Day 125 – Mobility vs. Security

I know that this whole thing is some twisted perversion of life imitating art. You cannot stop and look around and be reminded of all the different zombie movies that you used to watch as a kid or the video games that we have played. But the rules that they establish in those properties can actually save your life because you are dealing with a similar threat to what we have seen in those films.

I could not come up with a conceivable reason for Wes and Kyndall to not stay with our group. Food, shelter, human interaction, security, safety. Why would you walk away from that? But Wes told me something that made me understand his choice. So let me paint a picture for you.

If I tell you to imagine a zombie movie, you can imagine a small group of people on the run, being pursued by a ravenous horde of meat bags. Inevitably, the group holes up in an abandoned house where they barricade the doors and the windows. The zombies reach the house and they all start banging on the windows and doors.

Our zombies are not fleet of foot. They don’t run. So staying on the move presents any survivor with a distinct advantage. And yet, that is your impulse. You want to seek shelter to put barriers between you and the chomping jaws of death that can turn you into one of them. But by doing so, we make it to where we cannot run. We cannot utilize our speed. We are negating our advantage while the crawling and clamoring undead army piles relentlessly against our doors.

This is the scenario that Wes wanted to avoid.

Now, in our defense, our walls are tall. This is not some wooden home. This is a thick concrete building. Our doors are secured. And this is not just metal hinges and flimsy locks keeping our doors closed. Thanks to the store fork lift, we have several thousand pounds of pig iron propped against the grocery back door.

I think that we have physics on our side. Much like when the Hot Gates of Thermopyle nullified the numbers of the Persians against the brave 300 Spartans, I don’t think an army of zombies could press in close enough against a single door that we have barricaded closed. There are only so many hands that can press against the door and there will not be enough surface area for them to generate enough force to cave the door in.

And at this point, we have hunkered down and gone “quick quiet.” When we do that, the zoms do lose interest and move on eventually. But Wes’ words have given me pause. Is it possible for a large enough horde to force their way in? 

Day 124 – Survivor Profile: Brian & Kelly Anderson

Brian & Kelly Anderson: In a world where the cannibalistic undead are looking to chow down on the living, it is quite easy to forget about the basic tenants of humanity. And the first element of survival is family. Family above all. I think all of us have banded together as a loosely tied family at this point. But let’s look at our “families.” You have Alex and myself, initially you had Janet and Kim, and then later you had Janet, Kim, and Brad.  Now, we also have Kasondra and Brad. Aside from those pairings, everyone else was alone. But then that brings us to when our rolling band of vagabonds rolled up in their SUV. They brought us Brian and Kelly Anderson.

Brian and Kelly had a home on the outskirts of Claremore and they were the ones that took in Justin, Erik, Kimber and Nicki when that quartet made it out of Tulsa. They stayed in the small community, scavenging what they could until it was time to move on. Their mantra was that slow and steady wins the race. That got them this far and it is good enough for me. I can’t place Brian in the same category as someone like Kanen or Lance. I wouldn’t categorize any of our people as reckless but they are more likely to be aggressive in a situation where Brian is much more calculating and defensive. I don’t know if this analogy will make any sense but if Brian was in World of Warcraft he would be a Paladin. If he was making a deck in Magic: The Gathering, his primary color would be white. For all my non-geeks out there who need an explanation, Brian may not beat you with his offense but you are not beating his defense. Some people attack a situation wanting to win and others defend a situation not wanting to lose. Brian plays a defensive game.

We thought we were pretty good and set when it came to our defenses before. Brian and his big brain came up with contingency plans for our contingency plans. He was coming up with plans for when things go wrong and I have yet to find flaws in his logic. Brian will be the first to tell you that he is not a front line guy. I don’t criticize him for that. I think it is a smarter man that knows his place in the world and acknowledges his weaker areas. Brian would be the guy back at base watching the satellite feeds and telling the Special Forces groups where to go. That isn’t my analogy. That is one that he said openly.

But what sets Brian apart from the others is that he is fighting for someone else. Not that we aren’t all in this thing together but Brian has a little more skin in the game than most because he is fighting for his wife.

Kelly Anderson is originally from Texas. (Being that the rest of us are from Oklahoma, we try not to hold that against her.) She and Brian were married last year and she moved up to live with him in Claremore. During their courtship, Kelly was one of those big muckers in some corporate gig and she couldn’t just walk away. So she was closing out all her accounts and such while they were planning their wedding. I think theirs is one of those rare couples that did not live together before they got married.

I will say this for Kelly. Despite working in a corporate office and seeming to be one of those professionals, she sure does know her way around a garden. She has been really instrumental in tending to our garden that we have created on the roof. This is a pretty cool thing because that is not an area that I am even the least bit versed with that sort of thing. I am leaving that in their capable hands. This has really helped her bond with Demo Judy and Jenny as both of them have really been working hard to get that off the ground. Kelly is the perfect example of the “Adapt or Die” adage.

While they have not talked a lot about it, I have deduced that Kelly has some family up north. It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point down the road, Brian and Kelly decide to pull the same thing that Wes and Kyndall did this afternoon. I could see them loading up and making a push north… But that could be way down the road. For now, I am very happy to have them within our group.  

Day 124 – Losing Two Members… (by choice this time.)

I have to admit to you that I am disappointed. Last night, we all took a vote and it was unanimous. We wanted to add Wes and Kyndall to our group. Their resourcefulness would have been a wonderful addition to our crew. When we showed up to present them with our offer, Kyndall presented us with a supply list of items they were hoping they could have.

