As we are now in Day 24 of our life
inside our little grocery store, I have to admit I have seen a change in some
individuals and I think I know the reason. We had a major flaw in our plan with
the aluminum foil over all the windows and the glass doors. We originally
blacked out the windows using aluminum foil for two reasons:
#1) We believe zombies hunt by sight.
#2) We did not want to broadcast our
presence during the night time hours.
To those that still have use of their
cerebral cortexes, they will see zombie bodies littering the parking lot (from
the ones we have taken out), the windows all boarded up, and we are locked down…
Yeah, we probably do seem like a pretty strong fortress. Unfortunately, we
haven’t seen anyone with a functioning medulla oblongata for days. [I don’t
even know what those sections of the brain actually control but there were the
only sections I could remember from my 9th grade science class. It
was a long time ago.]
But, our big problem is that if you
take aluminum foil and cover your windows, zero light gets through. Zero. And
believe me, it gets pretty freaking dark. I have worked the night shift before
and said that as long as you didn’t look outside, you didn’t really notice what
time it actually was. But I want us to have some normalcy. We need to see at
least some small section of the outside world from time to time. We can’t just
live in Jodie Foster’s panic room. What kind of life is that?
So with that in mind, we are amending
the aluminum foil plan. We are still going to keep it up but we are developing
a system where the bottom one-third of the windows will remain covered at all
times. But we are making sections in the top two-thirds of the windows (above
the pallet reinforcements) that we can open up to allow light inside. Then we
are going to assign people to start closing the “shades” at sundown.
And I was pretty proud of this idea.
One thing a grocery store has plenty of is cardboard. With all the boxes that
cereal and mayonnaise and canned vegetables that used to come in, we usually
bailed up one pallet load of cardboard per day, sometimes even twice a day if
we were really busy. We worked together and rigged up these cardboard booths
that you can sit in and look through peek holes at night without light shining
out through the aluminum foil. It’s pretty effective.
But we do need more outdoor activity.
I could have sworn I read something one time about lack of sunlight causing a
vitamin deficiency. There was an episode of The
Simpsons where Mr. Burns blocked out the sun and Homer joined a posse to
tear the machine down. “I’ve had it up to here with these rickets.” I don’t
know what rickets are but I am fairly certain I don’t want them.
So we are going to work on projects
that will get us up on the roof. Lance loves to go up there and shoot zombies.
There is a ton of free space up there that we know is zombie free. We have
seeds in packets in the Produce Department and there are pallets of potting
soil outside (if we can get to them). We need to start our own garden. Everyone
could be involved. Fresh vegetables. It’ll be like Little House on the Prairie up in this mug.
I guess I list this to show you that
we are not always perfect in our plans. We have to make modifications. And you
will too. The only difference is that if we make too big a mistake, people can
die. And that is a pretty scary thought.
