissed
off. Roger refused to talk to anyone and has not moved from the
corner all morning. Needless to say, no one slept after that.

We are going to approach Roger in a few
minutes, just to see what was going on. Dustin thinks it was just a
misunderstanding, Tonya, Cole, and I do not. Misunderstanding or
not, I will not allow anyone to make the ones I care about feel
uncomfortable. I have a very bad feeling about this guy and do not
look forward to what lies ahead for us today.

We approached Roger yesterday evening about
his actions the night before. He denied doing anything wrong and
even said he had a problem with sleepwalking. What could we say to
that? The subject was dropped after a few threats were issued, and
he said he completely understood our concerns. I still don't trust
him, though. I am going to watch him very closely.

So we packed up everything we had and left my
old job location. Once we were loaded up, we headed down the path
towards my home.

Nothing exciting has been going on today,
other than driving very, very slowly. Every couple of miles, we
have to pull over on the side of the road to get around the
abandoned cars or to siphon gas out of them. The closer we get to
the city, the harder it is to drive. I am sure it is only a matter
of a few hours before we will have to walk. I am dreading this more
than anything else right now. At least we are somewhat safe in our
little tank of a vehicle, for now. When we get out to walk, I am
not going to be much help if things get bad because of the stitches
in my hand and arm. Then there is the whole Roger issue. I have to
watch out for the zombies and now this crazy guy. I just hope I can
protect everyone.

We are stopping for more gas and to discuss
our route. It is very eerie how quiet it has gotten: no sounds of
cars or airplanes, no sounds of children playing, no sounds of
equipment at construction sites; even the birds are silent. The sky
has been a light gray color the past few days, though it hasn't
rained in weeks. I am not sure what is going on with the world
around us, but whatever it is, it can't be good.

Yesterday, we decided to stop at a hotel
right before we went on into the city. We had abandoned the
vehicles about two hours after I had posted the last journal, so we
were exhausted by the time we got to the hotel. We decided to stay
in the same room again, though I wasn't very happy with that
decision because of the Roger situation. In the end, we decided it
was safer to stay together. Safer for whom, I am still trying to
figure that out.

Once we were settled in the room, we decided
to have a look around the hotel, just to make sure there were no
zombies running around. We made our way into the lobby, where there
was the nicely rotting corpse of a little old lady behind the
counter. She looked to be in her seventies, though because of the
rotting of her flesh, it was hard to tell for sure. She sat on a
tall wooden chair, her head pointing down to the ground, as if she
were looking at her feet. Tonya went in for a closer look. As she
approached, she yelled out to us, "Hey, her name is Melba. Isn't
that so sweet?" Just as the word sweet passed over her lips, Melba
sat straight up in the chair, looked directly at Tonya, then lunged
for her. When she was just inches from making contact with Tonya's
neck, Cole slammed a chair over Melba's head. Once she was on the
ground, he took a piece of the now broken chair and drove it
through her eye socket. We all could do nothing but laugh. We
laughed! What the hell is wrong with us?

After the lobby area, we all wanted nothing
more than to check out the bar. Once we got there, there were
hundreds of bottles of alcohol. Anything and everything we could
imagine was behind that bar. We proceeded to try everything. I
don't have many details about what happened after that, because I
don't remember. All I remember is shots of Jagermeister and Dustin
getting naked...

When we woke up this morning, Roger and Tonya
were gone.

We are leaving right now to go find her. I
swear to God, if he has hurt one hair on her body, I will chop him
into tiny pieces. We are all just hoping they got drunk and passed
out somewhere.

Either way, I am never drinking again.

Tonya and Roger are nowhere to be found. We
have gone room to room, searching the entire area, but have found
nothing. Dustin thinks they have been eaten or turned, but the rest
of us think otherwise. We are going to continue to look everywhere
in this town that we can. I am determined to find them both, dead,
alive, or living dead. I have to know what happened to them. There
have not been many zombies in this area that we have seen, so we
feel pretty safe.

Earlier this morning, we stumbled across two
zombies that had long dreadlocks and wore tie-dyed shirts. They
were covered in dried blood from head to toe. One was a girl with a
blue bandanna on; she was chewing on a severed hand. The other was
a man with a rasta hat on his head; he was eating a severed foot.
When they saw us coming, they both jumped to their feet and headed
straight towards us. Now I wouldn't call it a run, but I know for a
fact that they were moving quite fast. With all of us ready for
them, they went down quickly. The girl hit the ground, and as she
started to get up, I smashed her head in with a large rock I had
found. Dustin and Cole took care of the guy. Other than those two,
we haven't seen any others.

We are headed off to go look some more. I
will let everyone know if we find anyone...or anything.

I wish I had more to write about today, but
it has been a very uneventful day. We spent all day looking for
Tonya and Roger. All we found all day was a pair of Tonya's shoes.
They were lying on the ground by an old office complex.

We didn't see any zombies today.

I wish I could say that today was a good day,
but without Tonya, it is just another day. We need her here with
us. We are determined to not give up on her. I will not give up on
her. We are going to search some of the local areas some more
tonight. I will post as soon as I get more information.

We have searched for Tonya pretty much
nonstop for the past few days and have no leads to follow. I have
no idea what to do or where to go from here. Cole has said he is
not going anywhere until she is found, dead or alive, so it looks
like we will continue looking. I have been in every building within
about a three-mile radius and have only ran into less than five
zombies. I am hoping the zombies have begun starving to death or
rotting away; that would make things so much easier. After running
into the rasta zombies, we decided it would be easier to stay
hidden and not fight.

As we wandered through the town, we came
across store after store that had been looted, trashed, and even
burned. It looked like the people had panicked and begun destroying
the town, like so many people have done in the past. Looking at
this town, though, I can only imagine what the big city will look
like when we get there. From where we are right now, I can see the
cityscape in the distance; it looks like it always has, almost as
if nothing had happened. Sadly, we know better.

We have one more place to look tomorrow, and
then we will have covered the entire city. It is likely he got a
car and headed away. I am going to bring up to the others tomorrow
that maybe we should go ahead and head toward the city. More than
likely, he would have headed straight into the city. It is very
large with lots of places to hide. Once the town has been gone over
with a fine-toothed comb, we have nowhere else to look. My biggest
fear is that he took her in the opposite direction (if Roger even
took her). We just don't know what happened to them.

Things have been quiet for a few days now. I
hope they stay that way.

It is so late right now, and I am so very
tired. We decided to leave the town this morning. We haven't (nor
will we) give up on Tonya, but there is nothing for us left here.
We have searched everywhere we can imagine to no avail. We drove
for as long as we possibly could until the roads became too heavily
blocked with parked and abandoned cars. We were still a good
fifteen miles away from the big city, but there was no way for us
to get around the other vehicles. We walked for almost five miles
total this afternoon and this evening. We only encountered one or
two zombies along the way. I'm not sure what's going on. I don't
know where they have all gone or are going. I am hoping they have
all died for good this time.

I really have nothing to write about again
today; all we did was walk. It is now two a.m., and I need some
sleep if we are going to be walking again tomorrow.