It was a simple list: Some canned vegetables, drinking water in gallon jugs, some cans of evaporated milk, a few two liters of pop, Band-Aids, a few things of feminine hygiene aisle, and things like. We had an abundance of this brand of beef jerky that Wes really liked. A six pack of beer.

Here we were presenting them with an opportunity for a life, security and safety and they were presenting us with a list of stuff that they wanted to take with them when they bugged out.

I don’t understand it. Why leave?

Kyndall told me how they had survived for so long. The key was the empty or once-overrun gated communities. Wealthy and affluent neighborhoods in suburban settings often featured things like garages (to hide the car or even gain better ones), second floor homes with staircases that could be barricaded, and well stockpiled pantries that could feed two people for longer than you might expect.

Even without power, those luxury homes offered comfortable beds, sturdy deadbolts, and – God Bless Texas – usually an assortment of firearms and small caches of ammunition. Wes and Kyndall would hold up until the food started to run shallow. By then, they had siphoned gas from any and all nearby cars and lawn equipment. Staying hunkered down and hiding, most zoms might come for an inspection but finding locked and barricaded doors and no apparent signs of living humans, eventually they would shamble off.

We are now 124 days in. I cannot really fault their logic but moving two people north is a heck of a lot easier than moving a crew of 20+. Maybe that is the reason why places like Huston and Dallas were almost completely overrun, yet both of them have talked about coming across pockets of survivors in the smaller and more isolated towns.

Still, I am going to be sorry to see Wes and Kyndall leave tomorrow. They would have been valuable additions. We cannot force them to stay. All we can do is wish Godspeed and hope that they do well. They are headed north. Maybe Kansas City or Chicago will have safe zones. Well, by request, Mr. & Mrs. Reyes, if you are out there, your son and daughter are doing quite well. They are fine kids and they have survived this horrible nightmare. Montana is a long ways away but they are confident that “the Ranch” will be a safe haven once winter sets in.

They gave me this picture to post to let you know that they are okay and continuing to head north. I guess Kyndall is hoping that there will be some big Reyes Reunion at your ranch outside Billings.

On a personal note, they really are good kids. Both a very likeable. I wanted them to stay with us but Wes wanted to stay on the move. I am rooting for them. We all are…

Day 123 – Zombiology 101: It’s In My Blood, It’s In My Soul.

This Kharon Virus is transmitted by fluids. I think we have pretty much covered that to death in these article entries. Bites are the most common transferring agent but any sort of infected fluid risks contamination. This is why hand to hand combat with any zom is dangerous. If you cut your hand on a jagged shard of bone while caving in a skull… well, you need to start making some serious life decisions.

Here is something that I cannot figure out though. These things are animated corpses. They do not feel or think. They seem to be running on the most basic of instincts, as if the brain is working with just enough electrical current to keep them up and moving around and wanting to eat – again the most basic of instinct.

Near as we can tell, they do not breathe because they don’t need oxygen. I am willing to be that these things could travel underwater with no problem and then emerge from Grand Lake still hungry and ready to eat.

And while I have not been close enough to a living one of these things to hold a stethoscope to a chest for a good listen, I am betting that they don’t have a heartbeat. I have seen this because I have seen these guys take some serious ammo to the chest and just keep on coming. Following a good scientific theory, I have to assume that they don’t have a heartbeat.

So, all of this blood is just sitting in their system. We have seen the splatter of liquid when these zoms take a shot to the head and errant shots have hit them in the chest, drawing out sprays of liquid. I don’t even want to call it blood anymore because rather than being a healthy red, it is a very dark, black color. The consistency also seems more like molasses… No, that isn’t right. Syrup. Syrup after it has been left in the refrigerator after you open it. It splatters thickly and it is dark as night.

But if the heart isn’t working anymore, you would think that simple gravity would cause all that fluid to pool in their feet. Yet, head shots and chest shots draw gouts of this stuff. And, unfortunately, we have all seen our fair share of this zom blood splash across our parking lot.

Does this fluid, whatever you want to call it, move around in their systems? Or has it thickened so much that it just kind of holds in place in the veins and arteries? If so then, when something like a bullet comes along, it would cause it splash all over everywhere. I guess that sounds about as plausible as any other theory I can come up with.  

But I write all this out because of a certain fear. If their blood has changed, thickened and become more… resilient in death, then the same could be said of the rest of their organs. When we first started the Year One Plan, we were under the assumption that microbes had to be eating away at these things like crazy. We were assuming that natural decay would render the majority of their population desiccated husks within a year and then we would be able to move around safely.

What if that isn’t the case?

Day 122 – Wesley & Kyndall Reyes

I have said it before and I have said it again. Stealth is the key. There are times where having the advantage of numbers gives you strength and a certain level of defensive capability. But you could also argue that avoiding a fight by going undetected makes you even safer.

This is how we met Kyndall and Wesley Reyes. Wesley, 26, and Kyndall, 22, is a brother and sister pair that has made it up from Houston, TX. They did not bring good news with them. They escaped Houston and Dallas is gone. They made it from Highway 75 to Highway 69 and were heading north when they diverted onto Highway 28 when they came across too many zoms in Adair to plow through.

I would not go so far as to call them heavily armed but they did carry a decent stash of weapons. Some of the first questions they were asked is how they have survived as long as they have. They are utilizing stealth and speed to navigate their way north. And Wes’ techniques should not work. In theory, they go against every conventional and logical thought process but, dammit, they work and he and Kyndall are living proof of it. I am serious. Wes is like a freaking Jedi Knight.

