I need to paint a picture for you. I
need you to understand the mindset. After “The Lockout Protocol” was complete
and we had barricaded ourselves in the store, everyone was more or less
emotionally shattered. Once the zombies were trapped outside and we were safe
(or “safer”), everyone was able to do what I call an “emotion dump” which
sounds grosser than intended in hindsight.
We were able to stop and think about what was really happening. Once
your own security was established, you began to start thinking about all your
friends and family. I don’t even want to start typing about it or I might not
be able to continue. Needless to say, the first Tuesday or Wednesday of this
chaos was traumatic. I didn’t think it could get much worse.
God bless Sharon and Fred. Sharon is
the head of the bakery department and she is naturally a wonderful cook. It
also helps that we have a full-sized industrial kitchen in the bakery
department that is more than enough space to churn out food for 20+ people.
Fred, the second man in the meat department, has also taken over the fatherly
role. Together, the two of them are kind of the mom and dad of our group. So Sharon
took it upon herself to begin preparing hot food for everyone. It is funny, in
a grocery store stocked with everything you can imagine, I don’t know if anyone
ate for a few days. But last Friday, everything changed. Sharon cooked this
wonderful meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, corn,
peas, bread rolls, some pies for desert. I mean this was as close as you can
get to a Thanksgiving meal in May.
It was here that we all really got
together as a group for the first time. A lot of people were isolating
themselves in their depression, speaking in hushed tones, or trying to cry
where others would not see. But this was the first time that we all came
together without working. Everyone worked to reinforce the doors and hang the
tin foil and lock the dead cannibals outside. But unless we had a mission,
people stayed away from each other. Fred brought everyone together to eat.
Paternal instinct I guess. I can honestly say that this meal turned everyone
around.
It was over that meal that we came up
with the Year One Plan.
If our theory is correct, there is no
cure for this terrible disease. If you are bit and die, there is no coming
back. So, our only hope is to outlast the infected.
The best we can tell, these creatures
are not alive. Based on the laws of nature and science, microbial organisms
have to be chewing through these things like no tomorrow. I seriously doubt
that our story is going to end like War
of the Worlds where all the aliens just keel over and die overnight because
of bacteria. But it might be something that simple.
Take a piece of meat and throw it out
in the July sun. Without wild animals devouring it, how long would it take for
that meat to become rotten and decayed enough that it wouldn’t stay connected
to the bone? So that it wouldn’t support a skeletal structure? How long does a
deer or dog carcass remain on the highway, cooking in the summer heat before it
all just deteriorates into nothingness? Eventually, these zombie bodies are
going to rot away and die off.
The virus may still be alive and
contagious within their dead flesh but if their bodies are so deteriorated that
they cannot support the skeletal structure… Well, I think you can see where we
are going with this.
We are better off than most people. We
are in a fully supplied grocery store. We have food, water, medicine (because
of our pharmacy department), entertainment, and thanks to a few of our
survivors, we have weapons. We are safely barricaded inside.
So all we have to do is outlast the
horde.
We have taken a vote and we agree on a
target frame of ONE YEAR.
We are going to isolate ourselves for
one year, still broadcasting on any available frequency – Internet, cell
phones, CB radio (hopefully) – hoping to outlast this apocalypse until we can
find a refuge or safe haven provided by the government… if there even is still
a government left. Until then, we are going to remain safe within our new home.
Hey, no one is saying that this is
going to be easy. It is going to be a long year. But what is the alternative? I
for one don’t want to be shuffling my feet walking around mumbling “Brains…”
But in order to survive in here, we are going to have to do some serious
modifications.
So it is time to go to work…
I will be taking Sunday off but, I
promise, more soon.
