Joseph
Charles: During Zero
Hour, Joseph was on his way to work. He was doing a job installing central heat
and air ducts at a lake home out near Ketchum. He stopped in at Reason’s to get
some donuts and drinks for the crew he was going to be working with. If he
would have been in the check stand five minutes earlier, he might have been in
his work van and cruising on to Ketchum when he first encountered a shamble of
zoms.
Aside from Luke, I don’t think there
is another guy in the store that I relate to more on a dork/nerd level than
Joseph. It seems like whenever we are having discussions about movies, Joseph
and I are the ones that have the most lively and animated discussions. He is a
pretty smart guy and he is no stranger to firearms which makes him pretty
valuable. I know during Zero Hour, he was pretty instrumental in getting Diane
inside the store after she suffered her wound. So, thankfully, bravery doesn’t
seem to be lacking either.
I know I probably haven’t mentioned
Joseph a lot in the blog so far and the problem is that he has this innate
gift. He is like Matt Damon’s character Linus in the Ocean’s 11 movies. He has this innate knack to blend in and
disappear. He is not standing out but he also doesn’t fall behind. His ideas
regarding how we outfit and modify the store border on genius.
I need to discuss things with the
Sortie Teams but we need to work on getting him an instrument. He plays the
guitar. He contributes heavily with Kim when it comes to song selections on the
music that we play. I can hear him humming quite a bit when he works and like a
lot of musicians, I see him “air guitaring” like he is practicing despite the
fact that he doesn’t have a guitar. We need to work on that.
Shala
Martin: I know I
mentioned when talking about Audrey (we miss you, Audrey) that she felt she was
very lucky and being in the right place at the right time when Zero Hour hit.
Shala Martin is another one of those people that may have been born under a
lucky star.
Shala Martin is a teacher over at
Ketchum Middle School who had come in to get food during her planning period
for a class assignment. We don’t really know (and I think no one wants to) but
Zero Hour hit on a Monday. Classes were in session. If a pack of zoms hit any
of the local schools those area could have become a horrible hot spot for
generating a horde… And I mean horrible in that seeing a pack of zom third
graders would be pretty horrible to see and even worst to have to put down.
There are times where I feel very,
very sorry for Shala and I intentionally try not to interact with Alex too much
when she is around. Being outgunned financially, Shala took a very big hit
during her divorce because she could not hire the legal team that her husband
could. So, despite being a wonderful human being and a school teacher, she got
boned in her custody case. Losing almost everything in the divorce, Shala
became one of those horror stories that you hear about where a person is
financially crushed and they have to move back in with their parents. In this
case, Shala had to move back in with her mom. She was getting everything back
in order. She had her down payment saved up on a double wide trailer and was
working with financing through the bank when everything hit. She was in the
same boat as Tommy when Zero Hour hit.
Shala was trapped in Reason’s while
her kids were somewhere down in Jenks. (It is a suburb of Tulsa.) Survivor
guilt hit Shala hard and I was generally concerned that she would do something
stupid. We made it a point to hide her car keys from her and I will not lie, I
was concerned with giving her a weapon for fear that she would turn it on
herself. Because of this, in those first couple of weeks, I made it a point to
talk with her as much as I could without being encroaching. Having
conversations with Luke and Tommy and Hunter came easy.
I had seen Shala in the store shopping
before. I would call her a “regular” but I didn’t really know her and I was
really concerned that she would hurt herself. That was back in May. Now, I
realize how wrong I was. I have yet to meet a woman that enjoyed challenging me
so much mentally. We have regular debates about all kinds of subjects where
each one of us will purposefully take stands so we can talk out a subject.
We have had extensive conversations
about security of our home and a lot of the zom theories that we postulate on
Thursdays are due in large part to conversations with her. I find myself
talking with her shortly before lights out and then she retires to the top of
her cooler and I go to the top of mine to sleep close to Alex.
It is not all sunshine and roses. She
is really nice but she is has body issues and problems with her
self-confidence. When I compliment her, I get the impression that she thinks I
am bullshitting her. Still, I feel like lately we are starting to exchange
longer looks with one another. But I have to focus on the task at hand. I
refuse to get distracted.