The duo arrived driving a car in broad daylight. They are driving a small Honda Civic hybrid so the car is pretty quiet. We spotted them quickly from the roof. Kyndall had a white T-shirt flapping out the passenger window for a show of peace. Wes pulled the car very slowly up along the front of the store where the doors are barricaded with vehicles. In a very calm and soothing voice, he asked if we had any spare food we could share. Maybe a bed for the night. So, we motioned them around back.

They pulled the Civic up to the produce dock and actually parked it close. (He even pulled the parking break.) As Kyndall was hefting two hiking backpacks out of the back of the car, Wes calmly got out and walked around to help his sister. By now, a few zoms had taken note of their presence and had started shuffling towards the dock door.

I remember Hobbit Judy was waving frantically and motioning for them to hurry. It almost looked like Wes could have broken out into a whistle. Pistol in hand, Wes simply went into a shooting stance to rival someone like Eric or Fred. He actually waited. He waited until the zom was close. Not so close that he was in danger but close enough where he could shoot and not miss.

Putting three zoms down, Wes helped his sister up onto the dock and then actually took the time to smile, shake our hands, and introduce himself before wanting to come inside. I don’t think this guy is crazy. When you talk to him, it is clear he doesn’t have a death wish. But he has no fear. Zero.

I asked him, point blank, how he does it. He looked right at me and said, “They don’t have any fear. Why should we?”

When he elaborated, he called the zoms cattle because that is what he thinks of them as. Cattle are large, dumb animals. I am not hating on them. They taste great. But cattle are dumb and easily spooked. Being out in the fields with them, I was never really afraid of them unless they got to moving quickly in my direction. As long as they stay at bay, they aren’t a threat.

Now, zoms in a pack are very deadly but only if they can get to you. They have no magical powers, no ranged weapons, and it is pretty obvious that they can be outsmarted, tricked, and even herded (just like cattle) into the kill box. They are not fast. In fact, they shamble along pretty slowly. So if a zombie is chasing you at 1 mile per hour, all you have to do is walk 1.25 miles per hour. There is no need to scream at the top of your lungs and sprint like a leading lady in a horror movie through the forest where you end up fumbling the clip out of your hand when trying to reload.

Be calm. Keep that heart rate down. You are a better shot that way anyway. Panic when it is time to panic. And when they are 100 yards away… you have time.

Now, I don’t want to downplay the threat. These things are still wicked dangerous and relentless but Wes and Kyndall’s attitude is something we seriously need to work on adopting. I mean we are surviving right now but I think we need to start changing gears and actually get comfortable fighting these things…

Until then, we have invited Wes and Kyndall to stay and rest. They have agreed to stay in quarantine but I feel like it is just a formality at this point. Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes and just instantly felt a trust? They are good kids and I feel like we are going to learn more from them than they are from us…  

Day 121 – FoS: Water Stores

I believe that I have said this in the past and now being in our third month of lock down, I think it is safe to say that the Kharon Virus is only spread through fluid transfer. We do not believe that the zombie plague is transferred via water. However, even if we lose water, we still have a large variety of options to keep us hydrated in the event of water loss.

Step 1) All water being consumed from any bottle is immediately replaced with water from our Reverse Osmosis Machine. We even reuse old containers (gallons of tea, orange juice, Gatorade bottles, etc.) filling them up with water. These bottles are then placed on a different set of shelves so we can see how much we have and keep us at maximum stock levels at all time.

Step 2) We started immediately making all the frozen concentrate juice we could in case of a power failure. There is an entire half of an aisle dedicated to juices. Be it apple juice, grape juice, Kool-Aid Jammers, Capri-Sun, Gatorade, Crystal Light, etc. And then when we get through with that, there is an entire aisle dedicated to soft drinks (2 liters, cans, 12-packs, 6-packs, cases). And that is just the stuff that is out on the sales floor. That is not counting the back stock. Then there is the bottled water, iced cappuccino and coffee, energy drinks… The list seems to be endless even with our full complement of people.    

Step 3) If things get really bad, we also still have the 5-gallon jugs of water that we keep for people with those office or home water dispensers. We had 12 out for display and 40 in the back room for back stock. Those are considered our emergency stores.

Step 4) If we lose water all together, we are one mile from the lake. During one of the sortie missions, Tommy gave out a list for the guys to come back with. They hauled back a 55-gallon drum and bags worth of playground sand from the lumberyard that is just right down the road. He then layered the drum with large amounts of charcoal briquettes. We have an ample supply of charcoal. Apparently making a “seven layer dip” out of the sand and charcoal serves as water filtration.

Right now, we just have one drum but I know Tommy wants to make more. With enough of these, we can filter water from the lake for more than enough drinking water. And if things get desperate and hordes roll through and then hang around, we could position them on the roof along with containers and purify rainwater.

And for the ultimate measure, there are a few of those water purifiers on the shelves as well. So, when it comes to hydration, I think it is safe to day we got that mess covered…. One less thing to worry about I guess.

Day 120 – Now, All I Need Is Sharon To Call Me A “Donkey.”

So back before the Zombie Apocalypse, there was a certain strategy that smart people would adhere to. Okay, in an ideal world, management wants you to learn the job of the person above and below you on the ladder. It adds some redundancy into the system. However, to really take advantage of a situation, if you have a certain skill that only you can do, you don’t share that skill with ANYONE. It makes it harder for a company to fire you if you are the only one that can run the TPS spreadsheet reports.

Sharon is really instrumental when it comes to getting everyone fed. Because of our scheduling and our commitment to routine, breakfast is served at 7:30, lunch is at 12:30 and dinner is always at 6:30 in the evening. We rotate the KP duty. Using paper plates and plastic forks makes clean up pretty easy but we have to work on getting the prep area cleaned up. But with that scheduling, about the time that they get done cleaning up the bakery, it is time to start cooking again.

Well, despite the expression that too many chefs spoil the soup, Sharon has basically flung open the flapping doors to the kitchen and has welcomed anyone to come in and help. Many people rotate out assisting Sharon as she cooks but Share is definitely the Gordon Ramsey of the kitchen. She is running it.

But she has not only opened the doors for people to assist her, she has opened the doors up for people to come in and learn. For a lot of the younger kids, this is some valuable time well spent if they choose to take advantage of it. I have even stepped in to learn some of the “fresh from scratch” recipes like baking bread and the timing it takes to fry chicken. Sharon is a good cook but she is also a good teacher.

I have worked with some people who had wonderful skills but could not properly communicate how they do what they do. Sharon is a good teacher and she makes everyone feel included when it comes to the cooking classes. Still, as much as I like learning how to do what she does, I certainly do not want to lose Sharon and her ability to keep us all fed.  

Still, as of right now, we are still pretty much going off recipes and food that we all know and recognize. When the food starts to run shallow, we are going to have to delve deeper into those more stranger cuisines… That is not something I am looking forward to.

Day 118 – Many Shoulders to Share the Load

Years ago, I went through a really bad stint. I am not proud of it. I went to therapy to try to help but the company only paid for three sessions. After that I would have had to pay for it myself. I went to my doctor and he put me on anti-depressants. They did nothing and I quit taking them. It could have been that I was on the wrong medicine for my chemical make-up. Who knows? But at the end of the day, I looked at the anti-depressants as a failure because I was depressed for all the right reasons. Here is the thing. If you win the lottery and say, “I want to kill myself” then you have a severe chemical imbalance going on. My wife was having an affair and wanted a divorce. To me, that is pretty fucking good reason to be depressed.

I remember sitting in the dark, in my son’s room, holding a bottle of Xanax pills and calculating my body weight and wondering if it would do the job. Everything was spiraling out of control and I felt like my life was ending. Obviously, I didn’t go through with it because I am typing this now. But I considered it.

My mother passed away from cancer in 2005. It was a valiant but short fight. This is the reason that I abhor smoking. In those times, when I was trying to work my way through it, I would see these old, crusty curmudgeons in the store, yelling about the cost of a bag of potatoes. I used to cast an eye upward to the heavens and ask, “My mom dies at 56 and this waste of human skin gets 80-plus years?”

It is in these moments of isolation when we are at our weakest. The world keeps spinning. People are happy. You hear laughter. And you want absolutely no part of it. You don’t want to see any light of happiness because you feel like you are swirling in a tornado of darkness and despair. And when you see other people happy, it compounds your feeling of being forsaken, as if everyone else is happy in the world and you are alone in your misery.

Given what has happened in the world out there, it would have been very easy for us to just load up pistols, get in a drum circle and everyone check out on their own. But that hasn’t happened. Instead we have pallet jack races and laughter and happiness around our makeshift dinner table. We laugh and spend time together and have shooting contests to see who can snipe the most zoms staggering in the parking lot. (It is like shooting pool and the 8-ball. You have to call your shots.)

Why aren’t we all basket cases ready to head to Norman Greenbaum’s spirit in the sky? The answer is simple. There is not just one of us in that tornado of darkness and despair. We are all in her eye. Everyone has lost someone. A parent, a brother, a sister, a child, a wife, a husband, cousins…. Everyone has lost someone because everyone else is gone. We can think about all the people we have met in this world. And if they are not in here, chances are pretty good that they are gone.

Obviously, we hope that some family members are reading this but, again, talking statistics, anyone reading this doesn’t know me from Adam. And there is something about that shared sorrow. You can’t turn to someone and say, “I’ve lost [Insert Person’s Name Here]. You don’t know what I am going through.” If you try that, they can fire right back. “Really? I’ve lost [Insert Three Other Persons’ Name Here].” This is a shared tragedy. But when you have many shoulders to bear the load, it seems a lot less heavy…  

Day 117 – Survivor Profile: Justin & Eric

I guess I have been at this whole Survivor Profile thing for a while now. This is my first entry for the members of “Group 3” that made their way to us back in the second week of July. It is funny how quickly that crew became family. You know how they got here. Now, let me share a little bit about them.

 

Justin Burkes: I will have to admit, out of all the people in our group, Justin is the most enigmatic. You wouldn’t know it to look at him with his scraggily facial hair (that I constant rag him about) and the Legend of Zelda ring tone on his phone but Justin was probably the most professional in our group before Zero Hour. He was a store director down at a major drug store chain in Tulsa. A store director. This means he was our Charley Montgomery (the store director here) and he is younger than me. That is pretty impressive to be running his own store at such a young age.

We have some differences. He is obsessed with hockey where as I like football. … Okay, that is really the only difference that I can think of. If we would have met in the real world, I know we would have been fast friends. It just took the end of the world to get us together.

Secretly, in the dark when no one is around, I have inquired about what was going on in Tulsa when the outbreak hit. I know I am the only one that he talked to about it. The pandemonium that he described sounds horrible. I think he keeps it hidden to shield the other members of our group. I remember in one of these behind the scenes film documentaries, Tom Jane was discussing sharks and he said something about the average person doesn’t understand just how many sharks are out there. The Coast Guard knows. They understand how dangerous it is. Justin saw firsthand how bad Tulsa was and from the way he describes it, we got off light. Imagine trying to hold things together in your store as things are degenerating outside. His facility was overrun. He grabbed what he could and made it out. I don’t know if any of his other employees did.

Justin has family up in Miami, Oklahoma which is in the extreme northeast corner of the state. He was trying to get his crew to them when they were sidelined. But the more I learn about Justin, the more I realized how he made it out. His girlfriend was out of town on business. No brothers or sisters. No real ties to anything in Tulsa, so he was able to just drop everything and bail out. And now, he is with us.

 

Eric Nestor: I figured it would only be a matter of time before we came across a member of either law enforcement or the military. Like Powers Booth in Red Dawn, the police and the military are just flat out better trained for something like this. Okay, let me rephrase. No one is trained for something like this but the military/police are better trained to improvise in a situation like this. So I was not surprised when Eric came knocking on our doorstep. I was somewhat surprised to see him hauling one bad ass police dog with him though.

It turns out Eric was a detective down in Tulsa. Before he was promoted, he worked as a K-9 cop with his partner Kilo. Kilo is a German Shepherd and while he was used to track down narcotics, I can just see Eric yelling out something along the lines of “Chopper, sic balls.” And if that happens, dude, I would be out. It is amazing how this dog could be tremendously intimidating and yet he plays with Alex so easily.

As it turns out, Eric is the perfect person to lead a group from Tulsa to Langley. His father was a pastor. So Eric seems to have this calm yet authoritarian way about him. You want to do what he suggests but you don’t grumble or feel coerced into following his lead. He’s a good guy. In the real world, we probably would have been good friends.

Aside from mentioning that his father was a pastor, Eric hasn’t delved too much into his family or his history. He hasn’t offered and I haven’t inquired. I think it is one of those things that he has resigned to the fact that his family is gone and bringing them up just evokes bad memories.

Still, with his training, his weapons knowledge, his accuracy and Kilo, Eric is a real welcome addition to the group.

Day 116 – Zombiology 101: There Ain’t No Grave…

I think when you look back at the old school zombie stereotypes (and by old school I mean the movies of the 1950s), you immediately thought about zombies crawling up out of the ground in the formal wear that they were buried in.

I think that was the plot of a lot of 50s movies. Some weird alien rock would plunge to Earth and then corpses would start busting out of their coffins. A little before my time, but I certainly remember that being on a Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror episode because the two John Smith’s argue over which grave it belongs to. “John Smith 1852?” “My mistake.” But in those stories, zombies are shuffling around saying “Brains! Brains!”

Our sortie sweeps have found graveyards to be 100% undisturbed and I take that as a saving grace. There are enough zoms staggering about as it is, I could not imagine the population numbers we would have to deal with if every corpse in America was clawing their way out of coffins.

And clearly, these things don’t want to eat brains specifically. They just want meat. It is that instinctual need to feed but for some reason they want to feast on uninfected flesh.

This just continues to reinforce the deadliness of the Kharon Virus. You have to be infected to reanimate. You can reanimate regardless of the amount of physical damage your body has sustained. And the only way to put one of these shambling horrors down is to destroy the brain.  

I know this makes it seem hopeless but we have all taken a very strong stance. This is a viral outbreak. Since it is a virus then either there is a cure somewhere in nature or we just have to outlast it. And right here, right now, barricaded inside a grocery store is not a bad place to be.

Our crew is going out and ransacking local places on a regular basis to get us supplies that we need. Life is hard but we are doing quite well, all things considered. Still, I am curious about something. Thinking about scenarios involving carrier monkeys and all that, is it possible that a segment of the human race could be immune to this Kharon virus? And does their body generate antibodies that could be made into an antidote?

I am 100% certain that a person killed by the virus and then reanimates is pretty much dead and gone. There is no medical cure for that one. But if a person infected early by the Kharon virus was given a dose of medicine – let’s call the Herculean serum – could they cheat the boatman and survive in the land of the dead? I mean a cure has to be out there somewhere?

Right?

Please, God, let there be a cure.

 

Day 115 – The Jelly Bean Jar

Distractions are a wonderful, wonderful thing. And with the probable loss of Dillon, any distraction is a good one. I think I have talked about this already but we do experience a lot of downtime here in the store and people have to find ways to entertain each other. So, we want to reward those who come up with creative games to help stimulate the mind and keep us occupied (or distracted). Jennifer came up with a pretty good Kindergarten game but it worked because everyone was in on it.

She put a random amount of jelly beans in an empty jelly jar, sealed it with the answer inside and then had everyone record their answers. She even went Price is Right style where you had to guess the correct number without going over. In the event that everyone went over, the closest to the actual number of jelly beans would be declared the winner. A further twist is that all the entries were secret ballot, so you could not see what everyone else was bidding and then bid one bean over the highest amount or just bid one bean. It was really quite smart.

The stakes? An extra night’s stay in the Private Bedroom. People were all about that prize. It was so intense that people started doing taunts and blatant misdirection to try to throw off other people’s bids. I know some people, not saying any names (Luke), that were claiming to have already entered their bid when they really still had their ballot to try to influence the bids.

As a reward, since Jennifer came up with this idea, she was granted an addition night’s stay in the Private Bedroom at the end of the rotation. We really need to think up more redneck style games to keep us all occupied. Beer Pong? (Alex has to drink Mountain Dew.) Reason’s did try to capitalize on that fad by stocking ping pong balls in the beer section. We could do Cornhole. That game seems easy enough to manufacture. Water balloon fights on the roof.

We need stuff like that to keep our mind off things. I’m off to go see what we could make bean bags out of for Cornhole. Unpopped popcorn and zip lock bags? That has the potential to get messy if a bag breaks. Women’s socks? That has potential. I need to see what all kinds of clothes Yulonda brought with her from Dollar General. Maybe she brought a few packages of socks…  

 

Day 115 – Questioning the Almighty

I have tried to sit in with some of Janet’s bible study sessions but I find myself constantly being a man in doubt. Now, I don’t want you guys to get the wrong impression. I’ve always considered myself to be a spiritual person but I am not very religious. By that I mean that I believe in God and I am not trying to get into a whole religious debate here because that is not what this is. I’ve just never been much of a church guy. Love God, not crazy about church. I guess it is things like that wacko group of protestors that are outside soldier’s funerals and carrying signs that say “God hates fags.” Those people are part of an actual church. Things like that can sour you on the whole “organized” aspect of religion.

I’ve always felt that God and I were cool; that we kind of understood each other. I mean I didn’t rage against him when my mom was passing away from cancer. I never stood outside and screamed at the night sky, “Why is this happening?!”

When things were going south with my marriage, I begged him for help. I begged and pleaded for him to carry me through a pretty freaking dark time in my life. And I made it through that okay. In hindsight, I see that.

But when you see the whole world degenerating down you and the corpses of the dead are attempting to feed on the living, you naturally are going to have a little crisis of faith.

I seem to recall a message about how when Jesus returned, it would be in the twinkling of an eye to claim all of his loyal followers. Is that what happened here? Did the rapture occur and what were left behind were the soulless bodies? I thought about that for a second but if that is the case, why is Janet still here?

She can pull bible verses that she has memorized out for almost every occasion. It is kind of like me and how I can correlate any real life scenario with an episode of The Simpsons. (I am not proud of that fact.) But she is the most religious of any person I have ever met. She is the one that suggested we even have a bible study group.

“We need it now more than ever,” she said. I guess with society having collapsed all around us, she still wants us to hold on to our humanity and she feels that now more than ever we need the lessons that the Bible provides.

I have to tell you though. If ever there was a reason to have a crisis of faith, I think that this pretty much qualifies. When the living dead are roaming around trying to feast on the flesh of the living, all the rules about coveting thy neighbor’s ox or not eating shellfish no longer seems very relevant.

I mean, you get to a point where you look around in this world. If your supplies are running low, no gas, no power, all your friends are dead and you have a whole host of zoms banging at your front door…

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob made them take television off the air? Krusty the Clown tells the Springfield government: “Would it really be worth living in a world without television? I think the survivors would envy the dead.”

Eventually, I think you get to that point. Where the survivors do envy the dead. Like I said, The Simpsons trivia is my gift, my curse…

Day 114 – FoS: Department Report – The Office/Armory

Cash Office: Highlighted in Light Green (next to the Director's Office)

Back before everything degenerated, the Office had to be the most secure place in the store. Cash from the register tills, money orders, lottery tickets, and pretty much anything that had to do with money was kept in that office. It also included the safe. It featured a locking door that the managers had access to and every inch was covered by cameras. So, naturally, it seemed like the best place to transfer into the Armory.

We did some renovations to the place. We chunked out all the desks and pretty much everything in the center of the office. The computers just became big paperweights. There was no need to keep them in there. Instead, we brought in HBC shelves so all the ammo could be stacked up neatly and we used the pegboard style shelf backs with J-hooks to actually hang the pistols and rifles on. It would be a NRA member’s wet dream to see everything that we have and how we have it all organized. Just to keep a really accurate inventory, we don’t put anything in the office drawers. We want an easy visual count of what all we have in stock. Drawers are for storing knives and other melee weapons.

Part of this is for proper inventory but it is also about security. When Group 3 showed up, bringing us to 32 survivors, I will admit there was a bit of a feeling out process. The last thing we wanted to give strangers access to was our weapons and ammunition. Now granted, Eric and his crew had their own weapons but it is better to be safe than sorry. Trust but verify.

What if we have an instance where zoms are chasing a group of some less-than-savory looking characters? It is not like they can wait outside while we do a background check and an interview. I think everyone agreed keeping the ammunition and extra weapons secured was a good thing.

Yes, I have a pistol and one small box of ammo in my sleeping cubby. I think almost everyone has a personal weapon or at least a backup close by in case of emergencies. It is not like all of our weapons are locked away while we sleep. But just the small amount of looting that we have done through the local hunting shop and people’s homes have turned up a pretty wide variety of weapons and bullet calibers of all different kinds. Keeping everything secured is just smart planning.  

If the actual management of Reason’s could see what all we have done to the store – especially the office – I am quite certain they would poop bricks. When you stop and look around, really take a step back, and see what all we have accomplished, I feel it is quite impressive.

Well, that is all for today. You guys all stay safe. I hope everyone is secure. More later….

Day 113 – Broken Arrow

We are missing a member of our team. Our sortie missions had been developed so well. We use the Prius and Volbeat to lure out the majority of the zoms from town. Sorties teams use their five man formations when they are searching but we still use vehicles to maneuver around town. Pick-ups offer a chance for those sortie teams to both bail out and pile in quickly. And our most recent addition was to have scouts out patrolling on something fast and maneuverable – like 3-wheelers, four-wheelers, or motorcycles.

Our two best scouts are Kanen and Dillon. Both of those guys had those dirt bikes long before the apocalypse. With his family house here in town, Kanen’s bike and all of his “body armor” was one of the first things he grabbed from the barn once we made it out to loot.

Well, the crew came back from their sortie run early this morning and Dillon is not with them. We established rules very quickly with sortie teams. There would be no rescue team. In one of my favorite sci-fi movies there is a line: “There’s gonna be one speed. Mine. If you can’t keep up, don’t step up. You’ll just die.”  

Especially after the loss of Audrey, everyone was clear on the rules. If you break ranks, we are not coming for you. If you fall behind, we are not coming for you. Now, I don’t want to consider us cold or heartless. It was not like teams were purposefully moving at high rates of speed to weed out all non-hackers. But the rules were clear. If you go crazy and leave the protection of the group, do not expect us to put others in harm’s way to come rescue your dumb ass.

Dillon was a scout. His motorcycle made him fast and maneuverable. We have no way of contacting him outside of the small CB radios but the range on these things is pretty crappy. They were mainly intended just for use around the store. And Dillon and Kanen were really good at scouting the perimeter while the sweeper teams went to work looting what was needed for that day’s mission.

No one knows how or when Dillon got separated. It is possible that he could have come across a nest of zoms and he high tailed it down the highway. It is possible he zipped into Adair and is making his way back to us by heading on a circular route. I don’t see him as the type to just say, “I’m out of here” without saying goodbye to everyone or taking supplies.

It is possible that he could be holed up in a house somewhere but while Langley is a small town, performing a house to house search is just not within our manpower. Kanen is pretty upset. He doesn’t want to write Dillon off. We will give him some time to make it back to us but I am not hopeful.

I am considering voicing that we stop the sortie sweeper missions for a while. I think we have quite a bit of stuff to survive. Everything else would just be luxuries. Losing Audrey and potentially Dillon is way too much for luxuries.

(POTENITALLY) LOST MEMBER: Dillon Hernden – Ketchum, OK

Day 111 – The Ask vs. Take Mentality

When Group 3 arrived here, they came under a series of duress. They had two flat tires and zombies were closing in from three sides. But you look at the make-up of that group: Two strong, young men, two pretty girls, a married couple, and a dog. (Note: I am not saying that Brian isn’t strong or Kelly isn’t pretty. But that close knit married couple says a lot about their character.) There is a pretty good chance that if they would have come to the door, knocked on the door, and asked to come in, we would not have turned them away.

Now, they were also fairly clean cut and seemed to have been taking care of themselves. Now knowing that they moved from house to house, they never ran out of soap and shampoo. Fresh clothes were recycled regularly. They had been taking care of themselves.

And then there were the guys in the pickup truck. They looked a little like hoodlums. I know, I know. I am profiling but they didn’t knock. They were trying to be shady. Hey, they went after our door with a pair of pry-bars. Maybe I am wrong but we all got the distinct impression that those guys were looking to come in here and take whatever they wanted. There was not going to be any sort of negotiating or asking for something they wanted. I think the last thing they expected was to be staring down several gun barrels when we opened the door. Then there was Fred’s line of “We would much rather put our bullets in a zombie than in you.”

I think it was a line that says that we were not going to be aggressive towards them. If they walked away, there wouldn’t be any trouble. Static: Don’t start none, won’t be none.

Now here is the thing that I am concerned about. Let’s say that you are just a little bit criminal. A little bit psychotic. Not a lot. Just a little. Therefore, when the pig spore hit the wind spinner, they had a little less compunction to slip down into the darkness and do things that you normally wouldn’t do to survive. Breaking into a house, stealing a car, grabbing guns, these are all things that the good, moral upstanding citizens might have a problem doing. They may hesitate. And hesitation in THIS world gets you killed.

So maybe everyone out there is a creeper and is someone that we shouldn’t let in here anyway… but Eric and his group were pretty cool. We want our people to be safe and sound. We want to be solid. But at the same time, I think we need to maintain an “us vs. the dead” mentality. Not all people are going to be good people. I understand that. But those meat bags outside could care less. And anyone that is a hand to hold a gun against a zom is a good hand to have…

Day 110 – Survivor Profile: Yulonda & Kelsey

Yulonda Veloquio: I know I have probably abused the “in the right place at the right time” metaphor to death by now. Or even abused to undeath… See what I did there? Anyway, I guess if a person was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I wouldn’t be writing about them. So here is Yulonda Veloquio. She is a staple in the Langley community. I had seen her shopping in the store quite a bit but I didn’t really know her. She seemed nice enough.

So, Yulonda is going about her day as she had scored a day off from work at the Oklahoma State Parks Department where she works as a clerk. When Zero Hour hit, it was exactly one month to the day that she had closed on her brand new house. Well, it was new to her. And so here she is bee-bopping (yes, I just used the term “bee-bopping) down the aisles of the local hardware store getting all sorts of things to make repairs and improvements to her new home. She couldn’t be any happier. And while she is looking for a replacement for one of those hose things for the kitchen sink, screams of terror erupt outside. Suddenly the doors of the shop are slammed shut and barricades are hastily erected. Windows are sealed off and the doors are locked, covered, and blockaded. It is definitely not your typical Monday morning. Well, that is how Yulonda came to be part of our group, making it over with Brad, Kelsey, Shannon, Jenny, and Keith. (We miss you, Keith.)

For the basic rundown, if Sharon wasn’t our mother figure, I think Yulonda would more than fit the bill. She is ten years and one day older than me. She is currently single and has two kids, both of which are grown and out of the house. She is a grandmother and you can just tell in the way she approaches things. Shannon brought that group weaponry. Brad and Keith knew how to use it and they were bold/desperate enough to raid the Dollar General next door for food and supplies. Want to know what Yulonda brought us all from that store? What did Yulonda make sure to loot and bring to us?

Socks and underwear.

And it was the greatest gift I ever received. No one was happier than to be able to put on fresh drawers right out of the package after living over here for forty-five days. I know that seems like such a small thing but it shows you how Yulonda thinks long term. She is an excellent addition to our ranks.

But I have also learned not to approach her until she has been awake for about two hours and has swigged down about half a pot of coffee. I am a morning person. She is not. Of course I like to yell at her all the time in my best Samuel L. Jackson impression, “C’mon, Yulonda, what’s Fonzie like?” When that hits you at 7:00 a.m., you are probably not going to be happy either.         

 

Kelsey Cameron: Kelsey Cameron is the fifth member of the six that made it over from ACE Hardware. I want you to take the story that I told you about Yulonda and now change it to where instead of shopping at the hardware store, you are behind the counter running the register. It is still early. The guys are setting stuff up out front for sale display. Your boss has just made it in after dropping her kids off at school. You’ve got all your work done to get the business open. There is only one customer in the store. For some reason, you cannot log into Facebook and Twitter on your phone. Then there are the sounds of screams, panic, and sirens. And you look up inside to see you fellow coworkers Brad and Keith sprint inside and slam the doors shut. Two seconds later, some crazed lunatic slams against the door with blood dripping down his chin and human flesh in his mouth… What a Monday. This was Kelsey Cameron’s story.

Kelsey was working as a cashier at the ACE Hardware when Zero Hour broke out. I am actually kind of pleased to report that Kelsey is single and has no kids, so that was one person that didn’t have the massive trauma of leaving behind close knit families. She will be the first to tell you that her life was not particularly glamorous. I know that before all this hit she was hoping for the husband, the two-point-five kids, the dog, and the picket fence. But life – and the zombie apocalypse – has a way of changing all that. 

I guess if this were a movie, Kelsey would be our token minority. She is a Native American of the Cherokee tribe. She has her CDIB card and everything. Not that that gives her a particular unique skillset. If you are reading this on the coasts or outside of America, she is not dressed in a bearskin loincloth and carrying a bow. (I’d pay money to see that though. Or a cowgirl outfit, maybe. Moving on.) I don’t think she could track a man in the wild but I felt it was something worth mentioning.

Kelsey has adjusted quite well to the apocalypse all things considered. In a way, I envy her. I wish that more of our members could adopt her attitude. I think they would all be better off but I am not completely heartless. I understand why they mourn and I am not really one to talk since I have my son with me. But even in the middle of all this. In the middle of all the chaos and the nightmare, Kelsey always seems to be able to put a smile on. I cannot tell if the smile is genuine or not but it is a smile I welcome in the morning…

Day 109 – Zombiology 101: A Rose By Any Other Name…

Growing up in the country the way I did, I was not completely immune from encounters with dead animals. It could have been coyotes causing problems, road kill, or other such instances. I cannot imagine a kid growing up in New York City or Los Angeles has ever experienced seeing a deer or a large dog that has been on the losing end of an encounter with a pickup truck. Leave that carcass on the side of the road for a few days in the July sun and things get pretty ripe quickly. I’ve been walking along creek banks and come across the rotting carcass of dead fish that have been trapped when high water receded.  It is a scent that is impossible to get out of your nostrils and once you encounter it for the first time, it is quite easy to recognize it every time you forget it afterward.

Now, before the world degenerated into the mass chaos, my amount of time spent around dead bodies was limited at best. I had been to so little funerals that I could count them on my fingers and even then the bodies had already gone through their process of being prepared for burial.

So to be quiet honest with you, I cannot tell you what a dead human body smells like. But if I had to fancy a wager, death is death. Rotting meat is rotting meat and that smell is pretty !#$%ing universal.

Well, I want you to think about something as we are now into October and whatever week this is in this whole crap storm. Zombies are dead people. They are dead, rotting, skin falling off corpses that don’t know they are supposed to lie down and die.

So if you and your teams are wanting to sweep through a building, make like Toucan Sam and put your schnozz to work. There is a pretty good chance you might be able to smell this wretched horrors coming.

Now the downside to this is that there is a pretty good chance that if you can catch a whiff of them, they can catch a whiff of you too. So you better be on your guard.

However, if you are sensitive to such offensive odors… If for some reason the aromatic bouquet of burst intestines and diseased breath from lungs rotting from the inside out are not your cup of tea, then I would definitely check into a paint mask. And remember the sky is the limit. Don’t just get those paper/cloth masks that you can pick up anywhere. I kind of doubt your local Sherman Williams is closely guarded at this point.

We picked up several of those 3M half-face air respirators that people use when they are spraying chemicals or painting cars. I tried one of those full face mask deals like Walter White made when he was cooking meth but they are hot and restrict your peripheral vision. I felt too claustrophobic when wearing one and the outside world is stressful enough.

This is just one more reason why you need to burn these bodies. Don’t let the zoms that you have dropped continue to rot and fester in your back yard.

Burn those mothers down. Trust me, your nose will thank you.